I joined Twitter a few months ago, and while I rarely contribute, I generally like how it works. I’m following a dozen people now though, and while they’re all very interesting, I only check it on my phone maybe once a day, and I don’t think I have time for more than two or three tweets-per-person.
Unfortunately, some accounts (like @CBCNews ) tweet almost every hour, and it’s way too much. Can I maybe filter to only see user’s “popular” tweets? Is there a technical fix for this, or am I just not cut out for Web 2.0?
There’s the list function. I have a couple of lists: one for my close friends, one for friends and acquaintances, one for comedians, one for news and info, one for musicians, one for update feeds and the like. They’re not hard to set up.
I’m using the official Twitter app. Takes a few seconds to load on my old X10, but it seemed pretty good otherwise.
I think that separating things in to lists would just result in me completely ignoring a list, and getting annoyed at it’s length the next time I checked it.
I guess I want to filter rather than segregate tweets - I’ll follow Joe, but I really want to be following “The best of Joe”, which has Joe’s insightful tweet on the nature of MMO gaming, but not his series of 6 tweets in one hour on the location and flavour of his tea biscuits.
All this new social stuff is such hard work. Maybe I’ll just become a hermit.
I don’t think there’s a way to filter based on interestingness except for tweeters who are popular enough to get a significant number of retweets or replies or favorites. I can’t think of another metric to determine this.
I think lists is the best way to manage this. Make a list of “must see” tweeters. And only check the raw feed when you are bored.
I had the same problem. I subscribed to a blogger that I found interesting. But 90% of his tweets were utterly inane and brain-dead. Twitter is like alcohol; it removes the verbal diarrhea filter that most people have. Unlike alcohol, though, it does nothing to make people at least seem more interesting.
So yeah, a filter would be nice, but I’ve never seen one.
The logical problem here is that to Joe, **ALL **of his tweets are interesting. You would need a smart filter that only allowed stuff through that you found interesting, or probably easier, *blocked *stuff you found boring. Maybe someone will develop a trainable app along these lines. Until then…