Developing a Twitter Personality

Dear Cybersorter,

I have noticed that when I tweet about food or my cat I always get a few pleasant responses. If I tweet about more serious issues, though, no one seems to want to listen.

I prefer to talk in a public forum about more sensible things but it’s very tempting to talk crap when you get better feedback. 

How should I develop my Twitter personality?

N.C

Dear N.C

Along with bringing down despotic regimes and challenging the judgement of entire judicial systems, Twitter is still the tool by which people keep tight, or try to keep up, with their friends.

Tweeters, like other bunches of people, have things in common. Eating, fluffy kittens (please note the apostrophe), Star Wars and popular music will hit any available “like” button inside the head of the majority of Internet users.

It’s all about getting the balance right. Tweet inanely about such things on a constant or even overly regular basis and it will demark you as a sad git to the cool gang.

It’s also not a good plan to put too much nonsense out there if you are trying got build a professional front or may want one in the near to medium future. It’s wise to remember your Twitter profile is your public profile (unless you have protected your tweets).

When you say no one seems to want to listen to your more serious points it’s more likely most people aren’t willing to weigh in on something you seem to know more about than them (although it doesn’t stop loads of Twitter users). Just because someone hasn’t replied directly to your smart tweet, doesn’t mean it hasn’t resonated.

Think of the tweets you have read that you didn’t respond to but thought about afterwards or repeated to a friend or acquaintance.

People endlessly re-tweet the banal rubbish that celebrities bleurgh out while waiting for their Botox. Slavish numbskulls re-tweets don’t make their thoughts useful, valid or worthwhile.

Being yourself on Twitter is probably the easiest and best route to go. Lying about your personality to your twitter followers is like lying to your wife about the stag weekend in Wales. You get found out. It’s embarrassing when you do.

Your Twitter personality is your personality, only a little sharper (squeezed into 140 characters) a little funnier (don’t tweet too much when you’re down) and bit cooler (notice trends and pick up on them – but only when you fully understand them).

This way you won’t tweet like you’ve been Botoxed in the brain.

How to Help Your Teenager Manage Her Facebook Time

Dear Cyber Sorter,
My daughter is studying for her Leaving Certificate this year. She is mad into Facebook and I am concerned she spends more time on there than she does studying. It seems like a real distraction. I am on Facebook and I am friends with her on it so I know she’s logging on a lot. I considered limiting her computer time in favour of study time but she says she needs her computer to study, which is true.
How can I cut her Facebook time without causing a big teenage strop?
–CM

Dear CM,
You are right to fear negative effects. A recent survey by OnlineEducation.net found that students who “multi-tasked”, using Facebook in conjunction with studying, attained grades that were 20 per cent lower than those of their more focused peers.
The same has been said of television, but when a student is using a computer to study, it is more difficult to resist the temptation to log in and procrastinate.
There are positives from the same survey. Students who used Facebook felt more engaged with their school community than those who weren’t on the social network.
Fortunately, your daughter has not availed of several ways in which she could hide her Facebook usage from you. This shows openness and trust towards you. Resist the temptation to nag her or alienate her. Instead try to offer some coping mechanisms for dealing with her workload and upping her productive study time.
Suggest to her that the first thing she does on a study day is log into Facebook. She can spend up to half an hour catching up, reading through her news feed and responding to messages.
Then when the time is up she must log off. This removes the tab that whispers, “Open me. I’m far more fun than basic binary programming theory. Just for a little while. I promise you won’t spend long.”
It’s not a good idea to log back on during study breaks as it is likely to extend that break more than necessary. She is likely to benefit more from a walk away from her computer or a phone call with a friend.
It’s as easy to lose time on social media as it is to lose money in a casino. Telling her she is spending too much time on Facebook is likely to make her mentally plug her fingers in her ears and sing “la la la” until you stop.
There is an app that can help. Apps, such as 8aWeek, set up a toolbar on the browser where she can see how long she is spending on certain websites, such as Facebook. This app also allows her to set a timer on the site so she can restrict her usage.
As you are also on Facebook, she knows she can’t get away with saying it’s part of her study.
If you give her the tools, both software and psychological, to organise her time effectively, she is far more likely to thank you instead of defriending you, blocking you and starting a blog called “My Mammy Nags Me”. (Cyber Sorter regrets she is unable to guarantee prevention of teenage strops due to the inability to control other people’s hormones and brain development.)

How to Hide Embarassing Books on Kindle

Dear Cyber Sorter,
I have a Kindle and I love it. I read a lot of classic literature and consider myself well read and well educated. I also love an occasional thriller and some romance. The problem with the Kindle is that everyone wants to have a look at it and see how it works. If someone takes a look through my Kindle books they will see all my potboiler shame.
With paperbacks I could just kick them under the bed or disown them with the words, “Oh I wonder how that awful stuff got onto my bookshelf. Must have been so and so.” Is there any way I can hide books on Kindle?
- FG

Dear FG,
It makes me very happy to say yes, there is. You can hide your entire library. Make sure you are connected to the internet, then scroll down to the bottom and click on “collection”. Then click “hide” and it’s gone.
If you want to hide only certain books use the toggle or rocker button on the right. Select the title and click to the right and you will get a title page. Click on “remove from device”.
It actually just puts the book into “archived”, which you can access by clicking the “next page” button until you get the bottom of your list of books. It is easy to restore from here.
So whether it’s chick lit, erotica or that pile of self-help books, you can keep your private reading private.

"Finally, my Friendship Ha Been Accepted...Hang on a Minute!"

