I'm trying to get into Twitter as a source of information, that is, I don't plan on tweeting much (or at all) nor do I expect any followers, but I want to do the following, mainly for news, current events, etc., etc.

What organizations or people do you guys follow?

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I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out how to enter some Twitter thing last week and untimately couldn't figure out how to do it. Apparently I'm too old?

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MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

I must be old too b/c before I posted here, I read:

[support.twitter.com]

[support.twitter.com]

and

[support.twitter.com]

just to figure out what the fsck all the little @'s and #'s mean!!

@ is the prefix for your account/handle.

# is a hashtag, used as a way to tag a tweet with a location, person, event, pop culture reference,etc,etc. basically, it allows people a way to roughly categorize their tweets. You can then search by hashtag and see all posts worldwide that have been tagged with that hashtag. You can make up your own hashtags, or use ones that are already in use. You'll get the hang of it as you get more familiar with tweeting. Remember Charlie Sheen's #winning hashtag? Google that one for a crash course on hashtags, and do a twitter search of that hashtag.

I have a twitter set up account solely for free stuff.

Amex has always has deals if you tweet them.
Pepsi gives away Amazon mp3 credits every Tuesday.

#twitter
#is
#useless

Unless you like your information in 140 words or less.

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cbelt3
#twitter
#is
#useless

Unless you like your information in 140 words or less.

I think I'm learning that some of the benefit stems from the shortened urls that are provided in many of the tweets, either linking to websites, pictures or other tweets.

I tried to figure it out and it still baffles me. It is essentially a personal RSS feed. People don't see what you post unless they 'follow' you, yet somehow, presumable via the use of #tags, people can vomit information at anyone they want. There was a scandal last week when the US beat Japan in the men's soccer final and people were tweeting about the anniversary of Pearl Harbor at the same time. The unfortunate overlap resulted in some really unflattering tweets that made the US look like a bunch of xenophobic goons. I have a friend who specializes in social media for our local paper and she tried to explain it to me, but I still don't understand how Twitter works. It sounds like the #tags took the idea of the personal RSS feed and turned it on its head so that it is more like an unmoderated amorphous forum discussion that anyone can participate in. That sounds utterly useless to me.

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Nothing to see here, move along.

I follow NPR, PRI, PBS, BBC, AP, the Washington Post, the 3 local network news stations, the local npr affiliate, and various and sundry things that specifically interest me (Baltimore Ravens, Lapham's Quarterly, Andy Borowitz, Enoch Pratt Free Library, and such).

I think I will eliminate some of the news feeds because I get a LOT of repeats on a big story. At this point I have figured out which feeds don't repeat things over and over again, which some of them do.

And yes, the tweets link to photos and/or stories. I think of it as my personal all-news-station, with stories about which I can click to learn more or just scroll on past if not interested.

I don't know what I did to prevent me from seeing all the sorts of things ztirffritz described, but I get tweets ONLY from the folks I am following. If they retweet something someone else said I see it, but most of them don't retweet much at all.

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"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

EDIT: and by "folks" I meant the organizations and companies which I listed. I don't follow "folks" and regret using that word.

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"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

I use it as a news concentrator and it is so effective that I don't go to news sites any more. Apparently it doesn't "work" for some people here but it's a tool like any other and can be useful.

I have never and hopefully will never tweet anything but don't think you won't get any followers. Checking... I have 3 followers for absolutely no reason, I have no idea WTF is up with those people.

I have 3 followers, too. Why oh why is my question.

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"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

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Lew Zealand
I use it as a news concentrator and it is so effective that I don't go to news sites any more. Apparently it doesn't "work" for some people here but it's a tool like any other and can be useful.

I have never and hopefully will never tweet anything but don't think you won't get any followers. Checking... I have 3 followers for absolutely no reason, I have no idea WTF is up with those people.

Care to share which "sites" (what exactly do you call the people who tweet stuff...tweeters?) you follow?

One suggestion I would make is to not necessarily follow a broad organization like @cnn. I'd find someone that hosts a show or program within the network that you enjoy and follow them specifically.

