5 ms·

Can someone teach me how to use Twitter? Still don't get it. It's like an IRC channel for social media professionals, right?

Avalaxy 12y ago
There is no _the_ way to use it. But I can tell you about how I use it: - I follow a couple of industry professionals and companies to stay up to date with their updates. As a MSFT developer I follow MSDN, the .NET team, but also important players like Scott Hanselman and Scott Guthrie. By doing this I always get the latest updates. - I never follow more than 50 people and unfollow everyone who posts too much... If there are so many tweets that you don't have time to read them, you're not being effective. Be picky about who you follow. You don't have to follow your followers in return. - I use Twitter a LOT to communicate with people I'd otherwise have no access to, because I don't have their email or they are too busy answering me through the company mailbox. Twitter makes everyone (except for celebs) reachable. If I need some guy at Google who write library X, I just send him a tweet. - I use the search to find what people are saying about my product, but sometimes I also use it to engage with people who are talking about a subject I'm interested in.
- linkeex 12y ago
  > - I use Twitter a LOT to communicate with people I'd otherwise have no access to, because I don't have their email or they are too busy answering me through the company mailbox. Twitter makes everyone (except for celebs) reachable. If I need some guy at Google who write library X, I just send him a tweet. That one is a killer-feature right there I've managed to discover lately. Twitter completely sucks, because if you are just a normal person doing normal things noone will ever care about you. BUT, in case you're interested in some very specific topic and the contributing people then you should give twitter a try...
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    Actually this is one of the things that makes twitter so useful. With email the person can pretend that they didn't get your email ("it must have ended up in my junk mail folder"), while with twitter it is all public.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- kyleashipley 12y ago
  This is almost exactly how I use it as well. I find Twitter to be incredibly valuable, even though I scoffed at it for a couple years before finally signing up. I also know many people who game their main feed by reciprocally following everyone for audience building, then set up lists for groups they actually care about. This makes the main view too noisy for me, but I could see that as a viable strategy.
- eropple 12y ago
  > If there are so many tweets that you don't have time to read them, you're not being effective. I am convinced, completely convinced, that the idea that you have to read every tweet in your timeline is why so many people don't get Twitter. Even constraining yourself like you describe seems just so silly. I follow 300 people, some of whom (manually) tweet A hundred times a day. I don't read all of them. I dip in and out as I have a few minutes of downtime. It's a distributed sort of vaguely topical bar chatter. Trying to follow the whole thing is insane, and you have lists if you want to curate particular people.
  - frostmatthew 12y ago
    > Trying to follow the whole thing is insane It's only insane when you follow a huge amount of people and/or people who tweet a lot (or worse, both). I'll make exception for a handful of companies/organizations (e.g. WSJ, NASA) but generally I won't follow accounts that tweet more than once or twice a day.
    - eropple 12y ago
      Trying to follow the whole thing is insane. Not exposing yourself to what's there is, too.
      - frostmatthew 12y ago
        I may have misunderstood you. I thought by "whole thing" you were referring to everything that shows up in your timeline, but seems you probably were referring to all of Twitter.
        eropple 12y ago
        Like I said, I follow 300 people. But I don't break my ass to read everything by everyone. I dip in and out, because anything interesting is going to pop back up eventually and having that broad a cross-section of people to follow exposes me to more and more interesting people.
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > I never follow more than 50 people and unfollow everyone who posts too much You might want to check out a small side-project of mine[1] which I created because I also don't like to follow people who tweet too much. Just put in a username and it'll show you how many times a day (on average) they tweet. [1] https://www.shouldifollow.com/ https://www.shouldifollow.com/
lcmatt 12y ago
Sign up and follow people with similar interests. I follow very few people (approx 80) and remove anyone who starts tweeting things that's no longer relevant to me. Within that timeline I get a decent amount of tech info from respected people in the industry and other small snippets from friends. If you do as most people seem to and follow 500+ people you're never going to be able to keep up with the noise and to me it loses its value.
UweSchmidt 12y ago
I used some library, something didn't work, asked a question on Stackoverflow, didn't get an answer. What to do? Twittered the author, he twittered back, telling me that there's a bug, and here's the workaround, and invited me (and all his followers) to try that new product that replaces the thing I was using. So it's a unique communication tool which found a sweet spot with opt-in, brevity, low involvement, and publicity. (It's can also be anywhere from crappy to decent as a social network, a news aggregator, a blog site ... but I wouldn't bother with these aspects)
- jeffwass 12y ago
  How is that different from email? Are your back&fortu tweets with the author public or private? (I'm not on twitter, if that helps frame my question).
  - icegreentea 12y ago
    The back and worth is public.
  - UweSchmidt 12y ago
    problems: - finding someone's email - not knowing if they will reply or if it bothers them - they would have to put in effort just for one person On Twitter the guy's profile stated he wrote the library and is working in the same field. Helping me gave him the chance to plug his current work and skill.

