Twitter and me

When you have had a Twitter account before Twitter was Twitter, an account from the days when Twitter was the preserve of a special few and when the uninitiated looked at you as though your were mad when you tried to explain how it worked, you get used to occasional criticism about your use of the service. For example, I am sometimes censured for only following a few people when almost 200,000 follow me, or for not retweeting all kinds of causes and appeals, or for not replying to some people, or for simply blocking them.

My use of Twitter has changed over time. Initially, I talked about myself and what I was up to: the places I had been, the restaurants where I had eaten, that kind of thing. I said good morning and good evening, let people know I was going to class, or arriving at the airport, as though it were a kind of log, a way of keeping a note of what I had been up to during the day. I still have my Twitter address on my business card, based on the premise that if I have given you my card it’s because you’re going to get in touch with me, and so you might as well check with Twitter before calling, just in case I’m in class or in a meeting.

That phase lasted until around 2008, when the service suddenly took off in a big way. In a very short period of time, Twitter launched its Spanish version, and as a result, my account went from eight or nine thousand followers to almost 100,000. My Twitter account was no longer a way to let my friends know what I was up to, and became an asymmetric form of communication, and with more readers than many Spanish regional newspapers. I stopped telling people about my daily life, aware that this might prompt quite a few to ask “so what?”, and disconnected Foursquare and Instagram from my Twitter account. This was when I also realized that Twitter was also a fantastic way of capturing information: by following the right users and with the help of lists, Twitter became a source of real time news, to the extent that television or radio news programs were only of interest if they could add more detailed information about something that in most cases I had already known about for several hours. I drastically reduced the number of messages I was sending out, and the number of new people signing up to follow me slowed down significantly. At the same time, I began using Twitter to let people know about what I was going to be writing about on my blog, something that increased traffic on my web site with a clickthrough rate of about 3%. Twitter rapidly became one of the main traffic referrals in the couple of hours after updating my page. After doing this for a few months, it was clear that for many people Twitter had replaced their RSS feed: it was the means by which they were regularly accessing my page.

I have never resent tweets, except by mistake. It could have been a way to increase my traffic, but I think it is disrespectful of those who follow me; I don’t like it when people do it to me: it’s like when people tell you the same story twice, because they have forgotten they have already done so. Neither do I take any notice of people who ask for retweets, unless there is a very good reason for doing so: it seems to be a slippery slope once you start trying to do good deeds, whether it is trying to find a kidney for somebody or a home for a stray dog; it’s not why people follow me. When you have almost 200,000 followers, you get a lot of requests for retweets, several each day. I’m sorry, but unless the issue in question really affects me, you’re wasting your time asking for a retweet, regardless of whether I feel any sympathy to the cause in question. I do reply to people who ask me questions, either in public, if it is of general interest, and if not, on a one to one basis; again I don’t want to bore other followers who may not be interested. If I reply in private, I tend to follow the person in question, at least for a couple of days, to see if what they have to say interests me, if not, I remove them. This is not in any way a lack of respect: my rule is to try to keep the number of people I follow able to be fitted on the screen of my smartphone. And obviously, I only reply to people who are polite; otherwise I block them.

I only update about four or five times most days, two of which are for my Spanish language blog and my English version here on Medium. I tend to update if I am going to take part in a radio or television program or an event open to the public. I also use it to let people know about articles that I have found of interest, although I use a filter: to share interesting things I have Flipboard or Pinterest; if I put them on Twitter it is because I think they are really special (along the lines of “if you are only going to read one thing today, it should be this”). I also use my Twitter account for things related to cyberactivism, a subject that can lead me to break many of my self-imposed rules. If I am at an event, then I will tweet about what is going on at it if it’s interesting, again, often at length. I update in English and Spanish in different ways. If it’s news, then I usually update in English, because most news I consume is in English, unless it’s related to Spain. If the subjects are relevant to my students, then I also do so in English, because aside from working in a business school that is in the middle of Madrid, I deliver more classes in English than in Spanish. If I reply to somebody, I try to do so in the language they have used, if I speak it well enough, and if not in one that works for both of us.

Never, I repeat, never, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE will you see a tweet on my timeline that I have been paid to send. I have never done this, which doesn’t mean I mightn’t someday, but if I ever do it will be transparently, and because I like the product and the company. Any other approach would be showing a lack of respect to my followers: my goal is that they understand that I share things because they genuinely interest me, not because I have been paid to do so. If I recommend a restaurant or a bottle of wine, or any other product, it is because I like it. This is the same policy that I have maintained on my web site, and by now, I guess we can just say that this is how I work. That pretty much covers the bases. If you follow me on Twitter, you know what to expect: a mixture of alerts about what I have written today, news stories, and a bit of everything from cyberactivism to innovation, and technology in general, taking in topics I have discussed in class, things that I am concerned about, and a few other things. With this kind of use, I am now close to 200,000 followers, which seems insane to me, and is a level of attention totally undeserved. Needless to say, I don’t think that I am anybody special, but when all’s said and done, there’s no smoke without fire (says I :-)

(En español, aquí)