A few things that you shouldn’t say on twitter

Everyone with an internet connection and/or a mobile phone is tweeting now-a-days . While that is a very good thing and basically the essence of everything twitter stands for , we need to remember that twitter is also a forum . When we say that , we mean that there is a huge number of people who can potentially read your tweets . Some of them read them and then there are some others who might react on twitter . There is also a third possibility of your tweets affecting your real world life in many ways . So what should and shouldn’t we tweet ? Let us discuss this today

Without much ado , let us leap right into the discussion . What shouldn’t we tweet is a better and relatively finite list to make and hence let us focus on that .And as usual let us list them out

1. Extensive personal info : We are all on twitter to make friends and share thoughts and have conversations . While that is true , it is a BIG no no to share deep and explicitly detailed information on twitter . Things like which bank you have your account in , exactly where you live and the exact route that you commute to work through everyday are a few examples . I say so because , on twitter , anyone can stalk anyone without the stalked party even knowing it . Someone who does not follow you can still potentially stalk your tweets . So any info that can potentially be used to damage you physically , emotionally or financially SHOULD not be on twitter , not even in DMs . If you do use DMs to share such info with friends , ensure that you delete the sent DM after they have read it . If that is so unavoidable , that is .
2. Radically supporting / opposing anything : By this I mean , avoid tweets that can get you classified as a wingnut or a radical . It is ok to oppose and be offended about something and express it vehemently . But please do not do it incessantly , that will upset your followers and also decrease the shelf life of the readability of your tweets . And remember , deleting an offensive tweet does not get you off the hook , search engines always cache stuff really fast and hold them there . And these keep showing up everytime ANYONE searches for / about you on the web . so do think and tweet . Keeping the reader’s sentiments in mind when tweeting such things is of paramount importance
3. Mindless Hashtagging : Agreed that everyone wants to start or be in the TT list . But off late , I see a sad trend where people just start hashtags that are not related to their tweets and keep asking their friends also to tweet them . This is Spam and hurts very badly . The other stupid thing to do is take a trending tag and simply add it to tweets . Both of these are bad and will result in a loss of reputation . Same goes for obscene hastags and vigilante-type behaviour of ridiculing tweets with hashtags .
4. Negative RTs : While RTing is generallly a sign of generosity , there are people who will reply to me by RTing my tweet and appending their comment to it , that pisses me off no end and believe me , no one likes that . There is also a set of people who will take a perfectly good tweet and RT it after adding their dose of profanity to it . Totally stupid that is . There is also a group of so-called marketers who will just take their tweets and add the twitter handles of popular folks to it , effectively “faking an RT” , this too is not looked upon kindly .
5. Stolen Tweets : Some people take tweets from popular tweeps and re-use them without attribution . That is in effect stealing a tweet . Most of the popular users have preferrred URL shortners and singature tags that can easily reveal who is the original person who tweeted the information . Once they find out , then the news is out in the public and guess what ? No one likes following a thief !

So catch you in the next post ! Have fun and be safe !

Technorati : social media, tips, tweets, twitter
Del.icio.us : social media, tips, tweets, twitter