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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Twitter Me Timbers

Twitter Me Timbers

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So I’m finally getting around to figuring out this twitter stuff and have added a bunch of people to my twitter feed. The default page is so unorganized that I got chest pains and had to go re-organize my dvd’s to restore some balance in my life after I tried to visit twitter.com, so I am looking for a program to deal with the chaos. Are there any out there you would recommend? What about as gadgets for Windows Seven or Mac?

My feed is johngcole, btw. Not sure how much I will use it.

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  6. 6.

    SGEW

    God dammit, Mr. Cole! Don’t you dare start posting on Twitter!

    I’ve managed to avoid the damned thing ’till now, hoping that it would just go away (I thought for sure its days were numbered once John McCain started using it). But if you start, I’ll have to actually go and read your fucking tweets. Cripes. As if checking this blog a couple of times a day wasn’t enough (and most of the comments too, even if I’m too busy/distracted nowadays to join in very often).

    Don’t do it. Plz.

  7. 7.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    My feed is johngcole, btw. Not sure how much I will use it.

    Can you just call me if anything important happens?

  8. 8.

    Joshua Norton

    “so I am looking for a program to deal with the chaos. ”

    Here’s a customized program you can try:

    Delete
    Delete
    Delete

    Repeat as necessary.

  9. 9.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @SGEW: I always wondered when I’d be too fogeyed to enjoy the kidz latest technology. Twitter appears to be it.

  12. 12.

    Max

    I’d love to follow those BJ’ers that are on it.

    Someone (who is more tech savy than me) should do a list.

  13. 13.

    debit

    @Just Some Fuckhead: I resisted mightily, but gave in when I realized I could see what was going on with just a quick glance at my iphone. Plus, I get to keep an eye on what my kids are up to.

  16. 16.

    The Dangerman

    Timbers? Isn’t that what shivers Lowery when he sees Sarah? Ergo, Twittering me timbers just sounds wrong.

  17. 17.

    a different phil

    Following.

    Here’s another vote for Tweetdeck. Run in Adobe AIR, so it can run on anything AIR runs on, which includes Windows and Mac.

  18. 18.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Max: Maybe one of the front pagers could just have a thread called ‘post your tweets here’ and we could all give our twitter names in one spot. Then, we could have a twitterati…nah, forget that part of it.

  23. 23.

    SGEW

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Have I finally been fogeyed? But I still enjoy young people’s music! Like, uh, bands from the 90’s, and, um, jazz . . .

    . . . Hell’s bells, I guess I am an old curmudgeon. It was when I refused to friend anyone on Facebook, wasn’t it?

  24. 24.

    beltane

    Twitter smacks too much of revanchest populism for me. I prefer to communicate through the ether with the assistance of Panglossian archangels.

  25. 25.

    Nicole

    Twitter’s entire existence was validated during that brief, golden time when “CWalken” was tweeting. (it wasn’t really him, and somehow, FakeCWalken just isn’t the same). I have searched the web in vain for screen grabs of the hilarity, but I fear they are gone forever.

    Though Neil Patrick Harris’ first tweet was pretty good.

  26. 26.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @SGEW: I dunno, I’ve got 150+ friends on Facebook. Twitter is just stoopid.

    I get accused of the curmudgeon thing a lot but I’m not a curmudgeon. I just have anger issues.

  31. 31.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Just Some Fuckhead: I resisted FB for a long time because I knew I would get addicted. I wanted to keep my friends list manageable, but I kept having to add people who wanted to friend me. So, I now have a limit of 69. If anyone wants to friend me, I kick someone else off the island–usually high school acquaintances who are now screeching about impeaching Obama. I’m running out of people to kick off, so I might have to raise my limit to 75 (was doing it in multiples of 25, what, me OCD? Nahhhhh….My Netflix Queue is permanently set at 50).

  32. 32.

    tripletee

    I’d recommend Twitterific. Simple, clean interface with a lot of features under the hood. TweetDeck would probably send you into full blown cardiac arrest.

  33. 33.

    Max

    @Nicole: You should follow:

    @FakeAPStylebook

    Sample tweets

    When referring to someone with a Ph.D. as “doctor” immediately follow it with “but, you know, not a REAL doctor.”

    Use “faith-based,” as “nuts” or “probably dangerous” may be seen as disrespectful.

  34. 34.

    Comrade Mary

    I am now following any commentariat names I can recognize in my exhausted not-quite-flu fog. You have been warned.

  37. 37.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @asiangrrlMN: Yeah, I have those high school “friends” too. They’re defriending me at about a rate of one a week as I tell them how retarded they are.

  38. 38.

