Etiquette in the Age of Social Media

I completely agree. I have just started blogging via blogger and wordpress, and have about 12 blogs so I can separate the subjects I am interested. I then run a single stand off blog via wordpress for everything else that is of interest to me.

What I find is that by using Stumble, Digg etc.. a lot of users simply spam you. I mean - I don't mind receiving a shout.. but 12 in a row from a single user is crazy. You then have the issue of shouts only going your network.. but Digg is SO big, that finding relevant people to network with is really hard. The when you do - you get I'm not adding any right now (basically due to others spamming).

face book is really enoying. But I must say.. most of my friends are good and don't send every bloody app - then then again, I can understand some of them due to the app forcing you to do it if you want to get a result of a test etc.

I think all this is happening due to the size of the internet, getting noticed is so hard.. and people will try ANYTHING to get noticed. With most people never seeing who their talking to - this gets worse because it removes the social personal touch from the communication.

Most of this is spot on.

One thing I would add:

Not sure how widespread the sentiment would be, but I get irritated by read recepits on emails & Just Say No. - If it was that important to you to know I got your message, call me.

This is most useful, thanks a lot Chris.

I find that I use Twitter more and more for quick comments on blog posts and then aggregate them into a post of their own at a later date. Wonder if there's a comment plugin that pulls out specific twitter topics for a post?

I'd very much like to pull out a few of these bullets, especially the blog and email ones, for our clients. I'm pretty sure I couldn't write them any better. Is this ok if I cred you?

Interesting post, Chris. Brandice.net posts regularly on Internettiquette. I thought her posts might be of interest to you and the other readers:

http://brandice.net/blog/?tag=internetiquette

I love talking about netiquette. The only caveat I have to your lists above is that one person's definition of "urgent" may not be another person's definition of "urgent". So asking people to leave a voicemail if it's urgent can be a set up for trouble.

I have a client that often calls me and leaves a voicemail that says "Hi, it's [client]. Please call me back immediately. It's fairly urgent." And when I do call her back, it's usually just to ask me if I got her email. Sigh.

I had an interesting Facebook eiquette issue come up for me the other day that you don't mention here. First, I don't use Facebook too much and have about 150 friends there. As everyone knows, you can enter your birthday there as well. So last week, I had about 100 or so people sending me messages and wall posts wishing me a happy birthday. So do you respond to them all? I say no, since I want to use Facebook for leisure and I don't want to have to be forced to respond to every little thing. However, others have not agreed with that.

@Sue - that's grounds for termination. : )

@Jason - I'd probably respond to the folks you know the best, and maybe put a general "thank you" up on the Wall. It gets tricky managing that, but these people also feel that they've done something very personal to you. Mind you, they just responded to Facebook's prompt.

Useful post Chris. I think I'll share it with people who don't follow these guidelines as a "This is how I work" type of thing.

Also I learned that:

"An @ message at the beginning of a post shows up in replies. Further in, it doesn’t."

...good to know.

Cheers,

Chris

Some great tips here. I just wish we could brainwash people into not sending those stupid email forwards where if you don't forward it to all your friends you are going to die or whatever... *mumbles*

Maybe we could require people to pass a test before they were allowed to drive on the information highway.

Being human is something that gets overlooked quite a bit in this age of social media and online activity - I can't stress enough that if you aren't interacting like a person, in comments or Twitter, you won't get the same value back that you could have.

Great points Chris.

This is a wonderful list, which I'll be sure to share with co-workers, friends and family. I truly believe that everything you touched on in the Facebook section is what could end up turning people away from that community. If I get one more green patch or mod wars invite I too may walk.

Thanks for doing your part to keep people in check.

Jeff

the people who need this advice the most will probably never see this article

to bad its good

Regarding email etiquette -

Use the blind copy sparingly if ever. Finding out after the fact that someone else was involved in your conversation feels bad.

If you want someone else to listen in, have the stones to say so. (IMHO)

Great post, Chris.

