Ha! Good find!

With all due respect, I find it more interesting to read tweets from the so-called offender than I do about who you are having lunch with. (Waiting on ---- to return with my lunch. I am hungry like woah. Must have some delicious fixins."

Twitter is a place where many people are still trying to find their way. Perhaps it would have been better etiquette to offer suggestions than to call some one out so publicly? But truthfully, many folks like to get the newsfeed style tweets. And repeats are helpful if you are not online at the time the original tweet occurs.

Just my thoughts.

Your initial comparison is more of an apples and oranges comparison, really. A personal Twitter account is entirely different from a Twitter account that represents a specific recurring community event. You and I barely know one another, so of course you would be more interested in anything an arts-related account would have to say. My account specifically related to my book would never contained updates about my food or random comings and goings, while my personal account is just for people who know me personally and like to see a more personal side of me (and I them).

In terms of calling someone out, I'm not even sure who's doing it (the person who runs the account), so I didn't name any names and didn't directly refer to the account that frustrated me. AND, I most certainly did make a comment via Twitter prior to posting this write-up and the posting of non-First Friday material on the First Friday account continued (I guess now I've directly eluded to the offending party, but oh well).

If I want to know everything that's going on downtown or in the arts district, I will follow ArtsInStark or various other accounts specifically for that purpose (some of which I do), but if I follow an account for an event, I want to know about that event only, and if an event account starts retweeting every darn artist in Canton, I can't follow any of those artists directly without seeing unnecessary duplicates left and right in my Twitter feed. It's unnecessary noise, AND it's not what I follow that account for (I just want fun updates on what will be happening or what is happening for First Friday, and I don't want to see the info duplicated over and over until I start skimming past First Friday updates instead of reading them).

An account that covers a specific event should be handled differently than a personal account. It should be concise, respectful of the fact that people follow that type of account to receive a specific set of alerts, and instead of retweeting other local artists, it should instead recommend that people follow THOSE accounts for that information if they *want* that information (and only once, not constantly, and only when relevant to the topic of the account).

The more noise you make with your Twitter account, the more people are likely to start tuning it out, skimming past it most of the time. When each update is concise, spaced out appropriately in terms of timing, and contains new information that is relevant, people will read each update and will appreciate that you've respected their time and intelligence.

If I didn't care about this particular community in Canton and this specific project, I wouldn't even bother to make note of this issue, but since I do hope that First Friday continues to revive the downtown Canton area, it's important to me that bad netiquette is pointed out as being detrimental to the overall goal. As someone who has worked in online media and has been around the block a bit with some of this, I'd even be happy to have a direct conversation with whoever is running the account.

I mean no disrespect. I simply feel that there are different perceptions, and certainly more effective ways to deal with these sorts of issues. Although there are zillions of folks who profess to be online medial experts, the book is not written on Twitter. Many folks are trying to feel their way through it. They may make mistakes along the way. They may do things in ways that the experts disagree with. But give them credit for trying.

I have had an unusually positive experience with Twitter. I have had people who are thousands of miles across the globe help me learn the ins and outs of it, and give me support and guidance along the way. I have paid the favors forward to others. I am no expert, but that seems like good "netiquette" to me.

If the behavior offends you, simply unfollow and move on. If you want to see the account be more helpful, be kind and give positive suggestions. That is a win win for all.

"If the behavior offends you, simply unfollow and move on. If you want to see the account be more helpful, be kind and give positive suggestions. That is a win win for all."

If you read the entire blog entry, you'll remember that I've already explained why I didn't just unfollow and move on, and I also mention that I did actually make a direct comment to the account that was simply ignored. That is the point at which I chose to reflect on this particular type of frustration on my personal blog.

The implication or perception that I handled it some other way just seems to indicate that you've chosen to take only bits and pieces from this entry and that you've only come by to defend someone who is probably your friend/colleague rather than read what I've written from an objective standpoint.

I don't disagree with last part of your last comment at all, because... well, it's basically what I did. Even this entry, written after directly commenting to the account via Twitter, is written to express frustration in a way that indicates what I would like to see from an account such as First Friday's, and one can choose to learn from that or discard it due to an emotional tie to the person who's been called out. I have little control over which of those options anyone chooses, but I do wholeheartedly stand by the process in which I came to write the entry and the contents of the entry itself.

Look, I have no need to quarrel. I just felt it was harsh to go to the extent of writing a blog about a twitterer and accuse them of "bad Twitter etiquette" simply because they did not feel obligated to change when you sent your original tweet. I do know the person behind the account, and I also know that others appreciate having their tweets retweeted by that person.

I am sorry if I offended you by commenting. I presumed that someone who openly calls others "douche bags" on their blog was open to dissenting opinions. But no matter. I have no need to pursue it further.

Best wishes and good luck on the sales of your book.

I'm very open to dissenting opinions (and I certainly don't think we're reached a level that could be called quarreling), but in this case there's a very obvious bias on your part, including the fact that you yourself are often retweeted by this particular account when the retweeted msgs have nothing to do with the subject of the account, and I had correctly guessed that you're acquainted with the person who runs the account.

It's not really a dissenting opinion, it's more of a "hey, don't blog about your frustrations toward my friend, meanie" in a way that's somewhat silly, since a personal blog is for speaking about personal opinions, to which I'm entitled. I haven't heard a real disagreement with my frustration, simply that you don't think I should have publicly talked about my frustration toward your friend on my blog.

