Twitter is a lovely place to get info from all over the world , this is a plus and a minus . Plus because of the sheer depth of information and minus because of redundant information and the number of updates that you need to read in any given instant of time . This gets more complicated if you throw in the additional variable of the number of people you follow . If you are following more than five hundred people , you will understand what I am talking about , it is really tough to keep up with updates in your time-line . So how do you read the good stuff and not miss it ? Simple , the answer is Twitter Update Management or TUM as I fondly call it !
The first thing you need to do is get off the web and start using a good twitter client . I use Tweetdeck and recommend it very strongly it is really good and has a lot of nifty features .Or the other strong alternative is Seesmic . Choose one of the two . Now on to the real business at hand . Before anything else , let us see how to sort out tweeps in your time-line . Here is how I sort my tweeps
- Linkers : Folks who mostly tweet links to cool and really useful stuff
- Quoters : Folks who tweet a lot of inspirational quotes and other similar things frequently
- Fun peeps : Folks who are good at tickling your ribs with their funny and thoughtful quips
- Opinion Leaders : Folks who have good opinions and musings on current events that are worth a read
- Buddies : Folks who are my friends and I want to read WHATEVER they tweet
With that out of the way , it is now time to classify tweeps into these categories . After you are sure that you have the grouping right , here is what I do with Tweetdeck . I use Tweetdeck groups (not to be confused with twitter lists) , create one group per category and add all the relevant tweeps to the right group . Tweetdeck sorts each group into it’s own column for you and PRESTO , life is now easier ! All that you have to do to catch all relevant tweets is just stare at the right group . What’s more , you can also export these into actual twitter lists and anyone can then follow these lists from your twitter home .
But wait , we are not yet done , there is the other important side of TUM , conversations , the REAL reason why twitter is so great . You need to be absolutely on the ball when people @reply to you or mention you and acknowledge / respond to that correctly . If you are following many people , that is also tough , you need to again use your client more efficiently for this . In my tweetdeck , initially I removed the mentions column to save on API calls and replaced it with a search for my @handle ( @v_shakthi ) , strangely , the tweets in that column never tallied with my mentions feed on twitter .Some legitimate replies never showed up . Then I used the mentions feed on the web and the search for @v_shakthi on tweetdeck in conjunction . That improved things greatly . I never missed one . So eventually I added the mentions column also to tweetdeck and enabled the auto API management option . And from that day , I never missed a conversation , I swear !
So that my friends , is TUM , hope you like it !
Incredibly useful! Im favouriting it immediatly, RTing it often. This is like giving ur trade secrets away. Longlive TUM. Thanks a ton for sharing!
You are too kind Kaveri ! Thanks for the comment ! Pls do keep reading my blog
Thanks Shakthi for sharing. I agree with you. It is difficult to keep up with lots of information when u are following thousands of people.
My few cents – It is easier to add people to Twitter lists ( via web) than via Tweetdeck. The easiest way is to keep adding people to differnt lists from the web ( u can add people to Twitterlist via Tweetdeck also) and create a new column for those twitter lists.
I have enabled both Mentions and @tinucherian for conversations towards me and my tweet retweets in my tweetdeck. But still I am not able to see Twitter RTs from the web.I wish Tweetdeck fixes that too .
Shakthi – Thanks so much for posting this informative topic on TUM! It’s extremely helpful…something I was looking for…how people manage their tweets! You’re a gem!
TUM is an useful one!!! I never knew classification could be done so easily; an inquisitive question, to which group am I put into??? Apart from all this, yes, the article is an informative one! Planning to RT it!!! Great going with the tweets & articles!!!
You are in my buddies list
Thank you !
Twitter lists are also a good idea yes . Will post seperately on that ! Thanks !
You’re a LINKER for sure!! \m/
what am i??
you are a buddy !
I’ve traditionally been a blogger, and I am glad that with the kind of exposure one gets on twitter its awesome especially with twitter evangelists like you.
This is one thing, I would surely try out. was not aware of the grouping we could do from tweet deck.