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.