So to the Techradar website, on which there is a list of ten crimes that will get you unfollowed on Twitter. Many of them make sense. Some of them, though, are damned silly. The first few are fine - not Tweeting too often (we all do it at first), but it’s at no. 3 that the thing starts to come unstuck. Don’t, it says, Retweet yourself. Why of course I won’t. I’ll just assume that everyone saw what I said the first time around and ignore the fact that some of the people with whom I’m trying to communicate might be around at a different time from the rest.

It’s no. 6 with which I really take issue, though. Don’t, it says, reply to celebrity Tweeters. In other words please take away from them every reason they had for being on Twitter in the first place. Certainly there will be one or two who’ll be there for their own glory but equally there are some who want to chat. Twitter and other social media is about bringing down the boundaries, but doing so in an environment the recipient of these messages can still control. The tone of this ‘rule’ would offend me if I were a celeb; it implies that they’re not real people and won’t respond if they’re approached in a reasonable, polite manner in a forum on which you expect to be approached. I’ve certainly had friendly words with a few of them and even more with non-celebs - the one thing they all share in common is that they’re people.

In fact the more I think about it the more I think this is silly snobbery.

Moving on. another one that gets to me is not asking people to retweet what you’ve said. OK, a lot of the time this can be self-serving and silly - but what if you really need help with something? Or what if you’re doing something for charity and would like to raise thousands rather than hundreds? It’s a crazy rule, simple as that. End of rant.

But what really gets to me is that someone feels they can tell ever

Tags: twitter, facebook, social network, nuisance, good practice, best practice

A Tweet from Sheamus Bennett (worth following if you’re interested in social media, click here if you’re on Twitter and you can follow him easily) alerts me to this excellent blog post on why we should be following the smaller Tweeters and not just aiming for the big numbers by following people with loads of followers. The arguments are solid; follow only the big hitters with hundreds of thousands of followers and they won’t have the time to see your Tweets, let alone respond to them.

I have another reason for following people with fewer followers. They may be new, they may be inexperienced but they may well have something to say. And that’s the whole idea of this social media thing - finding out what makes people tick, what they’re doing by all means but more particularly why they should bother doing it. You might well learn something - I certainly have. The thing is, some of the celebrities or high-profile bloggers - the Stephen Frys or Guy Kawasakis who use social media - also have a great deal to say and much of it is interesting. They also have massive media interest, though, so if they want something heard the chances are very good that they’ll find a way to get the message out there somehow. Someone will report it, which they may not in the case of the bead maker in the West Country I’m following, or the advocate of mothers returning to work. They have comparatively few followers but they always reply and they often offer a fresher perspective on matters than I’d have thought of by myself.

So yes, follow the non-celebs who some people describe as the smaller timers on Twitter. Not just because it can be profitable (but hey, why not!) - but because you might read something interesting that other people don’t get to see.

Tags: twitter, facebook, social network

Just back from a meeting and OK, this isn’t strictly social networking but you have to see this video to understand my working life. Many thanks to Emma Jones of Enterprise Nation for Tweeting it.

Probably the most interesting thing about the case reported in the Guardian, in which a man in Korea has been acquitted of spreading falsehoods on the web, is the way it highlights the differences in culture and emphasises that the Web might make us look at the same thing but through many different sets of eyes. I sound like Marco Pierre White at his most cryptic, I know.

But it’s true. This Park guy sets himself up as an economic prophet. To a Western pair of eyes we see the word ‘prophet’ and already start to write him off as a chancer. He’s not serious, he’s calling himself a prophet, it’s a ludicrous title...but there it is. He’s one of these odd people you get from time to time who might, concievably, have something to say. Elsewhere it appears they take him seriously enough to take him to court when they find that some of his credentials are bogus.

There are areas in which it would be the same over here. Had he styled himself as an independent financial advisor in the UK without the right qualifications or offered actual financial advice without the right title there would have been regulatory questions to answer. But prophet? It sounds almost like guru. I hate to think of how many new media or social networking ‘gurus’ would be in serious trouble if they actually had to quantify their expertise.

Tags: blog, blogs, internet, web, on the web, twitter, facebook

I can’t tell you how relieved I was to read this blog entry from Edelman. Someone with a bit of clout has at last noticed that a great many of us are using Twitter, Facebook and loads of other stuff to announce absolutely everything about ourselves to a waiting world.

People have started to fall slightly foul of this, albeit nobody has confessed to anything too severe. A while back the estimable Twitterer Stephen Fry announced that he was stuck on a delayed flight, and when he arrived at the airport there were the paparazzi waiting to take his picture. OK, he’s a celebrity and if he announces his whereabouts in a public place he can take his chances, of course - he’s been perfectly affable about how he effectively set himself up for it in interviews since then.

More disturbingly, I’ve noticed a trend towards people mentioning that they’ve bought a swish new computer. I like doing that myself, although due to budgeting it’s going to be a while before I do it again (also due to the fact that the existing one works fine so I have no excuse for anything new and shiny, which is frustrating). But if I’d done so, would I announce it to the world? I think probably not, on balance - or at least I wouldn’t announce that and then tell everyone when I’m out for a meeting, or visiting family, as some people do. The connection between ‘I have something of high value in my house’ and ‘The house is now empty for a few hours’ seems not to occur to a number of individuals.

I could have missed something (please do let me know if I have) but I’m waiting for the first reports of robberies or other crimes committed by criminals using social networks in their planning. Call me a cynic, but don’t tell me you don’t agree. In the meantime I fully agree with Edelman’s call for some sort of social networking safety code - on which I will now be working for inclusion in my book. We’ve got to start monitoring what we’re doing online not only for success stories (which we like) but for undesired side effects too.

Tags: twitter, facebook, flickr, privacy, reality television, reality tv