Twitter: Don’t drink the river, drink FROM the river

Rommil Santiago — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 06:26:13 +0000

Twitter is a great source of information, but who can keep up?

I have a love/hate affair with Twitter. I use it to keep up-to-date with new media, engage in interesting conversations, and meet new people in my industry. I’ve always been amazed at the quality of the articles shared, and the speed at which breaking news spreads on Twitter. The fact that its influence was strong enough to have brought down ad campaigns, and win a Presidential election convinces me that it has made its mark in history and is a force to be reckoned with. But despite all it’s strengths and accomplishments, lets face it:

Twitter is a time-suck.

I’m not sure what the magic number of people to follow is at which it becomes unmanageable to keep track, but personally, I think that number is around the 200-mark or so. By following so many people at once, there is so much noise and distraction – it is hard to concentrate on any one thing or any one person. As my friend and co-worker, Kirsten, puts it, Twitter is often like an echo chamber. So much content is re-tweeted, and so many conversations are going one at once that it’s hard to pick out the new and meaningful content. Twitter can be completely draining – and that’s just wrong. Social media should be engaging and invigorating, not tiring and exhausting.

Get organized.

A screen shot of TweetDeck.

Several applications have come out recently that help sort out the spaghetti-threads of conversatio, but my personal favorite is TweetDeck. It allows you to filter and group Tweets. But as good a tool as TweetDeck is, I found that as I followed more and more interesting people, even TweekDeck wasn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, TweetDeck is great, it just doesn’t do a good enough job in stringing conversation threads together. Half the time I’m reading replies to comments I don’t understand, and it’s frustrating.

Following less people.

One option I considered, was to simply follow less people. I began trying to un-follow people that I either didn’t engage with, or stopped reading – but that proved to be a difficult task as well. Many of the Tweeters I follow tweet about all the mundane minutea of their lives: like what time they woke up, or how hot their coffee is. So I thought, “Well, perhaps I can cut some of the noise by un-following these Tweeters!”. Then, just as I’m about to drop them, they tweet brilliance – insight that resonates with me so much that I must convince myself that having to read their silly posts is just the price of admission to be part of the thought-party. There went that idea, right out the window.

Taking a break.

Probably the easiest thing to do to avoid Twitter burn-out, unless it’s your job to be on Twitter all day, is to take a break. Accept that it’s OK not to be up-to-date with every single development. It’s OK not to constantly engage in conversation. Twitter will be there when you come back. Promise. The world won’t end, and you’ll feel great – trust me. Treat Twitter like chatting in a cafe. You wouldn’t sit in a Starbucks all day and night would you? (Gosh I hope not at least.) So why blow an entire day on Twitter?

Twitter is like a river. As much as it can quench your thirst for news and conversation – it’s humanly impossible to drink all that Twitter has to offer. It’s OK to take sips – and breaks. So how about it? Close the window. Disconnect for a while. Get out and get some fresh air and feel free to retweet me when you get back to Twitter in a day or so. Twitter can wait. Honest.

How about you? Have you ever experienced social media burn-out or other similar techno-stresses? How do you cope?

Bricks and Clicks: A blog by Montreal-based Web Marketing Consultant, Rommil Santiago » Break

Twitter: Don’t drink the river, drink FROM the river