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This is a post solely designed to explain the principles guiding my Twitter usage. To find out more about me, use the sidebar or go directly to http://v-l-a-d.tel

If you are truly interested in connecting with me via Twitter, and not following me automatically (be that robot-automation or just blindly following people by yourself), PLEASE READ THIS.

Following

- I will follow you only if I consider your tweets interesting. Even if you are a very nice and interesting person in real life, if all you tweet is what you ate, I will not follow you. This is a very personal assessment and it doesn't claim to be anything but subjective.

- If you read the Bio on my Twitter profile you'll find out what my main interests are, and surely I usually follow people with shared interests. However, this is not always the case, as your tweets can be interesting to me even if they're not necessarily related to how much I could cram into a 160-character limited Bio.

- I do NOT autofollow. Nor have I ever. I read every single new follower notification and decide if I follow back based on what I stated above and my Blocking and Reporting as SPAM -related principles outlined below. Please note, though, that it may take a few days, or even weeks, for me to get to read new follower notifications.

Not Following and Unfollowing

- I do NOT follow people who are generally, or in relation to a particular domain (but one they choose to tweet often about), clueless. I respect personal opinion(s) and the right to that, but nothing gives you the right to say something is true when it isn't. If you don't care enough about what you're tweeting to base it on facts, I don't care enough about you to follow you. I will unfollow you if you suddenly post something that falls into this category. If this comes in great contrast to the normal quality of your content, I may make an attempt to let you know that you may need facts to base opinions on, but no guarantees.

- I will unfollow you the second you send me a direct message or reply about a "Twitter game", whatever that is.

- I won't follow you if you use Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, or any other similar location-sharing app/game and I will immediately unfollow you the second I see such an update from you. If you're not within 50 miles of me, these updates about your current location are completely irrelevant to me and probably everyone outside your stupid tech bubble. And don't get me started on the "becoming Mayor of..." aspect of these things. Bottom line: this is spam. Perhaps not in its generally accepted definition, which is why I won't "report you as spam" (see below when I will do that), but it nevertheless feels like spam to me. The only exception to this, in my view, is if you use these services only when you travel. In that case none of the above applies.

- I will not follow you if you tweet in a language other than English and I will unfollow you if you start doing this. On this account, I tweet exclusively in English, and I expect the timeline I see to be in the same language. Naturally, interacting with me (a.k.a @ replying me or direct messaging me) in another language will also ensure that I won't follow you or immediately unfollow you. [Note: If you tweet in Romanian and plan to interact with me, please follow the account I use for tweets in Romanian -@vladbro. However, bear in mind that I *very* rarely use it]

- I will not follow you if you use Twitter solely as a way to push stuff you do elsewhere (such as, but not limited to, Friendfeed) and I will unfollow you if your account starts to do this.

- I will unfollow you if you start tweeting a lot per day about subjects that don't interest me at all. The list of such subjects is very limited, but, for example, if 19 out of your average 20 tweets per day are live tweets from a baseball game, I'm sorry. It's your right to tweet about whatever you want, and my right to keep the timeline I see interesting to me.

- I will never follow you if your profile link URL points to a URL shortener. And depending on what you tweet and how much (or how little) information there actually is in your Bio, I might even block you or report you as spam.

- I may unfollow you if you use either of the words "dude", "awesome", "sucks", "rules" and "whore" (this last one in the 'geeky' sense) and any of their countless variations, an excruciating number of times per day.

Blocking

- I will block you if you follow me (and, usually, hundreds or thousands of others) without having tweeted once. Although this is not easily defined as SPAM (which is why I won't also report you as SPAM), something is clearly fishy about your account.

- I will block you if you have only tweeted 2-3 times, and the content of your tweets is useless.

- I will block you immediately if you are tweeting from an unregistered application (the source of your tweets appears as "from API"). If you're working on the next top secret amazing Twitter client, sorry. Other than that, again, something's fishy.

Reporting as SPAM
(this supersedes, and therefore implies, also blocking)

- 500-1000 following, less than 20 followers means you are a spammer.

- 1000-2000 following, less than 50 followers also.

- Having a pornographic profile picture is forbidden by Twitter's Terms of Service and it will instantly make me report you.

- If the only links you ever tweet refer to making money online (with or without Google!), having whiter teeth, or performing better with your loved one, you are a spammer and I will report you immediately.

- Being followed at a time by two or more users that have the exact same username save for 1-3 characters (usually the last ones) means I will report you all.

- Replying to me without any connection to anything I've said and/or with only a link as your tweet will get you reported.

- I will report you as SPAM if you've tweeted 20 times, 15 of those being the exact same link (accompanied by text or not).

Replying

- I generally try to reply to anything that I feel I have something to add to. I always welcome replies to my tweets and replies.

Replying to replies

- I generally reply to all replies addressed to me when I believe the conversation will receive added value by continuing.

- I may, and am known to, reply late. I don't think I've ever replied later than in 2-3 days, but be prepared for this. Use the "in reply to..." link below my reply to find out exactly which of your tweets I'm replying to.

Direct Messages

- I do not use Twitter as IM. If you want to have an IM conversation with me, let's exchange IM account details and do that. Do not try to make me use Twitter's DM as IM, I won't, and if you try repeatedly, I may even unfollow you thus preventing you from sending me any more DMs.

- I only use direct messages on Twitter when what I'm trying to communicate will be of value and interest only to one person (this includes sharing email addresses, the aforementioned IM details, and other 'sensitive information' too).

Sharing links and ReTweeting
This is very important

- The links I share, usually multiple times a day, generally come from Google Reader (and, in rare cases, Ping.fm) and represent articles that I believe are interesting, and, in 99% of the cases, agree (even if marginally) with or am neutral towards. If there is a pressing 'issue of the day' across the blogo- and statusphere, I will share the link that will take you to the content I most agree with on said matter. The articles I share in Google Reader are easily identifiable by the URL shortener being either ff.im or j.mp. I may use Friendfeed for pushing these to Twitter or Reader2Twitter (when one becomes unreliable, I switch). Please do note that these items are the only ones that I let Friendfeed push to Twitter and the links are ALWAYS direct to the article.

- Links from my blogs are posted directly by Posterous and as such easily identified by the URL shortener post.ly (the only post.ly links I share, except in retweets, are my own blog posts). They may also be retweets of tweets from the Twitter accounts I have set up as blog feeds for each of my blogs (these accounts are all easily discoverable right here in the sidebar) or come across as shared items originating in Google Reader (to identify these, see the paragraph preceding this one).

- Similarly to my link principles, in 99% of the cases what I retweet, I (even if marginally) agree with or am neutral towards and deem interesting. In the rare cases that I retweet something I don't agree with, this will be made obvious from my comment preceding "RT".

- I very, very rarely link to something posted on TechCrunch or Mashable. When I do, it's only because I consider a post very important or it's important breaking news. This is because me linking to these blogs would only make me the 123,456th person doing so, adding to the overall noise of Twitter. I think that if you care about what's posted on these blogs, you're already subscribed to them, or you've already seen one of the previous 123,455 retweets of a post originating there. Which is why I only use linking to them as a way to highlight important stories.

Favorites

- I use Twitter's favoriting feature similarly to how I use Google Reader's Star feature, meaning I mark certain updates for reading later.

- My Favorites are publicly accessible, and you're free to discover them, but I doubt that they will be of any use to you. As I said in the above 'chapter', if you're looking for stuff I consider interesting, my tweets will do.