Threaded conversations allow you to keep track of what people are saying in response to your post, and even allows you to conduct polls and surveys, as shown in the picture. We can use Plurk to source for information, or get feedback about certain issues.

It also makes it easier for people to reply to your threads, knowing that their response will never get lost, unlike in what I call the Twitter-mess.

Twitter is great because of the wealth of information it offers, if you follow the right people. You can easily find Tweeters who have the same interests or work in the same field as you do. A lot of people read and share articles relevant to work, thereby making it one of the best social networking service (SNS) for people to share information, and obtain information without having to actively search for it.

Of course, people do Tweet about things not related to work or industries (e.g. for me, social media related things and things that interest me about the PR industry) or simply put, bits and pieces of info that are not useful in any way, but are interesting to read and respond to. For example:

Why it’s important to date in parallel. http://bit.ly/lxt5s

The article, like many others on Twitter, is hilarious. Naturally, people respond, showing their delight, amusement, or agreement with something funny that another Tweeter has posted.

Unfortunately, they respond in manners such as below:

4 hrs after you’ve posted a funny story and it’s not so funny anymore:
I’m sorry, what? What was funny? I don’t remember anymore!

And yonks and 2705 Tweets later, someone replies:
I’d agree too, except I don’t know what you’re agreeing to.

And as always, someone with a delayed laughter mechanism:
I just Tweeted that my pet cat died and I’m really feeling godawful, but that’s okay, just go ahead, continue to laugh at the joke I told 7hrs ago.

I get a lot of such responses, and frankly, my dear, it irks the hell out of me. So here are some lessons that you can take.

Twitter 101: How to reply to a Tweet

Re-using the example above,

Good replies would look like any of the following:

Showing amusement / delight:

That’s so funny! RT @mengwong why it’s important to date in parallel. http://bit.ly/lxt5s

Showing agreement:

I agree, @mengwong! Who could’ve known you could use Physics to explain the Science of Dating, eh?

Showing amusement / delight:

LOL @mengwong! Good article! http://bit.ly/lxt5s

Remember – the whole point of social media is to interact, so don’t kill conversations by giving dead-end answers which leave the person you’re talking to confused, baffled, irritated or frustrated because he/she doesn’t know what you’re referring to!

Link the reply back to the Tweet you are replying to!

And so this concludes today’s lesson for Twitter 101.

So go forth and practise!

Some background info: Tweet.sg, run by 33 year old software security engineer and entrepreneur Jym Cheong, and powered by Ennovative Pte Ltd, is a free service that allows Singapore Tweeters to update their Twitter page by sending an SMS to a local Singapore number. Prior to this, we could only update by sending an SMS to a UK number, or update via Twitter’s mobile web page.

Tonight, after seeing a re-Tweet by shenheng, I got curious:

So I headed over to TweetSG’s Twitter profile page to check out what in the world was going on.

Before I begin, let me say that I have used Tweet.sg before. In fact, when they first launched, I tried the service. However, I soon left Twitter for Plurk, and never continued using the service. When I got back to Twitter last month, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of people were using Tweet.sg – “another startup that succeeded,” I thought.

So tonight, I was really a little surprised, hearing the announcement via shenheng that they’re halting / slowing down. From what I know, not many companies go down this path – it is, afterall, a step backwards.

I arrived at TweetSG’s Twitter profile page fully intending to find out what had caused them to disable new signups. Never did I expect that I’d see a whole flurry of angry Tweets from the founder and creator (who also Tweets as jymster). I scrolled through a couple of pages of the Twitter history for the user profile of TweetSG, and found out that the founder’s anger was due to the fact that users had been questioning the reason for a lag between time that SMS-Twitter update had been sent, and the time Tweet.sg actually posts the update to Twitter.com.

Much to my shock and horror, TweetSG (aka jymster) had begun lashing out at people, asking them to unfollow him and discontinue using the service that he has been providing, free of charge. Worse, he threatened to remove users who complained, from the Tweet.sg database, thereby disallowing them to continue using the service.

Wow. Epic social media fail.

Immediately, a flurry of angry Tweets from TweetSG followed, some directed at me, asking me to just shut up about my “social media shit talk”, and reminding me that Twitter is a free space where he can type anything he wants. He also mentioned that it would do me good to remember that Tweet.sg “is not an entitlement”!

