I feel no pity for people who don't want to see #moonfruit tweets. If it's that big a deal, unfollow your greedy friends who are willing to spam you in order for a shot at a laptop.
I think there is some value in a twitter client that filters for you. The canonical example that comes to mind for me is a couple of friends of mine who are sports enthusiasts and when the #redwings begin flying I am less than interested; but they still have worthwhile things to say about topics I am interested in.
I also don't have that much time for twitter, there are a number of people that i follow whom I don't need to know what they had for breakfast, but I would like to know what they thought of a site or idea. That's a harder nut to crack, some sort of adaptive learning filter might work.
This could just be solved by etiquette. Or, different accounts for different purposes: one for your minutia/personal life, one for your coding life, one for your politics life...
There are plenty of folks who do that. And some clients do support that behavior. But the problem with an etiquette based solution is that there is a fair amount of bandwidth consumed by discussions of what is and is not appropriate etiquette.
Client-side filtering does break the implied 'I read your every brainfart' contract that makes twitter appealing to so many, but come on; this just moves the filters a little ways outside your head.
Yep. Twitter's best use case seems to be awareness of what good friends are doing (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139421). If people stay true to that you should never have more than 7 subscribers who post a lot.
If you want to subscribe to more, none of them can post a lot. Otherwise the infrequent posters will get drowned out and you'll be likely to miss their updates. (http://akkartik.name/blog/2009-06-06-18-18-34-soc).
I follow a ~350 people. Most don't seem to toot much. But I don't expect catch everyone's postings; that's not the point for me. It's more like being in a really crowded room, where i occasionally wander around and overheard bits of conversation. I can step in if I like, or like it flow past. Sometimes I have a twitter client running where I can change stuff via peripheral vision. Usually I just poke in to see what the recent 100 posts happen to be.
It's an ambient medium.
I'm surprised, then when people speak of using twitter to get news out on something (such as an upcoming local event), since there's a very good chance people will not see it (unless it gets repeated and re-repeated).
I have stopped following people who tend to not offer much useful info (I really don't care where you are eating breakfast, nor want to be reminded that you enjoy being a shill for someone's business). Basically, I prefer that any random slice of messages will have some actual information content in the mix.
" ... where I can change stuff via peripheral vision."
No, I really can't do that. I can catch stuff via peripheral vision. (No edit link for my comment. I really need to read what I just wrote before submitting. My hands think different thoughts than my head ...)
You don't care about catching everything, fair enough. But do you care equally about everyone you follow? I contend that you don't. If you sample randomly you bias for those who post often rather than those you care more about.
"But do you care equally about everyone you follow? "
Of course not. That's not how use Twitter
"If you sample randomly you bias for those who post often rather than those you care more about."
If a random sample routinely has someone posting items of little to no value to me, I follow. So it works out.
The people I really care about I connect with in other ways: phone, E-mail, blogs, conferences and local meetings, and so on.
Twitter is but one of many ways I get my daily data bath. That I miss this or that is not a big deal. Besides, the important stuff tends to get repeated so it usually finds me anyways.
Exactly. Facebook should be for friends and people you actually know. Twitter works best if you follow people with shared interests (professional or otherwise) that you may or may not actually know in person.
If you want to follow many people you can't follow people who post frequently.
I think that's reasonable; surely professional tweets can be restricted to a dozen a day.
If twitter makes it possible to prioritize tweets that will change. But as long as everything is time-ordered, high-frequency tweeters interfere with my ability to follow high-priority tweeters.
No. If you want to follow many people you can't follow people who post frequently. I happen to be able to (TweetDeck helps a lot). It's a tooling problem, not a service problem.
Isn't it relevant that you need to use third-party tools to make Twitter usable? The concept of Twitter may live on, but I think we're all just waiting for a better implementation.
Heck, they had to buy another company just to provide search for their own data!
I wonder how much traction there will be in the next 18-24 months for a social network service that advertises a "No marketing" policy for it's users. I think people would value a service that refused to advertise to them or otherwise sell their data.