While I am quick to call out a real social media douchebag, that's certainly not what I've done with this post, because while I don't like the way the Twitter account spams its followers, I do support the cause and wish it well and plan to participate in and support it. I don't think the owner of the account is a full-on douchebag, but the person is clearly (in my opinion, which is what this blog is partly for) misusing that particular Twitter account.

And am I really supposed to take your comments as unbiased dissenting opinion when the following Twitter updates detail some of the most pointless retweets and replies from the account and they all include you or your cat?

http://twitter.com/CantonFirstFri/status/365486...
http://twitter.com/CantonFirstFri/status/341822...
http://twitter.com/CantonFirstFri/status/341811...
http://twitter.com/CantonFirstFri/status/320250...
http://twitter.com/CantonFirstFri/status/309826...

I think your cat is cute and your artwork is quirky and fun, but none of those updates are stuff that I want to read when I follow an account that is supposed to update me on one very specific monthly event. I'm sure that artists DO appreciate having anyone retweet them, but do the followers appreciate those kinds of retweets? As someone benefiting/enjoying this person's retweeting of your updates, I'm not sure you're aware of the objective answer to that question, which would be no.

Thank you very much for the well wishes, and while I do very much appreciate your standpoint and your wish to defend your friend and a project you support, I still feel that it's important to call a spade a spade, especially if the goal in calling a spade a spade is to hopefully prompt someone to do something better.

Best wishes to you as well. I'm certainly not offended and would be happy to discuss this with you sometime in person, as we will undoubtedly be at one or many of the same events at any given First Friday.

Your assumptions may or may not be correct about me. But as I said, I have no need to pursue it further. The last word is yours, my friend. Please, lets do chat sometime.

Peace!

This article shows the genius behind the openness of Twitter. The use of twitter is like life in how we exercise autonomy or choice for say, personal values for living. Analogously, twitterquette is user-defined on a user-to-user basis. This is both good and bad, but mostly good. Good because who the heck is twitter to dictate to the user how to speak and use the product, otherwise what's the point. Bad because from one user to the next, folks following each other will bump heads over how one should be using twitter (which kinda proves that relativism in twitterquette is untenable, but I digress). However, the compromise on this latter point is to simply filter out the person by unfollowing them--but this too is an additional "con" due to the obvious initial interest in following the offender from the start.

Personally, and I've said this on here before, I avoid such strict Twitterquette as yours Brandice, but that's not make you seem like the bad guy. To your credit, my twitter stream is a bit noisy at the moment, but the benefit to me is I'm getting a lot of the live information that I want and/or need for certain things that interest me from folks I follow. So my solution is to follow certain people for a period of time or at least until I feel I've benefited enough from their stream. Does this make for meaningful connection, yes and no. I use twitter close to the way I live out my real life. I'll talk to new people in the moment and if something grows from that interaction, then "let it be written, so let it be done". Otherwise, nice to meet you and adios--nothing personal. Twitter is my business card, and my weblink is my phone number. Ya dig. I don't come to twitter with the expectation for it to be a dedicated instrument for close relationships, but rather, twitter to me is a medium to other tools that are for more personal connection: Facebook, Myspace, email or my blog. So one's understanding of what twitter can ably achieve is what should be taken into consideration.

If a close-knit circle on twitter is what you're after than do yo thang. But with all due respect, I kinda feel that that is what Facebook is for. Facebook is very twitter-like these days and has A LOT of filter control than Twitter by necessity. Twitter on the other hand somewhat lends itself to be practically an open forum of connectivity and a lot less cliq-ish. More to the point, twitter has always seemed to me to be a platform that wants to push it's users to do the opposite of what Facebook does by encouraging you to connect with many more people and host conversation as if in a room without walls--Facebook is the inverse (and to digress that's why I'd argue that it will never eclipse Twitter). You can entertain a great deal of people on Facebook too, but with privacy controls, friend filters, newfeed filters, and probably more that I haven't learned about. But this all occurs behind the closed doors of your account with only your "friends".

But another credit to you is this aspect of connecting with many people on twitter. This is twitter's greatest strength and simultaneously it's biggest downfall. I'll use @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) as a guinea pig. It is entirely impractical to have 100 mutual followers, so imagine the sheer volume of noise that 1 million+ followers will bring versus meaning buzz from 20 mutual followers. And this leads me to a most unfair and cynical conclusion that the numbers on twitter are only for show for a lot of folks, much less meaningful consumption of live content from real people.

In conclusion, I agree and sort of disagree with you, but because of this, I agree with your overall brand of twitterquette on the grounds that it's your choice. Otherwise, I disagree. Make sense? lol

-David aka MacDavid ;)

Yes, you DO make a lot of sense and you raise a lot of valid points. :) And it is definitely important to remember that my etiquette and my critique of Twitter use comes from the way I use it personally, and it's not for everyone. A lot of people use it for massive amounts of constant concise information, and I use it for more personal purpose mostly. When it comes to professional Twitter accounts though, I think it's important to consider both vantage points, which is where I think this particular account got it wrong. I'm sure that I get it wrong some of the time as well. ;)

Thanks for your musings on the topic... very interesting read!