Tag Archives: Twitter

Good reads on my blogs: May 2010 edition

Posted on June 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

The most popular post on my blog this past month was the one on how to search your old tweets and Twitter spring cleaning tips. Check it out if you missed it the first time around.

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I’m really glad that Twitter tweaked its trending topics algorithm to better represent the topics that people are really talking about, rather than fake trends (via Mashable). As a result, Justin Bieber is not in the trending topics for the … Continue reading →

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Posted on May 15, 2010

Why I’m not following you on Twitter…

Posted on May 6, 2010 | 1 Comment
The Twitter fail whale error message.
Image via Wikipedia

I recently tried an experiment on Twitter. I tried following back everyone who followed me — well, almost everyone, as I’ll explain. The results were very interesting. Within a few days, I had gained more than 100 followers,  and they weren’t dropping off like they used to. I also found that my Twitter feed wasn’t overwhelming me. If anything, the tweets in my feed were even more interesting and varied than before, and there was always something new, every time I tuned in.

Even though I was following back (mostly) everyone who followed me, I didn’t want my Twitter feed to become overloaded with spam. I quickly formulated some rules to weed out those folks who were worth my time and attention from those who weren’t. The rules are really quite simple. I won’t follow you if:

  • You have no avatar. These are generally spam accounts, I’ve found. (If you have a pornographic avatar, I’m going to block you.)
  • Your Twitter name ends in several numbers. Again, this shouts “spammer!”
  • You have the words “social media expert” or “SEO” in your profile description. Or you have no profile description. I like to know a little something real about you before I’ll follow back.
  • Your Twitter username has that “make money at home” vibe or includes phrases like “DebtFree.” Ditto your tweets.
  • Your tweets are too hard sell or look like a series of spammy links.
  • The links you post all point to the same domain name.
  • You use hashtags like #acai #berry. Come on.
  • You just repeat the same tweet over and over.
  • You dominate my feed with your tweets. Or you don’t ever tweet.
  • You don’t speak my language. Nothing personal, but there’s no point in seeing tweets I can’t understand.
  • You abuse your direct message privileges. Actually, that’s a sure way to get me to block you.

I know a lot of people use Twitter for business-related reasons, such as public relations or networking. I don’t see anything wrong with this, as long as you keep in mind that Twitter is made up of people who are primarily interested in the conversation. You have to provide something of value. Share what’s going on in your community or post some interesting links that aren’t all self-serving. If it’s not a conversation — if all you’re doing is trumpeting yourself, your business or your service — then your followers will tune out. So if that’s all you intend to do, you might as well just shut up.

But if you’re interested in having a conversation with me, you’re welcome to follow me. I’m on Twitter as sturlington.

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How to search your old Tweets + Twitter spring cleaning tips

Posted on April 26, 2010 | 3 Comments

I recently had a question: How do I search my own tweets for an old link I might need or a great quip I had made? The problem with Twitter‘s search tool is that it’s time-limited. You can search your tweets by prefacing the search keyword with your Twitter username, but the search results will only go back a week or so. This is a pretty serious limitation of Twitter’s search functionality.

It turns out there is no good tool for searching your past archive of all tweets. Google will search tweets, but it’s not at all easy to limit that search to just your own tweets.

The best solution I’ve found requires a little forethought. First, you have to archive your tweets in a searchable location. I use FriendFeed, which also archives my Delicious bookmarks, StumbleUpon finds and blog posts. Here are some other places where you can archive your tweets.

If you start the archive now, it won’t be much help in finding tweets from 6 months ago, but at least you will have a searchable archive going forward. However, if you already have a FriendFeed account or similar Twitter archive, you can use the search tool there to search through your past tweets. I use FriendFeed’s advanced search, so I can limit the search to just my feed by entering my username in the “Specific friends/groups” box.

If you just want to search links, BackTweets may help. It enables you to search links posted on Twitter, and it expands shortened links. Unfortunately, you can’t search only your own Twitter account.

A better solution is to archive your tweeted links on a searchable platform. Packrati.us fills the void. It automatically archives every link you tweet to your Delicious bookmarks. It will even tag the link with each hashtag you add to the tweet. This has been a real timesaver for me, because I like to share useful tweets on Twitter and then save them on Delicious, which used to be a two-step process.

Speaking of Twitter, now might be a good time to spring-clean your Twitter account. I just went through my followers list so I could block questionable followers and make sure I was following back the interesting people. I also cleaned up my Twitter lists. Mashable suggests some good tools to help.

