Twitter

maltingsaudio

I have a twitter account because some one said I should have,and apparently I follow 300 thingies, left it open in a tab this morning and now have 216 tweets to cope with in the last  6 hours. By cope I mean just going to exit and leave it but what is it all about and how do you manage to live with twitter and have a life? 

CabbageCat

The BBC website has hundreds of news articles every day - you cope with it the same way as that.

Lixarto

maltingsaudio said:

how do you manage to live with twitter and have a life? 

By never checking it.

(I have an account for pretty much the same reason as you: I was easily led)

richardhomer

Oddly enough, I deleted the app off my phone this very morning. I was absolutely sick of reading sh1te....

When I can be bothered I need to visit the full site and close my account.

underdog

Follow a small list of people who tweet primarily about things you're deeply interested (guitars, bands, sports, news etc) and its the best, most personal and up to date news feed ever.

Use it right and its absolutely fantastic.

chrispy108

The key to Twitter is to ruthlessly add and remove people.

You don't need to follow all your mates, and if someone is posting shit constantly then block them. You owe people nothing. No one says you have to follow anyone.

dchwhite

Or if for some reason you do need to follow certain people - maybe family members who would be upset if they saw you'd unfollowed them - then 'mute' them. 

They can still se you follow them, so they're happy, you don't have to read a single word of their witterings, and everyone's happy.

Well, unless they tag you and you don't respond, but otherwise...

Hootsmon

is twittsters like faceboak?...... I had a faceboak account once and I was gettin' all these messages from folks, mostly like the following one..." hi uncle John,i am stayin' in tonite tae do my hair"

one week o' this shit was MORE than enough

PS I have got tae go,i am going tae brush my teeth

Hootsmon

PPS I should just let Hooters the wife brush 'em.....they're both in the bathroom

Tone71

I would be distraught if anyone I know in real life followed me on Twitter, I like it to follow freaks and oddballs whilst being anonymous, that's the appeal to me.

Nomad

It's the place where all the twits go, isn't it? Actually, I get the impression it's like birds sitting on tree branches, all tweeting away, looking for attention, and nobody is taking a blind bit of notice. The odd possible worthwhile comment in what is otherwise an endless sea of heaving, worthless shite just isn't worth the effort. I mean, who in their right mind would jump into a huge vat swimming with piss and shit in the hope of finding a £1 coin?

There are better places to get info on things like guitars.

Like here.

stickyfiddle

Twitter's ok. I use it mostly for F1 updates, both live during races and opinions between. And excellent for customer service. Tweet a complaint at the company in question and they put their best bods on it - can't have a complainer given a pubic platform, can we!?!

Rarely tweet myself these days though.

Flink_Poyd

I follow a select few things that appeal to me and use it to moan like hell at useless companies in order to get problems resolved quicker.
Oh, and finding hookers

PolarityMan

I made a numbers station on twtter once, it got a surprising number of followers, most were obvious marketing bots but there also seemed to be people who follow loads of different twitter numbers stations.

scrumhalf

I signed up to Twitter yesterday as it seemed to be the only way of getting a response from EE. Turns out they talk just as much bollocks on Twitter as they do over the phone (they say "no issues in your area" and "we have a problem we are trying to address" to two different people asking about the same problem).

Now the problem has been resolved (although it will surely recur, EE seem to have their network planned by squirrels wearing mittens) I can't see it's going to consume much time in the future.

holnrew

PolarityMan said:

I made a numbers station on twtter once, it got a surprising number of followers, most were obvious marketing bots but there also seemed to be people who follow loads of different twitter numbers stations.

What's a numbers station?

Bucket

I'm a fairly regular tweeter, I quite like it.

I only follow people I want to follow, if someone's tweeting too much and it annoys me I unfollow them, thinking along the lines that @chrispy108 mentioned above. It can be a bit of a gesture unfollowing someone sometimes, of course, but if the tweets get too annoying I'm not gonna put up with them hindering my enjoyment of everything else on there that I do want to see.

I've managed to get my followers-to-following ratio looking pretty good too - I'm following 288 and have 283 followers. This pleases me, although I'm acutely aware it's a terrible thing to be proud of.

PolarityMan

holnrew said:

PolarityMan said:

I made a numbers station on twtter once, it got a surprising number of followers, most were obvious marketing bots but there also seemed to be people who follow loads of different twitter numbers stations.

What's a numbers station?

http://youarelistening.to/numbers

frankus

CabbageCat said:

The BBC website has hundreds of news articles every day - you cope with it the same way as that.

SHAZAM!

monquixote

PolarityMan said:

holnrew said:

PolarityMan said:

I made a numbers station on twtter once, it got a surprising number of followers, most were obvious marketing bots but there also seemed to be people who follow loads of different twitter numbers stations.

What's a numbers station?

http://youarelistening.to/numbers

Only just realised that the counting on some Boards of Canada tracks are from numbers stations. 

I find them really spooky. As they are one time pads they are impossible to decode.

imalone

Nomad said:

It's the place where all the twits go, isn't it? Actually, I get the impression it's like birds sitting on tree branches, all tweeting away, looking for attention, and nobody is taking a blind bit of notice. The odd possible worthwhile comment in what is otherwise an endless sea of heaving, worthless shite just isn't worth the effort. I mean, who in their right mind would jump into a huge vat swimming with piss and shit in the hope of finding a £1 coin?

There are better places to get info on things like guitars.

Like here.

Yes, you're using it wrong. People I follow: 6Music, 6MusicMorning (Lavern show), RadMac (Radcliffe and Maconie show), a few music shops, Rough Trade. Good for finding out about new music, occasionally tweet at some of them which they can see and respond to without having to subscribe me. Would also be worth adding a few bands to find out about new release. I also follow TFL, though it turns out they don't do the useful thing and tweet service updates, but just stuff about new buses, so will be removing them soon. Also for academic papers it's worth tweeting as ways to get people to notice them, but you need the right network of followers.
People I don't follow: next door's cat, some person I met down the pub. It's not email or even facebook.