> If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter.
> Sometimes, some people I follow tweet things I'd rather not hear. So I simply mute them.
> I cull my 'following' list to get to 300 people once every couple of months
All of the above steps are time consuming, and a lot of people (including me) simply can’t be bothered or don't have the time, or both!
Last time I created a new account I entered some basic details and in return a bunch of well-known Tweeters were offered up, none of whom I was actually wanted to follow. That was the sum-total of the on boarding experience and I was left with nothing useful. So what do I do? I start posting content and following people - adding more content almost randomly in a hope that something sticks.
Twitter absolutely nailed the input side of their user experience. Adding content is almost too easy, hence the amount of bullshit “here’s what I ate this morning” tweets. Imo their next mission should now be to help new and existing users discover high-quality content.
Reddit does a better job of this using their sub-reddit approach and it’s entirely because this curation is perfumed for me that I return there more regularly than Twitter.
I can justify: I do not have to 'actively' go out to seek for information that I might be interesting/relevant to me: it comes to me. It's better than reddit because I see posts only by people vetted by me, so that's my 'filter'.It's better than email, because it's open conversation, and it's better than RSS because it's a 'social-network'. The network effect brings in the 'celebrities' (or, cool people, as I see it)
Yeah, twitter search sx ba*s. I'm hoping they make an agreement w google to figure out some sort of indexing. Regardless, it's pretty nifty. Highly recommend. Specially considering a lot of academic CS celebrities seem to be active there. (I do not come from SV eng background, so it might be a different community.)