Why is it that whenever I’m riffing on a Robert Scoble post, the premise is so very often convoluted?

Questions of semantics aside, Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble have had a slightly tongue-in-cheek feud on the “right way” to use Twitter.  The following quote and embedded video of Chris’s Web 2.0 Expo speech tell the full story.

It started as a little joke that I said on stage at the BlogWorld Expo. One of my fellow panelists said she didn’t like people who told other people that they were doing Twitter wrong. So, of course, I blurted out “Chris Brogan is doing Twitter wrong.” Mostly as a joke, but partly because, well, I think he’s doing Twitter wrong. More on why in a moment.

Of course Chris heard about it and he got back at me on stage at the Web 2.0 Expo by pointing out that he is doing Twitter right. That’s why his video is embedded on this post.

Why don’t I like how Chris Brogan does Twitter?

Because I can’t find his good blogs and videos. Why? Because he does so many conversations. Look at his Twitter home page. All you see is @replies. This is what makes Brogan Brogan, because he’s going to answer you no matter how popular he gets. But, that means I can’t find the good stuff he publishes.

I wish he’d do a separate feed of just his blog posts and well-thought out things.

Actually it was that realization that made me open up two new Twitter accounts: scobleblog is a feed of just my blog posts and scoblemedia is a feed of just my videos and podcasts I’m on.

Here’s why Scoble is doing it wrong: Twitter doesn’t like accounts that simply “link out.”

Over the weekend, Dave Winer wrote a blog post that described what happened when he tried to create an account that behaves in accordance to what Scoble prescribes:

I have several accounts that I use for testing Twitter apps. One of them, bullmancuso, was shut down last October. A few weeks ago I petitioned to have the account restored.

This evening I got an email from the Twitter support person BFF, who explained:

"Your account was suspended because our specialists found that your tweets were primarily links to other sites and not personal updates, a violation of Twitter Rules."

http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18311

It’s true of that account but it’s also true of the NYTimes and many other news oriented Twitter sites.

I suggest they take another look at this.

Obviously, I have no problem with how Scoble or Brogan use Twitter – to each their own (and to be honest, I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up separate accounts for my different online social activities), but Twitter doesn’t see it that way.

I, myself, could very well fall into the violators category. The bulk of what shows up in my Twitter feed are posts that I find interesting throughout the day, shared from Google Reader (via a custom application) into my Twitter feed.  I’m using Twitter wrong, apparently.

This is definitely an oversight in the way they’ve written and decided to enforce their Terms of Service.

[Editor’s Note: Photo Credits to CC. Chapman and (cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.thelettertwo.com –mrh]