Featured

A Twitter Code of Conduct

What if your Twitter Followers really don’t care about 99 out of 100 of your Twitter posts but they’d never tell the King he was wearing no clothes? Just consider it. Be open to the possibility!

If you collected all your tweets into a book at the end of a year, what would the underlying themes be? Would anyone want to read it? Buy it? How would it teach or help others?

What if your followers don’t really care when you go to bed, when you get up, when you go for coffee, what kind of coffee you have, how many packets of sugar you put in your coffee, when you get in your car, when you get on a plane, when you leave for church, your pool party, your sermon preparations, the movie you watched, the restaurant you took your spouse to, the arrival of your air conditioning repairman, the departure of your repairman, the outrageous bill from your repairman, the departure time of your plane, the arrival time of your plane, your arrival at the rental car place, your departure from the rental car place, the arrival at your hotel, the departure from your hotel, the view from the first base line at your kids little league game, the traffic getting home, the video games you play on your day off, the number of candles your daughter blew out on her birthday cake, how radically cool your church is, or how wonderful your spouse is for putting up with you all these years (particularly the countless wasted hours of twittering you do)?

While I don’t personally twitter other than some limited testing, I am addicted to following a handful of leaders who do. I keep asking myself why. Why do I spend valuable time checking my twitter account 20+ times per day when the return on the investment is so poor?

Why do your Twitter Disciples follow you in spite of the painful plethora of seemingly meaningless rambling filling the twitter waves? Let me suggest one theory:

I am addicted to Twitter not because of the wisdom or insights gained, but rather out of the fear of missing an elusive gold nugget that others might find in my absence. It’s peer pressure at its best.

I’m not anti-Twitter. I do believe it is being misused and under utilized in terms of its potential. On one hand I’m very thankful tweets are limited to 140 characters (more would be painful). On the other, just give me a less frequent, insightful, 200 word blog post that challenges my thinking.

Is it possible to see a transition from 1 valuable post in 100 to 99 in 100? What would it take? How about a Twitter Code of Conduct resulting in less frequent, more meaningful posts? If I ever graduate from Twitter Disciple to Twitter Apostle, here is the Twitter Code of Conduct I hereby commit to follow (and challenge others to do the same):

• Frequency (How Often?) – Not more than 1 post per day. Period. Less is better and forces a more disciplined choice of topic. NOTE: for those already addicted when they adopt this code, the frequency may need to be phased down from 10+ per day to 5 to 3 and eventually 1.

• Length (How Long?) – 140 characters. Period. Surely the ability to pen longer posts are on the horizon. Not for me. It’s a 140-character guarantee. No more. Only less.

• Motivation (Why post?) – My motivation for every post will be filtered to ensure at least one of the following questions apply: Does the post communicate something I’ve learned that I wish I’d known sooner? Does it help promote or stimulate healthy conversation on a topic needing further discussion? Is the post the result of some transformation in my own thinking or values that would be of general interest to others? Will the post help encourage or equip others? Would I want to read this same post from someone else?

What if the leading Twitter Apostles committed to try this Code of Conduct for just 30 days?

© 2009 Envisaging.