Ah. Right. Of course it’s none of my business how he runs his company / service. However, as a Netizen, I have every right to Tweet about it, or blog about it! Well, to quote the man, “Twitter is a space that I type what i please.” [sic]

And interestingly, he states that he’s the same person, online and offline, and that if he doesn’t like a person, he will “just whack” [local lingo for "just attack"]. While being the same person online and offline is a good thing, I’m not sure how many people would openly admit to being a mad / unprofessional person online AND offline.

So here’s what I have to say about this whole issue (and social media in the corporate world) (and my own personal experiences prior):

1. It takes a long time to build a good reputation, but only a minute to ruin it.
2. Do not undermine the importance of social media in building a business or reputation that exists in the digital space.
3. Businesses should always remember that the Twitter / Facebook account that is used to communicate with users is an official representation of the organization.
4. You may not care about what people think about you right now, but in time, the bad bits of your reputation will surface and will precede you.
5. As an entrepreneur, this speaks volume about how you handle a business, and you might want to start worrying about how this will affect future partnerships.
6. In a world where everything is Google-able (and cached), you can never really fully delete yourself. As the Chinese saying goes, Paper can never keep fire under wraps.

So I guess what once promised to be a good product is now tainted by this founder-and-users dispute, and I see many people already calling for fellow Tweeters to move to another similar service called sgBEAT.com, which Claudia claims (backed by many re-Tweets by fellow users) is a “101% friendlier and nicer” service compared to “the other one“.

BTW, at the recommendation of my frend, victan, I’ve tried instead, yet another similar service called SMSyo.com.

With it’s clean and intuitive interface, quick updating service, and SMS numbers for Singapore and Malaysia Tweeters, I can see SMSyo.com rising quickly in the ranks of SMS-Twitter services available in Singapore. Do give it a shot and tell me if you like it! I do hope they have Plurk integration soon!

In the mean time, let’s all steer clear of Tweet.sg – who knows when the founder might just delete our accounts and send our Tweets into a Twitter blackhole?

(Was hesitating to write, until Uniquefrequency’s post on this issue was published, making me want to air my views too!)

She writes about her reasons for not following people on Twitter, citing reasons like their being spammy, sales-oriented, and using Twitter only to broadcast their own blogposts, etc.

Since I don’t use Twitter anymore, I shall write this with Plurk in mind instead.

On Plurk, you can add someone as a friend or a fan. Then, by default, your friend’s Plurks will appear on your timeline. However, you can have the option of whether or not to follow said person’s Plurks. That is, you can be friends with someone, but be sneaky about it, and not follow his/her Plurks, so as not to create enemies (remember, one enemy less is always good), because although his/her Plurks irritate you, frankly, they could still be good friends.

In any case, I now have 149 friends on Plurk, and that is honestly quite a lot of noise, if I were to follow every single person. I estimate that I have (at any one time), unfollowed about 20 Plurkers on my friends’ list, for various reasons. I add some of them back after a while, but some I just cannot be bothered to, for the following reasons:

(1) You are whiny. The number one pet peeve of mine (pertaining to Plurking) is when people only come to Plurk to whine about how horrible their lives are, how depressed they are, etc. At other times, they don’t appear. Or worse, they are constantly there to whine! 28 times a day! Sorry honey, go write it in your personal diary or something. There’s only that many (cozy) emoticons that we can give you.

(2) You use Plurk to spam us. Be it your blog posts, your friend’s blog posts, your friend’s blog shops, your grandmother’s blog, your dog’s website, or your goldfish’s pictures, if all you ever post are links and images and Youtube videos, I am taking you off my timeline.

(3) You Plurk 14 Youtube videos. Consecutively. In different threads. I liken such people to those irritating species on the MRT who blast their music from their handphone speakers, thereby forcing everyone to listen to their choice of music.

(4) You are boring. This is probably the same reason why you I don’t talk to you on MSN anymore.

(5) You are stupid. I am all against discrimination, but there are always exceptions to the rule. I discriminate against stupid people, ignorant people, and most of all, people who talk without running their thoughts through their brains to see if it might possibly be interpreted by others as stupid / senseless / discriminatory / wrong. Of course, said people might not know that those thoughts are stupid because they are stupid. So off they go. I might have followed them just because they are my friends, or my friend’s friend. But stupidity really irks me after a while.

(6) You say something just for the sake of saying something. This is probably a common reason why I unfollow most of the 20 or so people I mentioned earlier. If you have nothing to say, it’s okay not to say anything! Please don’t feel accountable for our entertainment, nor that you absolutely have to Plurk 8 times a day to tell us what you are eating for meals and what bus are you riding on.