    Thadeus Horne

    @SGEW: No!! Why? w Why do you have to read his fucking tweets? I don’t understand why anyone would read anything called ‘tweets.’ That’s just not acceptable. Sorry, but I would rather pry my eye out with a rusty spoon than do anything called twitter. ball up, Cole. Repudiate that crap.

  40. 40.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Just Some Fuckhead: I should try that. One guy wanted to friend me, and I read his info. He said his politics were anything but Democrat. His religion? “I know there is a God because of the US Marine Corps!” Yeah, I didn’t accept his invite. As for the others, I swear some of them friended me just to have me join their Mafia Wars (which I did not). I’ve had some defriend me, most likely because of, well, everything.

  41. 41.

    Thadeus Horne

    @SGEW: No!! Why? w Why do you have to read his fucking tweets? I don’t understand why anyone would read anything called ‘tweets.’ That’s just not acceptable. Sorry, but I would rather pry my eye out with a rusty spoon than do anything called twitter. ball up, Cole. Repudiate that crap.@Just Some Fuckhead:

  44. 44.

    Incertus

    I use Tweetdeck myself, on both my phone and my laptop. I use it also as an adjunct to Facebook. If anyone wants to follow me, I’m briankspears. I’ll be going through this thread and adding people myself.

  45. 45.

    Annie

    Shit. And I just mastered Facebook. Now, i get these emails of people following me on Twitter. Half the time, I don’t even recognize the names.

    Is this creepy? Or is it just me?????

  46. 46.

    Thadeus Horne

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Come on…you don’t have 150 friends. Nobody has 150 friends. Christ, I’m 65 years old and I don’t even know 150 people, let alone have 150 friends. You’re lucky if you find two friends in your whole life. Can the hyperbole.

  48. 48.

    Comrade Mary

    @asiangrrlMN: Aw, have lots of ginger tea! I’m just intermittently sore and tired and foggy, not full out sick. I want to go lick a subway car, get the flu, and get it over with, you know?

  49. 49.

    Thadeus Horne

    @Woodrow “Asim” Jarvis Hill: I don’t know..The opinions seem pretty clear to me on this site. I don’t need to be ambiguous with a bunch of misspellings and abreviations. But, that just may be because I learned to read and write when they still taught you how to do that. It was a long time ago in a place far, far away.

  50. 50.

    Incertus

    @Annie: It could be creepy. I do it because I’m planning on bombing both facebook friends and twitter followers with incessant pleas to buy my book when it finally comes out–on facebook at least they’re mostly former students and other writers, with a smattering of old classmates thrown in, so it really is a networking thing with me. That takes some of the creepiness out, I think.

  53. 53.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Thadeus Horne:

    I don’t understand why anyone would read anything called ‘tweets.’

    Says the man commenting on a “blog.”

    I’d tell you my professional twitter account, but then I’d have to kill you. :)

  55. 55.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Annie: Those are most likely spam, on the Twitter, I mean. Check to see if they are following a bajillion people and have no followers of their own. Dead giveaway. Most only have one post, too.

    @robertdsc: Tuna. Nap. Tuna. Nap. Escape! Pet me. My futon.

  57. 57.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Incertus:

    and others – I also like Tweetdeck. I’ve tried about 20 different Twitter apps, and that’s the one I always come back to. Like the multicolumn view.

    And for those who think twitter makes people sound stupid, I’ve found some great professional info and links to great articles through twitter that I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise. I have over 1,000 followers professionally. It really can boost blog traffic too. Kos and his stable are on there, as are eschaton and willis. Apparently, the TCOT (true conservatives of twitter) are also a hoot to read.

    As if the front pagers don’t have enough comedy gold to mine.

  59. 59.

    debit

    @Thadeus Horne: It’s only creepy when you look at their posts and realize they have nothing in common with you and probably only added you to up their “followed” count.

  62. 62.

    Incertus

    @Thadeus Horne:

    I don’t understand why anyone would read anything called ‘tweets.’

    Because you’d be surprised just how much you can communicate in only 140 characters if you limit yourself. Hell, that’s the whole theory behind formal poetry, behind pretty much any game for that matter–take a reasonably easy task and make it more difficult by putting some artificial limitations on it. I’m not saying tweets are the equivalent of Shakespeare (though there are some poets doing some really interesting things in the format), but then again, most poets aren’t Shakespeare either.

  64. 64.

    gwangung

    Fehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

    Who the hell thinks I’m interesting enough to follow?

    If I wanted minions, I’d hire them.

    Different if you’re female and drop dead gorgeous, but come on……..

  66. 66.

