The world as I see it…

Does the title of this blog make sense?  Well, we’ll see… I’m sure it does.  It’s almost 5am and I’m fried!  I really need to sleep, but would rather write this now than later or tomorrow because I know I’ll get too busy with work stuff and forget.  So, it’s now or never.

Well…  as many of my friends know, I use Twitter for almost 90% of my “updates” and usually that comes from my phone or ipod touch.  I’ll admit that as much of a “techie” guy I consider myself, I’m still very ignorant and behind the times regarding much of the social networking that’s out there these days.  For instance, I signed up for Linkedin a while back, added many “connections”, yet I have no idea what to do with that profile or why I even have it.  It keeps telling me to add this and that to finish it and I just don’t wanna.   I’m sure that someone will tell me eventually, but this is really the first time I’ve ever asked (albeit, in a blog).

I don’t wanna write for 2 hours about random junk as I usually do, but I kinda wanted to touch on the Twitter thing and mention something I just found out recently.   As I said, I tend to be a bit behind on the social media thing… not that I’m not into it, but if something changes (like a Facebook redesign, for example) I could really care less, nor would I notice unless I read a million updates on people saying “omg! facebook changed the design again?!?!…  gahhh the world is ending…”    (blah blah get-a-life blah!)

But a while ago, Twitter added this new feature called “Lists”.  I saw it…   didn’t really look into how to use it and just figured it would be useless to me.  I tend to ignore these things at first rather than dick around with them.  I’m just too lazy, I guess.

Speaking of – I still haven’t used half the tools on Pyware yet…   people sometimes ask me, “how does this tool work?” and I say “umm, I don’t know… never knew that existed or what it does.”   (…really)

Anyway, after a while, I saw I was added to my friend Bill’s account under two lists.  I looked at the links and saw it was a compilation of different people, organized under that list’s name thus making it easier to keep those people all in one group.  Well, yeah… cool.  Lists are to create and organize groups of people associated with one thing or another so you can click on and view just those people when you want.  Yeah, okay.  Easy!

So, I went through and created a few lists to organize the people I follow and just use it for the reasons it’s there.  I mean, easy, right?  Well, yeah… but the reason I’m writing this is because I found out a neat little trick that people probably don’t know about, and after talking with my friend Brian about it last night, he didn’t know of it either and both of us agreed that this makes for a much easier and simpler experience with Twitter, by doing a bit more organizing of the people you want to “follow”.

Now, if there’s an official page online that explains this in plain black and white (or red and green… whatever…) and I’m just WAY late to the party, then please just don’t tell me. I don’t care.  I work a lot and have no time to read all that junk because I’m always constantly buried in music and drill and photoshop stuff.

So, these lists…  you can create them and add people to them and you can follow their updates through lists (which are essentially bookmarks)…  but WITHOUT actually following them in typical “Twitter” fashion!  (again, I feel as if I may sound like Captain Obvious here, but just let me have my moment, ok?)  ;)

I find it somewhat annoying that there are a few people/celebs/businesses that post like 45 times per hour.  Not that I’m really complaining that much, because after all, I DID voluntarily choose to follow them.  However, there’s gotta be some of you out there that agree with me that sometimes it’s just very random that so-and-so posts a blog-like message that covers 16 tweets in a row…  only that you have to read it backwards/bottom to top.  haha!  Random.

As I was organizing my lists, I went through and created/added all of the ones I wanted to and pretty much cleaned up my account which I hadn’t touched in a while.  After I finished organizing everyone into lists, I went through again and noticed a few random store sites and info sites I was no longer interested in following.  So, I just “unfollowed” them and went about my business.

Today, I went through and just for fun, I bookmarked each of my lists, so I can just click on the one I want and when I want.   When I clicked on my “shopping” labeled list, I saw a few sites that were showing that I used to follow but I coulda sworn I unfollowed.  Hmm…  Twitter has had issues before…  I just thought it was a random snafu.  Then I looked at the profile and saw that I was NOT following them.

Realizing that I unfollowed them yet didn’t remove them from the assigned lists I created, I experimented on some random place (Banana Republic, I think), I saw the pulldown menu for lists, added them to “shopping” and reloaded my list page for “shopping”.  They showed up there!!!

So…  this is totally awesome.   I may have found a way to actually simplify Twitter (for me) by doing a bit of organizing and arranging of the people I wanna follow or am interested in updates from.  And what I did in the process was made sure I had all of them in the proper lists and then I proceeded to unfollow them!  :)  This way, they will no longer show up in my default feed and the only people/celebs/companies that will are the ones I really care about each time I log on.

I have now created a few more lists and will add people/organizations to those lists to “follow” without officially following them, and this will keep that home page clear of clutter.  Those people will only show up on my created lists and I don’t have to follow all those people anymore if I don’t want to.

I’m not saying I’m going to unfollow all of my friends.  No no no…   This is only for people like celebrities, companies, fan sites, things like “Google” or random accounts I was “following” who don’t follow me, that I only wanna read about once in a while.  Sometimes I don’t care about these Star Wars fan pictures at some costume party yesterday.  But I like to follow them for days I really need to kill time.  That’s why they went into my “entertainment” list and I’ll click on that whenever I wanna see all that stuff at once.

I added a ton of people/organizations to all of my “Lists” and now am able to view whoever’s updates I want, when I want and without all the clutter of mixed friends with ESPN with Shaq with Amazon with Weather… etc.   It’s just a home page with all of my friends’ updates, the few companies I follow that I wanna check on regularly and the few celebrities who’s updates I genuinely enjoy reading.  :)

Not to say I wasn’t aware that I could just create a “friends” or a “favorites” list.  I did that and that works fine and all, but this is just to simplify everything all together and to only see what I want to see, when I want to.  :)

Twitter is cool…  it is what it is and I’m always using it to update whenever I feel like it, post pics n vids, as well as posting blogs, like this one.  It’s already “simplified” in a matter if speaking, but with their addition of “Lists” and giving us the ability to add people to a list without officially following them really makes me happy and it’s kinda nice to still have easy access to all of the info I want with just a click or two, but only have who I really want on the home page.

Thank you, Twitter.  I’m probably a year late getting on that bandwagon, but that’s ok.   I tend to be behind on all this stuff, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.  :)