Is there a right way to use Twitter?

An obvious reaction is to remind those people that nobody is forcing them to follow me and they can easily unfollow if they don't like what I'm saying. In fact, I have done just that on several occasions.

However Twitter is an unusual hybrid of public discussion and private conversation. In fact it's not unlike being at a cocktail party with friends.

At a good cocktail party there is sufficient background buzz for people can feel they are having a semi-private conversation. However the volume is low enough that people can shift easily from one conversation to another. If one person or group is being too loud or courting too much publicity, it can be seen as being rude.

The difference between Twitter and a cocktail party is that a typical party will have a single host. With Twitter everybody is simultaneously both guest and host. As such many people can't feeling that they have some right to dictate terms or influence the behaviour of others.

As a content creator I sometimes view Twitter as a microblogging tool. On other occasions it's a discussion board, a link sharing tool or location broadcast mechanism. It's Wordpress, delicious, Foursquare and a raft of other services all rolled into one. In fact I think the very strength of Twitter is its flexibility. So it is defined by its users and its usage, not by its functionality or a strict set of rules and behaviours.

Twitter is also beautifully emergent. So the way I used Twitter 3 years ago is different to the way I use it now. Was my usage right 3 years ago and wrong now? Obviously this is a stupid and reductionist question and one that doesn't deserve an answer.

I think things get more complicated when you view Twitter from the perspective of a follower. By choosing to follow a person you are giving them some kind of patronage. In a time of dwindling attention, this is very flattering and something that should't be abused or squandered. I think this is the crux of peoples frustrations with my Twitter usage style.

There are some things I talk about which are of interest to certain people. There are other things which are not. There is an understanding that users will continue to patronise you if the quality of signal is in balance with the level of noise. A high frequency signal and you're considered a good citizen. Too much noise and people start to get annoyed. Some will leave immediately and that's fine. However others will become frustrated, thinking— "I really like some of what this person has to say but the rest is uninteresting or irrelevant to me"

The difficulty is, with several thousand followers it's very difficult to provide value to everybody. Some people follow me because they have read my book, heard me talk or are familiar with my work. Others follow me because we've met in person and are interested in my personal life.

When I'm conscious of the people following me I tend to split my tweets evenly between people I know and people I don't know. This may feel like a raw deal for each group, but that's the nature of the beast.

The problem is that most of the time I'm not tweeting for a particular audience. Instead, much like my blogging, I'm tweeting for myself. So a lot of the time I don't mind if 15 or 15,000 people see what I'm saying. It's personal, it's selfish and I'm fine with that.

As I described earlier, there is an interesting sense of entitlement that comes through following somebody on Twitter. With that comes a level of annoyance if that person is wasting your time with personal, irrelevant nonsense. However—with my early caveats about being a good citizen aside— that really is more your problem than mine.

So dear Twitter followers, I will try to respect your patronage and provide you with useful information and tidbits when I can. However my Twitter account is largely personal and I will use it in the way I see fit. Not to any one person's timetable, agenda or individual sense of etiquette. I'll aim to protect the commons without pandering to the gallery.

Similarly I will respect the way that you choose to communicate on Twitter and won't criticise you publicly or privatly. I'll reserve to right to unfollow you on occasion. However please don't take that as a personal judgement. I will still love you and will almost certainly refollow you at some later date. What I won't do is judge you on your use of the medium. After all it's the Internet and its greatest strength is as a mechanism for self expression.