Tweeting, Shmeeting, I’m about to write about the downside of social networking toy: Twitter. The downside is the amount of RT (or retweets) and useless information (this one is opinion based I’m sure I do the same).

I’ve found usefulness in retweets for programming and design tips or tutorials. I’ve also found it valuable for people to follow you or befriend you online. Jesse Newhart wrote a very informative post about Retweeting and How To Turn Twitter Followers Into Friends, check it out here.

So yes, I’ve actually started following some people on twitter because most are extremely resourceful. I’m currently following just 33. These are 33 people who are either real life friends, college people or colleagues who may/may not be updating their facebook statuses via twitter already (haha). I’ve also added a few random people and companies (i. e. JetBlue – which I love using at times however I tweeted about my horrible experience on Dec 31st and adagency layoffs – for the apparent recession scare). I’m sure the number of people will change soon. However, you shouldn’t be offended if I didn’t follow you back (I just found out today that you can actually check to see if people are following you on twitter by using friend or follow (I’m not sure whether I should be offended that BarackObama isn’t following me). 

Also, just because you followed me and I didn’t  return your follow doesn’t mean I hate you or find you uninteresting. I just think that I should be selective of who I follow, You Don’t Have to Follow Everyone on Twitter that Follows You!

 I’m used to tweeting from twitterrific, TweetDeck, Destroy Twitter, txt and the web. I realized this today:It’s extremely easy to distinguish posts that are directly in reference to something that I posted if I use the first three applications. However, if I am signed on to twitter via browser, I realize that I lose responses based on the users RT (retweeting) hundreds. I barely refresh unless I’m idle. So today, I lost an invitation to an event which was buried for 2 hours, after I played some Guitar Hero, until I turned on TweetDeck (which showed me messages responded to me). I was a bit saddened by this and I got this epiphany that determined this post.

I realized that not everyone that I’m following is completely valuable. They are classified as spammers – you know – they do that annoying  thing like what enters your spam folder.  Check this list to determine whether you might be a twitter spammer … Read Here. Maybe these people are addicted? See also You might be addicted to twitter if… Read Here.

Also true: you do not have to read every post on twitter. 

Earlier today passionsista showed me a person’s profile who had over 11,000 updates. His first post was the evening of September 28th, 2008. I’ve been on twitter since March 21, 2007 and as I create this post, I have a mere 573 updates, and I recently started RTing. That’s basically 5% of what this person has who joined a year and more after me. Most of his content I found very irrelevant, Such as most of his ROFL comment with no statement. I’m not against him totally but the idea is that twitter is completely opened and I’m just curious what the ROFL might have been a response to? Sure, I might be a bit “nosey” in this situation however I would be annoyed if I am following someone whose every post is ROFL or LOL @anyone-he-is-following, every few minutes. I used to believe this works so much better over IM.

Well, it’s possible his friends are curious of what he does every few minutes, he does have an active audience of over 500. 

The thing is, you don’t need to retweet everything. There’s actually  good resources out there that provide RSS feeds that most likely someone has seen. I use google reader which provides me a clean list of programming resources and design resources. Surely you do want some people to be aware of posts that may be extremely valuable to them but what if your entire audience aren’t programmers and you posted RTs of 50 tweets based on programming information in one hour? Same goes for different topics that others may be into. I think you need to know your audience and the reason why they are following (or I may be thinking as an advertiser – I do work in advertising).  I was quick to unfollow people who I found weren’t interesting/valuable to my twitter account.

Many Tweeters should consider the frequencies of their posts, and their retweets. You fellow tweeter, as someone who tweets, aren’t required to post every single activity for your tweeps, people who follow you. Then again, we may be curious about your twitter meltdown .

In all honestly, it’s also based on how many people you’re following as well. So probably the 33 that I’m following may remain the same. By the way: yes, I did have warm apple pie and vanilla ice cream before I shamelessly posted this blog entry on my twitter (@Jerlyn)asking everyone to have better tweeting etiquette.