I learned something recently, the hard way, about being a good Twitter citizen (or Facebook or any other social platform, even email).
I concluded wrongly that in my one and only twitter feed, because it was MY twitter feed, that I could post on multi-various topics as long as they were about me... that everything about ME would be regarded as on-topic and as non-spam. Big mistake.
The situation is that my personal interests range over some wide and fairly incompatible subjects. On the one hand, I have a group of twitter followers that focuses on Skype, VOIP, and associated technologies. On the other hand I have a large group of friends and followers that chats comfortably in defined areas of politics and religion. These are the two sides of my online personality, and I live comfortably in both worlds. But for some people in my audience, these themes are completely incompatible.
Some of the tech folks didn't like it that I posted so frequently and vociferously on politics... and my political followers were less than juiced if I yammered on and on about Skype. I bet lots of other people are in similar situations. It shows itself most commonly when a person wants to twitter about disparate professional, personal and trivial interests.
I now know that a twitter feed is like any other blog or even email. It must stick to a theme and be written in a style that matches the expectation of the audience. Twitter followers are like any other audience. People decide to follow because they are looking for enlightenment in defined areas. A writer must know his audience and he should not be surprised to lose followers if he mixes themes and writing styles together.
Exception to the Rule: For a person that is following a huge crowd, whose stream of incoming tweets is huge, it doesn't matter when an author is off-topic, but for a person that is following just a few people with a narrow range of interests, it is terribly annoying to receive lots of off-topic postings in the midst of those that are on-topic. This is a minor exception because most people follow a small number of Twitterers, and the rest really don't care.
My advice, learned the hard way, is to separate your twittering life into separate streams; perhaps one for family and friends, one for work, and one for each of your special interests. Unless it is email, which can be configured with filters at the receiving end, most social media cannot be filtered. People who write must consider this problem and censor themselves accordingly.
As for Twitter, most software available today (eg. "Twhirl") allows you to maintain multiple accounts with varying profiles easily, and one of the reasons I failed to establish good habits early on in my Twitter life is that I was using the wrong software; "Twitter4Skype" and my browser, both of which make managing multiple personalities very hard.
Live and learn... stay spam free. Follow my rantings at http://twitter.com/aaytch(politics, religion) or http://twitter.com/ckipe (Skype, VOIP, and related technology).
Hudson