Looking back at my twitter history (mainly links to GIFs and frivolous comments) and delicious (nothing of substance) I turned to my Readability list (just articles).

I’ve done posts in the past (https://paulrandall.com/2010/01/23/condensed-type-1/ and https://paulrandall.com/2012/04/25/linkspiration/) that collate what I have consumed over the week, and I think it is much better way of documenting what is going on, because otherwise I just forget!

I watched a talk by Gavin Strange (@jamfactory) http://vimeo.com/61248847 where he had a page full of things that interested/inpired him recently. Braun watches, old sticker packets and wicked-awesome camera rigs. I’d like to play with creating one of these a week/month as a visual representation for the things that I have consumed.

There seems to be the feeling that, especially at the start, without many followers you are talking to no one, and have no one listening. In discussing this, I hope some of these points help you get the most out of Twitter.

Create, Curate, Comment

Create content

You’ve probably heard that content is king. Well it’s true. Good content will always find readers. So spend time to generate great content. Now Twitter can be tricky to get your point across in just 140 characters, so if you don’t already have one, setting up a blog should be the next thing to do. It allows you to go into a bit more detail and elaborate on your points.

Then, by tweeting out the link, your followers may want to retweet (publish your tweet to their followers) or promote it themselves.

Curate content

Now, generating posts like that takes time, so not every tweet will like that, so follow your peers, and follow industry leaders and link to their posts.

You may be initially sceptical about this, but becoming a curator, and reposting other peoples good content makes you a valuable person to follow. If you constantly talk and link to interesting stuff, people will want to listen.

Comment, join in on the conversation

One of the fantastic things about Twitter is its instant, real-time feedback so if people are asking questions, or looking for an opinion on something, converse with them. Firstly, they’ll notice who you are (if they don’t currently follow you) and if your opinion is a good one, you’ll be known as someone with a decent opinion.

Conclusion

• Have a voice, have an opinion and people will want to listen to you
• Create, curate and comment
• Tweet predictably and with rhythm. Try not to be quiet for a few days and then tweet 10 times a minute

Tips and Tricks

• Use a URL shortening service (like bit.ly) to keep track of how many people click your links
• Add ‘tweet this’ and ‘follow’ buttons to your site, to allow others to promote your content

Technology today means we can gorge on content from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep, constantly throughout the day without hesitation; But how much of it can we actually take in? Does it reach a saturation point where we keep consuming even though our minds are full?

All you can eat information

For me personally, this information overload means that I generally cannot remember many of the things that I have read. This is because our brains are not programmed to hold lots of short-term memories.

We can use various tools to overcome this. Services like Delicious and Instapaper mean we don’t have to commit it all to memory, but it still takes an involved process to catalogue all of the content we read on a daily basis.

So what is the answer? Reduce the number of people we follow on Twitter, or RSS feeds we subscribe to? Rebalance the signal-to-noise ratio and remove some of the more superfluous things we read? Or have a system in place to catalogue online consumption for future recollection? I’m keen to hear your thoughts on the subject: You can either leave a comment below or reply to me on Twitter.

Screenshot of Twitter when it first launched

I joined the site on the 27th February 2007 (it launched in March 2006), which seems a scary long time ago in the web, and so I was hunting around for a review of the site when it first launched. This post from Techcrunch is pretty interesting to read — here are a few quotes from the article:

I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website.

If this was a new startup, a one or two person shop, I’d give it a thumbs up for innovation and good execution on a simple but viral idea.

Now, it has over 200 million registered accounts, with over 1 billion tweets posted every week, and whilst it first promoted itself as an SMS-based update of course the rise of the smartphone has meant that much more could be achieved on the go, but its focus from the very start has remained of realtime status updates, wherever you are.

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A web designer and developer from the UK. I occasionally blog, frequently tweet and often procrastinate.

The last part couldn’t be more true. With RSS feeds, Twitter and other social media, lots of time can be spent keeping up-to-date and researching – but it really boils down to procrastinating (postpone doing what one should be doing).

With the immediacy of these social media, links can come in at any time, easily distracting you away from the current task in hand. Staying ‘in the zone’ can be hard with tweets popping up and other distractions such as IM, text messages and phone calls; chances are you are reading this when something more important needs to be done.

The Solution

Taking a dedicated hour out of your day to deal with these can help alleviate this. You’d be surprised how non-urgent reading your tweets are when you don’t do it for a few hours.

So turn off your Twitter client, IM and sign out of anything which could ‘pop-up’ during your day and give it a go, perhaps taking time out in the morning and afternoon to check-up and see what’s gone on in the real world and see if your productivity increases.

My third wallpaper-of-the-month, and this time it has a Twitter theme. I have decided not to add a calendar to it (but if you object, please let me know, but it at least allows you to have the wallpaper for more than one month of the year)

Download august-2009.zip

In this design, I have used the classic Twitter colours of light blue and orange, whilst creating some simple cloud shapes, and the fonts are Caslon Pro for the main quote, and Chaparral Pro for the citation.

The wallpaper has a feint tiled brid graphic, and a little lens flare just behind the quote to add some focus.

I’ve just noticed this is another blue/orange combo, so I can assure you next month will be completely different!

The wallpaper dimensions in this months zip file are:

• 1024 x 768
• 1280 x 1024
• 1280 x 800
• 1440 x 900
• 1680 x 1050
• 1900 x 1200

Download august-2009.zip