As a relative newbie to Twitter, and while suffering from a fairly severe case of analysis-paralysis on my blog, I figured I would take a stab at something that I have been thinking about quite a bit: How can we describe the 'Social Contract' in different kinds of New Social Media, especially Twitter?
I tend to think of technologies like Email/IM/Texting as being more established in our daily lives, and I feel that it follows that users have adopted techniques to deal with overcommunication (spam) etc. from correspondents. Most people I know and/or work with have a grasp on how to filter out "spam" from their inboxes, "block" IMs from folks they don't want to hear from etc.
However, in my opinion, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter present a further wrinkle by forcing a re-evaluation of the definition of 'relationship' when using these services. For one thing, each application has it's own termilogy that emerges from it's use-model. Facebook has 'Friends', Twitter has 'Followers', LinkedIn has contact-relationships. Additionally, each individual has their own preference of a contact-level i.e. how much information I would ideally like to receive from each person, and along with that goes each person's personal understanding of what the relationship is.
In my experience, the social contract of LinkedIn is best understood. The site is geared towards professional networking - placing one's professional experience and credentials in sharp focus. To 'connect' to someone on LinkedIn is, at it's heart, an expression of professional affiliation. Beyond that, we can Recommend anothers work, etc. All of this creates a user-experience that constantly intones: "This is a Professional Environment"
Facebook is far more broad as a platform. Relationships are called "Friends", so right there we know that our personal lives come into play. We have an array of tools to share a wealth of personal information, photos, music choices, personal preferences, etc. The designers of Facebook seem to know that we aren't going to want to read everything from everyone. They give us the ability to say "less from X", or "more from Y". They give us a fairly good amount of settings to manage how we are notified of new posts from people, and how these notifications are delivered.
In my experience, the establishment of a Facebook 'Friend' is much like the actual social-contract of Friend in "real life" - Very Broad. We tend to establish friends at all points in our lives of varying intensity. I think Facebook strives to allow us to engage our friends in many different ways - giving us to the freedom to pick comfortable ways of communicating depending on the type of relationships we have. So the social-contract is more complex than LinkedIn, but still very well understood: When I post pictures online, do I expect all of my friends to click through them, no - of course not. Nor do they have to. Depending on how they (privately) see their relationship with me, they may see 'Newsfeed' alert showing them that I have posted new pictures, or perhaps not. However, should they wish to (again, privately) re-aquaint themselves with me or my family, they can simply go to my profile and see what I have shared. Since this model is aligned with established social norms, it is easier to understand how to be a good Facebook 'Friend'.
But, Twitter, at least for me, presents the question of how to be a good 'Follower'. It is both an accurate, and heavily freighted and tendentious way, to describe a relationship. I have been trying to understand the reasoning behind the use of the word. I can see other words being acceptable as well, such as "Listener", "Subscriber", "Reader". Sometimes, when I am feeling a bit sarcastic, I feel more like "SpamEater", "Wincer", or "TMI-Recipient".
Religions, Schools of Thought, Political Movements, Art Forms, and Celebrities all have 'Followers'. In Life and on Facebook,I may have 'Friends', but I don't necessarily feel like their 'Follower'. However, on Twitter, when I 'Follow' someone, I do _actually_ want to 'Follow' what they say. Or, to be blunt, I _hope_ that I want to read and keep track of what they say. Further, I hope that what I have to say is found valuable by my 'Followers'.
From a technical standpoint, the software is written so that I always have access to what those people have to say. So I _am_ 'Following' them in a real sense. However, I sometimes feel that the term, and the way we use the service, stir up some interesting questions.
Like it or not, Twitter is here to stay and there the term is 'Follower'. So how can I be the best 'Follower' I can be? And, also, what do my 'Followers' expect in return?
Here are some of the questions I have been asking myself and my thoughts in parenthesis.
1. Is it socially-acceptable to ignore personal tweets from business 'Followees', or vice versa?
(Strongly: Yes. )
2. Do I expect all my Followers to be captivated by all of my Tweets?
(Strongly: No. Twitter provides me with one channel which is multicast to all my followers regardless of the characteristics of the relationship. And this leads me to some open ended questions:)
3. Most Importantly: How can I filter what I read and what I write to my (and my Followers) best advantage?
Should I set up a separate Twitter account for different kinds of relationships?
Business? Personal?
What if I speak more than one language, how do I handle that?
What if I have many interests and different Friends/Colleagues from each?
Should I #tag tweets to better 'target' them? Does that actually work unless Followers are searching?
How can I manage the Tweet volume from my Followees?
If it is socially acceptable to ignore/filter tweets, how can Twitter users accomplish this? (before an intelligent agent based architecture is available to end users to pre-read their incoming Tweets,:)
What do you think the Twitter environment will look like in 2 years? Will there be tools like the ability to search Tweets and exclude content? i.e. from:EffectiveTech -#personal
Will we have different types of Followers in the future: i.e. "Follow when #Biz", or "Follow in Summarized Format by [Day, Week, Month, Category]?
What do you think? I promise to "Follow" all your responses!!!!
