Saturday, January 31, 2009

Have You Committed Any of These 12 “Twitter Football” Plays or Penalties?

One of the hottest topics among Twitterati these days seems to be the subject of etiquette and what is acceptable Twitter behavior. So in honor of the Super Bowl, the following are 12 “Twitter football plays” you need to be aware of. Have you run any of these football (American) plays?

1. Audible: You are engaged in a Twitter conversation among your tribe and the leader of the topic suddenly takes the conversation in an unplanned and different direction.

2. Blitz: Repeated postings of the same topic, news item, issue or request of followers. Most common use of this play recently has been the repeated requests to vote for companies in the Shorty Awards – including resorting to sending direct messages.

3. Bomb: Aggressive use of innuendo, swear words, titillating teases, Twitter elite references, crazy polls, etc. in an attempt to score as many new followers from a single Tweet as is possible.

4. Bump and Run: You post a tweet that prompts a number of replies @you but you disappear and the promising conversation dies.

5. Clipping or Stiff/Straight arm: A questionable attempt to block someone from taking your tweet in a direction you don’t want.

6. Fair Catch: Someone serves up a tweet @you and you catch it, perhaps say “thanks” but don’t advance the conversation.

7. Fumble, Incomplete Pass or Turnover: You serve up a retweet and no one clicks the link, retweets it again or posts a reply @you. It simply falls to the ground.

8. Hail Mary: A tweet that begs for followers, asks people to please click their link, or makes some last ditch plea.

9. Out of Bounds: This is when a member of the Twitter elite, that you are following because they are a subject matter expert, posts tweets outside of their “domain.” These can include venturing into areas such as religion and politics.

10. Personal Foul: Attacking an individually publicly when it isn’t called for or necessary.

11. Sack: A tweet or group of tweets that successfully stop the forward movement of someone else’s tweets or conversation.

12. Spike: Showing off when you score a Tweet touchdown. Occasional bragging is fine, but repeated chest beating should result in a Tweep being benched for a game.

Did I fumble the analogy? Do you have other Twitter football plays you’d like to add? Post your new ones or better versions of my plays in the comments below. If you need inspiration for football plays visit this football glossary.

24, 36, hut, hut hike…

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