How I use Twitter

I use Twitter as a social networking tool, or to put it another way, as a means of conducting a two-way conversation between real people.

Discovery
I prefer to use email newsletters and RSS feeds for keeping up to date about a product, service or company that I have a long term interest in. I have found that if I try to use Twitter for this purpose then I get lost in the haze and I don't know what I've missed. If the product, service or company that I'm interested in does not have an email newsletter or RSS feed then I create one.  This is easy to do.  If the primary source of information is Twitter then I create an alert using TweetBeep and subscribe to the resulting RSS feed.  If the primary source of information is elsewhere (not Twitter) then I create an alert using Google Alerts and subscribe to the resulting RSS feed.  There are lots of other wonderful tools and different methods of information discovery but I find this nice and simple and it works for me.

As a result I only have 2 places to go in order to stay up to date with all that interests me;

• My email account (Gmail)
• My RSS reader (Google Reader)

If you want to follow the news stories that I've found particularly interesting then you can do here.

Social interaction

I use Twitter to have a personal exchange with real people that I would otherwise not meet and with whom I have something in common, albeit sometimes very fleetingly. This might be something as transient as we both have the same problem with a product or company (one-off type events) or something more persistent like we both support the same sports team.

From time to time I will seek out new people to follow by searching for various terms that interest me at the time.

When to follow and when not to follow


I WILL NOT follow you if...
1. you are selling something (excessively).
2. you make me go somewhere else to find out what you are saying (too often).
3. you are abusive or insulting to something/someone (and they don't deserve it).

I WILL follow you if...
1. you are interesting or if we share the same interests.
2. you are funny.
3. you enrich my life somehow (it is possible and yes, it does happen - you know who you are)

I MAY stop following you if...
1. you tweet too much.
2. you don't tweet enough.
3. you become quarrelsome, uninteresting, a bore, distateful or abusive.

Swearing
A note on swearing on Twitter: I don't mind swearing on Twitter; in fact, when used carefully, the occassional four-lettered word can be very amusing, but I don't like profanity when it's abusive or insulting.

Want to know how rude you've been on Twitter? Well, there's a third party tool for that.  Cursebird searches your timeline looking for swear words and then tells you how rude you've been. I was quite shocked at my own score. "Blatter swears like a Scottish Comedian. 183,717th worldwide. Swears 21. Score 93 out of 100." That was when I last checked anyway... :-)

Have you got any tips for me?
I hope you found this article useful, but I'd be really interested if you didn't and you have found a better way of discovering news and interacting with people.  If that's the case please let me know!