What bothers me most about people using Facebook and the like for 'important' messages is that Facebook is still, for most people, a destination more than a platform. An analog metaphor would be posting a note in the town square vs. sending you a letter in the mail. As a social person, you may frequent the town square to read and send messages – but it's still an indirect form of contact. Many people have SMS/email forwarding enabled for Facebook messages, but that's certainly not a given.

Thanks for this, Chris. I'm sending it to my colleagues now, especially the ones that have forgotten how to use the phone.

The only thing I think you left out (maybe it goes without saying?) is cautioning people that sensitive topics still require face-to-face interaction (*gasp*) if possible. Things like bad news, constructive criticism and sarcasm don't translate well in email 99% of the time.

Thanks again!

I know we want people to be civil when using these applications, but etiquette almost sounds like "rules" to me, and breaking the rules are what brought these applications to light in the first place.

I think a lot of our social media habits are based off our reasons to be in social media to begin with. So thinking about it in terms of etiquette is a nice way to help us remember that hey, if we're going to use the web effectively, remember that we're people here, too.

It's interesting that you glump blogging etiquette for writers and commenters together. Of course, things that apply to commenters usually apply to writers/bloggers, too, but I still see a lot of people participating only at the comment level on blogs (suprising, yes).

This is a great resource to be able to reference when introducing people to social media and its uses and misuses. As I remind people I work with when considering which business communication platform to use: IM is good for quick response and basic questions, email for sharing information and asking questions, phone for nuance and clarification, and face-to-face for in-depth conversation and conflict resolution.

Wait, what if you're too handsome for a profile pic?
;~)

Seriously a cogent and increasingly important post.
One I'll refer folks back to into the future...

@Ed - oh, I don't mind what one uses. Just not the default brown thing. It just seems less participatory.

Your avatar is just fine.

"Cogent." Points to you, sir.

This seems like a no-brainer, but I will sometimes get replies to e-mail that don't include the original note.

We all lead busy lives and send/receive lots of correspondence, so please respect my time enough not to expect me to remember the question that you are saying "no" to three days after it was asked.

I have had the privilege of teaching a teen etiquette course this summer. We covered email and cell phone etiquette but, of course, I neglected to go over social media etiquette. I should have been more aware of my audience and the way they communicate. Will definitely add that in the future. One of the pet peeves of the teens was getting emails with no subject of a misleading subject.

Genius! And a well needed article.

The great thing about the generic-ness of most of these tips is that they can be applied to almost any service. For instance, you mention Twitter, but many of those rules apply to Pownce, Plurk, etc.

Chris, thanks for this post. I especially appreciate the notes on Facebook. I'm a recent new user of FB and it drives me crazy all the apps I get.

I'm not fond of long @ conversations on Twitter, either. More than three, take it to MSN or some such. Please.

Y'see now I feel kinda crappy about sending you three emails in quick succession yesterday...

;)

Great post!.... ;).

One thing I think is also important to note is "friend requests," on any social network. If you know someone personally, it is ok to just click, "add as a friend," and leave it at that.

If you are connecting with someone who you haven't been in contact with for a while (like a long lost high school friend) a brief, "Hey, remember me?" type of introduction is sufficient.

If you don't know the person personally but want to connect, a brief introduction and why you want to be added to his/her "friends" list is appropriate (but do not be offended if they decline).

Too often I get connection requests from people I don't know who have no explanation as to why they are connecting with me. I'd be happy if they just wrote, "Dude, I love your blog!"

I posted about this, "3 Rules of Social Selling Etiquette. (http://www.nathanmcgee.com/2008/08/05/3-rules-o... Would love to hear feed back from anyone.

Rock on Chris!

Chris -- relevant information for all of us that use social media sites. Learning the acceptable protocol across all the platforms can be tricky. Too bad the respective sites don't have a little handy 'how-to' at the top of that site as a little guidance to newbies or those overly enthusiastic posters. Personally, I was a bit surprised to see the Facebook posts [at the top of your Facebook profile telling those who visit there what you are up to] showing up elsewhere. It gets tricky with all the cross-platform intermingling of posts and data.

Superb post, Chris. Bravo. The truth of the matter is that, as my grandmother sometimes would say, is that most folks don't have the good sense that god gave a goat. And the challenge that has arisen in the digital realm is that what little social etiquette some folks had, seems to have evaporated.

