Twitter Focus: Solving The “Groups” Dilema

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

File this one away with my series of posts focused on Information Overload…

One major gripe I’ve had with Twitter for some time now (and I know I’m not alone here) is the inability to group the people you follow into certain categories. Let me explain.  Currently I’m following (receiving updates from) upwards of 600 people on Twitter.   It can be assumed that they are all worth listening to from time to time – otherwise I wouldn’t have clicked “follow” in the first place.  But the experience of watching a big newsfeed tick by with the updates from all these people is a little daunting, and clearly inefficient.  How can I focus with all this noise?

Right now, some of my main interests are startups, photography, Milwaukee (”represent”), and business intelligence.  Sometimes (almost all the time actually) I’d prefer to read about only one of these subjects, not all of them at a time.  For example, if I’m in a creative mood, I could be eager to see what people are saying about photography or design.  Now, I could do a twitter search for “photography”.  While this might return some decent results, it just shows me a list of recent tweets mentioning “photography”.  This completely negates the time I’ve put into finding people who actually know what they’re talking about.  I’d much rather just see the recent updates from all the people who I consider experts.  And now I can – using the Tweetie iPhone app, with the process described below. [note: This works just as well with Twhirl for the desktop if you don't have an iPhone]

Tweetie is like many iPhone Twitter applications that allow you to see the recent updates from the people you follow.  What sets it apart is that Tweetie allows you to use many different Twitter accounts.

Here’s how it works:
1. Download Tweetie (it’s $3, but worth it)

2. Make a list of topics you’re into.
Maybe include on the list some people on Twitter who clearly know what they’re talking about when it comes to that topic.

3.  Create a new Twitter account for each topic
(in this example, i’ve appended “a_” to the name.  It will help my list of accounts sort nicely alphabetically later)

4. Log into the account created for a topic, and follow the people who say interesting things about that topic. For example, with the account I created for Photography, I followed @simonmcconico, @jakedavidrohde, @RachelK, @photocampmke as a good start.

5. Add your real account, and your “topic accounts” to Tweetie

Now you’re all set!  In my example, I can pop into the Photography account to see what the photography tweeps are talking about…

Or if I want to see what’s going on in Milwaukee, it’s as easy as checking the Milwaukee account…

One critical feature of Tweetie is the ability to reply with any of your accounts.  So If I’m viewing all the Milwaukee updates, I can still reply as @blakesamic.

Just another battle won in the war against Information overload.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

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  • While this method may "work", it's really just a band-aid you have to change every 5 minutes on a sliced jugular.

    The major problem is that you would have to maintain four (or whatever number of "groups" you would want) accounts instead of one. You would have to "re-follow" everyone from your main account for those particular accounts, and then keep track of new followers and new followings (because you'd most likely want your networks to continue to grow and flourish). Anyone you would follow on your main account would have to be duplicated on your "group" account. No thanks. I'd rather have a real solution.

    Twittelator Pro has a "Subgroups" feature that addresses this problem, but the interface (both the app overall and the subgroups) is so unwieldy that it's almost impossible to use. Get this feature added to the otherwise-excellent Tweetie, and it would be the PERFECT app, but for now this lack of a very important and much-needed feature makes it stick out like a sore thumb.
  • @Jorge @Scott
    I realize this is patch solution. Judging by the tools that are available right now (April 21, 2009), this is the best solution I've seen anyone propose (to fit my personal needs anyway).

    @Scott, you wouldn't have to "re-follow everyone from your main account" depending on how you use it. I only have 10-20 people in each of these categories, so I only need to re-follow those 10-20 people. So if I want to see what everyone is saying, I look at my main account. If I just want to see what the Milwaukee people are saying, I look at the Milwaukee account, etc.

    Also, it should be noted that I see these other accounts as read-only. I don't even pay attention to people @replying to them or new followers. In fact, all the new follower emails for those accounts go directly to the trash [who would follow an account that hasn't said anything (ever), anyway?]. All of my out-going communication comes from my personal account.

    Even if a grouping feature was built into Tweetie or another comparable app, there's still the problem of setting up the groups again in the other apps you use. In my case, I use an iPhone Twitter client (Tweetie), but I also use a desktop Twitter client (Twhirl) on two different computers. Instead of me having to create groups in all of these applications (assuming it was possible), all I have to do is log into all of my accounts on each app. All those groups are maintained, cross-platform.

    Take it or leave it, but this has really helped me cut down on useless Twitter noise.
  • This is a patch, not a solution.
  • Peter Vader
    Fantastic, gents. Thank you kindly.
  • I just set Twhirl up the same way, to have groups on the desktop. It works just as well, and the beauty is that you don't need to recreate your groups. You just use the same Twitter accounts in Twhirl.
  • That's almost exactly what I did. I've actually got a special gmail account set up for Twitter (here's why). When I was registering each of the Twitter accounts, I used the '+' gmail feature described by @SirCrumpet with the Twitter gmail address.
  • Peter Vader
    I like this idea. A lot. Is there a clean way to manage the all the unique email accounts this method (Twitter allows only one account per email address) necessitates?
  • SirCrumpet
    Peter, If you are using gmail, this is easily solved by appending "+whatever" to your email address. So for example, you might use me+photography@gmail.com, which would be automatically redirected to your usual gmail inbox (you can then use filters to easily label messages to these addresses if you plan on using them further)..
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