I hadn't thought about the need for "twitterquette", since Twitter only gives you 140 characters to play with you wouldn't think there is much damage you can do. But I've discovered Robert Scoble has set the anti-pattern for twitterquette:
"The 10 rules of Twitter (and how I break every one): If you follow the talk over on Twitter you’ll see that there are some unwritten “rules” and that I am breaking lots of those rules and pissing lots of people off. I break the rules so you don’t have to."
Twittergram is a good example of stretching the Twitter paradigm - it lets you send a short tweet with a url to short MP3 sound file that you can upload or record over the phone. Apparently some people hate them.
Scoble's post is funny, but I prefer this comment from Kelly @ pinkfu.com:
"There is 1 rule of Twitter: Do whatever you want and if people don’t like it they can stop following you."
What ever the medium, I think all social software is little like that - how we use it will be defined by how we choose to use it, not how others tell us to use it. The other approach can only result in a kind of twittersnobbery where only those who get it, get to play.
But what do you think?
Isn't all software (not just social software) like that. The people using it decide how it's going to be used. I'm sure that the writers of PowerPoint never envisaged it being used the way it is in most businesses. I'm also sure that no-one envisaged email quite like the thing we have got.
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