Managing Twitter: a How to Guide

[miss_s_b]

I've seen a couple of people tweeting about how to manage twitter and stop it from becoming a time sink recently - possibly because it's new year and there are resolutions going on. It's a genuine (first world) problem. If you follow back everyone who follows you your timeline quickly becomes unmanageable. But if you don't follow back won't they be offended? And then there's all the celebs/journos/etc.

My twitter feed is reasonably tight. Here's how I do it:

1. I don't backread further than the first load of my homescreen. Ever. Twitter is something for NOW.


2. I don't track or care who follows me. If you follow me, I won't notice unless you talk to me.


3. I always check my @ replies before my home screen, and regularly throughout the day, and am happy to talk to people I am not following.


4. I only follow people who tweet consistently interestingly, and don't pay any attention to whether or not they are following me. If you're a nice-but-dull person then sorry, but I won't fill my timeline with your tweets.


5. If someone posts something on my homescreen that annoys or offends me I unfollow them. Even if they are someone I generally admire.


6. If someone spams me or is consistently annoying/offensive in @ replies then I block them - sometimes only on a temporary basis if they just won't shut up about something we disagree on and I have no spoons.


7. Once a month or so I use Manage Flitter to clear out inactives and/or people I had a fad for a few months ago that I am no longer interested in (last year's contestants on The Voice, for example).

So you can see that the people I talk to on twitter and the people I follow on twitter are two overlapping but distinct groups. I don't think I miss much, because people who post consistently interestingly are bound to get retweeted, so I pick them up eventually. Also, there's no real pattern to the people I follow, other than that I find them interesting: there's politicos and journos, musicians, artists, sciencey tweeps, young folk, old folk... your job or your age or your gender or any other attribute doesn't really matter, as long as you are interesting.

Oh, one other thing: I absolutely do not and never will get offended by people not following me back. Just because I am interested in what you have to say does not mean I will assume that you are interested in what I have to say. If you're not following me then I need to try harder to be interesting.

Comments

[gominokouhai]

Another useful guide is scotm's Enjoying Twitter 101, q.v.

> I don't think I miss much, because people who post consistently interestingly are bound to get retweeted, so I pick them up eventually

I've actually gone so far as to unfollow certain people because all of their good stuff gets retwitted, so I can avoid the dull stuff. I appreciate that if everyone did this then the whole system would collapse like a flan in a cupboard.

> Just because I am interested in what you have to say does not mean I will assume that you are interested in what I have to say.

This is a general problem that was probably created when Livejournal first called it a friends page. Just because I read you doesn't mean that I'm your buddy, or even that I agree with you. It's a reading list.

[miss_s_b]

Yes, I've unfollowed people who get retweeted tons too, but that seems to happen less often recently - possibly because I have unfollowed the uniteresting people who only ever retweet other people's interesting tweets but have nothing of interest to say themselves.

And yes, I follow John Prescott. Does not mean I like or agree with him.

[eatsoylentgreen]

"If you're not following me then I need to try harder to be interesting."

well said! and hi! I'm random.

[miss_s_b]

Hello! Soylent Green is made of people (om nom nom)