Ask HN: How do you use Twitter? Do you a) read all of your timeline tweets (i.e. scroll back for tweets you missed overnight) b) don't care what you missed and start reading from present time on? |
Ask HN: How do you use Twitter? Do you a) read all of your timeline tweets (i.e. scroll back for tweets you missed overnight) b) don't care what you missed and start reading from present time on? |
I don't understand people who are put off by the noise. Just don't read your timeline. Also, it's not much work to manage...whenever I read an interesting article, I just tweet the headline and link...Literally a 10 second action that sometimes can catch a lot of attention and help you find other like-minded people,
The service had a value to me when there was a focus on interaction, but as it transitioned to a news feed/advertisement service it lost any and all use to me.
For news, there are enough sites that all spout off the same reviews and "exclusives". If there is truly breaking news that I need to be made aware of, there are a multitude of channels I can get the information from and all of them will convey the information better than a 140 character tweet could.
As soon as I realized that sometimes there is news worthy stuff posted there, there will always be reporters crawling through the noise to find those and put the content on their respective outlets. What's the point of me subscribing to boat loads of literal shit ("at toilet, pls rt") to find a pearl now and then, when I can use traditional media to get to the pearls immediately? Sure, I might not get the pearls instantly, but I think that sacrifice is totally worth it when I occasionally read through some public Twitter feed.
oh God why?
Anyway, my answer is "a", I use a client, Tweetbot, that syncs my read position across all my devices. When I wake up in the morning it shows me the last tweets I read the previous night. I then read them chronologically until I'm caught up.
I detailed that process because I feel that there's an important distinction between what I do and scrolling back for tweets I missed. For me, the process to catch up is the same process I use to read Twitter throughout the day, meaning that I don't have to do anything special when I wake up.
Of course, if I'm away or otherwise have been unable to check Twitter for two or three days, catching up can be a bit difficult and I might just give up and scroll to the top, then scroll down a bit just to see the most recent tweets, but I try to avoid doing that most of the time.
I only check my followers tweets in moments of complete boredom. But there are lists with people whom I want to keep up with (personal friends, key targets who's attention I would like to get).
Of those lists I ready every tweet and by checking it at least twice a day and try actively to engage with the people (responding, re-tweeting, asking, answering, etc). Otherwise the noise ratio is just to large and it feels pretty much just as social as shouting "hello" at random strangers.
Most don't flood, spam or waste my time. Too much signal to noise, no matter how popular you are, I have to unfollow.
I keep the feed open and look over every few minutes. I catch up on mornings if I'm bored.
I use Feedly, which allows me to mark some sources as "must read," so I can read every single item. I then also add a few hundred sites where I just glance at the most recent.
It balances my "keep up on everything from x source" and the "have a steady stream of interesting to fill time" needs pretty well.
I would like something like 'circles for twitter' so that I could check close friends and family tweets quickly, then kill time with lower priority/higher volume users if I want to.
I wish twitter made list building easier.
I like twitter, but I don't love it. I would use twitter often when third party clients were popping up.
I was using app.net for a while, but my friends never took to it. (this is within the first months of its launch) I paid for it, and liked it, but it lacked the network effect.
+ c) I search for specific keywords when investigating product ideas and pain points
But about six months ago, I stopped posting and now I rarely visit. It wasn't a conscious decision. I just got bored with it and started tapering off usage.
The rude part is that someone took the microsecond required to follow you and now they have to use a tool to find their unfollowers (you), unfollow you, and follow someone else.