    Incertus

    @arguingwithsignposts: I’m only a little over a hundred followers, but I’m not as aggressive as I could be in tagging people to follow either. But I’m at almost 800 facebook friends, so I’m making connections that way also. Downside is that it’s still frowned on a bit in academia, and I suspect that it’s not helping me in a tight job market. Of course, some of my intemperate remarks on my blog over the years probably did more damage than Twitter and Facebook combined. Still, I’ve got a job, which is more than many of my friends can say.

  69. 69.

    Comrade Mary

    @asiangrrlMN: Nooo! Now my throat is feeling a little more sore and I’m getting all hypochondrialistic. Of course, Toronto just opened up H1N1 vaccinations to the nominally healthy today. Nice timing, city.

    (Hope your sinuses and the rest of your betraying body get better soon.)

  70. 70.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Incertus:

    Downside is that it’s still frowned on a bit in academia, and I suspect that it’s not helping me in a tight job market.

    I guess it depends on where in academia and what kind of uptight assholes run that particular specialty. :) I have a niche that I cover pretty extensively, so I’m pretty tied into the professional and academic spheres there. And the whole interwebs thing is sorta part of my field, so it fits. And it helps me in a job market if I ever need it, I think.

    I feed all my blog posts through Facebook, so I have a lot of people following there too, but I don’t bother to update that account too often.

  72. 72.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Comrade Mary: Heh. I do have that effect on people. I get bronchitis every year, so this is probably that with a soupcon of flu and a big ol’ sinus infection cherry on top. Nip that in the bud if you can because it fucking sucks.

  74. 74.

    Betsy

    @asiangrrlMN:
    3rding SGEW, JSF, and asiangrrlmn. Esp SGEW – I also thought that when John McCain and Wolf Blitzer and other painfully unhip people started using it, I was off the hook – surely no one I knew or gave a shit about would use it. But no. I’m in my twenties (for another month, anyway), yet I feel too old for it. I do not understand.

  75. 75.

    Nicole

    @Max: You have just helped the gaping wound that was torn in my chest when CWalken was shut down start to close just a little bit. I’m going to start following FakeAPStylebook. Thanks!

  77. 77.

    Incertus

    @arguingwithsignposts: English, specifically creative writing/poetry. There were a grand total of five jobs I qualified for this year, and I’ve applied to all five. Don’t even expect an interview even though I’m reasonably published, won a major fellowship, have a book coming out next year, have extensive teaching experience and am a poetry editor for an online culture magazine that gets 200K hits a month and is growing. There’s just no room at the tenure-track inn these days. So I teach my 4/4 full time, get a cw class most semesters, and keep working at it.

  79. 79.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Incertus:

    English, specifically creative writing/poetry.

    Yeesh, I feel for you and totally understand that the English market is an oversaturated bitch of a job market. Good luck. I used to run a job board in my field, and was fortunate to get into the internet arena before it was clogged with a lot of newly minted ph.d.s and laid off/retired executives with pretty pedigrees.

  81. 81.

    parksideq

    @Comrade Luke: Co-sign on tweetie. I can’t wait for the Mac app to update so that it can sync with the iPhone version. Adobe AIR kills computers slowly, hence my avoidance of TweetDeck, Seesmic, etc.

    @parksideq is my Twitter handle, follow at will.

  84. 84.

    JenJen

    What the hell did you do to get locked out? From the looks of it, you’re not in Twitterjail at least.

    And ya’ll are just haters. Twitter takes a bit of getting used to, is all, but once you assemble the right balance of people you are actually interested in, it’s surprisingly cool. And addictive.

  88. 88.

    Nicole

    @Incertus: Also hilarious. And helps fill up my feed so they aren’t all a friend of mine who seems to post about a billion times a day, and yet never says anything the least bit amusing.

  89. 89.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Anyway, I’m still waiting for the Balloon Juice t-shirt and thong selection over at cafe press. (cf.)

  92. 92.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Thadeus Horne: Ooooh, I have. I may pour a shot in my ginger tea. I know, I know, should be drunk neat, but I like mine cold so I usually have it on the rocks.

    @JenJen: Nope Too few words. Too little thought. Too restrictive.

    @Thadeus Horne: I just like the yin-yang look of the 6 and the 9 juxtaposed….Oh hell. I have the mind of a fourteen-year old boy. What can I say?

  93. 93.

    Nicole

    … and I just updated my status on Facebook with how much I like the FakeAPStylebook on Twitter. I’m worried that crossing the streams will cause a rip in the space-time continuum and it will be all my fault.

  94. 94.

    JenJen

    @asiangrrlMN: Yeah, it’s not for that, but I still think it’s awesome at what it does do. It fills a really terrific news junkie niche, too.

