6 tips on how not to get addicted to Twitter

If you are like me and want to consume as much information as possible then you have probably heard of twitter.com. This micro blogging system is mostly used by people sharing their current activities. However, a lot of people are also using to share great tutorials, articles and other interesting information. Twitter.com is an excellent tool to stay up to date with current technology. There is however a downside to this fantastic service.

If you are following people who tend to post interesting things a lot, it’s hard to keep up with them. Multiple times I’ve had a browser window open with a lot of tabs (50+) of things I still had to read. One handy firefox plugin can be Read it Later. However with all this new information flooding in, even this will get unmanageable after a while.

So in this post I will give you some tips on how to prevent a twitter addiction. I promise, this will help you in the long run.

1) Filter your interests: You can’t be interested in everything. Prioritize what you really want to read.

2) Use the search functionality, it works great and it’s on demand. Want to see the latest on JQuery, search JQuery and you will get the latest.

3) Don’t follow just everyone. Follow people or sites that will really have an added value to your interests.

4) Use one good tool to view your tweets and customize it to your needs. I’m using TweetDeck and this is working very good for me. It allows me to have separate columns. Use the search column. It updates whenever you start TweetDeck and shows new results on the last search criteria.

5) Don’t spend to much time on twitter. Plan your Twitter time! 30mins in the morning, 30mins in the evening. Not more! Got some spare time, do something else.

6) Don’t go back more than 12hours. Don’t be like oh this is handy, this is handy too, oh my god..I gotta read this. Now I need to go back some more in time to see what all these other people have tweeted, what if I miss valuable information. Don’t do it! The chance that you are actually going to do something with the article, tutorial or plugin is very slim! If you are working on something and need to find some information quick, use the search (Tip 2).

There are probably a lot of good tips out there, these are just the ones I have found to be the most effective. If you have some good tips, let me know via the comments.


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