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A rule that is obvious, but which most people on Twitter don't follow, is that it's best to share information that is simultaneously (a) interesting and (b) not
by michael_nielsen 16y ago
A rule that is obvious, but which most people on Twitter don't follow, is that it's best to share information that is simultaneously (a) interesting and (b) not already widely shared by others. Most people aim either for (a) or for (b), but not for both. csallen's suggestions elsewhere in this thread are useful, as with one exception they fulfill both (a) and (b).
This rule can be tipped upside down: it's best to follow people whose tweets mostly fulfill both these criteria. This rules out a very large number of people. It's amazing how many people fill their tweetstream with the news of the day from TechCrunch (or HN). It may be interesting, but it's already widely shared.
Personally, I find twitter most useful as a highly tailored source of links. That makes it sound similar to news sites such as HN, but the experience is different because you choose which people to follow. For instance, I get a lot out of following @NicholasGruen, who ran the Australian Government's Gov2.0 taskforce, @rjlipton, a leading theoretical computer scientist whose blog was the main clearinghouse in the scrutiny of the recent claimed proof the P is not equal to NP, @gnat of O'Reilly Media for an eclectic collection of tech-related links that for the most part fall outside the purview of the standard sources (TechCrunch etc), etc. Of course, those particular sources are just ones I find interesting, and they may not interest you. The point is that if you choose people whose tweet streams match your informational needs, Twitter can be very valuable.
- igravious 16y agoAllow me to express a contrarian viewpoint. I get the feeling that this information gathering strategy leads to an amplified echo-chamber effect. You mostly only find out about stuff you already have an interest in and rarely stray from your comfort zone. Even coming to HN already limits your horizon to certain types of narratives and _also_ guarantees a limited response to those narratives because certain ways of responding to events are down-modded. Added to the above effect is the pervasive misplaced hero worship and tech fanboyism that is formed based purely on peer pressure and not on merit. IMHO , IANAL , posted in good faith , blah blah blah :)
- michael_nielsen 16y agoIn disagreeing with the rule I stated, you're advocating reading tweets which are either (a) uninteresting, or (b) contain only information already widely shared. Are you really advocating that? (And if so, which part?) I agree with you about the echo chamber. But it's virtually impossible to live inside an echo chamber when you follow people who share mostly information that is not widely held. By definition, that means those people aren't merely echoing the crowd, and this will take you away from people with me-too tweets about iPhone antenna issues (or whatever the news of the hour is).
- igravious 16y agoHi Michael, I could be advocating not following anybody at all, I could be advocating the avoidance of micro-blogging services in the first place :) At least though if you are going to follow somebody then you are indeed right, you should follow somebody like Stephen Fry for instance who is nice erudite chap or the people you mention also sound cool. Or if Wittgenstein was still around, I'd totally follow him (not that he'd be seen dead "tweeting" I'd imagine). The same goes for me though. I get my political info from a handful of blogs that all share the same bias. I have to remind myself to check out the opposition from time to time to get some well-needed perspective. I guess you could say the same for cable news except that somebody is preselecting the bias for you. Maybe I'm weird but I have never felt the urge to "follow" someone on Identi.ca or Twitter or whatever's the flavo(u)r of the day ... :)
- michael_nielsen 16y agoThanks for the clarification --- I had misread your previous comment as advocating a different information-gathering strategy, not as avoiding the particular information source (Twitter) entirely. Of course, I have no problem with that, even though I personally find Twitter quite useful in this regard.
- jedbrown 16y agoI prefer Google Reader for this stuff, the ability to have a threaded technical discussion is useful and not available with Twitter. Of course you can follow Twitter feeds with Reader, but these days I just follow Reader feeds of a few people that tend to satisfy (a) and (b). Note that @rjlipton hasn't made any Twitter updates in months, all the activity was on his blog, which would be in your news feed if you're at all interested in the problem.
- michael_nielsen 16y agoI prefer Reader as well. My information gathering preferences are (1) Reader; (2) Delicious; (3) FriendFeed; (4) Twitter; (5) etc...