(7) I don’t like your face / your personality / you. I’ve only done this to one person before, though.

So what makes you unfollow someone with whom you are friends, or someone whose Plurks you have been following?

An afterthought: Have you also ever unfollowed someone, or muted someone’s threads just because they have irritating friends who reply with nothing but emoticons?

Some people have criticized my way of living and the social life I have, saying that friends online are not real friends. For a while, I believed them, because I was hurt by someone some people whom I met online. But now, I can really say this – that my friends whom I’ve met online are as real as the friends I meet through school or work.

I remember when I was a much younger girl, my parents used to warn me about the strangers I met online. They used to tell me that under no circumstances, I was to meet up with the people I made “friends” with online.

10 years have passed since I first got connected to the internet. 8 years have passed since I first met up with an online friend, at West Mall. His name was Payton. But I digress.

Today, my social life consists mainly of meeting friends from Plurk or Ping.sg for dinner after work, meeting up for coffee, going out with them for a movie or coffee, or desserts, or a meal over the weekend, joining them for Singapore Slingers basketball games at the Indoor Stadium, meeting them at PR-blogger events, having supper with them, or just basically, hanging out.

While some may say that my social life has deteriorated, I beg to differ. I have more than 30 friends whom I talk to on a regular basis (either on Plurk, Facebook, MSN, Gtalk, phone or SMS) and at least 15 whom I meet up with on an equally regular basis. And these people are people with whom I can have interesting and meaningful conversations with, be it about my life, about philosophy, about religion, about current affairs, about the ongoings in their lives, about food, movies or books, or any other interests. With the astounding number of people online, there’s always someone you can talk to about some quirky interest or other.

And I simply love starting threads and taking initiative to meet up with these friends, whether I’ve known them for years, or just a few days, because I enjoy being around people, meeting people and talking to them, listening to them share about their lives and perspectives on certain issues, as well as sharing mine.

What I love is the spontaneity of it all. I could just send out a message, asking, “Anyone wants to meet up for coffee and Scrabble?” and someone would reply. A similar message on any night asking for company over dinner would be responded to by at least one friend willing to meet up. Sometimes more than one person respond, turning what was meant to be a simple meet up into a huge gathering (remember the Plurk gathering at ICB back in November 08?)

Some may find this extremely unusual, but I suppose it’s a habit for me, to meet up with friends from online, and to organize gatherings and outings. It began from the time when I got myself involved in Ping.sg – slowly, I began to organize outings, and then I joined my friend Uzyn in helping him manage community events and activities.

By the time my stint at Ping.sg came to a close, I was already involved in another similar “community” on Plurk.com, which consisted of a lot of people from Ping.sg too. A lot of us were already familiar with one another, and we roped in friends of our own to join in the conversations on Plurk as well.

I don’t find these friendships wrong. Neither do I find them meaningless. Of course there have been mis-steps along the way – I’ve met less-than-nice people, but hey, they are everywhere – online, offline, even in your families! In fact, there are more horrible, poisonous people offline than online! But not all of the people online are creeps, you see?

I’m sure everyone will have a story to share, or will have heard a story, about an online friendship, an online romance that became a dream come true, or about learning from people online, etc. There’s a huge community (which translates into a huge pool of resources) online, and people just have to see that this community is there for some common purpose, to learn something and to share something.

With the ease with which we are able to get connected to the internet these days, it is also no wonder that we make friends with twice the ease, and triple the speed as the good old internetless days. It also means that we keep in touch with friends more often online, than offline. I personally have friends whom I don’t meet often, but whom I talk to regularly online. How do you draw the line between online and offline friends, then?

Truth is, I’m happy to meet people online, because I can judge from their writings before I decide if they would be worth my time to meet up with offline. In fact, I’d really be able to better connect with people who have lives online, too. I said this just 5 days ago, on Monday:

And I stand by what I’ve said. Because this part of my life is so important to me, I will never give it up for anyone. If he loves me, he will accept me for who I am and what I love doing – he will never restrict me in my social life, BUT most of all, I expect him to partake in it too.

Therefore the conclusion that I will most likely end up with someone who is equally as active as I am online, if not more. I just hope that people in my life can understand this, and stop criticizing me about it.

To my online friends: Cheers, to many many more years of friendship, and great conversations, and laughter-filled outings, and discovery of new interests. Cheers to learning, sharing, and helping one another in times of need. And most of all, cheers to US, because we are having the type of fun that some people only dream about!