Please don’t take this too seriously or personally – as you all know New Year’s Resolutions rarely involve much “resolve” and are more likely to be a general direction one would like to head in than any hard and fast rules. That being said, I humbly present for your critique my brainstorm on potential 2009 microblogging resolutions:

  1. I will not #unnecessarily #hashtag nearly every #other word. Not even for #ironic effect.
  2. I will not post vague and mysterious emo crud, nor vague and mysterious emo lyrics.
  3. I will not post and mention someone just to namedrop. Really. I will search my heart first.
  4. I will not attempt to make ten consecutive 140 character posts instead of one 1400 character blog post.
  5. I will not post a link to every blog post I make, but rather sparingly link to the ones that are pertinent to a conversation at hand. Twitter is not my RSS feed.
  6. I will use direct messages whenever appropriate, and make “quality over quantity” my mantra for posting publicly. No daily “Good morning/night, Twitterverse!” posts.
  7. I will try to filter Twitter lingo from showing up in my Facebook status, so as to be kind to n00bs.
  8. I will not take Quitter personally, everyone follows and unfollows people for different reasons.
  9. I will make connections offline, and use microblogging as a tool for rather than a substitute for real life. I will use it as a tool to rally friends for impromptu face time. :-)
  10. I will not overshare or post while consuming alcohol… which generally results in oversharing.
  11. I will not be bullied into adding anyone on LinkedIn just because we randomly follow each other, I will retain my LinkedIn network as a list of people that I know that I would recommend professionally.
  12. I will strictly limit my forays into the following topics: every cute thing my cat/dog/baby/significant other does, every slightly notable quote by every speaker at every conference I’m at, every food or drink item I’ve consumed all day, every address I’ve arrived at, and every change in the local weather… even if it is SNOPOCOLYPSE 2009 because Seattle got 2mm of snow.
  13. I will remember that just because I’m bored at the airport, doesn’t mean that I should inflict that boredom upon everyone else.
  14. I will never post a lone URL without some other text to describe why you should follow the link, unless the link is quite self-explanatory.
  15. And for all that is good and holy in the world, I will stop rickrolling people already. Even if I am Wil fraking Wheaton. It’s 2009 already after all… we need to let it go.

In a nutshell: noise < signal.

Any suggestions for additions to this list?

« »