I'm a Twitter Twit

Paul Downey writes:

Ruminating on Twitter constraints, I see two kinds of Twitterers emerging: Twits and Twerps.

A Twit sees Twitter as a presence service. Twits love the ambient intimacy twitter affords with their friends, and tweet to build a meaningful permanent record. They strive to entertain, to be profound. ... A twit uses an @reply primarily to reference a user for the benefit of their other followers, and use a direct message to communicate with someone where their followers are unlikely to be interested in the conversation. ... Twits always think about the question “What are you doing?”. A good twit will make you laugh, make you cry but above all feel connected.

A Twerp sees Twitter as a conversation. It’s irc, only with free SMS thrown in. Most twerp updates start with an @ and are meaningless unless you too are a twerp. Twerps often follow 1000’s, because that’s the best way of dealing with other twerps and seeing their asynchronous replies. Twerps often fail to embrace twitter’s 140 character limit; they’re writing memos when they should be writing Haikus.

I aim to be a Twit. :-) When I do use @replies, I try to add a little context so that others can guess the subject without the need to click too many links.

I've found that when I choose new people to follow, I tend to choose other Twits. If @replies predominate on their updates page, I don't click Follow.

I also watch for interesting turns of phrase that make me want to read more from this person.

• playing with power tools. VROOM (photomatt)
• I'm sleeping. I'm not sleeping. I'm sleeping. I'm not sleeping. I'm a goddamn somnolent yoyo. (jefferyharrell)
• thinking that astrology sites are good sources of phrases for focal reviews (dajobe)
• Just raided the supply closet for a new notebook and a handful of big rubber bands. World domination is next! (kplawver)
• Finally having some success with the old "biscuit on the nose" trick. No, not my nose... ( alexkingorg )
• Eating dried cranberries and watching high speed cat race across living room. (isabelwang)
• Apparently Monday was cached. (joemaller)

I'm currently following 96+ people in Twitter. I've moved the Twerpier folks over to RSS * where I can still see what they're saying, but they don't clutter up my timeline. :-)

I'm off to read Twitter...

I'm a Twitter Twit ( in category Random Thoughts , WebTech ) - posted at Sun, 20 Jan, 08:44 Pacific | «e» | TrackBack