Are You a Twitter Douchebag?

I’ve argued for a while that it’s not only rude and douchebaggish to not respond to your Twitter @ replies, its a form of online social incivility. I twittered about this before and I know the counterarguments:

I get a lot of bozo/auto-generated replies and its hard to filter them out.
I have too many followers to respond to each of them.
I’m way too busy to respond to every @ I get.
I don’t know how to keep track of the @s I receive.

…with the bottom-line response that I’m not being realistic or fair.

Here are my thoughts on each of these arguments:
1. The Bozo/Auto-generated Reply
Yeah, we all get the various bozo/auto-generated replies and I’m not talking about them. Bozos are like those damn robo-calls and dickish spam emails which none of us take seriously. But perhaps you have trouble separating the good from the bad and the ugly. It’s getting easier to spot bozos and Twitter’s ever-evolving TOS tries to pare them down for us. But if a tweet looks like it comes from an actual person (look at their profile and their last 20 tweets…this is usually enough) and isn’t an attempt to bait us into a reply (something controversial aimed at starting a flamewar), then let’s call it legit. And if its legit, it deserves a response.

2. Too many followers
Yes, I know its easy for me to talk about this issue since I have around 2000 followers. Here’s why I’ve been on Twitter for three years and only amassed 2000 followers: I make it about the relationship. If I wanted to get 10,000 followers by the end of the month there are plenty of ways to game the system to get there (see folks who have 10k or 20k followers but only 100 tweets as Exhibit A). But if you have thousands of followers, you still have the civil responsibility to acknowledge them when they communicate with you. Because one day, they’re probably going to get tired of being ignored and wonder why they bothered following you in the first place. Ain’t celebrity a bitch?

3. Too busy to reply
I’m not saying we all can’t get busy and miss some replies. Life happens and it’s okay. I’m talking to the individuals (and organizations) who tweet like mad, but never acknowledge the responses they receive. For them, here’s what I suggest: stop tweeting. Seriously. Delete your account and go back to blogging or whatever form of broadcast communication you desire. If you want to use the somewhat tired analogy of “Twitter as a cocktail party,” this would be like the pompous guy talking to everyone but also saying that he’s far too busy to listen.

4. Don’t know how to track @ replies
The good news is that it’s not hard to start. Either use an app like Seesmic or Tweetdeck. Both apps give you the ability to easily see all the @ replies sent to you. Or if you’re a fan of the web interface, go to http://twitter.com/#replies (don’t be afraid to use your custom RSS feed for all your replies). Just don’t NOT make the attempt to reply because you don’t know how. Ask for help and I guarantee it will be freely given.

I hope this doesn’t come off too much as a “Chris got slighted and is pissed” post. And yes, my approach to using Twitter is different than the approach others may take. My goal is to highlight what I hope become more common-sense social norms in how we use social technologies. But then again…if you’re an douchebag in real life, you’re probably just going to be a douchebag on Twitter.