I’m Messing Up Your Twitter
The thing many people hate about twitter is the noise. If you are just there to socialize, it may not be a big deal but twitter can be pretty useful for more serious things too. If you want to get information about cars or software or politics its there but likely burried in a bunch of useless information.
One way to filter out the “junk” is to use one of the twitter seach tools. Tweetdeck has one built in. You can go to search.twitter.com for others. Its useful in the way a search engine is useful but it doesn’t always help for getting the whole conversation in real time.
Another options is to try to follow tags. I was at a conference lately where we used #PLMCONX for our tweets. This helps but I had trouble remembering to use the tag. And then there were gray areas… do I tweet that I’m getting lunch at the confererence or stick to the topic?
The traditional way is to follow the person in twitter. If they don’t talk about what you like, don’t follow them. I’ve got a good list of CAD, industrial design, car, virtual world, sports, Huntsville, and social media experts that I follow. You see the problem here, right? When I reply back to one of the people in these groups, all I do is increase the noise for the rest.
So, for the people that follow me, I’m sorry I’m inserting all that noise into your twitter stream. Now, to go tell everyone I’m getting some coffee.
That's the main complaint about Twitter I always get here @ work from folks. It is a little difficult to find things in the noise, but using some of the tools out there like you mentioned makes it a little easier. I for one like some of the noise, and it lends a personal touch.
twitter does have a lot of noise. we use it for our sl biz (we have 12 sims) and it's proved to be a good tool. but we are careful in who we follow and dump those that get nuts with the “get a zillion followers” tweets
here's some coffee for you –> [_]D
I suspect people who consistently complain about “noise” or “chatter” don’t quite get the “social” concept of social media. The reason many of us use Facebook or Twitter is because it lets us get to know one another in a non-professional context — as human beings with quirks, habits, and preferrences. If we eliminate noise altogether from social media, we’ll be left with yet another boring collaboration interface devoid of personality and color. –Kenneth
Excellent article
It is very nice.
thinking that the “twitter noise” is sometimes more interesting then retweeting of big news .. so let the noise coming!