Dear Cyber Sorter,
My sister-in-law, whom I have known for nine years, has accepted my friendship request on Facebook after ignoring it for 18 months.
I see her regularly and I always thought we got on fine, even if secretly I find her a bit loud and annoying.
It has surprised me how offended I feel now that she has chosen to accept my request. When she was ignoring it, I assumed she just hadn’t seen it or whatever and didn’t really think about it. Now I think she was ignoring me because she didn’t want to be connected to me online.
Have I got this all out of proportion? Isn’t it rude to ignore someone for so long only to accept them at last?
- GJ

Dear GJ,
Perhaps you are reading too much into this. Isn’t it possible that your sister-in-law hadn’t seen or had overlooked your friendship request? Or that she may have hit “ignore” before by accident? Then on a rare and thorough inspection of her profile came across your innocent little “friend” request and clicked “accept” without thinking any more about it.
Of course, she could be a manipulative, game-playing, evil witch. You know her better than I do, but these things are easily missed.
It would probably be better for everyone if you were to go with the first explanation and continue with your social life unaffected. After all, you have admitted you don’t like her much either.

A Newsfeed that's More Baby Ga Ga than Lady Gaga

Dear Cyber Sorter,
I’m in my late twenties, and it would appear it’s the start of a new era. The baby era. People are popping them out left, right and centre, and while I’m delighted for them and plan to join them at some stage, I’m not there yet.
Where I am is on Facebook, reading their tedious status updates. I would have thought it went without saying that one loves their offspring, so why do they feel the need to plaster it all over my feed (complete with love hearts)? I’m happy you’re happy, but stop shoving it down my throat. There are only so many “Mummy is so happy with her little darling who is the best baby in the world!” statements a person can handle.
Is there a polite way of getting this message across to my friends?
JL

Dear JL,
It is an awful pain when your friends get brainwashed by their babies. Almost anything is easier to stomach than hourly updates on nappy creams and winding.
It’s very hard not to be irritated by anyone one knows falling desperately and blindly in love with anyone other than oneself, be it a boyfriend, girlfriend or a baby. They become myopic, one-topic beings, with none of the wit, flair or interest in your life – or indeed the outside world – that they had before their brains were hormonally charged up and let loose on Facebook
It sounds as if it’s not just the dull, gurgle gurgle goo content of the updates that is bothering you but perhaps the niggling worry that, if all your friends are in this zone, you should be too.
You simply cannot say anything about how annoying this is, even in the mildest tone, to your new Mummy and Daddy friends without mortally offending them. As far as they are concerned you should be riveted to every burp and nappy update, as this is the most fascinating and important topic in the history of the world.
So, do yourself a favour and hide their updates from after the first photos of the newborn until between six months to one year old. Send these friends the odd message and email to stay in touch instead, beginning in the following manner:
“Dear New Mummy Friend, Glad you and the baby are doing well. You might not have seen this amazing article (link to the article) about how smoking is back in fashion! What do you think?”
This healthy form of normal adult interaction will almost definitely come as a breath of fresh air to New Mummy who, though currently enamoured of her darling infant, is also suffering from a horrifying form of mental malaise and mild isolation. This way you can be the brilliant friend who allows her to still be herself and have access to the grown-up world, and your newsfeed goes back to being more Lady Gaga than baby ga ga.

Boss Excited by Social Media But Also Clueless About It.

Dear Cybersorter,
The company I work for is very excited about using Twitter to “put our message out there” and “get social” (their words, not mine).
Despite the Office Space style of their communication, I think they are right in wanting to build an online profile for the company and get potential clients and customers to connect with us.
The problem is my boss is insistent that on top of all my many duties, he now expects a constant flow of information and updates for our Facebook page and on our Twitter profile.
I can’t keep up and I’m worried I’ll say or do something damaging to the company if I continue to juggle everything at the current rate.
– DB 

Dear DB,
It’s great your company has cottoned on to the benefits of social media, even if it’s only because the boss just read about it in the Financial Times and decided to jump on the Facepig’s back.
There are applications, such as Buffer (bufferapp.com) for Twitter and Sendible (sendible.com) that allow you to stack up your tweets and FB messages and schedule their release.
However, this will not entirely solve your problem and beware stacking up tweets and messages that may go stale while they wait.
Companies who do well via social media do so because they are committed to it and, crucially, because they provide a forum for customers and clients to respond and feel listened to.
Your company needs a full-time social media manager. Old-school bosses have made the mistake of assuming that because social media is ostensibly free, the work that goes into managing it should be too and they get an intern to do it.
Make your boss aware of the atrocious and costly social media mistakes of some of the biggest companies in the world, including Nestle and United Airlines. This should be enough to convince her of the need to allocate resources to this issue.

"I Want to Take Back My Friendship Request"

Dear Cybersorter,
I met a guy at a party a couple of weeks ago. He was good craic and I liked him. He was flirtatious with me, and my friend who was with me agreed it wasn’t in my imagination.
I decided to send him a friend request on Facebook. Then I found out that he’s married, which makes me regret doing that. Is there any way to take back my request to be friends?
– RB 

Dear RB,
You are in luck, as until recently there wasn’t a way to retract your friendship request. There is now. Search for the person on your Facebook page and click on them. Scroll down and click “Cancel Friendship Request” under his profile picture. It should give you a reassuring “Friendship Request Cancelled” message.
You should also be aware that when you request friendship from someone it opens up some of your Facebook profile to them for a limited period of time before they have accepted your request. They will be able to see the categories Basic, Personal, Work and Education Info and Friends.
All the same, be cautious when a friend agrees that someone finds you attractive. It is a very rare, possibly extinct, sort of friend who says, “No, he clearly didn’t fancy you at all.” Even if he didn’t.