Twitter is an amazing way to stay current on just about everything. But, as great as it is, it’s a challenge to actually follow what matters to me most.
Twitter offers only one way to organize my timeline–chronological order. I have no good way to make sure I don’t miss tweets from certain people.
My options are to make a Twitter List, which is cumbersome at best, or search for people one-by-one. Neither of these is easy or effective, so the reality is that I’m drowning in the noise of my timeline. Tons of great stuff, but a lot of stuff that I am missing as well.
What I want is a simple filtering system, a way to organize my timeline into groups so that I can always see what I want, when I want it.
For example, I’d put my Family into one group, Industry News into another, and my favorite Comedians into a third. When I want to see what my son is tweeting from college, I’d dip into Family. Or if I want to keep up on tech blogs, I’d bounce into my Industry News group.
You might say that’s what Twitter Lists are for, and yes I use them. They are a part of the solution. In fact, OneLouder created SmartLists in TweetCaster to be a fantastic list management tool, well beyond the alternatives I have used.
That being said, Twitter Lists are not enough. And judging by how few people use them, it seems I’m not the only one.
I want to create groups for my timeline, bookmark things that matter to me…..and yes…..utilize lists in creative ways.
What about you? Would you be interested in a filtering your timeline? Let us know in the comments. And take a look at what we’re doing about it.
Evan (@EvanConway)
This is the second in a series of blog posts about Twitter. Evan Conway is the President of OneLouder Apps. He has been at Handmark/OneLouder since 2008. Evan’s passions include guitars, soccer, and all things mobile and social.
The lists are sufficient for me. I’m interested in having the ability (within TweetCaster, specifically) to mute hashtags and users. It’s a functionality that’s available in TweetDeck and Echofon.
I found tweetcaster quite helpful in regards to this
Easy content filtering is going to become a must if Twitter is going to move forward. A simple “circles” type mechanism like Google+ has would be awesome.
Tori tweetcaster has that…it’s called zip it. on my phone just Swype the offending tweet to the left or right
OMG. I seriously had no idea what ZipIt was. Thanks so much for telling me that!
Great idea. I don’t want to read everything from all users I follow.
Better lists like you’ve described sound amazing! Just a few adjustments to deeper personalization (like plume).
The (stale) TweetDeck app uses swipeable columns for searches and lists, which is the closest I’ve seen to do something about this, was easy to see which columns had updates from coloured dots along the top. Looking forward to Onelouder’s solution, because I use Tweetcaster Pro exclusively now.
And we only get better everytime you see us.