Working Through My Skepticism

So…Anybody know anything about Twitter?

I ask because I’ve been hearing a lot about how it’s this incredible content early-warning system for the internet, all in messages of 140 characters or less. Intriguing.

The problem is that there’s no immediate way I can find to filter the raw stream of consciousness; and even when “something big” is moving down the pipes you’ve still got to differentiate that data from the rest of the individual kernels of data bursting like popcorn onto the surface of the internet before getting inexorably buried under the next batch of “tweets.” How the heck do you navigate that?

The solution that comes to mind is that you use the “follow” function to create a separate feed specifically for the individuals that you think have the highest probability of generating the kinds of data you would be interested in. Not knowing really anyone on there (that I know of) however, tends to put a damper on things like that.

So, if anyone feels like sharing how they use this service, I would be very interested to know what you all do with this thing. It seems to me as if it might at least have the potential to be something cool; I just need directions on how to use it.