Yeah, so I implemented the new official Twitter button in a few places. We’ll see if it lasts. If it’s slow or annoying it’s out of here. ::

There are two reasons to read a book: one is to read it, and the other is tell people you read it. — Bertrand Russell

First, let’s state the obvious: you need a bit of ego to maintain a Twitter account. Not to experiment, but to keep doing it. To do so you must believe that the world wants to hear about you and your life.

So it naturally follows that when people tweet they’re usually trying to impress someone. This can be done by describing an impressive activity, like:

Wow, five continents in five days. That’s just TOO much.

…or it can come in the form of an insight, like:

Most Twitter posts are, in some shape or form, an attempt to disguise outright narcism using wit. ¹

In both cases the goal was to make the reader say, “Wow, that guy’s cool!” This may not always be a conscious goal, but for this type of poster it sits under the surface of most

How to Hide Narcissism

Here are a couple of the methods for obscuring outright lovemeness.

Self Deprecation

This is by far the most popular method. The most common implementation looks like this: “I’m so stupid: trying to build a 100K+ user Rails app in a weekend should be left for the Gods.” Translation:

I not only build Rails apps, but I do what you could never do in a weekend. Oh, but don’t worry, it might actually take me until Monday.

Notice that the first quote about traveling five continents employed this as well. He’s basically saying, “I’m not durable enough to do this many cool things.” Even though he already did them.

The Name-drop + Thanks

Another excellent way to cover your self-love tracks is to execute the brag–which consists of talking about all the cool people you hung out with–and then to thank people profusely for their work that made the get-together possible.

Man, non-stop party with Chris Brogan and Tim Ferriss this weekend. I just want to say thanks to Chris Pirillo and Gina Trapani for making the whole event possible! You guys rock!

See? He wasn’t really talking about how cool he was, he was just saying thanks!

Conclusion

Anyway, now you have a keen insight into the inner-workings of narcissistic Twitter posts…all because of me. You can find more of my brilliant insights at http://danielmiessler.com. ::

this is not a picture related to boobs

What follows is my method of deciding who to friend on the three major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Your method may differ; I get that. It’ll come off a bit pompous; I get that too.

Facebook

Facebook for me is personal. I friend people on Facebook using the following criteria (at least one of these must be true):

1. You are a close friend
2. You are someone I’ve met a number of times (associate) who I would enjoy having numerous, long conversations with (hint: concepts vs. current events)
3. You are someone I know of and have interacted with only a little, but you’re someone I’d enjoy having numerous, long conversations with

Who’s Not On This List

• High school friends who I have nothing in common with
• Celebrities of any sort who I have nothing in common with
• People I know well but who don’t have anything in common with me (see long conversations)
• Anyone who I wouldn’t trust to have a key to my house

Basically, the criteria is trustworthy people, who share interests with me, who I can enjoy long conversations with about things I find interesting. This matters because this is where I post personal stuff, like thinking of changing jobs, thinking of moving, rants about stupid people, religious and political humor, etc. It’s for close people only.

This results in me having around 100 friends, which is trimmed down from over three times that amount. Clean out your list; life is too short to miss important stuff from those you care about because it’s been squelched by those you don’t.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn for me is professional. No surprise there. I friend people on LinkedIn based on the following criteria (at least one of these must be true):

1. I’ve worked with you directly in the past, and the experience was positive
2. I’ve dealt with you in the past, and the experience was positive
3. I know your name, and know you’d be a valuable professional contact

Who’s Not On This List

• People I’ve worked with, or dealt with, who I didn’t have a positive experience with (could be negative, or even just neutral)
• Random people who send me invites

The goal here is to have a list of valuable contacts, not a list of people I’ve met or seen…ever…while in a work environment. That’s not useful to me.

Also, the upside of keeping your list properly groomed like this is that it’s not a problem to post things like Tripit updates because you’re not worried about someone on the list robbing you while you’re away. If you have that problem on LinkedIn then you’re doing it wrong.

Twitter

Twitter for me is public. It’s a realtime stream of events from the public-facing personas of various entities. Friends, companies, whatever. I have simple criteria for who I follow on Twitter (at least one of these must be true):

1. You’re a friend
2. You’re family
3. You’re an associate who posts interesting content
4. You’re a company I enjoy hearing about
5. You’re a personality I enjoy hearing from
6. You’re informative

Who’s Not On This List

• Boring people (yes, there is a different between entertaining mundane and just mundane)
• People who tweet about the fact that they’re tweeting, i.e. they’re so into social media that they aren’t actually using the mediums to talk about life, but rather to talk about talking about it

Twitter is an information source. I follow people in two main groups: 1) those who are close to me (see the Facebook section), and 2) those who contribute input that I find either useful or entertaining.

