So when I look at somebody's Twitter, there are a few things that just shut me down and I won't follow them back. That's not to say if I'm not following you back you're not a lovely person and you probably help feed orphans or kittens or orphaned kittens or something, but you're just not my cup of orphaned kitten tea, if you know what I mean. (Or it could be that I've been getting a lot of followers recently and I missed you in the shuffle–dreadfully sorry about that, if that's the case.) Anyway, a few things to watch out for:

1. If your updates are protected, then I can't make a judgement call on you. In fact, what can you possibly be saying on Twitter that is that confidential? I mean, honestly, I'm as paranoid as the day is long and I don't have my Twitter secret.

2. If you have no updates, then again, I can't make a judgement call on you. Now Twitter actually sends out a quick thumbnail sketch of your number of followers, number of people you follow and your number of updates. So if I don't know you already and you follow me but have said nothing, I probably won't bother to even click.

3. If you talk about something I have no interest in. If I go to your Twitter account and all of your updates are about your fungi farm, then I'm probably going to not follow you, once I wake up from falling asleep reading about your farm. If your fungi farm is from Yuggoth, though, you might have my attention.

4. If you talk about something and I can't tell what the hell it is you're talking about. I literally have gone to somebody's page and seen nothing but smiley faces and "You know it!" replies and so forth and so on. I would take fungi over that, seriously.

5. If you are so completely marketing-centered that it's bloody obvious you just want to sell me something. I'm talking about those Twitter accounts that have seven updates and they're all "I used to be an exec but now I breed emu in my back yard make $$$ I'll show you http://bit.ly/emupower"–if that's you, then I have very little interest in following you.

6. If you are so completely marketing-centered that you tried to hide how marketing-centered you are but did a piss-poor job of it. I mean seriously, if you're going to try to sell me stuff, at least entertain me. And if I had a dime for every Twitter account I've seen where it's Emu Power! bits sprinkled with supposedly motivational quotes from famous people, I would have, on my account right now, "I used to be a shmoe who ran a website but now I get dimes for reading lame Twitterz http://tinyurl.com/lamepower." Or protip for people who do that, at least get different quotes…I think there must be a quote RSS feed somewhere that they've all piped into their Twitter. Blah.

If your bio amuses me, if you graphics amuse me, if your post amuses me, if your attitude amuses me, then I will follow you back. But if you've got none of that going for you, I'm afraid it's going to be a one way street. No offense, though. Good luck with the orphans and kittens.

Man, this is great tea.

There is a term in Twitter called "retweet" or "RT" for short. It's the only time I try to use the term "tweet," meaning "to post to Twitter," because "tweeting" just sounds…well, pretty goddamn stupid. Basically when you "retweet" you are simply passing along what somebody said. So if I had said "I wish I could get this flathead screwdriver out of my ear" and you RT'ed me, it would look like this

RT @Widgett I wish I could get this flathead screwdriver out of my ear.

This makes perfect sense to me. When you read that, you see "RT" and know that what's being posted isn't original. And then you see "@Widgett" and know, oh, that lunatic Widge said this. And then you read the rest.

Now some people have said you should credit the original poster with "Via" instead. So the Via post would look like this

I wish I could get this flathead screwdriver out of my ear (via @Widgett)

You probably see the problem right away. When you start to read that, you think the person Twittering it said it and is the "I" of the statement…until you get to the very end of the post and learn it was actually me who said it. And it doesn't seem like much to find that out later, but that changes the way you're reading the content. And confusing it, too: did @Widgett actually post that or did he just pass the info along to the re-poster who is now regurgitating that info?

There's nothing wrong with using RT and it actually makes more sense. And I know there's a whole line of Twitterologists who will tell you the proper way to structure a Twitter post and whatnot, but honestly, take all the time you'd spend worrying about that and work on your own content on your own site (or the necessary equivalent). Places where you don't have to worry about 140 character limits and if you want to name a source you can just name a source with a normal link.

All that being said, feel free to format your Twitter posts however you want. Just RT this one.

I'm kidding. Mostly.