Not sure why people feel that life in the land of ones and zeros is somehow immune from basic considerate behavior, but I'd say that following your advice could go a long way towards at least nudging people in the right direction.

Now if only people would get some manners too.

Well, guess we can't expect *too* much. (-:

Chris, on email one small disagreement is that these days, it’s easy for email to get stuck in a spam filter. Your newsletters are considered spam by Gmail (I can’t control it, other than saying “Not Spam”). So, a “did you receive” follow up 3 days later is sometimes needed in a time-sensitive context. In fact, you don’t mention this, but having to scrutinize a list of spams several times a day to find the one jewel (your newsletter) is a bigger waste of time than most of your pet peeves :)

Not only are we all busy, but unfortunately email is getting less reliable as thousands of managers use thousands of spam blocking techniques.

The one thing, uh, two things, I usually never respond to an email I'm cc'd, in, a cc email is someone just keeping me in the loop. If you want my reply, put me in as the recipient. The other, long threaded emails, at some point just wack off the old stuff it's not relevant, update the subject header if the conversation moves to a different topic, it just makes the email ugly and not search friendly, and we all like pretty friendly things. hmm that was three things...

What I'm concerned with now are "thank you"s and "you're welcome"s. Should these phrases be left for voice (face to face and phone) conversations? If you accept my friend request or decide to follow me, should I send thanks? Or do you feel that these social conventions clutter up your inbox?

Interesting post not just for itself but also for the opportunity for discussion.

I truly appreciated this, Chris. I really do need to stop by here more often.

Hi Chris,
Thanks for touching on a *touchy* subject. I always laugh out loud when I get invitations to join a mob, join a drug cartel, or become a knight ... Wow, I never considered those options when joining FaceBook. On that note, when it comes to FB ettiquette, there also seems to be a trend of tagging anyone and everyone in notes. This to me seems like blatant promotion, and even though I think social media has slightly different definitions to each one of us, that tactic is one of the things that makes me shy away abit. At some point it starts to feel like static and often sharply cloaked sales tactics. I believe there is value in social media, but find it frustrating when it feels like a bait and switch routine.

Hey Chris,
It was nice meeting you at our Mzinga BBQ today. This is a great post, and the world of social media interaction would be a better place if folks followed these guidelines. There’s at least one more area of online etiquette: Forum (Message Board) Etiquette.

In doing some online research into community etiquette recently, I came across an interesting article The Need To Know Netiquette from a site called SearchYourLove.com – a dating site I had previously not heard of. Although a bit “Emily Post meets Miss Manners”, and meant for their audience of dating singles, the 10 online community etiquette guidelines are spot on and can be generally applied with slight modification not only to public forums, but closed (business) forums. The article can be found at: http://www.syl.com/articles/theneedtoknownetiqu...

Great post!

Regarding above - I'm sorry, I simply couldn't help myself... I hope you'll pardon one of your less mature fans, Chris.

Kidding aside - thx for sharing this. One really resonated with me... It's one of the challenges with all social tools, IMO...

"If you don’t have much to say, it’s okay not to say it."

Bravo! Be it a blog, a tweet, an email - whatever... I encourage folks to ask themselves - does any one care about what I'm about to say? Is it relevant to anyone other than myself? I may sound a bit harsh - and sorry if so. I just think there is a balance between sharing for the sake of collaborating and participating versus sharing for the sole sake of putting words out there.

Cheers,
LD

@Len Devanna I agree. I get chastised at times because I refuse to blog about every aspect of my life. I just refuse to be that transparent, to be that public. It's not my place to share something just because Joe Schmoe asked me to.

All good points Chris... I would like to add that social media is a tool for networking with humans. If you focus on building honest relationships you will achieve trust. Once you are trusted people will look for an opt-in form, join your RSS feed and/or your product offerings.

So many traditional Internet marketers try to classify social media as yet another marketing vehicle. They don't understand that Social etiquette is the missing link.

Chris you are right on with these. I especially agree with "Please don’t send every little app you try."

I get more of those notifications than anything and half of them I don't see the point of. As someone else said, Just say no.

