Twitter Etiquette

Like about a million other people, I am a newbie at Twitter.com. (Twitter is the moment-by-moment social networking site which turns blogs into a slough of primordial goo).

When I read the tweets, I feel like I'm squeezed into the 14 Mission Trolley in San Francisco: hot, crowded, surrounded by strangers speaking a foreign language and trendsetters busily making plans on their cell phone. And out of it.

In desperation, I recently twittered a plea for instructions and got a tweet back with a link to Twitter Etiquette. Amidst the suggestions at this link this one really struck me:

The author suggests people keep their private conversation or their business and private lives separate by creating separate Twitter accounts. It probably sounds really obvious, but the original idea of Twitter seemed to blur the line and made me feel that whatever I shared went to business associate, lover and enemy all alike.

For me, the suggestion boils down to setting up one twitter account strictly for business updates "Follow TKB Trading at www.twitter.com/tkbtrading to be alerted when there are new products, sales, and general announcements" and another for personal "Follow Kaila Westerman at www.twitter.com/kailawesterman for updates on Kaila's success with losing 5 pounds, lowering her cholesterol or whatever else she is worrying about today!" Once the two accounts are created, I can control who gets my tweets and whose tweets I receive.

Now, if I can just get everyone else to do this too.

Kaila Westerman
TKB Trading, LLC
for now, follow tkbtrading at http://twitter.com/tkbtrading