The Dangers of Twitter

Twitter is great! Twitter is fun! Twitter is easy-to-use and practical for writers!

There are all kinds of nifty things on Twitter, such as these 60+ great hashtags for writers! And agents with advice, or editors with advice.

Twitter is like a giant chat room with loads of cool people and friends with the same interests as you! What could be bad about Twitter?

Well, that very chat-room-esque feel can be dangerous. The "microblogging" format of Twitter feels more like a conversation than a blog. You @reply friends and join #hashtag chats on your favorite topics. As you get to know your new friends, you become comfortable around them. You start to open up.

This is all great. Until you forget you're on the internet. In a public forum. Which saves a record of everything you Tweet.

So when your friend George rants about how much he hates his agent, and you reply telling him zomg, yours totally sucks too, she just took 3 months to read your novel... Well, guess what? If your agent looks at your homepage (or even Google-searches her name and your Twitter hashtag), chances are she's going to see that comment. And I'm guessing she will not be very amused that you're dissing her in public.

This is just a random imaginary example off the top of my head, but you get the idea. It's dangerous to forget you're posting online. You might agree wholeheartedly with a complaint your friend posted about their boss so-and-so, but do yourself a favor and PM your response.

And when you're tempted to do some complaining yourself, stop and think for a moment. Is this the kind of rant you want to put online, for anyone in the world (including many people who do not know you or your brand of sarcasm/humor) to see? Or is this the kind of thing you should email your friends to bitch about?

Trust me. I have almost made some bad mistakes myself (ohai glass of wine + heated Twitter hashtag chat).

Stay classy, lovies!