On Being a Twit.

I've been on Twitter for a while now -- my first Tweet was on April 1st, 2007. I didn't really get into it much at first, for two reasons: 1) I didn't see any real reason to sink large amounts of time into it, particularly since I was already blogging my random thoughts on MySpace (ugh) at the time; and 2) I know that I have a very bad tendency to sink large amounts of time into things once I get into them, even when there's no good reason for me to do so, and I did not want to fall into that trap at the time (same reason I have not, nor will I ever, get involved with World of Warcraft and the like). So my Tweets were few and far between. The fact that my job's web filters started blasting Twitter three days after my first Tweet helped, too (although now Twitter is unblocked, go figure).

Well, now I'm starting to fall into that trap. Lately the things I would like to do with my (admittedly limited) online presence have grown well beyond the limitations of MySpace and Facebook and probably even this blog, and as I'm able to sneak away more time in front of the computer (not an easy task with a toddler), it will continue to evolve. So I decided that being more involved with Twitter would be a step in that direction. Plus, it's kinda fun.

Part of my reluctance to get sucked into the vorTwex (see what I did there? It's like vortex, but unnaturally mated with Twitter) was my inability to find interesting people to follow. My followers seemed completely random until I realized that they were probably just executing a search on certain terms and following anyone whose profile included any of those terms. I didn't want to cast that broad of a net. I also didn't want to put in the time or effort towards doing it the right way (see point 1 above).

Now that I am Tweeting more of my silly little life away, I have run across a number of web applications that have made Twitter a little more useful to me. In the open spirit of the Internet, I shall share them:

Twibes allows you to hand-pick the 10 Twitterers (Tweeters?) you are following who you think deserve to have more followers. Mmm, word-of-mouth advertising.

Twittelicious is a similar service, encouraging you to submit individual Tweets or Twitter sites that you find interesting (or amusing or whatever). They're even separated into sub-groups like "Weird" and "Famous People." There should be a "Creative Profanity" section.

WeFollow is a user-generated Twitter directory. Twitterers (look, I just prefer "Twits" so I'll use that from here on in) list themselves under different categories so that other Twits can find them easily. Most popular ones bubble up to the top of the listings.

TweetScan searches Twitter and other microblogging sites for given search terms and spits out a list of all the recent Tweets (or whatever other sites call their posts) that match the terms. Great for following hundreds of conversations about waffles, for instance.

Twubble digs through your existing friends and gives you a list of other Twits you may want to follow, based on what it discovered whilst interrogating your associates.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on my mood), these services are helping me rediscover Twitter and keep it from being the next stale account that I never log into anymore (I'm looking at you, Friendster). I'm certain there are more which I haven't discovered, but there you go. Of course, now the problem I find myself running headlong into is that I have to sink more time into Twitter just to keep up with all my newfound friends. You'll recall, unless you're a turnip, that this is the reason I kind of stayed away from Twitter in the first place, treating it more as a curiosity than a vital social tool.

I've decided that I need to be more selective with my circle of chosen Twits. Now that I'm following a few companies, online magazines, news aggregates and such, it occurs to me that it makes no sense to do so. I see no advantage to following these entities' Tweets that can't be gained with a plain ol' RSS feed reader. There is, however, one major disadvantage: the sheer volume of these Tweets makes it so that I have to scroll through multiple pages of material just to catch up on the Tweets of regular individuals. So, new rule: no following company Twits who have functional RSS feeds. Eliminate redundancy.

True, there are Twitter clients I can install that will help me keep corporate(ish) Tweets separate from Joe Blow Tweets, but I find the notion of installing a local application to keep up with a web-based application... unappealing. Maybe I'll try it out, but I promise nothing.

There is one thing that can save me from my impending addiction to Twitter, and that is my other annoying tendency to quickly get bored with things and walk away from them when the effort required to maintain an addiction reaches an even remotely uncomfortable level, or (more often) when a new shiny object slides into my view. I have a feeling the next shiny object will be finally learning Drupal, or Django, or Joomla. Who names these things?