I’d like you to hold two slightly contradictory thoughts in your head at once for a few minutes. They are: 1. One of the best things you can do for a new community is seed it with good stuff. And: 2. One of the worst things you can do to your community is lie.
I got my first email address in 1991. I was a freshman at UC Santa Cruz and a friend took me to a basement geek office where you had to fill out a paper form to get your free ucsc.edu email account. In the box labeled “User-name” I started to write “Derek.” My friend stopped me. “Nobody uses their real name.” He said it like he was talking to a child.
Congratulations on getting a Twitter account (or having one for a while)! You’re now taking part in the biggest social experiment in human history (more on that later). But just because you’re floating in a global sea of idle thoughts doesn’t mean you have to drown.
You can be a grownup and participate on Twitter, but it takes some doing. Here are the two ways I’ve found to use Twitter as an adult.
Twitter is currently testing a new feature called “Who to follow” (henceforth referred by its unfortunate acronym, WTF). One of those 25% is, apparently, me. When I log in there’s a box on the main page that suggests two users for me to follow. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s exactly what Facebook does.
The purpose of a test like this is to gather feedback, so here’s some feedback.
Jean-Louis Gassée on customer service: A customer complaint dialogue is structured around a two-position toggle: a) it’s terrible, b) it’s…
Hi, I’m Derek. I used to make websites. Now I grow flowers and know things. I’m mostly harmless. More.
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