Aurora's Blog

Since I spent almost a week talking about how bad Facebook is for me, and how much happier I am when I use it less – and I raved all about twitter yesterday – I thought it might only be fair to mention that I guess, perhaps, twitter might have some things that aren’t perfect about it. Maybe.

For one thing, let’s start with me! I’m not perfect at twitter.

I obviously had the story of the rough night on twitter. I’ve made mistakes before – accidentally using photo or video services that don’t embed into the tweet directly, sending a dumb tweet here and there, even a typo once or twice (though I try so hard not to!).

(Oh geez, another Cory Booker story? Just skip the next two paragraphs for more twitter and non-Cory Booker talk.) Cory Booker sent me a nice thank you tweet after I donated to his fundraising page. At first I retweeted it. But then, getting closer to his reception in San Fran, I tweeted again to say I donated again in the form of a second ticket. He graciously thanked me again, and then I un-retweeted the other one, because I thought “Two Cory Booker fundraising/thanks tweets in a row – that’s a little much in your timeline, isn’t it?”

Anyone who follows me knows my timeline is going to be Cory Booker heavy. And he’s Cory Booker! How could you ever have too many retweets of things he tweets you? You couldn’t. When I’m lucky enough to get a tweet, I should be retweeting that biznatch. (Or, at least, I think so.) (And obviously, now that I’ve un-retweeted it, it’d be too weird and not timely to back and retweet it now.)

I’ve also read that sometimes when you delete tweets, some of your other tweets might accidentally disappear by the wayside somehow. Well, I know I didn’t purposely delete it, but somehow my tweet suggesting “Empire’s New Groove” for #DisneyStarWars names got deleted. And I was sad, ’cause I thought that was clever, and I even got retweeted by a writer I like!

I guess that’s what I get for deleting tweets.

The man I mention too much (but really, how could I now when he’s such a big reason I started tweeting) (and yes, it’s Cory Booker) says part of his tweet is to never delete a tweet, even if it’s a “butt tweet.”

Being that I’ve mentioned deleting tweets, that’s obviously not my style yet. Maybe it should be. I don’t know. I never delete any kind of important tweet or tweet I think people like. I try not to delete a tweet that people have publicly responded to (though I’ve obviously made that mistake, mentioned earlier).

I do delete tweets with misspellings or bad links if I send out a new tweet. I do delete a few tweets here and there if they’ve been up for a while and have no favorites or retweets, ’cause I guess people didn’t find them interesting. So, why leave them in the way of things people might have found interesting?

Obviously, I’ve had twitter for less than a year, so I think I’m still finding my strategy. I don’t know how long it takes to find your strategy, or if some people ever do.

Ashton Kutcher’s twitter philosophy is ICEE (pronounced “icy.”) It means you can’t send a tweet unless it inspires, connects, entertains, or educates.

Are all my tweets ICEE? I don’t think so. Some of them are kind of dumb or silly. I mean, sure, I’d like to think I’m entertaining people through my feed. But I’m no comedian or anything. I’m oftentimes just tweeting facts, I suppose. “This or that happened/is happening.” Or “Hey, celebrity/jeopardy contestant/random twitter person I’m totally loving right now, pay attention to me?”

And it can be hard (especially for someone a bit loquacious like me) to get thoughts into 140 characters. (But I am thankful that twitter makes me think, “What’s the best, most concise way to say this?” It might be a lesson I can eventually bring to the blog or other places in my life.

Not only is it sometimes hard to find your twitter strategy/philosophy, but it can also be hard to find your twitter brand, which I’ll talk about tomorrow.