Unauthoritative Pronouncements

I fave things on Twitter a lot. A whole lot. I should probably not do it so much. What impulse drives pushing that button?

If I really scrutinize this to an unwarranted degree, it boils down to:

1. What the person had to say was amusing.
2. What the person linked to was interesting.
3. To use the fave as a bookmark to revisit a link later.
4. To impart a small ‘nod’ to the conversation.
5. To say, “This was a good back and forth, but it’s done.”
6. When reading a conversation involving people I follow, I may weigh in to the conversation by favoriting a tweet in the thread I agree with, to nudge the conversation without interrupting, or branching it.

The barrier to entry in those first three categories just happens to be very low for me. At least, it is when I compare the frequency of my faves with those of other people.

This is at odds witch my feelings towards retweeting. I rarely retweet because I would much rather have a personal conversation, and retweets rarely spawn any conversation, they just get retweeted. I know that I have an assortment of people that follow me, and that there is an even wider range of people whom I follow. I don’t want to jam up someone with things they don’t want to read. I’d much rather have a directed conversation with someone through @-mentions so only people following the both of us will see it — presumably, they are interested in that since they follow us.

Some people seem to be caught off guard by getting their tweets faved often. It seems to put them off. I’ll try to tailor my copious issuance of stars to spare them from “too many”. I do wonder if that means that other people also feel that I favorite things far too much and are simply trying to be polite and not tell me.

I would very much rather have people give me input on this since this is hardly something where there is an etiquette guide.

I really like you. Here, have this: ★ . It’s free.