Dear Amy: The #SMEtiquette of Asking for Private Conversations

 Social media can make us feel as if we know people better than we do — even when we have never communicated with them before in any way. We find people with similar interests and enjoy conversations that would have been impossible to have even a few years ago.This week's question comes from someone who wanted to learn more about a new friend he'd made, perhaps a bit too quickly.Don't forget to submit your #SMEtiquette questions!

Dear Amy:I saw this woman tweeting with an author we both like and I asked her impressions on the book. After she answered me, I asked if she wanted to hop on an IM chat right then to discuss it in more detail than 140 characters could bear. She took a few minutes to respond, then came up with an excuse as to why she couldn’t, though I saw she kept tweeting with other people.It’s not like I asked her to marry me or anything; I just asked to have a conversation. Why was she so rude?Bewildered Bookworm

Dear Bewildered:One of the lovely things about Twitter is that we can eavesdrop on conversations other people are having and even join in without it being rude. Our circles of communication become ever-wider and we are the richer for it.But most of these people are strangers. We don’t know them; they don’t know us. Twitter’s often compared with a cocktail party, but there are some significant differences.The biggest difference of all is that you can’t see anyone and so can’t read body language, tone or other communication cues that enable you to judge intention. The next-biggest is the 140-character limitation. Put the two together and if you’re chatting with someone you don’t know, there are bound to be situations such as you described.You don’t know what she was doing. Maybe she was out and about, popping in to tweet when she had moments here and there, or in transit, but wasn’t in a situation where she could hop on GChat or Skype.Maybe she was a bit uncomfortable with the fact that someone she’d never communicated with before suddenly wanted to hop on an IM chat immediately. Women face different issues online than men do. But even if she were a man, she might have felt uncomfortable leaping into a private conversation immediately with someone she didn’t know.Perhaps a better tack would have been to chat with her more about the book on Twitter. Have a public conversation. Become correspondents of some sort before asking someone to hop into a private conversation – it doesn’t matter how platonic you want the conversation to be, it just seems rushed when there’s no background or context.That goes back to if this had happened in person: If you’d been at a cocktail party and heard the conversation and joined in, you likely would have had a long and lovely conversation with the woman and possibly the author as well. But it would have been a natural progression.Now imagine that after one or two sentences, you’d asked the woman to go into a private room to discuss the book in more depth. That would be kind of creepy.I am not saying that what you did was creepy. I have no doubt you really were excited about the book and wanted to talk to someone else who’d read it, in more than 140-character bursts. But context is everything, and there was no context to this.She may have taken a few minutes to respond, in fact, because she did not want to be rude, or because she was trying to figure out why she didn’t feel comfortable with it. Or she may have just been, as I noted, in transit or otherwise busy in a way that made an IM conversation difficult but tweeting not.Just remember that context in social media conversations relies very heavily on prior communications with a person. If you haven’t had any, most of the context of the conversation is missing and it’s much easier to take things the wrong way.We all occasionally take things the wrong way from long-time, real-life friends on social media. Or in person, even. She wasn’t being rude anymore than you were being creepy. It’s just that neither of you had any context to wrap around the situation.Next time, talk some more first. See if you know mutual people who can help put that context in the situation. And don’t ask for a private conversation two tweets in.