How I do.
Spurred by Walter Mossberg’s code of ethics and certain events of late, I figured I would talk a little about the principles that I hold online. None of this is new, but I’ve never bothered to make any of it explicit. This is what works for me; other stuff may work for you, so you shouldn’t take it as preaching.
Don’t write about any products that I don’t already use. Easy enough. With a few extremely rare exceptions, I can’t force myself to use things that aren’t already appealing, and I won’t write about theoretical interfaces. This industry changes so much that speculative demonstrations matter worth very little, so I will only discuss shipped, usable, and useful products. This also means I won’t take free products, because in any such situation, I would just pay for the product anyway. (I sign up for beta tests if and only if I’ve already purchased an earlier version of the product, or if I plan to purchase the product once it publicly launches.)
Don’t write about any products that lack a clear, non-advertising-focused monetization strategy. Open source products, one-off hacks posted as a community service, nonprofits, and side projects don’t apply here, because there is already no expectation that the creators will make money off them. But if you’re going to found a startup and you have no clear way to monetize, forget it. I refuse to support any products that lack the courage to make money, I refuse to post about anybody who is too squeamish around the idea of making money, and I refuse to support (or work for) services that believe they have to fall back on advertising as a crutch for charging people.
No more than five public, non-@ tweets per day. This includes retweets. I maintain a personal account with a (much) higher follow cost, but the public one should remain unintrusive and easy to read. I chose five as an arbitrary number a couple of years back, and I’ve rarely hurt for it.
Don’t post any articles that I haven’t read the whole way through. No exceptions. Skimming is not the same as reading. I won’t support anything that I haven’t put the effort in to understand. I owe the article’s author – and anybody who reads my own blatherings – the time and effort to provide my full attention. This is sort of like the first rule above, but it may explain why I tend to post articles a few hours after everybody else.
Only follow real people on social networks. No couples sharing a login, no groups of people, no food trucks, no conceptual 140-character art pieces, and especially no companies. Two sort-of-exceptions on Twitter at the moment: I follow a design agency because I’m friends with the account’s maintainer (and she doesn’t ever post to her personal account), and I follow an account organizing a car share for an upcoming conference. (I do read several companies on RSS, but RSS hardly qualifies as a two-way communication medium in the same way as Twitter or Tumblr does.)
Market by word of mouth whenever possible. If people aren’t compelled to spread the word about the stuff that I do, then I’m not working hard enough, and I’m not making awesome enough things.
Don’t waste money. Be clear about profits and expenses. I don’t believe in buying things that I can’t clearly justify. For example, I outlined every single expense in my book’s budget and posted it online for people to inspect (and call out accordingly, if they thought they smelled any bullshit). This means that when I charge you money for something, you generally know where the profits are going to go. Not enough people – including the makers in our field – talk about the money that they earn, and what they do with it.
Be clear about an un-launched product’s timeline after its announcement. 99% of the time, it’s not going to ship “whenever.” Or “soon.” Be honest about how it’s going, what’s working, what isn’t working, and what is holding up the process.
Don’t flame anybody without a damn good reason for it. Nobody likes a hater, and constructive comments are almost always more valuable.
Use the Oxford comma. It’s just common sense for removing ambiguity from a sentence. I can’t believe that this is even an issue.
I reserve the right to change, bend, or break any of these. Lighten up. They’re guidelines, not laws. If some major event happens, for example, I’m probably going to break the five tweet rule. But you do get to hold me to this post if I do something that’s obviously heinous, and I don’t follow it up with a solid justification. (And for the record, I could have just as easily not written this post, and you wouldn’t know whether or not I was breaking something.)
