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The New Twitter
If Twitter is more popular with lawyers than we expected, the best may be yet to come.
Yesterday Twitter launched a new design. The changes are largely cosmetic, but there are some functional changes as well.
I’m finding Twitter much easier to use, and some of the features are faster. If the public thinks the same it could increase in popularity.
So if you haven’t tried “Tweeting” yet, now might be the time to check it out.
Prettier, maybe. But not more useful… yet. I reckon they’re doing this to signal that Twitter still lives and will develop. I wonder how many people use the web interface, as opposed to Twhirl or Twitterific etc.
What has to happen for Twitter to become useful and enjoyable for me is the introduction of filters or channels or folders. I’ve got at least three different sorts of people/orgs. I follow: those who tweet social stuff (“I”m having breakfast.” “I’ve finished breakfast” etc. Why? Because sometimes… they’re funny.), news organizations such as IHT, and then tech people who alert me to good links. But all of these swim together in the same “inbox” and make reading — even scanning — my tweets, difficult. I need to be able to group them by my own taxonomy and then, depending on what I”m up to, screen out the noise and leave the signal.
And the noise can be really annoying. I can only take so many incomprehensible messages by people I’m following that are meant for people they’re following. Again, there should be a simple way to shut these out.
I’ve been hunting for ways to accomplish this filtering now, even kludgy ones, but I don’t think it’s possible. Strange that an Adobe Air developer hasn’t yet put something together that will do this.
There’s a decent piece out of Monash on what needs to happen to Twitter, most of which I agree with: http://tinyurl.com/2mvepd
Hah! No sooner do I comment on the need for filters than I get (via RSS) word of Feedalizer http://www.feedalizr.com, an Air app that wants to marry my Twitter, FriendFeed etc. etc. in one app. (Which is pretty much the opposite of what I want). Except that it lets me filter! But only by one person at a time. So using Feedalizr to read Twitter (not nearly as pretty as Twhirl) I can see just Connie Crosby or just Steve Matthews.
This isn’t the grail yet, but it is getting there.
The National Post blogged a You Tube video that I thought appropriate to this discussion. See the Twitter Song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYP-wBaqQAI
More today on this from Robert Abrogi.