    Also, you’d be surprised how damned funny some people can be with so few characters.

  96. 96.

    Martin

    Twitterific or Tweetie for Mac, depending on your preference.

    There don’t seem to be any decent Twitter clients on Windows for whatever reason.

  97. 97.

    ominira

    My favorite twitter story of the day: “Conference humiliation: they’re tweeting behind your back.” A conference keynote speaker gets tweckled (500 tweets during his presentation about how much it sucks) and remains blissfully unaware of the total contempt his audience holds him in. Glad I read it after I got back from a conference in my field or I would have been totally paranoid about giving a talk.

  98. 98.

    leinie

    Somebody tweets as John Scalzi’s cat Ghlaghghee, and he’s pretty damned funny. Scalzi swears it isn’t him.

    Into the account to add all you people, even though I mostly lurk here and rarely post.

  99. 99.

    tripletee

    @tripletee:

    I’d recommend Twitterific Tweetie. Simple, clean interface with a lot of features under the hood. TweetDeck would probably send you into full blown cardiac arrest.

    Fixed – just realized that Twitterific (the iPhone version) is the one I tried briefly and gave up on in favor of Tweetie. Too many sickeningly cutesy app names to keep straight, I guess.

  100. 100.

    RareSanity

    @Incertus:

    shitmydadsays:

    “Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.”

    Classic…

    RareSanity = maceow on twitter…Guess my cover is blown now.

  101. 101.

    D-Chance.

    Cole tweets!

    Disaster, frustration, blegs and otherwise curse-laden blogposts to ensue shortly… ;)

  103. 103.

    TaosJohn

    If you’re just using Twitter (not FaceBorg), Tweetie is a great app. I use TweetDeck mostly, though, because I have a FB page too to drive a little traffic.

    That’s @TaosJohn, John. I’m a-following you now…

  104. 104.

    slag

    Twitter got kinda useless when they changed it so you don’t see the replies made to people you aren’t following. It used to be that when someone talked to someone you didn’t know, you could eavesdrop and maybe learn something new. No more. Not to mention that it can be infuriating and totally counterproductive. But that’s a whole other issue.

  105. 105.

    TaosJohn

    Since management is tweeting, I switched to my Twitter handle instead of JHF, and now I’m moderated. Hnhh.

    I agree the medium sucks, although tweeting does get at least a few people to your website. You can get in on some good info streams if you follow the right people, too, but there’s also an inordinate amount of what so-and-so had for breakfast, Chopra quotations, and what time the fucking plane is landing. The thing is, I just went through a week of family crisis and didn’t post or read anything, and when I looked back in today, it was like so what.

    But it’s still interesting. Things can go viral. And more than that, it can do astounding things for entrepeneurs and local businesses. There’s a lot of experimenting going on. Anyone who cares about the digital medium at all oughta have an oar in the water.

    But I don’t think it’s a good place to meet girls.

  107. 107.

    different church-lady

    @Incertus: Because you’d be surprised just how much you can communicate in only 140 characters if you limit yourself.

    Yeah, it’s just like haiku, really.

    Except that people who write successful haiku sit down and THINK REALLY HARD about what they’re doing with those 17 syllables in the attempt to give them DEEP, LAYERED, AND LASTING MEANING instead of just firing off whatever they happen to be thinking about while standing at the bus stop.

  109. 109.

    Yutsano

    @kormgar: I even have several good reasons to join Twitter (mostly to follow Roland Hedley and Karen Tumulty) but I still won’t do it. No Facebook or MySpace either. After hearing how fast and loose they play with your personal info that pretty much decided that for me.

  110. 110.

    The Tim Channel

    My twitter account is thetimchannel, but my tweets aren’t public. I have to approve you to get my tweets, so I’m obviously not trying to get the most followers. I only follow half a dozen folks, but like John, am overwhelmed by the constant tweets. Will have to check out some of these tweet management systems to see how they work.

    How about you just subscribe to the RSS feed on my blog instead? That seems like a reasonable workaround to me. Does anybody really care what I’m doing every second of my life anyway? Hell, I don’t even care that much.

    Enjoy.

  111. 111.

    WereBear

    I’m at @wayofcats and twitter occasionally, such as my newsletter, because I find it very confusing, still. Just haven’t reached that peak of learning yet.

  113. 113.

    terry chay

    I see you’ve found TweetDeck (there are others, of course: Some people like Seesmic, I like Nambu for the Mac, There is Echofon and Tweetie for the iPhone)

    In any case, I also recommend Twitlett: twitlet.com/ . It’s a handy little thing when you’re browsing and want to just point out a link to someone (like your Simon Johnson tweet.)

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