The best tool on the list, I thought, was UnTweeps. This tool finds all of the people you’re following who haven’t tweeted in a while (30 days or more) and lets you quickly unfollow them. Twitter Karma also seems like a cool tool. It shows who you’re following and who’s following you back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work for me yet; it depends on how busy Twitter is when you run it.

10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets (ReadWriteWeb)
FriendFeed
BackTweets
Packrati.us
How to: Spring-clean Your Twitter Account (Mashable)
UnTweeps
Twitter Karma
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Here’s a nice interview with Heather La Garde, a friend of mine, on how to use good manners on Twitter to get results for your business (via MercuryBrief). Heather works with my former employer, IntraHealth International, and directs the highly … Continue reading →

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Posted on February 14, 2010

Like everyone else, I have an opinion about Google Buzz…

Posted on February 11, 2010 | 4 Comments

Google launched Google Buzz, its social media application for Gmail, over the last couple of days, and everyone on the web has an opinion, including me. Some opinions are unnecessarily hostile for a new software application. The social web is a very friendly place for the knee-jerk reaction.

After using Buzz for a little while, I have decided that I mostly like it. Here’s why.

Most people are comparing Buzz to Facebook and Twitter. Buzz does a lot of the good things Facebook does, only much, much better. The interface is cleaner and easier to use. So far, I have not had to worry about catching spam, malware or viruses from Buzz, and it avoids all the inanities of Facebook. The commenting and like features are super-easy to use; the privacy features take a little more figuring out (especially if you don’t use Gmail’s Groups feature), but not much, and they are also easier and more versatile than Facebook’s, as far as I can tell. The integration with Google Reader is especially powerful, and I would like to see that strengthened over time, particularly so that I don’t have to read everyone’s shared items twice.

I like that Buzz lets me communicate very easily with people I email a lot, particularly friends and family. It’s great for quick, asynchronous chat sessions that I would normally carry on over email. I like to see what my friends are reading on the web and quickly comment on them. I would close my Facebook account today and only use Buzz if there weren’t so many people on Facebook who I want to stay in touch with and who seem unlikely to move. Regardless, I think I will be visiting Facebook even less in the future.

Buzz is not a competitor with Twitter, though. It does not even try to do the things that Twitter does well. I use Twitter to find news, links and trends. It’s basically my window on the social web. I like it because I can drop in when I have time and ignore it when I don’t. I would never try to follow high-volume posters like Mashable or the New York Times on Buzz. That would quickly get overwhelming.

Also, my audience on Twitter is very different. It is larger and made up mostly of people who don’t know me, who I assume are more interested in specific topics I frequently write about and post links on. So I will continue to use Buzz and Twitter as complementary networks, rather than try to replace one with the other.

I suspect that Google knows this and that is why they let you feed your Twitter content into Buzz. I disconnected my Twitter feed from Buzz, though. There is too much possibility for redundancy, and besides, I tweet a lot. I don’t want to overwhelm the people following me on Buzz with too much noise. I also didn’t connect my FriendFeed to Buzz for the same reasons.

Some people are concerned about the privacy of Buzz. These people didn’t take a few minutes just to learn the software before getting all upset about it, I suspect. You can turn Buzz off — look for the link at the bottom of the page. You can block people from following you. You can make your posts private. Buzz launches with suggestions for people to follow culled from your email and chat contacts and people you’re sharing with on Reader, but you don’t have to follow any of them.

The biggest concern may be that Buzz posts the list of people you’re following and people following you on your Google Profile page. This is no different from what Twitter does, but it’s a bit more personal, since these people are also your email contacts. It is very easy to turn this public display off, which I did straightaway. Just go to your Google Profile page (click your name in Buzz), click Edit Settings and then uncheck the box beside “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me.”

So you can choose to follow me on Buzz (via my Google Profile) or on Twitter or both. I post more to Twitter and it’s more impersonal but possibly more interesting. But on Buzz we can have conversations about the links I share. Both have value. Where you likely won’t see much of me anymore is Facebook. I don’t think I’ll miss it.

More opinions and help with Buzz:

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Twitter vs. RSS: How Twitter has freed me from hours of blog reading

Posted on January 16, 2010 | 3 Comments

I used to subscribe to all my favorite blogs and read them in Google Reader. But no matter how much I tried to stay on top of them, I always ended up subscribed to 100 or more blogs, which were collectively posting hundreds of times a day. I was spending hours skimming through blog posts.

There is something about the RSS feed reader that makes a completist like me feel like I have to at least look at every post that shows up. Maybe it’s that bold number at the top. I have to get it down to 0 each time I open up Reader. It’s like my email Inbox — it must always be empty. And it feels like cheating to mark everything as read when I hadn’t actually read it.

