Am I Slipping Into the Tweeter Zone?
01/13/2009Over the past couple of days, I’ve had a good increase in the number of people who are following me on Twitter. Some of this is due to automated bots that pick up words from my blog and tweets (that’s shorthand for messages sent via Twitter). Many others are due to some diligence on my part. On Sunday, it dawned on me that a good way to broaden my reach would be to look at who my friends were following and follow people who I either know or who looked interesting. After several hours, I had added about 30 new people to my “following” list. Then, as if by magic, more than a few decided that they would like to follow me.
I don’t know if it was the cute cat avatar I have, the engaging (NOT!) bio I wrote for Twitter, or morbid curiosity from people hoping to see me crash and burn in cyberspace. Regardless, I was very happy with the results. However, this brought up an unintended consequence. How does one deal with a significantly larger volume of twitter messages?
I went from 1 message every 10 or 15 minutes to 2 every few minutes. Some of the more prolific Tweeters could send out 10 an hour! Initially, I was overwhelmed and was tempted to stop following so many people. Then I realized how rude it would be since many of them were kind enough to reciprocate my initial request.
I’d been steered towards TweetDeck (thanks @exbor!) as a good way to manage large numbers of tweets. It allows you to group senders and display just certain groups or the entire stream in separate columns in their app. This is a handy way of not missing important tweets from family and friends while allowing less significant items to be viewed at my leisure.
Still, I detected a certain disconnect. I saw people from completely different spheres sending messages about a huge variety of topics. Several times, I wondered whether, if 2 people were following each other, what would they say about each other’s ideas? There is a protocol in Twitter called re-tweeting (RT for the uninitiated) where you can re-broadcast a message to your followers. It’s a very manual process and I imagine that lots of opportunities are lost.
I’m sure that there are smarter people out there who have either thought about how to harness tweets flying through the Ethernet. However, I have not personally seen any apps or projects that directly address the issue of aggregating and prioritizing them and I think that this is where the real power of social networking rests. So, I’d like to posit a question to all my readers to see if we can start an ongoing discussion.
Is it possible to develop a Twitter application that harnesses the concepts of 1) tweeter reputation, 2) areas of expertise, 3) consistency, and 4) accuracy?
If I get enough feedback, perhaps we can move the discussion to another forum. Please let me know what you think.
*** Note ***
Due to the start of school, my posts may become more infrequent. I’ll still be sending out tweets announcing new posts and also changing my Facebook to reflect new items. You can either subscribe to the RSS feed of join my Facebook blog network to get updated. If you choose RSS, would you please drop me a comment so I know that the drop in pages views isn’t due to disinterest?
So That's Life? 
I get your blog in a reader, but I always make sure to click through so you (and other bloggers I enjoy) will be able to count the hit.
This might be an interesting proposal at the next meetup, Tweetup, Manoa Geeks, or even Unconferenz.
Maybe we could do it as an iPhone app? That would generate some additional interest.
In TweetDeck, “ReTweeting” someone’s Tweet is a one click operation.
As far as tracking ReTweets to determine popularity (if not relevance), there are a few folks out there doing just that. Dan Zarrella is doing plenty of development with “ReTweet Mapper,” and now “TweetBacks, which work with blogs to pick up Tweets that reference posts.
I follow over 2,000 people, so my stream moves incredibly fast. TweetDeck and basic Twitter search (and, of course, checking @replies) are the only ways I make sense of it all. I lean toward the ‘firehose’ model of data consumption, though it has its downsides. Like in ‘The Matrix,’ I like to see a torrent of data flowing past, just intuitively picking up on trends, conversations, and interesting topics.
I was thinking of something that allowed a user to tag or categorize Tweeters/tweets in a way that would allow the user to quickly see who had posted about what topics that might intersect. It might also be useful to have a feature that did a RT directly to followers who shared a category/tag.
Just thinking out loud here.
There are a lot of disconnects for sure – and occasionally in there is that random connection that would not be possible without twitter. I find a real ebb and flow there – trusting that of something is relevant I will get it.
I like your blogging voice and hope you keep it up.
Aloha, Rox
Rox,
I know what you mean about trusting instincts. What I did learn from the #hipower episode was that critical info seems to bubble to the top in a crisis. However, in everyday situations, I don’t trust myself to pick up on nuances. I want technical assistance from a program! I don’t know if this is possible, but I wanted to at least float the idea to people reading my posts.
Thanks for the kind encouragement. I plan to post 3 – 4 items each week depending on my school load. It’s a funny thing how 4 paragraphs can turn into a 90 minute exercise in obsession!