Annoyance at spam twitter accounts had me lock up my twitter updates last week. The upshot of that was that by doing so, I moved some 500 people who had been following me into twitter limbo. For the last few days, I’ve been having to decide, one by one, which ones I let return to seeing my updates. Rather than do this willy-nilly, I came up with some basic rules that might be interesting to you as well.
In order for me to let you have a glimpse of my life, I’ve decided, I need to know you or know of you, or at a minimum want to know you. If I don’t know you or know of you, the only way I can tell if I want to know you is from your online identity, which in this case means glancing at your twitter profile. If you follow thousands of people, I’m probably not going to let you follow me, because it bespeaks of a lack of interest in me as an individual. If the “person” is a company, product or service, forget it. There has to be some benefit to me in your seeing some of me, and that is unlikely to be the case with most companies. I can see how it might benefit them, but me? Unlikely.
The bar is much higher for me to choose to follow someone. In order for me to do that, there are two criteria: I have to know you well (we’ve at least had drinks or a meal), and you have to use your twitter account in a way that I find acceptable. By that I mean you don’t twitter excessively or have long @ conversations or only @ people. You need to have something to say for me to want to hear it, not just responses. I have to know you well for the simple reason I need to understand a little of your life to make sense of some of your messages. Where you live, your family life, what you do for a living, your sense of humor, etc. Without context, a twitter stream can simply be stuff and nonsense.
Now, abstracting this just a little to all social networks isn’t much of a stretch.
- Have something to say.
- Pick and choose who you follow and who follows you carefully.
- Offline context still matters.
- Reveal only as much as is necessary.
- Give me a reason to follow you–and to share with you.
It’s a start anyway.
Strangers following me is far less of a problem now than the unfortunate intersection of my father, my boss and my friends following me. I was sort of living a public life in twitter, but you can imagine what happens with your audience changes, especially people you really can’t refuse to let follow you. I’m twittering innocuously now, while trying to find my feet again.
I just did the opposite to avoid offending people I’d recently met who wanted to add me (so that they could do so without my having to have them in my friends’ feed). And I’m already starting to wonder if it was such a great idea.
Twitter needs a way for people to say things like you said here *within* Twitter (Facebook and other platforms need it too) so users can shape their own context — “hey people, even though you like using Twitter for X, I prefer to use it for Y, so keep that in mind.” But, alas, no.
I created a (personal) social media policy for many of the same reasons you mention. Here it is. I’ve asked that people take and remake it. Remix and mash up (I even put a CC license on it!):
http://melaniemcbride.net/about-melanie/social-media-policy/