Avalaxy 12y ago

There is no _the_ way to use it. But I can tell you about how I use it: - I follow a couple of industry professionals and companies to stay up to date with their updates. As a MSFT developer I follow MSDN, the .NET team, but also important players like Scott Hanselman and Scott Guthrie. By doing this I always get the latest updates. - I never follow more than 50 people and unfollow everyone who posts too much... If there are so many tweets that you don't have time to read them, you're not being effective. Be picky about who you follow. You don't have to follow your followers in return. - I use Twitter a LOT to communicate with people I'd otherwise have no access to, because I don't have their email or they are too busy answering me through the company mailbox. Twitter makes everyone (except for celebs) reachable. If I need some guy at Google who write library X, I just send him a tweet. - I use the search to find what people are saying about my product, but sometimes I also use it to engage with people who are talking about a subject I'm interested in.

linkeex 12y ago
> - I use Twitter a LOT to communicate with people I'd otherwise have no access to, because I don't have their email or they are too busy answering me through the company mailbox. Twitter makes everyone (except for celebs) reachable. If I need some guy at Google who write library X, I just send him a tweet. That one is a killer-feature right there I've managed to discover lately. Twitter completely sucks, because if you are just a normal person doing normal things noone will ever care about you. BUT, in case you're interested in some very specific topic and the contributing people then you should give twitter a try...
- danieltillett 12y ago
  Actually this is one of the things that makes twitter so useful. With email the person can pretend that they didn't get your email ("it must have ended up in my junk mail folder"), while with twitter it is all public.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
kyleashipley 12y ago
This is almost exactly how I use it as well. I find Twitter to be incredibly valuable, even though I scoffed at it for a couple years before finally signing up. I also know many people who game their main feed by reciprocally following everyone for audience building, then set up lists for groups they actually care about. This makes the main view too noisy for me, but I could see that as a viable strategy.
eropple 12y ago
> If there are so many tweets that you don't have time to read them, you're not being effective. I am convinced, completely convinced, that the idea that you have to read every tweet in your timeline is why so many people don't get Twitter. Even constraining yourself like you describe seems just so silly. I follow 300 people, some of whom (manually) tweet A hundred times a day. I don't read all of them. I dip in and out as I have a few minutes of downtime. It's a distributed sort of vaguely topical bar chatter. Trying to follow the whole thing is insane, and you have lists if you want to curate particular people.
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > Trying to follow the whole thing is insane It's only insane when you follow a huge amount of people and/or people who tweet a lot (or worse, both). I'll make exception for a handful of companies/organizations (e.g. WSJ, NASA) but generally I won't follow accounts that tweet more than once or twice a day.
  - eropple 12y ago
    Trying to follow the whole thing is insane. Not exposing yourself to what's there is, too.
    - frostmatthew 12y ago
      I may have misunderstood you. I thought by "whole thing" you were referring to everything that shows up in your timeline, but seems you probably were referring to all of Twitter.
      - eropple 12y ago
        Like I said, I follow 300 people. But I don't break my ass to read everything by everyone. I dip in and out, because anything interesting is going to pop back up eventually and having that broad a cross-section of people to follow exposes me to more and more interesting people.
frostmatthew 12y ago
> I never follow more than 50 people and unfollow everyone who posts too much You might want to check out a small side-project of mine[1] which I created because I also don't like to follow people who tweet too much. Just put in a username and it'll show you how many times a day (on average) they tweet. [1] https://www.shouldifollow.com/ https://www.shouldifollow.com/

lcmatt 12y ago

Sign up and follow people with similar interests. I follow very few people (approx 80) and remove anyone who starts tweeting things that's no longer relevant to me. Within that timeline I get a decent amount of tech info from respected people in the industry and other small snippets from friends. If you do as most people seem to and follow 500+ people you're never going to be able to keep up with the noise and to me it loses its value.

UweSchmidt 12y ago

I used some library, something didn't work, asked a question on Stackoverflow, didn't get an answer. What to do? Twittered the author, he twittered back, telling me that there's a bug, and here's the workaround, and invited me (and all his followers) to try that new product that replaces the thing I was using. So it's a unique communication tool which found a sweet spot with opt-in, brevity, low involvement, and publicity. (It's can also be anywhere from crappy to decent as a social network, a news aggregator, a blog site ... but I wouldn't bother with these aspects)

jeffwass 12y ago
How is that different from email? Are your back&fortu tweets with the author public or private? (I'm not on twitter, if that helps frame my question).
- icegreentea 12y ago
  The back and worth is public.
- UweSchmidt 12y ago
  problems: - finding someone's email - not knowing if they will reply or if it bothers them - they would have to put in effort just for one person On Twitter the guy's profile stated he wrote the library and is working in the same field. Helping me gave him the chance to plug his current work and skill.