I finally signed up for a twitter account on Monday during class, after being exposed as one of the few who hadn’t yet signed up. After spending some time on Listorious, I found 10 individuals and organizations to follow that fit with a technology beat. While following the “tweets” over the course of a day, I found that different people utilized twitter in very different ways, some good and some bad.
Organizations I chose to follow include GuardianTech, BBCSciTech, TechCrunch, and DiggGamingNews. All of the tweets originating from these sources linked back to news articles from the organizations websites. The text in the tweets were generally headlines from the stories. While this is a convenient way to gather news relevant to the beat you’re following in one place, there is little to differentiate this sort of usage from a basic RSS feed. There was a larger diversity of content to be found in tweets of individuals that didn’t directly associate themselves with broad-spectrum, mainstream news outlet.
When I say “diversity of content,” it’s not necessarily a good thing. There were certain people on my list who had some interesting commentary and links to blog articles but would then regress into a state of annoying self-indulgence by making multiple tweets about irrelevant topics. One person posted eight tweets in a row about drinking in a bar in Texas. Maybe I am being too critical, but I did not find it all that entertaining when my tweet list started getting spammed like an AOL chatroom. Had these bloggers been celebrities, I could see the appeal to fans, but when I choose to follow tech reporters, bloggers, entrepreneurs, etc. I wasn’t expecting as much unnecessary information.
That being said, there were others that provided great information that you probably would not come upon by browsing a typical news site. David Pogue is a tech columnist for the NY times and works with CNBC. His feed has great, relevant commentary with links to different tech-related stories and plenty of pictures.
Chris Pirillo has a great feed as well. He is a tech expert for CNN.com but he has his own blog and the stories he produces are both newsworthy and entertaining.
Others I’m currently following (subject to change!):Â Bill Gates, Veronica, the host of Tekzilla, Jeff Pulver, a tech entrepreneur and Robert Scoble, a popular Rackspace employee.
Leave a comment