Protected Twitter updates

by Jeremy Vaught

I re-met someone this weekend who requested we stay connected on Twitter. I thought it slightly odd that they didn’t just follow me instead of making the suggestion, but meh, I’m game. So I went to Twitter to follow them but their updates are protected. So, I requested to be a part of their exclusive club, and wrote this email back to them in reply.

“I requested the super special permission to have the honor of being allowed to witness the awesomeness that are <protected tweeter>’s tweets. So awesome are they in fact, that the general internet would likely burn their retinas upon viewing said tweets, and thus must be protected, like unknowing children or small puppies, because we, the small but steady few, must protect that much awesomeness from such unworthy viewing.”

Well, I thought it was funny. :)

Dude/Dudette! Thanks for coming back, you make my day! :D Contact me at jeremy@jeremyvaught.com and let me know what you are up to.

Cheers!
--Jeremy

  • I think a lot of people are confused and don't understand Twitter. Especially if it someplace they think they "need" to be in the marketing-social media-web 2.0 space.

    Still a lot of folks are of the 1.0 mindset where you used a screen name instead of your real name. They haven't come to embrace the communicative web yet.
  • I don't get it -- so you want to have a public Twitter account.

    Why are you threatened by those that do not?
  • haha, and thanks for the link to your protected twitter account. :) well played
  • I'm less trying to make a point as to make some humor. Personally, I do find it odd that people try to walk the fence of being social and anti-social. But we each have our own feeling of where to draw the line on privacy. I get that part. Sorta.

    But if you travel across the country to attend a Podcamp, I think you are slightly beyond the anti-social, and squarely in the social. What do you have to hide anyway?
  • I don't understand protected updates either. I don't use twitter like britekite, announcing my exact location, so I can't see the harm in sharing my updates with the whole wide world. Nothing sadder than refollowing someone who is private (out of curiosity) only to find them boring/annoying/spammy. Be upfront with your annoyingness!
  • This is a great point mayjah. Their true intentions are hidden. The other side of that , is I try to follow people back that follow me, unless they are spammers or don't speak my language. However, if someone I don't know follows me and they have their updates protected, I rarely follow them back.
  • Kelly
    Personally, I think your response was very clever and I got a good laugh! However, I work for a K-8 school and we have a twitter account to communicate with families, parents, and other groups, so I chose to protect our updates. When I signed up our account was public and within the first minute I had 5 women (wearing very little) following us. Soooooo, I changed our account to private. Good move on my part... I think so.
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