Twitiquette

A good tweet can be challenging, a great tweet is becoming somewhat of a rarity. I think I can be funny via twitter, but too often I give in to my natural tendency to either

A) inform my followers of completely unimportant, non-funny and non-exciting things like the weather. i.e. "The temperature outside is finally bearable" or "Going to hit up the pool! Its finally summer in Provo....for now". This is especially true when many of my followers do not live in Provo, and could care less if its hot there.

B)COMPLAIN. This is one of the worst twitter habits, but is so easy to fall into. Sometimes you just want the world to know how pissed you are. But, they don't actually care. And if they do you should really just call or text them directly. For me, this particular faux pas frequently uses the word "damn". Examples: "damn parkway authority idiots", "I wish I had more things to occupy my time than just homework. Damn." or "JUST realized I forgot my power cord. damndamndamn"

C) Excessive tweeting about the Celtics. (or anything that is a personal passion, emphasis on personal). Although some of my followers do like the Celtics, they probably are the same ones who follow the NBA on twitter and therefore don't need my often too frequent updates. I won't even provide an example for this one, there are simply too many.

Beef I have about YOUR tweets:

1. Infrequent tweets: J.K. Rowling, you are the worst tweeter ever. Why even bother?? @jk_rowling

2. Twitter updates about people, places or things that no one else knows or cares about. Almost always done from a cell phone text-messaging system.

Give a little context to your tweets. Twitter isn't the place for inside jokes. I am guilty of lacking context on occasion, and I think this rule can be broken if it is still funny, or enough of your followers are in on it.
Still okay: "Italy is roughly the size of Arizona" (Maybe not that funny, but they get it).
Should've just sent a text: "Funniest sun bathing experience of my life. I can't even explain via twitter." Then why in the hell did I send a tweet?? Go figure.

3. Extreme Retweeting

Retweet with caution. Its kind of like quoting in research papers. Only retweet when you can't say it any better. Because obviously I don't condone plagarism.
Weird/Unneccessary retweets: "@hunterschwarz you're so clever" Really? You had to retweet this? You couldn't just tell him yourself, or just think it inside your head?

Now that we are all aware of what I do and don't want to see on twitter, I hope we can all be a little more interesting and worthy of our followers.

Follow me @_khansen