For instance, I follow Rachel Maddow (@maddow) & Willie Geist (@williegeist) from MSNBC.

Also, as far as sports goes, I like a hockey team that isn't in the city in which I live. I follow one of the beat writers for that team from the paper from that city.

I follow some photo blog Tweeters, too. Add in a mix of few bands that I like to stay up on as well as some organizations (world wide as well as local... @peta & then one or two local animal shelter places that always have events going on).

You'll get the hang of it in no time. I use it to converse with a few "friends" I've made with similar interests but primarily use it as an information source.

@sciam (best)
@BadAstronomer
@universetoday
@NASA (prolly the 1st I'd remove- more chatter than news sometimes)
@naturemagazine
@sciencemagazine
@SkepticsGuide
@plutokiller
@WilliamShatner (on a lark)

No real news as you can see, so it may not be what you're looking for but I likes my sciencey news. 3 individuals on there so those are more personal as you might imagine but they're all good in their own way.

Cool. Thanks for recs and advice.

Now, how do you follow all these tweets? On your mobile device? On your Mac? For either one, do you use the apps that Twitter puts out or some 3rd party apps to follow?

Thanks.

I use Echofon on my iPhone and the actual Twitter app on my Mac. It's a PITA because they don't "sync" but I don't like the counterpart of each for the alternate device. If you can find one that serves you well on both, you're ahead of the game.

Why?

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RIP, Greg the DogSitter. You are missed.

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pinkoos
Cool. Thanks for recs and advice.

Now, how do you follow all these tweets? On your mobile device? On your Mac? For either one, do you use the apps that Twitter puts out or some 3rd party apps to follow?

Thanks.

Hi Pinkoos, sorry for the delay.

I use my iThings only. For some reason I don't like doing social media on my Mac. It might be because on a portable device I want a quick and dirty look at headlines to skim and since Twitter messages are so short by definition, this works well. Just a headline and a bit.ly (or similar) link to the article. With as many sources as I follow and the frequency with which new articles are added, there is never a shortage of news. It's great!

I prefer Twitter's app though if the other apps rendered linked web pages more quickly, I'd consider changing. Mobile Safari seems faster than the embedded version used in the Twitter client. Many other apps try to aggregate many social apps and since I'm not using FB at this time and don't use any others, I prefer the single-use app for now.

Thanks again for the details.

Follow up questions:

1. When people link to stuff (those bit.ly links or other types shortened links), is twitter generating those or are the posters having to shorten their links and then put the shortened links into their tweets manually?

2. I noticed the same thing on my iPhone native Twitter app...tapping on a link takes the app a very long time to actually display the result of the link (ie, the webpage).

I may check out some of the other free offerings on the App Store just to see if there's one that does the webpages faster.

Along those lines, what do the 3rd party apps offer that the native Twitter app does not? What makes them better or worse?

Thanks.

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pinkoos
Thanks again for the details.

Follow up questions:

1. When people link to stuff (those bit.ly links or other types shortened links), is twitter generating those or are the posters having to shorten their links and then put the shortened links into their tweets manually?

2. I noticed the same thing on my iPhone native Twitter app...tapping on a link takes the app a very long time to actually display the result of the link (ie, the webpage).

I may check out some of the other free offerings on the App Store just to see if there's one that does the webpages faster.

Along those lines, what do the 3rd party apps offer that the native Twitter app does not? What makes them better or worse?

Thanks.

I don't have answers to your questions, I hope someone else here does.

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(vikm)
One suggestion I would make is to not necessarily follow a broad organization like @cnn. I'd find someone that hosts a show or program within the network that you enjoy and follow them specifically.

This is excellent advice. I started with the big organizations yesterday and as others mentioned, a lot of the tweets are the same news reports over and over again, just from different sources.

So, I'm starting with a few I know I want to follow like Rachel Maddow that you mentioned (was just watching her right now), Fareed Zakaria (unfortunately he's been quiet on Twitter lately for obvious reasons) and will search for more now.

Thanks again.