A Tiny Trick for Tuning Twitter

I use Twitter as my main source of news, real-time information, and opinion on top of those facts. As a result of my reliance on Twitter, I grow increasingly sensitive about which accounts I follow and let into my feed. I’m still tinkering with my follow count (shaved down to under 300, but recently met some cool new folks!), but one move I made dramatically improved my experience: I un-followed every Twitter feed for technology news or any news, for that matter. I even un-followed TechCrunch, where I’ve been a contributor for a long, long time now. Why? I realize that if I picked the right ~300 folks to follow in the first place, that they would retweet and/or share all the important news and surface it for my consumption. When I mean I don’t follow any tech feeds, it even includes TechMeme. I’ve tried to cull my list to people who share news with their own insights or judgment, and this filter is serving me quite well — I never feel “behind” the news cycle, but I also never feel drowned out by the noise. (By the way, whenever someone says Twitter is too noisy, it’s worth recalling that it’s not Twitter that’s noisy, but rather that individual hasn’t followed the right accounts. Twitter is the perfect information filtering tool out there — if used properly, the noise should be minimal or nonexistent.)