Clicked on a Twitter link today, to a well-written and pleasant piece on how to retain friends and followers. I’ve got no issues with the author or the piece, but reading it got me verbalizing my uneasy feeling about Twitter and the changes I’ve seen in just the few late-adopter months that I’ve been on it.
Why does Twitter need to be about ‘growing’ or ‘keeping’ friends and followers? Has social media eclipsed the communication sphere so completely? Most of the article’s tips, and those of so many other articles on the ‘right’ way to use Twitter, assume that the context of tweeting is to keep and attract strangers as followers. “Don’t whine. Don’t post trivial banalities. Don’t be negative.”
That’s fine for strangers. However, when friends do those things, their friends reach out with supportive responses, jokes, keep-yr-chin-up notes, and other relationship strengthening responses. Sometimes even, gasp, out of band– via other services like LJ, Facebook, email, cellphone, etc.
Trying to please everyone is like diluting good strong coffee until everyone is willing to drink it black. Nobody really loves it, but they’re willing to drink it when you’re all out of cream. Homogenizing twitter into a link-sharing service with an extra 40 – 80 characters and a picture wrapped around it just makes it less usable for the rest of us.
I know the Cult of the Brand of Me is huge, but the less it takes over new social media services, the more actual adoption of those services will occur by Real Live Generic People. Optimizing the echo chamber is not helping those folks come and hang out with the rest of us.
In that spirit, I’m going to stop obsessively tagging my blog posts. Folks can find stuff via search, and it adds a whole bunch of really annoying clicks, especially since (grouch alert!) I set my default font to 14 points because I am Not a Young Thing Anymore. WP’s UI can’t compensate, and tagging & categorizing are painful. Also the left side menu buttons take the first 4 – 6 characters of every line on the top of the screen. Whining, rambling, trivializing, AND being negative. In one paragraph! Ph34r M3, I RAWK! 😉
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