Another problem was that I was reading about the same things 5, 6 or 10 times over in different blogs. There aren’t that many blogs that consistently post new content. Usually, they just react to the same bit of news as everyone else.

So one day, not too long ago, I unsubscribed to most of the blogs in my Reader. And I started following the bloggers on Twitter instead.

Almost everyone who blogs is also on Twitter. And they usually tweet about their own blog posts as well as other interesting bits of news and links. So everything in their RSS feeds also shows up on Twitter.

But I don’t have the same need to have to catch up with everything on Twitter that I do in my RSS feed reader. Twitter is like a river of information flowing by (I know that New York Times columnist used the same metaphor in his Twitter article but he stole it from me — he must have overheard me making this observation in a Starbucks or something). Every now and then, when I have a few minutes, I dip my toes in the river. Google Reader, on the other hand, is more like a dam, and all the new information flowing in backs up into a lake that I feel compelled to empty.

But what if I miss something? Well, so what if I do. The Internet is so vast, and there is so much interesting stuff going on all the time, that I’m bound to miss many things. Besides, the truly interesting things get reposted so much that I will see them sooner or later. By doing most of my reading through Twitter, I have found that I am more in control of how long I spend surfing. Whether I want to stop in for a few minutes or hang out for an hour, when I am done and ready to move on to other things, I just close the page and walk away.

Twitter lists are the new feature that have made this really possible for me. I obviously don’t want to follow thousands of people — too much noise. I tend to follow just the people who are consistently interesting. But I can add anyone I want to a list without having to follow them. So when I want to dip into a particular subject of interest, such as the world of book bloggers or minor celebrities, I open up my list on that topic.

I still use Google Reader, but it’s a much more targeted use now. RSS is a very handy way of keeping on top of news that really interests me, such as local events or personal friends’ FriendFeeds or Google alert results. And there are still a very few blogs where I want to see every posting. For instance, I know if it’s interesting, eventually it’s going to show up on MetaFilter, so I still subscribe to that feed. But now when I open Google Reader, the bold number that faces me is usually less than 20, which is a lot easier to zero out.

This is yet another reason why Twitter is so much greater than people generally think it is. And it’s not at all addictive. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find out whether Justin Bieber is still trending.

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    Stop saying Twitter is useless! Because now there are Twitter lists

    Posted on November 10, 2009 | 3 Comments

    Have you played around with Twitter‘s new lists feature yet? Well, you should, because lists take Twitter from “pretty cool” to “OMG I can’t live without Twitter!”

    The idea behind lists is actually super simple (and staying super simple is part of what makes Twitter so great). Basically, you can group some of your Tweeple (i.e., people you follow on Twitter) into a list.

    But here’s why this is so awesome:

    • You can group people by any criteria you choose and then go to the list to see a timeline of only their tweets. For example, you may want to check in on just the people you work with or the celebrities you’re stalking.
    • If you put someone on a list, you don’t have to follow them. You can still see their tweets by accessing the list. So you can limit your main Twitter timeline to only the people you truly care about. I am now actively following only about 50 people, which is a lot easier to keep up with. Since I keep Twitter open on my iGoogle page, it is extra-nice to get rid of the excess noise.
    • You can follow other people’s lists. So you don’t even have to go to all the trouble of making your own. People have made lists for every possible category. Here’s the place to find the best of them.
    • If you’re following someone on a Twitter list, why do you have to bother reading their blog anymore? (No, wait, you should still read my blog.)

    So I have made a few lists that you may or may not want to follow. They are:

    And a few others. Visit my Twitter page to see them all.

    Now that Twitter is finally integrating retweets into its web interface, there will be no end to its usefulness. We can just pretty much ignore Facebook and StumbleUpon as no longer relevant.

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    Update: The contest is closed. I have sent the invitations to the four winners. Thanks, everyone, for commenting! Yesterday I got invited to preview Google Wave. I was kind of surprised, because I don’t think I signed up for the … Continue reading →

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    Posted on October 24, 2009

    Getting active (politically) using social media

    Posted on August 27, 2009 | Leave a comment

    Ok, it may not be as impactful or as meaningful as marching on Washington or staging a sit-in, but if you’re using social media anyway, there are lots of ways to use it to make your political views known or to try to do some good in the world. Futurismic calls it “micro-volunteering”: using social media tools to do some good on your down time. Mashable is running a program called the Summer of Social Good, using social networking tools to raise money for worthwhile causes.

    Here are some causes I like that you might want to join:

    Once you’ve picked your cause, head over to Twibbon to display a ribbon proudly on your Twitter avatar.

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