

Ask HN: How do you use Twitter? - ziko

Do you<p>a) read all of your timeline tweets (i.e. scroll back for tweets you missed overnight)<p>b) don&#x27;t care what you missed and start reading from present time on?
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helloanand
I typically scroll back to catch up with overnight tweets unless I have missed
a few days worth either due to travel or busy work schedule. I don't follow
just to reciprocate and am very ruthless unfollow people who are noisemakers.

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joshowens
Pretty much sums up what I do.

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Neff
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.

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pearjuice
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.

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Neff
The larger issue is that Twitter has pushed news services to focus on being
first over being correct. It seems like reporters are falling over themselves
to be the first to break a story, journalistic integrity be damned.

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netman21
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.

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mrThe
>I follow 30,000 accounts on Twitter

oh God why?

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netman21
I use Twitter as a broadcast medium. People follow me for news and very short
form analysis. 80% of the hits to my blog and column come from Twitter. Of
course I have a lot of followers and it is rude not to follow back.

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liotier
Rude not to follow back ? Is it rude to be honest ?

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netman21
OK, set aside the judgement on rudeness for now. Twitter limits the number of
people you can follow with daily limits and rate limits and a hard stop at
2,000. In order to follow more than 2,000 you need first to be followed by
around 1,900 people. There are many people who would like to generate a large
following. After all, the most influential/interesting people (and
celebrities) are followed by millions. Therefore many people unfollow non-
followers so they can move on to follow someone who does follow back. Think of
it as a karma system that has real world relevance because the number of
followers you have is public and often your Twitter handle is associated with
your real identity. So, if you do not follow everyone who follows you will
lose folowers. Unless you are Justin Bieber of course.

The rude part is that someone took the microsecond required to follow you and
now they have to use a tool to find their unfollowers (you), unfollow you, and
follow someone else.

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liotier
Who you follow is a reading list for people who share your interests.
Polluting it with people whom you follow just as a hat tip is rude. Also,
following uninteresting people makes your stream unusable. In my book, keeping
a high signal to noise ratio is the epitome of politeness. I guess that we
don't use Twitter for the same reasons...

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kylec
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.

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mdisraeli
I'm trying to use twitter more, but I find keeping up to date with it very
difficult! This isn't helped by following several distinct groups of people,
and only having mobile client access most of the time. What do people
recommend using to keep on top of twitter?

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Brajeshwar
Don't care catching up. Rapidly reply to tweets if it makes sense while
reading the timeline at that time. Usually tweet via buffer and OS X's
Notification. Checks twitter mostly while traveling, waiting before a meeting,
etc.

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1337biz
Twitter is for me pretty much unusable without active list management.

I only check my followers tweets in moments of complete boredom. But there are
lists with people whom I want to keep up with (personal friends, key targets
who's attention I would like to get).

Of those lists I ready every tweet and by checking it at least twice a day and
try actively to engage with the people (responding, re-tweeting, asking,
answering, etc). Otherwise the noise ratio is just to large and it feels
pretty much just as social as shouting "hello" at random strangers.

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radley
I use desktop Twitter and follow a handful each of professional designers,
UX/UI devs, artists, DJs/producers, Android blogs, tech blogs, kaomoji
artists, and @HNTweets.

Most don't flood, spam or waste my time. Too much signal to noise, no matter
how popular you are, I have to unfollow.

I keep the feed open and look over every few minutes. I catch up on mornings
if I'm bored.

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brownbat
I barely use Twitter, but have a similar dilemma with RSS.

I use Feedly, which allows me to mark some sources as "must read," so I can
read every single item. I then also add a few hundred sites where I just
glance at the most recent.

It balances my "keep up on everything from x source" and the "have a steady
stream of interesting to fill time" needs pretty well.

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frostmatthew
Typically I'll scroll back to read all tweets since the last time I checked,
but I will rarely go back more than 8 or 10 hours.

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madsushi
I only read Twitter in real time. It's like a pseudo-IRC chatroom for me. When
I'm watching sports, I can fire it up and see real-time reactions (from the
various sports people and writers that I follow) and have everyone go "WOW
LOOK AT THAT SHOT" at the same time. Makes it almost as nice as having a
living room full of friends.

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rickmatt
I don't think I browse twitter well. I alternate between your two choices,
depending on how long since I last checked twitter.

I would like something like 'circles for twitter' so that I could check close
friends and family tweets quickly, then kill time with lower priority/higher
volume users if I want to.

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Leynos
Isn't that what lists are for? That's certainly my primary usecase for them.

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gmays
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.

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QuasiAlon
Huh! Cool question. I do both. If I have time to kill (say, a train ride), I
go back and read from where I left off. If I know I just need to pass a few
minutes (say, waiting in line at the store), I'll just pop in and see the
latest. Sometimes I go back and read what specific friends wrote throughout
the day.

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Leynos
I originally did a), but it became impractical one I was following around 300
people. Now I just read the last 10 or 15 minute's worth. I also, however,
have a list of people I am reasonably close to whose tweets I try to read to a
reasonable level of completeness.

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antjanus
I use a ton of twitter lists! I'm probably the only one that does this. If I
get REALLY bored, I go through the actual feed. When I check the list, I check
the entire timeline. If I check the feed itself, i don't care.

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joshowens
I have also been trying to curate lists and I use tweetbot to easily switch
between them. I find it is a great way to catch up on one community segment or
another.

I wish twitter made list building easier.

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fumar
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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socialmediaisbs
B, I'll take one hour a day to go through the timeline on my phone and then
the discovery tab.

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thibaut_barrere
b)

\+ c) I search for specific keywords when investigating product ideas and pain
points

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jackgolding
b - information saturation is huge when you follow 100+ people in the same
topic

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nhebb
b.

But about six months ago, I stopped posting and now I rarely visit. It wasn't
a conscious decision. I just got bored with it and started tapering off usage.

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mkhpalm
I used to do A before I lost interest in twitter.

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Kiro
What are you building?

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digitalvortex
connect it to my wordpress blog and it auto updates.

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danso
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,

~~~
jlarocco
If nobody reads it, what's the point?

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danso
People may not read the Tweet _then_ , but people who look you up later have a
good sense of the kind of things you like to read and think about. In a way,
it's an even better reflection than if you had kept a blog, because with a
blog, your main intent is letting your thoughts be known and read. For me, a
Tweet is an effortless snapshot to what I just read.

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idoescompooters
Newsfeed.

