As many of you know, I have been occasionally hot and usually cold on the Twitter experience. Yes, I share hand-curated links *** to my Twitter followers, but much of that takes only a couple of clicks from within Feedly, my feed reader of choice. But I have never embraced Twitter as either a consumption or a conversation platform.
*** If you’re interested in tech news and topics, you should consider following me, not because I am so interesting, but because almost all of my tweets are links to tech topics and apps I find interesting. It’s the best stuff from my very large reading list.
For probably the fifth time, I recently embarked on a project to better understand Twitter, both the bad and the good parts. Some of this is ongoing, but from a content consumption perspective, I knew I had to filter and divide my Twitter feed, to slow the roll a little so I can find the content I care about. I decided to do this via a third-party Twitter app and some topical lists. Eventually, I’ll have more lists and the lists will be fully populated, but here’s where I am so far.
I chose Tweetbot as my third-party app. There may be better choices out there (if so, please let me know), but I keep reading about Tweetbot, so I decided to give it a try. Installation is easy, and you can get up and running quickly. It takes some trial and error to figure out how to manage the columns and how to administer lists from within the app, but it’s not a difficult learning curve.
Next, I decided to start with three lists, on three topics I’m interested in: breaking news, Mac & Apple talk, and Wake Forest sports.
I added some of the obvious candidates to each list, and I tweak the lists as I discover new sources or realize some sources simply regurgitate too much quantity and too little quality (I’m looking at you, Houston Chronicle). It’s early, but clearly this is a system with potential to work.
Using lists, I can separate my feed into topics and can manage the content within those topics. This allows me to better consume content via Twitter, and to be more interactive. I’ve probably retweeted more in the last week that in the years before, simply because I can see things easier.
I also like the way Tweetbot lets you arrange your columns, and switch to Mentions (so I can reply or retweet if appropriate), Messages (though I really don’t like Twitter Messages as an email substitute), and a search function.
I’ll have more later, but for the moment I’m hopeful that the fifth time will be the charm.
If you’ve already made some good Twitter lists, let me know. I’ll take a look.
Newsome.Org 