Twitter Protocol

I’m fairly new to the whole Twitter phenomenon, and while I think I have a lot of the basics down, there are still some things I’m fuzzy on. I only recently figured out the whole ‘@reply’ function, which is probably super basic and easy and I shouldn’t admit it because it reveals that I am not as technologically aware as I should be. Then there are those tags that appear with ‘#’ signs in front of them – I haven’t even tackled that at all.

But here’s a protocol/manners question with regard to Twitter – Is it inappropriate to not follow someone who is following you? I’ve been told that yes, it is not okay to choose not to follow someone who is following you. But what if the person following you is in some random band that you’ve never even heard of and that, after listening, you really don’t like? Or the ‘person’ is basically just a marketing/spam page where they go Tony Robbins on Twitter and talk about how you can expand your brand? What if I really don’t want to see that crap turning up on my Twitterfeed? HAVE I NO CONTROL OVER MY OWN TWITTERLIFE OR TWTTERLATIONSHIPS!?!

Honestly though, I’d like some opinions on this. Does Twitter not work like most every social networking utility, where you pick and choose what associations you want to have? Or am I missing something?

Information Society – Creatures of Influence

Zoot Woman – Information First

*Note: Creatures of Influence is out of print to the best of my knowledge, and the only other album this song appears on is Apocryphon. InSoc has a ton of rarities, and if anyone out there actually has a copy of Creatures of Influence on vinyl, I’d probably buy it off you.

Tags: information society, Rants