How to Tidy Up Your Twitter Feed

Published on February 17, 2014

Twitter is an amazingly active social media platform.  The feed is an ever-updating hub of information - sometimes useful, sometimes not.  Thankfully, there are a few ways to tidy up your Twitter feed to optimize the information that you're getting on a daily basis.  Here's how you can make your Twitter feed work for you, some information courtesy of LifeHacker.

Only Follow Who You ACTUALLY Want to Follow

"Follow Back!" is a frequent request from Twitter users as they follow you.  The neat thing about twitter is that you are not obligated to follow the tweets of those that are following you.  In fact, NOT adhering to the "follow back" rule is one of the best ways you can optimize your own news feed.  In this way, you're choosing sources that you actually want to be hearing from - not your distant college friend who's tweets constantly update you on their relationship woes.

Categorize your feeds into "Lists"

Twitter automatically feeds all tweets from all those you follow into one list.  While this can be a useful service, there is a way to create lists to separate those you follow into categories so you don't miss something.  You could create lists for those who tweet about tech news, health and awareness, world news, close friends... the possibilities are really endless.

Create lists by adding users via the menu button (near the Follow button in most apps). You can then open up these lists individually and view them as separate feeds.

Unfortunately, Twitter currently lets you only view these feeds one-at-a-time.  If you want to view all your separate feeds at the same time, you'll have to use one of these different apps:

  • TweetDeck (Windows/Mac): TweetDeck is a great in-browser app that compiles all of your twitter information in a consolidated area.  View multiple lists at once here.
  • Plume/Falcon Pro (Android): The Android equivalent unfortunately doesn't allow side-by-side twitter list viewing, but you can swipe between each list page quickly.

Filter out what you don't want to read

 

Even when you follow completely relevant sources, sometimes they do send out content you really don't want to read.  If you want to avoid content that is boring, off-topic, spammy, or spoils what happens at the end of the Walking Dead mid-season finale (...I may be a little jaded here), you can use apps to help you filter it all out:

  • TweetDeck (Windows/Mac): TweetDeck lets you filter out the content that you see on each individual column of Tweets that you have.  Click on the settings button at the top of a column, and enter in keywords under the "Exclude" box in "Content".  You can also use this service to eliminate re-tweets, specific users, or certain types of tweets (i.e. tweets with pictures) from your feed.
  • Plume/Falcon Pro (Android): You can use this app to eliminate keywords from your feeds as well.  Go to "manage mutes" to add keywords.

Don't try to see everything: Instead, focus on what you MUST see

As we said before, Twitter is an exceptionally active social media platform.  Unless you're glued to your phone/tablet/pc/smart watch 24/7, you're probably going to miss something.  However, if you're able to prioritize specific content that you know you have to be updated on, you can separate it out by using a few different services:

  • Twitter Lists: You can create an "Important" list on Twitter that exclusively holds your VIP personnel that you want to make sure you're up-to-date with.  Be as exclusive as possible with this, as it can get full quickly.
  • RSS Feeds: If you find that most of the information you want to keep up with is website-based or blog-based, consider subscribing to an RSS feed compiler like Feedly instead of Twitter.

How do you use Twitter?  Have you used any of these apps?  Let us know your perspective!  Drop us a comment or send us an email.