From Public to Private, But Not the Other Way Around

So let’s summarize here: Facebook is private, LinkedIn is professional, and Twitter is public. Let’s capture that differently by saying you post things to Facebook that you can only tell your friends or family over dinner. You post things to LinkedIn that you wouldn’t mind on a resume, and you post things to Twitter that you wouldn’t mind being brought up…anywhere. Ever.

This illuminates an interesting model for cross-posting, which is the practice of sending content from one social network to another. The general rule I recommend is that you allow content to go from more public to more private, but not the other way around. So I send my Twitter content to Facebook, but I’d never send my Facebook content to Twitter. LinkedIn sits in the middle, so it could receive from Twitter but not from Facebook, while Facebook could pull from both of the others.

Summary

Your attention is the most precious of commodities. Adjust your networks accordingly, and don’t be afraid to be exclusive. ::

People often wonder what others think of them. If you use Twitter to any significant degree there’s a simple way to tell: do a tag cloud on the names of the lists people have added you to.

Mine, for example, are: industry, evolution, technology, infosec, nontheists, developers, tech, neatpeeps, blogs, tech, security, infosec, privacy, etc…

I think this is a much better view of what you’re presenting yourself as than a tag cloud of the content of your posts. When I get a chance I’m going to write a little Ruby deal that’ll pull these, and then I’ll try to figure out how to display them as a cloud. Or maybe there’s an API for this already?

Anyway, yeah. ::

I am really looking forward to the potential of Twitter Lists. Here’s my Information Security list. Ping me if I’ve overlooked you.

[ Daniel Miessler's Twitter Information Security List | twitter.com ]

And here’s my complete list of…lists.

::

There’s a very cool new feature in Twitter called Trends Map. It shows trends…from Twitter…on a map.

/cricket sounds/

Just click the link, dammit. :) It’s a very unique and interesting way to look at what the world is talking about. It really makes 24-hour news channels look pretty damn stupid.

[ Twitter Trends Map | trendsmap.com ]

I was in a bit of a design mood this weekend and decided to redo my Twitter background.

Here’s the full image for anyone interested.

People struggle with why Twitter is special. It’s special because it counters, better than any other technology, the timeless social obstacle of “out of sight, out of mind”. Regardless of how much time you’d spend with a given person if they lived nearby, relationships atrophy when distance comes between you.

The longer someone you care about is gone, the more an invisible barrier grows between you–one that makes it awkward to reinitiate contact. It’s as if loved ones over time somehow change from tangible people into abstract ideas that require effort to interact with. This sinister effect of distance turns best friends into strangers, and technologies such as mobile phones and video conferencing don’t help. They don’t help precisely because the barrier is the initiation of contact, not the ability to communicate once connected.

Twitter solves this problem in a way that no other technology has. Through a stream of common, real-world updates about one’s life, Twitter reminds our fickle, here-focused brains that those we care about are real, and prevents them from disappearing into the world of the abstract. In short, Twitter’s magic is that it’s able to keep close people close regardless of how far they are from each other, which is a feat that no other technology has been able to accomplish. ::

It is considered good social networking etiquette–especially on Twitter–to warn your followers that you are posting a link to content on your own blog or company website.

I hereby reject this for the following reasons:

1. When I follow someone it’s because I think they, on the whole, produce content that I want to read vs. content that I find spammy, boring, or otherwise low-signal-to-noise. If this ever stops being the case, I will no longer follow, and I don’t care at all where that content comes from.
2. If you’re worried that the links I post might be “spam” then we already have a much more serious problem than a labeling issue.
3. The odds of my own content being significantly lower quality than the content I enjoy and share from other sources that you DO enjoy, is low.
4. If I don’t have to warn you before I tell you I am going to get a coffee at Starbucks, then I damn sure am not going to warn you before I refer you to a piece I wrote that I think you might find valuable.

In short, what it really means to warn people that you’re posting your own stuff is:

I wrote this, so it’s probably way lower quality than what I normally post.

But if that were the case, then you probably wouldn’t be following me in the first place.

The whole purpose of social media and networking is to put yourself out there–to share your life and ideas with others. There is simply no more pure way to do this than to show people what you’re thinking and writing about.

So no, I will not shield or obscure my own perception of what I find interesting in what amounts to a preemptively apology. If you like what I normally post then you should also like what I write about. From the follower perspective, you either trust me to post content that is somehow worth your time or you don’t. ::