This post keeps getting emailed around. Thanks for sharing. Looks like there is some good uptake!

Excellent suggestions. I write for a couple of different blogs, and while the "Nice post" message makes me aware that I'm being read, what I really want is someone who will continue the conversation.

Hi Chris,
Excellent article. I thought the dilemma about thank yous was a good one - we are all busy, yet shouldn't we make time for those little courtesies that so often get left behind both offline and online?
Also, if you "friend" someone, take the time to check out their posts. The idea is to build relationships, not just add to your "list" blindly.
I'm bookmarking this page to share with others who are also new to the social media sites.
Barbara

And so say all of us - thank you, etiquette is sorely needed in social.

I would add something about the cheesyness of only using Twitter as a dump for RSS feeds or blasting every site on Earth with Ping.FM services, but don't know how to fit it in.

Oh! I just did! :)

I passed this one along!

I'm just curious--how do you feel about "de-friending" on Facebook? I find that it tends to hurt my self-esteem a bit--especially when the people who de-friended me were once good friends who I no longer see frequently.

Great post. Thank you.

I want to share this entry with Japanese people, so I translated this to my weblog. If any problem let me know.
http://shotawatanabe.com/2008/08/%E3%80%90%E5%8...

I feel "calling" is very important method in this age, too. If we don't have reply from someone I sent e-mail, and I'm in hurry, I should call him if I could.
It's some kind of ways to make it easier to communicate.

Hi Chris! These are really useful tips to keep in mind and to get the ball rolling on considering how we choose to communicate online.

One thing I would add to the e-mail etiquette is if the e-mail sent/received (depending on who the recipient/sender is) warrants a response, then please take the time to add it into your To Do List to respond.

I find that I constantly have to chase people up after 48 hours on the e-mail I sent, and then I have to remind them what the e-mail was about in the first place. I think we need to be more considerate of others and realise that we all can't be chasing people up as there's more important work to be done.

We would never leave people "hanging" in a phone conversation so why do we feel okay to do it with e-mail?

If i could I would solve everything over the phone but that isn't quite possible these days.

Great post, especially on blogging etiquette. It can be so easy to cut and paste, and so important NOT to, if only to keep the Internet healthy, like you mention.

excellent excellent excellent! i don't think i could have so tersely summarized each of the different spaces as well as you did! I want to add some fodder but I inherently believe you just addressed the major point around calling for urgent matters and more importantly, not using social spaces like facebook for urgent matters either! you've done a great deed in allowing me to share your post with my gf in the name of love! :)

fodder if u choose to start a wiki per Anne-Marie's comment!

http://chinarut.wikispaces.com/Communication

Nice post, and timely (if we think its bad now... look out everyone the masses are coming!!)

In particular, the facebook advice. That is the one that really has its own purpose. The app requests are beyond annoying, but the fact that i is "friends" makes it awkward too. Kind of like someone at work pushing a "would you like to buy X for my kid" in front of you.

Over all trend is to PULL. Everyone wants their information at their time, in their way. Anytime you are too hard on the PUSH...you might be over-stepping a boundary.

I do want to put a twist on the app request conversation...

I just let all the app requests queue up. I must have 400+ requests outstanding at this time of writing.

After awhile, you will see which applications are "bunching" up and those are the ones in *your* network worth considering!

I use the same approach for friend requests, if you allow someone you may have met but don't know very well to just "queue" (I usually ping them and ask them to introduce themselves if they haven't already) - eventually more contacts in common will "bunch up" as well. Eventually you'll have so many friends in common that these contacts may very well be worth carving out some time to get to know.

I don't know if these 2 approaches are related to etiquette per se but I thought it was worth mentioning as it is a matter of perception!

Great list of email, blogging, and twitter etiquette tips from Chris Brogan.

Great post! Um, wait, oh.

Seriously though, I enjoyed reading it. Brief, to the point, and nothing extra. Fun read.

As to rules about email.
- don't cold email someone about an 'opportunity'. if you aren't already close contacts, it will likely be treated as spam.
- don't use IM talk when a real word will do.

