Earlier quoted context omitted.
"why would you follow people if you were not interested in what they tweet?" Well, yeah. Who are these people that you want to silence but don't want to unfollow? What would unfollowing do, which you don't want, which silencing would not do?
IMO people get slightly offended/feel bad if you unfollow them. But as a gesture of politeness, you might want to follow someone who has followed you and is close to you, but at the same time you would not want to listen to all his tweets, in that case, silence might work, and not unfollowing.
Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#22I started using twitter as it comes, then when it became unmanageable I started using TweetDeck, but notifications were annoying and the client was way too heavy for my machine. The tab kept freezing all the time. That was a long time ago, I haven't checked it out for a while. After all this, I switched back to plain Twitter and built my interest lists (smalltalk, music, friends, etc), but having to visit all these l…
"why would you follow people if you were not interested in what they tweet?" Well, yeah. Who are these people that you want to silence but don't want to unfollow? What would unfollowing do, which you don't want, which silencing would not do?
From the Smalltalk world, I'm pretty much interested in every single tweet. Besides, people in this group don't tweet that much.
As for musicians and bands, we usually follow each other in order to stay aware of gigs, recordings, etc. But following is also an act of befriending, so there are bands and individuals who tweet way too much but to whom I still want to show interest, so I can't unfollow them.
Friends and acquaintances from my town, however, you've got to follow them... and some of them are really annoying. I don't want to unfollow them because, as OP said, «few of them might get offended and then your relations might ruin or something like that». If you live in a small enough town, you'll know what I mean :)
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#23Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#24I make extensive use of lists, divided into about ten categories, each with over 150 members. I add people to lists without compunction, whereas users I follow are subject to much more stringent examination.
The alternative, which I've been thinking about doing, is just following everybody and treating the timeline as a river.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#25This seems like a ridiculous reason to me, but to each their own.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#26Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#272. These days, after streamie stopped working, I have my own streaming twitter client. Easier to get exactly what you want when you are your own customer.
I find that getting a near-real time flow of messages is more engaging than twitter.com telling me I can now press a button to get tweets from 1-5 minutes ago, but maybe thats just me.
Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#28Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your Twitter timeline?
#29I started using twitter as it comes, then when it became unmanageable I started using TweetDeck, but notifications were annoying and the client was way too heavy for my machine. The tab kept freezing all the time. That was a long time ago, I haven't checked it out for a while. After all this, I switched back to plain Twitter and built my interest lists (smalltalk, music, friends, etc), but having to visit all these l…
That functionality has become indispensable to me, and I hate reading my timeline in other clients.