2009 March | Sonja Foust

I’ve had a blog since December 2000. You won’t find posts from that long ago here because: (1) they were on Xanga; (2) no one needs to read that crap. See, I used to pretty much put everything on my blog. It was really more of a diary, and I hadn’t yet learned the hard lesson that someday, someone you don’t want to read what you said in a public forum will read it, and will hold it over your head. I’ve now learned that lesson many times over and am much more careful about what I say on my blog, or Twitter, or Facebook, or anywhere public really.

Still, once in a while I long for those unfettered days of saying whatever crossed my mind. So, in that spirit, I’m posting a teeny tiny little excerpt of a sad post I wrote in college, after a bad month. (I’d been dumped, and had lost out on a summer job I’d wanted, and probably, I don’t know, gotten a bad grade on a test or something. It all seemed like a huge deal at the time.) I was kind of trying to explain about wanting to be loved in spite of all my flaws and failings, but what came out was this, an explanation of why the Sesame Street character I identify with most is Oscar the Grouch:

: Image via Wikipedia

I like Oscar the Grouch. Sure, he always SAYS “leave me alone,” but he doesn’t really mean it and everyone is always really nice to him even though he’s… well… a grouch to them… and he has a faithful little best friend… even if he IS a worm. I had an Oscar the Grouch washcloth when I was really little.

: Image via CrunchBase

So, really, this article isn’t for those of you who think Twitter is stupid and refuse to get account. That’s fine. This article is for people who signed up for Twitter and now want to make it more useful than the out-of-the-box web app. Here’s my Twitter plan, and what I do to make Twitter work for me.

1. Get off the web app.

I used the web app exclusively when I first signed up for Twitter. It’s fine, it works. But, if you want more powerful features, you want to get off the web app and use something else.

My personal favorite desktop app is TweetDeck. TweetDeck lets you customize pretty much everything about your Twitter experience. You can see content filtered by who wrote it, what it said, and a host of other neat tricks. For example, my TweeDeck has 7 columns at present. The columns are:

All Friends: Everyone I’m following on Twitter
Facebook: Friends Status: This is a new feature in the still-in-beta version 0.24.1b of TweetDeck, but I love it. It pulls your friends’ Facebook statuses into TweetDeck.
Replies: Any message that contains “@Sonja_Foust” anywhere in the message. This reply column is more powerful than the Twitter web app @Replies page, because it looks in the whole message, rather than just at the beginning, so if, for example, someone says, “@rfoust , @Sonja_Foust , great to meet you at lunch today!” Both me and @rfoust can see the message, even though only @rfoust will see it in his @Replies page on the Twitter app. Clear as mud?
Group: People I Know: This is a group I set up in TweetDeck to show messages from people I actually, you know, know, as opposed to people I only know through Twitter. Not to be harsh, but I care way more about the people I actually know than the people I’m just following on Twitter. Seeing only those messages together allows me to catch up with the important stuff if I’ve been away from my computer for a while and don’t want to read back through all of the tweets from everyone I follow.
Search: bbinteractive: TweetDeck’s search feature allows you to enter any search term and see any message containing that search term. (@bbinteractive is my company’s Twitter account.)
Search: rfoust: @rfoust is my husband. By entering the search term “rfoust” rather than “@rfoust,” I see his tweets in this column, as well as replies to him. (If I entered the search term “@rfoust,” I would only see replies to him.)
Direct Messages: Any direct messages that come to me.

It may, perhaps, seem like a lot of effort to get that all set up, but it’s my way of keeping up with the really important stuff, filtering out the not-so-important stuff, but still having all the information I want at my fingertips.

2. Consolidate posting to various social networks.

If you have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and several other social networks to keep up with, updating all your statuses can be a hassle. There are several products to help with this, but my favorite by far is ping.fm. Ping.fm lets you post to pretty much any social network you can think of, all from one place. I use the AIM bot for posting when I’m at my desk, and m.ping.fm when I’m using my phone.

Note, this may not be a great idea if you tweet 67 times a day and don’t want people to de-friend you on, like, Facebook for taking up their entire homepage stream. For me, though, the casual 2 or 3-times-a-day tweeter, it works well.

: Image via CrunchBase

3. Get mobile.

Twitter becomes super fun when you are out in the world and have something to share, but no one to talk to. Get a mobile app on your phone, or set up the SMS feature. If you have an iPhone, my pick is the free Twitterific app. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been killing time somewhere, waiting to meet someone, standing in line, whatever, and found long moments of entertainment on Twitter.

4. Have fun!

Try out all the cool Twitter apps that are out there and see what works for you. I only highlighted a few, but there are TONS. If you want to do something with Twitter, chances are there’s an app for that. Ask on Twitter, someone will help you out. I use Twitter mostly as a social tool, but it’s helped me to form connections I never would have otherwise, and I’ve gotten a lot of opportunities just from knowing people on Twitter. Don’t take it too seriously, and have a good time!