Facebook
- Consider turning off timeline notifications. Folks want to see something interesting about you, not how many flowers you're growing.
- much like in Flickr comments, it is not good practice to leave bright, flashing, glowing or noisy things on peoples' Facebook walls.
- Consider that not everyone is interested in the latest thing, e.g. money making, click getting,chick wooing, scheme. Act accordingly.


I always enjoy posts like this. Reminds me I need to do more.

PS. How'd you get the FF comments here?

After reading all this, I have a simple question:

Everybody's praising Chris for (in my opinion) saying the obvious (about web 2.0 etiquette). In essence, the basic etiquette rules for social networking are no different than those for everyday life - whether it be for:

- synchronous colocated communication (e.g. F2F meetings and conversations)
- asynchronous colocated communication (e.g. posting on a real bulletin board in a real meeting place like the town square - an example used above)
- synchronous dislocated communication (e.g. phone, mobile, videophone, IRC, ICQ, AOL, MSN, Trillian, Skype, chat conversations)
- asynchronous dislocated communication (e.g. email, SMS, MMS, PMs)
- asynchronous colocated communication revisited (web 2.0 simulated virtual meeting places - e.g. online forums, bulletin boards, SecondLife, FB and all the other social and/or professional online communities).

The technology is different in each case so you have to adapt the details, but all you really need in principle is some common sense and the ability to imagine how you would react if other people did to you what you did to them - a.k.a. the Golden Rule known from most major religions, humanism and other ethical frameworks.

Now, is it really so that most people simply aren't able to figure this out by themselves?

Is it REALLY that simple?

If so, I think a lot of the problems of the world has just been explained... (he added dryly)

However; I do appreciate that those few people who can combine abstract logical thinking with empathy and social intelligence need to discuss and agree on a consensus since views vary on these technology-specific details. And I guess most of this feedback is part of that process.

But still - if people really need an etiquette course to use these technologies, then there should be a "user license" on par with a driving license.

My point here is that you can drive a car without a license, if you master the basics of the technology, just like you can use email, FB or SecondLife as soon as you know which buttons to press. But you cannot negotiate complex traffic patterns without knowing the arbitrary rule set governing these patterns, and that rule set has evolved from the consensus of logical abstract thinking about the behaviour of drivers, the physics of driving and the mathematics of traffic optimization.

And if the similar arbitrary rule set for social networking is getting so complex (due to the heavy traffic) that common sense (as in abstract thinking and empathy/social intelligence) is insufficient, then I think it is pertinent to consider creating a "social networking license".

It might even be a popular approach. Compare this with the "Microsoft applications license" or whatever it is called - in some countries this is asked for by employers, as it certifies that the person possesses a minimum knowledge of how to use the most common MS applications like Word and Excel. Or even with the "sowing machine license" that I got when I was 11, as part of the class in domestic technologies (as in washing, cooking, sowing etc) at school. Of course we were exhilarated to get a diploma for our efforts!

And I think that if you need to give a course for etiquette to teenagers, you might as well give them an exam and award them a certificate at the end of it.

Then I will leave it up for discussion whether it is a bad thing or not that there is no "traffic police" that will impound your computer if you are caught socially networking without a license... ;-)

PS: As technology advances, cars are evolving towards the stage where they are no longer cars but automated transport vehicles where everybody inside are passengers, like on a bus or a train, and all you need to do is enter you destination. At that point, the arbitrary rule set (a.k.a. traffic rules) are no longer needed as such - they are rather implemented directly in the algorithm running the vehicles for optimizing the flow of traffic.

Perhaps we can envision a day when social networking sites will work the same way - your actions are guided so that you are not able to break the rules and offend others?

I think not. Just like I don't think we will ever see the day when ALL cars have been reduced to another kind of public transportation. Cars, like social networking sites, are about freedom - even if it is highly theoretical (given the fact that you move faster from A to B using public transportation where you are not the master of your own destiny (as in being the driver) - or in the case of social networking where you end up spending half the day fending off different app requests and so on).

