I worked at Twitter for 5 years before starting PhotoStructure. I was originally on the ads team, then went to growth and timelines. I didn't use Twitter befo

I worked at Twitter for 5 years before starting PhotoStructure. I was originally on the ads team, then went to growth and timelines. I didn't use Twitter before working at Twitter. I didn't get it until I watched how "good at Twitter" people used it. I heard this a bunch, and it's still true: other social networks are about your friends. Twitter is about your interests. (You can certainly follow your friends, but you can also mute them if they're kind of terrible). You have to invest some serious time in tending to who you follow before your timeline will become relevant. It's like gardening, seriously. Think of it like an rss feed of your favorite podcasts and bloggers; but that people publish about 50 % (or lower) good stuff, and the rest of the content is, meh. The "who to follow" can help, but also looking at other people's follow listing (not who follows them, but who they follow), especially if it's between 150 and 1000 accounts, ish. If they blindly follow back every account that follows them, that's noise. There will be golden, delightful accounts you find. The NBA mom that tweets during games. The HK people on the street, documenting what's actually happening. Others you'll probably want to unfollow, because their tweets aren't great. Also, be aggressive with the terms you add to your timeline filter. I suggest adding political names, to start. Also, holy crap there's a lot of shouting and offense and rancor. Mute that too. Good luck.