Mar 22, 2011

Twitter Noob

I'm on Twitter, but I'm not really ON Twitter...if you know what I mean.

I follow 27 people.  A handful of celebrities, some baseball writers and then a few of y'all.  I occasionally check out other Twitter fees, but generally I try to stay away from feeds that have too much content.  10-12 tweets an hour from one feed is too much for me.  And some folks post even more often than that.  I don't need to know everything a person is thinking at any given time.

Some bloggers also use Twitter to promote their blog.  I guess that makes sense, but since I use a feed reader for the blogs I read, updates on new posts on Twitter seem a bit redundant.  But I guess some people don't use feed readers, so there probably isn't anything to be done about that.

Weirdly enough, I wind up getting a lot of news from Twitter.  Mostly baseball news during the season, but the odd bit of real world news.  I read about the earthquake in Japan on Twitter first from a post by Pauley Perrette.  I found that to be a bit odd.

Anyway, I've got a couple of questions on how to make my Twitter experience more enjoyable?
  • What's the deal with lists?  Why do you use them?  Am I missing out on something here?
  • I've seen that you can't send direct messages to someone who doesn't follow you, or at least I've gotten that message when I've tried.  But sometimes they seem to go through?  What's the story?
  • What is the best way to contact someone through Twitter?  As I mentioned above, I've tried direct messages. I've also tried replying to one of their tweets, but I'm not sure they see that.  I think they do, but I can't be sure.  
  • Have you ever thought about protecting your tweets?  I see that is an option, and I guess it's a way to make sure that only the people you want to read your tweets will be the ones reading it.  I dunno, I guess it's for the same reason that some people make their blogs private.  I don't think that's for me.
  • What else?  What else am I missing?  I'm sure it's a lot.
So do it to it, my fellow Twidiots!

13 comments:

RW said...

I have a parakeet.

Verdant Earl said...

RW - See, that's the kind of advice I'm looking for people!

Slyde said...

i have yet to try twitter.

i am WAY too fucking popular... i'd probably crash their server..

Water Logged Canine said...

How's about you tweet yourself a new background?!? Spring has sprung like Sir Mixalot observing a young female entering the room with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face.

Get serious about the important things in life...and fer crissakes...stop dickin' around on the twitter!

Verdant Earl said...

Slyde - I think you are exactly the Twidiot they are looking for...

Doggie - You are totally right. Consider it fixed. Now can I dick around on Twitter?

Water Logged Canine said...

No...But you can twitter around on MY DICK!

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEF JELLY!

Bruce Johnson said...

Like you, I am on, but not really into the whole Tweet thing. I follow a few news feeds and interest feeds, but don't know that many people on Twitter...I think it is more of a 20 and under crowd that are 'super' networked. My only function on twitter is I have all my tweets forwarded to Facebook as posting. In fact, almost everything I do is auto-posted to Facebook. I am not going to invest too much time in learning the ins and outs of something that is less than 256 characters at a time.

Verdant Earl said...

Doggie - I don't see you stopping with that Beef Jelly schtick any time soon, eh? I may have to murder you.

Bruce - Or 140 characters, but I catch your drift.

sybil law said...

Water Logged Canine is on my shit list until he gets a fricking blog up....

And I'm with you on Twitter. I have messages sent to my phone, and sometimes that sucks when my phone is blowing up because I'm being mentioned or soemthing, but.. yeah.
I made a Foos list, for the Foos. Only so I can click on it easily and see what Tweets I've missed or whatever.
I made other lists for people I've met, but they don't mean shit to me, really.

hello haha narf said...

twitter is something you can use any ole way you like and have a fuck em if they don't like it attitude towards anyone who tries to tell you that you are doing it wrong. so yeah, i can't tell you how to make your use of it better for you. sounds like you are doing just fine. especially since we have some of the same attitudes about it!

i love pauley perrette. might have found her through something you retweeted.

i wanted to say something funny about your snow filled background, yet the wet dog beat me to it. and with much more humor. just not the same if i say "twitter my dick!"

Faiqa said...

Okay, thus far, nobody seems to have take your questions seriously, so...
- Lists? Lame, I never use them. HOWEVER, the purpose is to categorize people by content. So, say you're following a bunch of celebrities, you could make a list called celebrities and that list will update only the people you put in the list. You could do it with news, sports, hot chicks, etc. I used to have a list of local people, but I never used it.
- You aren't supposed to be able to DM people who aren't following you. I have no idea why it would let it come through sometimes. Maybe they ARE following you?
- People can see your @ unless you have been blocked. A person would have to intentionally do that, I can't fathom why someone would do that to you. I only do it to people who are obviously spammers.
- I don't protect my tweets. That's a personal choice, I guess. I will say that I don't follow back people who protect their tweets until I have direct contact with them. I hate rejection. What if they don't accept my request?
- Other stuff? Well... I think you should update your twitter feed with not only your blog but also iTunes feed. I'll go DAYS sometimes (as you know) ignoring my reader, but if I see a twitter update with a post from a blogger friend, I will click through and read it (usually from my phone.)

Here endeth the lesson.

Verdant Earl said...

Faiqa - Thanks for taking me seriously! Ahem... ;)

Avitable said...

Yeah, what Faiqa said.