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Then Mashable has ‘the complete guide‘ to Spymaster.  Personally, it’s the type of game I would have probably enjoyed a few years ago, but can’t really justify even trying at the moment – my use of Twitter is mainly for discovering information, sharing information, and building connections with people.

But, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to take part in Spymaster,  or the latest frivolous use of # hashtags.

Whatever you do on Twitter, and however you use it, is entirely down to you, as long as it’s within the Terms and Conditions of the site. That’s the beauty of it – and possibly why so many people find it a bit scary and drop from the site so quickly.  Whereas Facebook etc have a defined purpose of connecting with people yu already know, which provides an initial safety blanket, Twitter suggests users and friends, but ultimately you can interact how you like, with who you like, when you like.

So while I won’t be joining you on #spymaster or #whateverthelatestcomedytrendis , and I might hope for better filtering to avoid trending topics when they overwhelm my stream,  I’ll never tell you to stop!

It may because I’m tired and a bit ill, and the fact I’m following an ever-increasing number of Twitter-related blogs, but it seems that there is a never ending stream of guides to starting on Twitter, or gaining followers, and 90% of them have the exact same advice. (Even the New York Times carries a Twitter beginners guide!)

For the record, I didn’t feel the need to do one after I read Luke Razzell’s excellent Twitter guide back in October. Search traffic be damned!

Whether you’re an individual or brand, the tips are always to be human, interactive, interesting etc.  Which is basically the same as you’d get for any network, or for your offline life.

So I’d like to suggest that following most of these guides is a complete waste of time – if you’re a spammer by nature, or your company is in fact the work of evil robotic overlords, then you’ll revert to your true nature eventually, and you’ll have wasted everyone’s time until the mask falls.

Instead, I’ll present the one suggestion I think should be given out to everyone as the way I’d love to see people using Twitter.

Rule 1: Try to make other people’s lives suck a little bit less.

That’s it.

There’s no ‘how to’ guide because it varies for every individual. It could be providing great customer service (Do I need to reference @ComcastCares or @Zappos?). It could be by responding to someone asking for messages to demo Twitter to their colleagues, or finding a bookmark someone has lost.

Or it could even be auto-posting from your blog via Twitterfeed if that’s how people want to receive information (despite all right-thinking wisdom pointing to the contrary!)

It could be something more formal, like helping out with a great charity project like the Charity Water campaign by @Pistachio, or contributing to a personal attempt to help a family.

It could be posting something that makes someone think, laugh, cry or start a conversation.

It’s simple, but easy to overlook when you’re thinking about other things.

‘We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give‘ Sir Winston Churchill.

Picked up via Pistachio Consulting, is Jeremy Pepper’s post on ‘Twitteriocy’, or some simple rules on how to use a corporate Twitter account, and basic etiquette – inspired by a personal encounter with someone following him.

While I don’t think microblogging benefits from too strict a set of rules, the guidelines he lays out are simple and provide a pretty good grounding.

Be yourself, don’t follow everyone back, use a decent client like Tweetdeck, be engaged, be personable, be responsive, be a person, and remember that social media, including microblogging, doesn’t work for every company or individual.

So something very similar to the best practice for all social media!

I’d add:

• Be realistic, and don’t expect 1000 followers overnight, or 1000 referrals from every link you post.
• Stick with it – if you’re going to use these tools, be prepared for the mid-to-long term commitment needed. It took me two attempts at using Twitter to understand why it was so invaluable and addictive. And far longer to try and find the right level between addiction and a reasonable amount of time investment.
• It might still be worth registering your brand name to stop ‘brandjacking‘, but use it to lead people to your real representatives.

Any more?

Every popular social network contains people and accounts which, for one reason or another, are undesirable. Spammers, con artists, egomaniacs (Isn’t that all of us?), the plain offensive etc all inhabit the social world – as they do in the real world.

Recently I unfollowed 3 such accounts on Twitter. None were malicious in the same vein as people setting up phishing scams. But two constantly used it as a platform for personal attacks – either against one individual, or against a group of individuals, without providing anything of value.

A third autofed his latest blog entries but refused to engage in conversation, or even reply to direct messages. That’s just about excusable if you’re constantly breaking lots of news e.g. @BBC for BBC News, or you’ve reached the scale of someone like Robert Scoble, who follows and is followed by over 20,000 people. It’s not ideal, but excusable…but if you’re batting at under 100 for example, then there really is no reason for ignoring anyone who wants to interact with you.

That all might seem a bit negative – but then I flipped it around in my head. I’ve unfollowed 3 people – not had to block them, or complain about them, but just unfollowed them with a simple click of a button. But due to a policy of reading through a few details before adding people, those are 3 of 714 I’m following. So that’s 0.42% of all the people I have chosen to follow, and an even smaller percentage of people that I’ve had any contact with.

It’d be interesting to find out how this compared with other networks, but from a subjective viewpoint, it’s a lot less. And the number one connection tool for irritation still seems to be Myspace.… The perentage on there is probably closer to 20%!

It’s why we persevere with Twitter despite the downtime, and it’s why Plurk is gaining traction. The days of average users amassing 1000s of random contacts for the sake of it is waning by people who actually want to use these tools for a tangible benefit. The days of using them for what my colleague, David Cushman describes as ‘self-forming communities of (global) niche shared interest’ is here for more and more people. And Twitter is all the better for it…