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To steal someone else's metaphor, try thinking of Twitter as a river. If you try to bottle it up or consume it all you'll drown. If, on the other hand, you dip

To steal someone else's metaphor, try thinking of Twitter as a river. If you try to bottle it up or consume it all you'll drown. If, on the other hand, you dip in for a swim as you please, you might find it all bit more manageable. As the rush of tweets flows by you, just check out some, then turn your phone off and carry on. When you load it again, don't feel you have to go back and "catch up" or give it the constant attention you mentioned. YMMV, but I also think the emphasis on "conversations" is a bit misleading. Lots of people do have conversations on there, but I personally love it for breaking news, link-sharing, jokes, and photos. If your frame of reference is a forum with posts, or an article's comments, or a real-life conversation... you're going to have a bad time.

DaveWalk 11y ago
I've heard this too; it drives the completionist in me nuts. After reading a Twitter stream for 5 minutes, I look up and wish I had caught up on the news, or read a short article from Instapaper / Pocket. I have no doubt this says more about me than about Twitter, but I never could never see a way around it. Similar experience with Reddit, comparing the default front page to one tailored to the subreddits I enjoy the most. Of course I gave up on Reddit too after a while...
janfoeh 11y ago
(sorry for the delay, I'm on CEST, and it was close to my bed time) Thanks! Maybe I should try to treat it more like the worlds' biggest IRC channel then. I will give it another shot some day…