Queues and spam are very similar phenomena - they occur because of the "over-popularity" of a certain communication/information/transportation technology, be it cars, email or social networking sites. The problem with chain letters and spamming your friends with app requests is that they are (half-)deliberate actions by your presumed-logical-thinking-and-empathic cohabitants and so cannot easily be removed by certain rules (as you can do with spam filters or by taking public transportation on dedicated tracks/lanes or at different times to avoid queues). Kind of like when some maniac driver causes an accident with a resulting queue when there shouldn't be a queue normally.

So you end up back where you started - social networking technologies are about freedom and expression and just like in the rest of the world, you will have the usual percentage of people lacking empathy and/or the ability of abstract thinking, and they will detract from your enjoyment of the site by breaking the etiquette.

The only way out of this is to shut them out, either by some kind of licensing system (which I think will be impossible), or by the system already in use in many places - invitation-only (or closed) communities with strict moderation. These have two problems - one is that social networking needs to be open to everybody in order to work as intended, and the other one is that moderation/monitoring is both limiting the freedom and simply an impossible task given the amount of data.

Ideally there would be some kind of self-censoring among the community. This would work if the group of people appreciating and understanding the value of etiquette manages not only to agree on a basic set of rules but also to outnumber those who don't and simply use peer pressure to enforce the etiquette rules.

Again, this might be exactly what is going on right here in this blog. In any case, I commend you for stating the obvious, kicking in open doors and fighting windmills.

All my experience tells me it is necessary, as there are way too many people out there who must either lack the ability of abstract thinking and/or empathy, or they simply
break the rules against better knowledge (and then I am always curious about their motivation for doing so - I guess I have never quite understood the pleasure of being an anarchist or nihilist, as I prefer working against the second law of thermodynamics rather than with it - I believe it is in the nature of humans to create and restore order rather than destroy it).

That's my two cents. Looking forward to your comments.

This is a great post!

The only thing missing is my #1 pet peeve about Facebook: TMI wall posts. Some people just don't know when to direct message/email you vs. leaving you a wall post.

Any suggestions on how to tell offenders to use the wall appropriately?

Great post, Chris! One of the key etiquettes for Facebook I wanted to add was 'Add as friend' one. If you don't know the person that well to call a 'friend', please don't just add without leaving a polite message. It's awkward if you don't want to add that guy who nods once in a while at you, crossing in the hallway, as your "friend". FB has to find a solution to this one I guess.

@Khyati: I second your recommendation. I, too, am irked by people I know rather casually (and certainly those who I have no idea who they are) who don't "add a personal message"

what kind of solution do you have in mind?

I often message them asking them if the person in common has introduced us and/or recommended us. I often don't get a response (surprisingly) and well - I let it be.

If I am very close to the connecting person and frequently in touch with them, I often asks them what's up with this person and see what they say.

I really detest all the Facebook apps and rarely sign up for them. I would love Facebook much more if it didn't have all that junk....

Chris,
Two quick thoughts: A) still not sure how to handle the situation of separating personal from professional facebook friends. Right now, Fbook is limited to my personal friends because the professional ones just don't need to know that much about me. Do you have two profiles, or have to choose one identity over the other
B) the Fbook apps remind me a lot of the jokes and spam email that goes around. Those same people who send around jokes and funny stories via email probably SuperPoke you as well. I usually send a polite "no thank you" not via email. Why can't we do that on Facebook as well?

Chris, this is now one of my favorite posts. Thanks for the etiquette advice. All of it is practical and mostly 'duh' stuff people just don't understand at times.

Sadly enough, by stating the etiquette rules in this article, the author just expresses our common desire for a more sensible and stress free online life. We all recognize those annoying things too well and we all realize that this set of rules is more like a list of what we have to deal with every day and not the guidelines someone would use to get awake to their faults.

Excellent points Chris. I would add that for me, many of these tools and platforms are about experimenting and trying things out. In the process of trying a few things out, you will sometimes offend a few people. That's OK. Making mistakes is how we learn. So if you do make a mistake, know that it is not the end of the world. Hopefully you learned something valuable in the process.

I am curious about how you would handle when others post information in your tweets with no RT. I would like to chalk it up to inexperience. . . but it is not always the case. Thoughts?

Insightful read. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Others no doubt will like it like I did.