from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you use Twitter?

by ziko on 11/16/13, 2:34 PM with 42 comments

• by helloanand on 11/16/13, 3:01 PM

  I typically scroll back to catch up with overnight tweets unless I have missed a few days worth either due to travel or busy work schedule. I don't follow just to reciprocate and am very ruthless unfollow people who are noisemakers.

• by Neff on 11/16/13, 3:44 PM

  c) I don't.

  The service had a value to me when there was a focus on interaction, but as it transitioned to a news feed/advertisement service it lost any and all use to me.

  For news, there are enough sites that all spout off the same reviews and "exclusives". If there is truly breaking news that I need to be made aware of, there are a multitude of channels I can get the information from and all of them will convey the information better than a 140 character tweet could.

• by netman21 on 11/16/13, 3:21 PM

  I follow 30,000 accounts on Twitter. There is no way that anything relevant/interesting shows up on my "feed". I always use the "@Connect" filter so I do not miss any Tweets directed at me. I search on key words or hashtags to follow interesting discussions and get news. I keep a separate tab open to @glenngreenwald since everything he Tweets is interesting.

• by kylec on 11/16/13, 3:57 PM

  I'm surprised this isn't a poll.

  Anyway, my answer is "a", I use a client, Tweetbot, that syncs my read position across all my devices. When I wake up in the morning it shows me the last tweets I read the previous night. I then read them chronologically until I'm caught up.

  I detailed that process because I feel that there's an important distinction between what I do and scrolling back for tweets I missed. For me, the process to catch up is the same process I use to read Twitter throughout the day, meaning that I don't have to do anything special when I wake up.

  Of course, if I'm away or otherwise have been unable to check Twitter for two or three days, catching up can be a bit difficult and I might just give up and scroll to the top, then scroll down a bit just to see the most recent tweets, but I try to avoid doing that most of the time.

• by mdisraeli on 11/16/13, 5:43 PM

  I'm trying to use twitter more, but I find keeping up to date with it very difficult! This isn't helped by following several distinct groups of people, and only having mobile client access most of the time. What do people recommend using to keep on top of twitter?

• by Brajeshwar on 11/16/13, 3:15 PM

  Don't care catching up. Rapidly reply to tweets if it makes sense while reading the timeline at that time. Usually tweet via buffer and OS X's Notification. Checks twitter mostly while traveling, waiting before a meeting, etc.

• by 1337biz on 11/16/13, 4:18 PM

  Twitter is for me pretty much unusable without active list management.

  I only check my followers tweets in moments of complete boredom. But there are lists with people whom I want to keep up with (personal friends, key targets who's attention I would like to get).

  Of those lists I ready every tweet and by checking it at least twice a day and try actively to engage with the people (responding, re-tweeting, asking, answering, etc). Otherwise the noise ratio is just to large and it feels pretty much just as social as shouting "hello" at random strangers.

• by radley on 11/16/13, 5:46 PM

  I use desktop Twitter and follow a handful each of professional designers, UX/UI devs, artists, DJs/producers, Android blogs, tech blogs, kaomoji artists, and @HNTweets.

  Most don't flood, spam or waste my time. Too much signal to noise, no matter how popular you are, I have to unfollow.

  I keep the feed open and look over every few minutes. I catch up on mornings if I'm bored.

• by brownbat on 11/16/13, 5:09 PM

  I barely use Twitter, but have a similar dilemma with RSS.

  I use Feedly, which allows me to mark some sources as "must read," so I can read every single item. I then also add a few hundred sites where I just glance at the most recent.

  It balances my "keep up on everything from x source" and the "have a steady stream of interesting to fill time" needs pretty well.

• by frostmatthew on 11/16/13, 2:45 PM

  Typically I'll scroll back to read all tweets since the last time I checked, but I will rarely go back more than 8 or 10 hours.

• by madsushi on 11/16/13, 5:10 PM

  I only read Twitter in real time. It's like a pseudo-IRC chatroom for me. When I'm watching sports, I can fire it up and see real-time reactions (from the various sports people and writers that I follow) and have everyone go "WOW LOOK AT THAT SHOT" at the same time. Makes it almost as nice as having a living room full of friends.

• by rickmatt on 11/16/13, 4:27 PM

  I don't think I browse twitter well. I alternate between your two choices, depending on how long since I last checked twitter.

  I would like something like 'circles for twitter' so that I could check close friends and family tweets quickly, then kill time with lower priority/higher volume users if I want to.

• by gmays on 11/16/13, 4:01 PM

  Whenever I start a new project I snag the Twitter name for it and link it up to automatically tweet when stuff is posted to the website so I can at least show up. Same with Facebook. I don't think I'd ever use is it as a communication tool, though I might consider it for news if RSS completely died or something.

• by QuasiAlon on 11/16/13, 4:25 PM

  Huh! Cool question. I do both. If I have time to kill (say, a train ride), I go back and read from where I left off. If I know I just need to pass a few minutes (say, waiting in line at the store), I'll just pop in and see the latest. Sometimes I go back and read what specific friends wrote throughout the day.

• by Leynos on 11/16/13, 4:30 PM

  I originally did a), but it became impractical one I was following around 300 people. Now I just read the last 10 or 15 minute's worth. I also, however, have a list of people I am reasonably close to whose tweets I try to read to a reasonable level of completeness.

• by antjanus on 11/16/13, 4:22 PM

  I use a ton of twitter lists! I'm probably the only one that does this. If I get REALLY bored, I go through the actual feed. When I check the list, I check the entire timeline. If I check the feed itself, i don't care.

• by joshowens on 11/16/13, 3:12 PM

  I have also been trying to curate lists and I use tweetbot to easily switch between them. I find it is a great way to catch up on one community segment or another.

  I wish twitter made list building easier.

• by fumar on 11/16/13, 4:13 PM

  b) I will check it twice or so per day. This is on my personal account. I will retweet or post to it a few times per day.

  I like twitter, but I don't love it. I would use twitter often when third party clients were popping up.

  I was using app.net for a while, but my friends never took to it. (this is within the first months of its launch) I paid for it, and liked it, but it lacked the network effect.

• by socialmediaisbs on 11/16/13, 4:05 PM

  B, I'll take one hour a day to go through the timeline on my phone and then the discovery tab.

• by thibaut_barrere on 11/16/13, 3:23 PM

  b)

  + c) I search for specific keywords when investigating product ideas and pain points

• by jackgolding on 11/16/13, 2:53 PM

  b - information saturation is huge when you follow 100+ people in the same topic

• by nhebb on 11/16/13, 5:28 PM

  b.

  But about six months ago, I stopped posting and now I rarely visit. It wasn't a conscious decision. I just got bored with it and started tapering off usage.

• by mkhpalm on 11/16/13, 4:36 PM

  I used to do A before I lost interest in twitter.

• by Kiro on 11/16/13, 4:07 PM

  What are you building?

• by digitalvortex on 11/16/13, 4:34 PM

  connect it to my wordpress blog and it auto updates.

• by danso on 11/16/13, 3:42 PM

  I use it purely to Tweet and to network...either to respond to people or to just tweet what I've read. I almost never read my timeline as I follow just about anyone who follows me, and anyone who is either in New York, a journalist, or a programmer, though I don't follow too many celebrities.

  I don't understand people who are put off by the noise. Just don't read your timeline. Also, it's not much work to manage...whenever I read an interesting article, I just tweet the headline and link...Literally a 10 second action that sometimes can catch a lot of attention and help you find other like-minded people,

• by idoescompooters on 11/16/13, 3:26 PM

  Newsfeed.