Here’s a tip on how to get those low signal to noise ratio Twitters out of your immediate Twitter follows.
The problem:
Part 1: There’s only a few real people on Twitter I have two-way real-life conversations with and seeing what they say is the highest priority.
Part 2: There’s a bunch of others like #tinyquote I want to follow but there are dozens of tweets from these types each every day and I don’t want tweets from my real friends lost among them.
Between all the great Twitter clients out there and Twitter’s web based features there’s a number of solutions, like Twitter lists, that are workable. While trying to decide what to do with each Twitterer I don’t want in my main stream I may choose any from among the various solutions.
When there is one that I am just not that interested in enough to see every day but don’t want it forgotten entirely I subscribe to the RSS.
For example, newspaper and other news source feeds… There are several reasons I don’t take in the news regularly, but when I catch wind of a developing story like the Hawaii tsunami warning I want to keep up with temporarily, seeing the Tweets on it is one way to get a quick, concise, bird’s eye on what’s happening without having to plow through the repetitive minutiae that clog wire and front page stories.
Did the bill pass? Is the tsunami warning cancelled yet? A quick check of a news source’s twitter feed in Google Reader gets me those factoids quick. I’m in, I’m out, free of distractions.
How to do it:
1. Find sources you like of course. Check them out – I look for the ones that do more than just link to their web site. I want to see the fact in the Tweet.
2. Navigate to the Twitter page, in my example, the Honolulu Advertiser. On the sidebar, under all the “following” icons, is the link to the RSS feed. Click on that.
3. That will either take you to a place you can select your news reader – I use Google’s Reader, or you can just copy the link to your favorite reader.
Now you’ll have a easy to see view of all the tweets with just the pertinent stuff and none of the buttons and empty white space.
If you do not usually use a news reader as your inbox for the internet this tip isn’t going to pay as many dividends in efficiency. The real benefit of this tip is if you’re able to check up on one of these miscellaneous feeds while processing all your other internet intake. You are using a RSS news reader aren’t you?
If you are not, its time to start unless you prefer being a reactive gaping hole that anyone with something to sell can lead to their lair and shovel stuff in. News readers give you complete control over what you see. They bring all the information you want to you in one place so you don’t have to go out and hunt it down while dodging the endless distractions.
They make getting the information you want quicker, saving you tons of time. What a deal.
Subscribe to all the stuff out there you like to see regularly or may like to see later at some point. Next, organize all your feeds in a way that suits you. Now you’ll be able to “check the internet” the same way you check your email. Start with the feed to this blog.
