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Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

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11–20 of 43 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#11
post #8

I follow 30,000 accounts on Twitter. There is no way that anything relevant/interesting shows up on my "feed". I always use the "@Connect" filter so I do not miss any Tweets directed at me. I search on key words or hashtags to follow interesting discussions and get news. I keep a separate tab open to @glenngreenwald since everything he Tweets is interesting.

>I follow 30,000 accounts on Twitter

oh God why?

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#12
I use it purely to Tweet and to network...either to respond to people or to just tweet what I've read. I almost never read my timeline as I follow just about anyone who follows me, and anyone who is either in New York, a journalist, or a programmer, though I don't follow too many celebrities.

I don't understand people who are put off by the noise. Just don't read your timeline. Also, it's not much work to manage...whenever I read an interesting article, I just tweet the headline and link...Literally a 10 second action that sometimes can catch a lot of attention and help you find other like-minded people,

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#13
c) I don't.

The service had a value to me when there was a focus on interaction, but as it transitioned to a news feed/advertisement service it lost any and all use to me.

For news, there are enough sites that all spout off the same reviews and "exclusives". If there is truly breaking news that I need to be made aware of, there are a multitude of channels I can get the information from and all of them will convey the information better than a 140 character tweet could.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#14
post #13

c) I don't. The service had a value to me when there was a focus on interaction, but as it transitioned to a news feed/advertisement service it lost any and all use to me. For news, there are enough sites that all spout off the same reviews and "exclusives". If there is truly breaking news that I need to be made aware of, there are a multitude of channels I can get the information from and all of them will convey the…

d) Never used Twitter

As soon as I realized that sometimes there is news worthy stuff posted there, there will always be reporters crawling through the noise to find those and put the content on their respective outlets. What's the point of me subscribing to boat loads of literal shit ("at toilet, pls rt") to find a pearl now and then, when I can use traditional media to get to the pearls immediately? Sure, I might not get the pearls instantly, but I think that sacrifice is totally worth it when I occasionally read through some public Twitter feed.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#15
I'm surprised this isn't a poll.

Anyway, my answer is "a", I use a client, Tweetbot, that syncs my read position across all my devices. When I wake up in the morning it shows me the last tweets I read the previous night. I then read them chronologically until I'm caught up.

I detailed that process because I feel that there's an important distinction between what I do and scrolling back for tweets I missed. For me, the process to catch up is the same process I use to read Twitter throughout the day, meaning that I don't have to do anything special when I wake up.

Of course, if I'm away or otherwise have been unable to check Twitter for two or three days, catching up can be a bit difficult and I might just give up and scroll to the top, then scroll down a bit just to see the most recent tweets, but I try to avoid doing that most of the time.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#16
Whenever I start a new project I snag the Twitter name for it and link it up to automatically tweet when stuff is posted to the website so I can at least show up. Same with Facebook. I don't think I'd ever use is it as a communication tool, though I might consider it for news if RSS completely died or something.

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#19
post #12

I use it purely to Tweet and to network...either to respond to people or to just tweet what I've read. I almost never read my timeline as I follow just about anyone who follows me, and anyone who is either in New York, a journalist, or a programmer, though I don't follow too many celebrities. I don't understand people who are put off by the noise. Just don't read your timeline. Also, it's not much work to manage...wh…

If nobody reads it, what's the point?

Re: Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

#20
b) I will check it twice or so per day. This is on my personal account. I will retweet or post to it a few times per day.

I like twitter, but I don't love it. I would use twitter often when third party clients were popping up.

I was using app.net for a while, but my friends never took to it. (this is within the first months of its launch) I paid for it, and liked it, but it lacked the network effect.

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