You Don’t Have To Stop Following People To Get Rid Of The Noise
by Alex Vermeule posted July 27th, 2009 at 21:06
When you just start Twittering, it feels like having a conversation in your living room with all the people at the same time. Right?
As you start following more people, you almost automatically move your conversation to a larger room and some even to a stadium, so there is room for everyone and you can still hear them. However, you also notice that it becomes more difficult to listen to everyone.
At the same time, there are new people ‘entering your stadium’, as they are interested in what you have to say. This is the equivalent of people following you on Twitter, effectively saying ‘Hi, nice to meet you! I am interested in getting to know a little bit more about you’. Still with me?
Personally, I think it is decent that you say ‘hi back’ by following them too, when someone introduces him or herself this way. It is also fun to open new connections!
No More Noise
However when you follow everyone back, you also introduce additional noise…
Noise comes from people that are trying to sell you something or promote themselves, often via automated tweets (you’ve all seen the ‘get a 1000 followers in a week and get rich in a month’ direct messages, haven’t you?). These people don’t understand that the conversation is not just only about them. My advice is to carefully ignore those tweeps as they bring no real value to the conversation.
So how do you ignore the noise and keep listening to the people that provide real value to you?
Meet TweetDeck Groups
TweetDeck is the most used Twitter client available. I use it too and I’ve created a short video on how you can use TweetDeck’s group functionality to minimize the noise from Twitter. It also included a bonus tip on how to use TweetDeck across multiple devices.
How do You minimize the Noise?
There are several ways to minimize the loud chatter from Twitter. Some just don’t follow back, others move the conversations to FriendFeed as it allows you to create groups from within the service. What is your preferred method? Please write it in the comments area below and leave your name if you want credit.
Tags: Noise, Strategy, Twitter
Categories: Social Media
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You can just follow a conversation, and not all the tweets that the participants send out on other things by following a #hashtag. Visit hashtag.org to find a #hashtag you want to follow, or you may see one in someone's post #education , for instance.
type the hashtag in the twitter search field on the left of your twitter home page and press enter.
The latest tweets (if any) will appear in your timeline.
Now, save the query for checking it again later. Better yet, go to the bottom of your twitter right-bar and you will notice the RSS button has now changed to something like “RSS feed for this query”
Click on that and subscribe to have it appear always updated in your RSS reader.
Hmmm. That triggers a value discussion: what is twitter without tweetdeck? I refuse to install tweetdeck because it uses adobe's stuff (yeah, I know, I'm a hardliner softie) and the problem you describe is exactky why I never liked twitter…
Hi Paul, you don't need TweetDeck to use Twitter effectively, there are almost 250 twitter clients
see http://twitstat.com/twitterclientusers.html Writing a Twitter client is the new 'hello world' app, hehe.
I understand where you are coming from in terms of Adobe Air however I care more about the User Experience, which I find fantastic with TweetDeck. You should try it
Great tips Steve, thank you!