How to Use Twitter Without Going Insane

Posted by Melissa Wiley in Reviews on Thursday, March 11, 2010 10:00 AM

Yesterday I talked about some reasons you might be interested in using Twitter. Today we’ll look at how to do that without being driven nuts by the blur of disconnected information.

When you log into Twitter, you land on your home page. That’s where you’ll see the tweets of everyone you “follow.” You also have a Twitter profile page. That’s where all your tweets are collected in one place. Here’s what a profile page looks like:

1) A great way to get a feel for Twitter’s potential is to visit individual users’ profile pages.

That may sound obvious, but many newcomers to Twitter find themselves bewildered by the seemingly random and jumbled stream of conversations. Visiting the pages of individual users can help you get a feel for the ways people are actually using Twitter.

On a user page, you’ll see that person’s tweets and her replies. The replies will begin with @username and will be responses to something another person has tweeted. If you want to see the original tweet, click the “in reply to” link just below the tweet.

You might also see a retweet. That’s when someone likes another person’s tweet and wants to pass it on. You can see an example in the image of my profile page above—I loved @feebeeglee’s tweet about the hummingbird-cam and wanted to share it with my friends.

Here are some fun profile pages to visit:

http://twitter.com/daniellebean
http://twitter.com/peerybingle
http://twitter.com/Karen_Ed

2) Visit your own “Mentions” page

In the sidebar of your Twitter home page, you’ll see @yourusername — that’s a link to your mentions page. A “mention” is a tweet in which someone has mentioned your @username.  You’ll want to check your mentions page often — that’s where you can see all the replies people have made to your tweets, or remarks someone wanted to call to your attention. Fun!

3) Create groups of people whose tweets you really want to read.

Twitter’s “lists” feature allows you to create groupings of the people you follow. These lists can be public (which means you can view other people’s lists) or private. Perhaps you follow dozens or even hundreds of people on Twitter, but there are only a few close friends whose updates you really don’t want to miss. Create a list with those friends on it, and suddenly Twitter has become much more practical for you.

To create a list, go to your profile page and you’ll see a “lists” button near the top of the page. (See it up there in the picture of my profile page?) Click the button and you’ll see the option to create a new list. You may find it helpful to create groups for the different kinds of people you follow—for example: homeschoolers, real-life friends, book bloggers, religious, news sources, politicians, you name it!

Another way to add people to a list you’ve created is to click on your “following” tab (at the top of your home and profile pages).

You can even follow lists created by someone else. (Public lists, that is.) When I first started creating lists, I was about to set one up for all my twittering, homeschooling friends, when I realized one of those friends had already set up a similar list. I just clicked the little box to “follow” her list—she saved me the trouble of creating one myself!

4) Use hashtag searches to follow topics that interest you.

This is a hashtag: #

On Twitter, people sometimes attach hashtags to words or phrases at the end of their tweets, like this:

#kidlit
#Olympics
#hellokitty
#ff   (That stands for “Follow Friday”—every Friday people tweet their recommendations for people to follow, marked with the #ff tag.)
#fridayreads (On Fridays, people share what books they are reading.)

Hashtags show up as clickable links on Twitter, so you can click on a tag (or type one into your Twitter search bar) to see all recent tweets marked with that tag. This can be useful if you are looking for information about a specific topic, such as #ChileEarthquake or #smoothies. Just be aware that you’ll be viewing tweets by anyone who uses that hashtag, not just the people you follow.

4) Download free desktop applications to make Twitter even easier to navigate.

There are many apps you can download to your PC or Mac, as well as your iPod Touch, iPhone, Blackberry, and other smartphones.

A few I’ve tried —

Twhirl (for your desktop; new tweets and mentions pop up in a small notification window in the corner of your screen).

TweetDeck (many people liked it for its ability to create sub-groups, but now that Twitter offers the list feature itself, I don’t bother with TweetDeck, which seemed something of a memory hog).

Brizzly (my favorite, and the way I most often check in with Twitter; I like its clean, bright layout; the “trending topics” list in the sidebar; and the way it lets me know—with a simple blue dot—when I have new mentions and direct messages).

UberTwitter (for the iPhone or iPod Touch—easy interface and easy on the eyes).

All of these tools and tips are meant to make your Twitter experience easier, more efficient, and more fun. If you decide to join the fun, please drop me a note @bonnyglen so I can be sure to follow you!

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