Let me ‘splain about how I use Twitter and what my personal definition is of it.

First, I leave it open that Twitter is whatever you want it to be. So, if your views don’t jibe with mine that’s fine. Personally, I think Twitter is like the water cooler in the office. It’s like the copier room (you guys remember what photo copies are, right?). Granted, there are times when it is one of the most dynamic and far-reaching water coolers one could imagine (like during earthquakes, protests, conflicts, life and death, etc.). Like a water cooler it, too, can be a source of misinformation.

However, for the most part, it’s a water cooler for me.

Sometimes I chit chat about unimportant thing. Sometimes I reach out to potential clients or get contacted myself. So, the personal and business uses are intermingled at any given time. There’s a lot of in-between content, too and that’s fine by me. I follow people because they provide something valuable in the same scope. I follow other Tweeps because they entertain me, they are my friends, they’re my peers, or maybe they’re an expert in a field I desire hearing more about.

However, I consistently have less and less time for certain types of Twitter users and, because of my first definition of Twitter (It is whatever you want it to be) I make no apologies for not following someone – or worse yet, blocking them.

Keep in mind, sometimes it takes me a while to check out a new follower and determine if I want to follow them in return. I’m getting better at making that decision sooner than later but sometimes I just don’t get around to it for a while. When I do make a choice to not follow it’s usually because:

1. You don’t give me enough to go on. Your bio is empty, you have only a few Tweets and I can’t discern if you’ve got anything of interest that I want to add to the endless stream of Tweets occupying my feed every day. That’s not a judgment against you – it’s a fact: I can’t see what you’re all about so, if I had to make a decision at the moment, I say “thanks for following me but sorry I won’t be following you at this time.” I can say that because I’ve got almost 5,000 Tweets under my belt at the time of this entry… I believe people can make a decision on following me just fine. No hard feelings, though, okay?

A little suggestion, though… if you intend to follow people and are surprised you’re getting so few in return… fill out your damn bio and post a few things of interest. Nobody wants to follow a non-existent account with “Hello Twitter world.” as the only thing to their name. You might be a wallflower in the offline world but the online world sometimes requires a little more to go on. A’ight?

2. You give me more than enough to go on and I don’t care for it. Sorry, fact of life. Sometimes there are just people I don’t want to listen to. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s me? No, it’s not you – it’s me… it’s just not right, I’m not ready for a new relationship right now but I’m sure you’re really sweet and someone will be very lucky to hook up with your Tweets. Maybe we can be non-Tweeting friends- the kind that never actually talk or share? Would that be okay?

Hey, what can I say? I try to surround myself with people that fit the descriptions I gave earlier. I try to avoid people that mess with my Chi. They’re lucky I let them post on this blog but I don’t want to hear from them regularly on Twitter. In general, though, I prefer to surround myself with people that bring positive, constructive and forward momentum to my day. That’s good juju. It’s not that I don’t care about your illness, problems at work, crappy Monday, pain in the ass client, or whatever. I do. Those things alone won’t make me avoid you on Twitter. Life is life and life happens whether we like it or not. I’m talking about a trend of undesirable online communication. If I can spot a negative or undesirable trend in a series of 140 characters or less… chances are the rest of what you have to offer might be more than I wish to listen to. Since it’s up to each person to subjectively decide what bangs their rocks together and what kills their buzz I accept anyone could make the same call on me. It’s cool, we’re still groovy.

3. I blocked you? You’re sh*ttin me. Really? Well, maybe it’s because I don’t think you’re worthy of beholding the blipfish, huh?

Maybe you creep me out? It’s possible that, when I look at your bio and Tweets, there’s something that tells me that you don’t have good intentions in why you followed me and I’ll have no part in being on your list of minions for others to see nor for you to read the greatness which are my regular Tweets.

Maybe you’re just a spammer? Yah, that’ll get you not only not-followed but blocked because I won’t bolster your following-statistics, I won’t give you additional market research, I won’t associate myself with you or your product, service, cause, or scam. What’s worse is that, if I get the impression you’re a dud and the only reason you found me is you’re using some service like TwitterHawk to scour for keywords to score scam-bait… I’ll not only block you but I’ll also send a spam report to Twitter. You might be surprised at how many people I can check up on 48 hours later that had thousands of people they followed only to be a suspended account. So, don’t underestimate the power of Twitter’s simple and convenient spam reporting and my willingness to use it.

4. You annoyed the blipfish. Want to know one of the best ways to get unfollowed by me? Automatic or repetitive posts telling me what you’re listening to every five freaking seconds, nothing but a series of affiliate crap one after the other telling me about some great product complete with a TinyURL link, retweets of quotes from other people because you can’t get enough of a daily helping of “Inspirational Quotes” pumped to your own damn desktop every day, or generally self-serving “buy my sh*t” posts barely disguised as anything more than “buy my sh*t” posts. If I want to learn about SEO or some quote from Sun Tsu – I’ll Google for it. I honestly don’t require you to Tweet tips, tricks, quotes, and other balloon juice all day. Your attempts at “Social Marketing” are bad enough without buying into the theory that people want to hear you regurgitate what others have said a million times in a million other places. As I said – you can be replaced by a Google search.

The blipfish is glad to hear about stuff you genuinely like, music you sincerely love, a new gadget you just bought and want to tell others about, or a word of wisdom you felt so strongly about you just had to shout it out to the rest of us. I commend you for these things because you felt passionate enough about them to take a second and share.

However, if you are just gaming the system or too lazy to type 140 characters to tell me about it but instead have an automated script telling me you’re listening to “Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus” …I’d be grateful if you’d shut your gob. Since I know it’s not my place to tell you to shut your gob I’ll just unfollow you. Maybe I’ll let you know you have a booger on your nose to give you a chance to reconsider but hey, Twitter is for you to use the way you see fit so who am I to force my views upon you, right? So, I unfollow. Enjoy the electronica.

I’d be following more people if I followed all who keep track of me. My statistics show this. I don’t believe in the nonsense as to a magic ratio, that Twitter is about following more than being followed or more about being followed than who you follow. I think Twitter is whatever you want it to be and I don’t pay attention to my statistics (I had to go look them up just to write this blog entry).

I’d have way more followers if I didn’t block so many. I’m sure I’d be more impressive to others if they saw my follower-count higher but I can’t worry about that. I’m in it not for the numbers but for the quality… the human quality.

So, if you’re on my list of people I follow then I think it’s fair to say I really value you and what you offer in such a tiny format such as Twitter. As you can tell… I’m kinda’ particular. You must be special.

http://www.Twitter.com/blipfish

Twitter is incredibly valuable – particularly to those of us who must network online for the majority of our connections.

Personally, I use Twitter a lot for casual questions, tapping peers on the shoulder, or just keeping up on things that aren’t worth an email but I want to explore with others.

So, if you haven’t already joined me – I invite you to do so! We might have a lot to learn from one-another and adding more, great communication tools is a good thing.

~ Follow Blipfish on Twitter!