Twitter is not stupid, People may be

It was one or two days back when I read a post about Twitter. The title of the post was – “Twitter is Stupid” and it was written by Willis Wee from Penn-Olson.com. I was willing to reply Willis but at the second thought, I realised that my comment is going to be quite very big. So instead of filling up the comment box with my 700 words comment, I decided to post a response on my own blog. This is, therefore, a response to the post titled – “Twitter is Stupid” by Willis Wee.

Willis wrote the title of his post – “Twitter is Stupid” (without question-mark). At first, I thought that Willis is telling that Twitter is stupid and so are the people who are on Twitter. When I went through the post, I realised that Willis was actually favouring Twitter and not opposing (contrary to what the title of the post suggested).

Willis says people who are not on Twitter or who do not have friends at Twitter (to shout out loud to) say that Twitter is stupid. Yes, it is indeed very true. I have met certain non-Twitterers who think that Twitter is stupid. But unfortunately, I have also met certain Twitterers that think Twitter is stupid. Yes, this is also very true. However, the fact is that these people (the one who are on Twitter and think Twitter to be stupid) are themselves stupid. Twitter is not a person that has own characteristics that makes it seem stupid. On the other hand, it is actually a group of people (Twitterers). Twitter is made stupid or smart by its users. Therefore, it is important that we behave smartly and keep our stupidity aside to make Twitter smarter.

To make Twitter smarter, you should avoid being stupid on Twitter. Stupidity is essentially a personality defect that can be easily remedied by following some simple rules for “how to do away with stupidity on Twitter”.

Number one: Make Twitter clean

As already said in one of my popular articles about Twitter (link), you should not feed your Twitter account with what you ate for lunch or what you will eat for dinner unless you discover a new edible sensation at a local restaurant or invented a new type of burger.

Number two: Do not behave like a salesperson

It is good that you use Twitter for marketing your products but you should realise that Twitter is not meant for approaching Twitterers like an unruly salesperson. You should be subtle about your campaigns on Twitter. Not acceptable: Get rich quick! Pay $20 and get $100 under a week. Acceptable: I recently discovered a nice way to make five times the invested cash.

Number three: Do not disturb celebrities

It often happens that you send out some tweets to a celebrity and then you expect a reply. When you do not get a reply, you start sending out stinky tweets talking whole lot of rubbish about that celebrity. It is better that you do not send out unnecessary tweets to celebrities and end up in showing yourself stupid and childish.

Number four: Say no to lengthy conversations

If you’re planning to have a lengthy back and forth conversation on Twitter, it is better that you invite the other person to a messenger and continue with your conversations. This, however, does not mean that you should not communicate or converse with fellow twiterers. This rule does not apply when you send out few (one or two) messages to a certain Twitter user. It only applies when you are planning to have a lengthy back and forth conversation.

Number five: Do not behave like a bot

It is okay to send out hundred updates a day. It is also okay if you use an application such as Twitterfeed for feeding your Twitter profile. But sending out 500 updates a day and feeding your Twitter profile with nonsense news aggregated from a website feed is something really very annoying. Twitter is not a competition where you get prize for filling your Twitter profile with 500 or 600 updates a day. Behave like a human and update your profile when you have time. Do not let the bots do it.

This post is a response to Willis Wee and a small initiative to end the discussion – “Is Twitter Stupid?” We, as Twitter users, must realise that we are the people making Twitter be smart or stupid. It is, therefore, our duty to behave smartly and make Twitter emerge as a smarter social networking website.

Image Credit – Flickr, BubbleArmy