Twitter Overload?

I was a reluctant convert to Twitter, and I'm still not sure what value it really brings to the evolving world of social media. I started out slowly, only following people I know. Then people I didn't know started following me. I thought it was pretty cool that people I didn't even know would be interested in what I had to say. Then I set up a TweetLater account so I could automatically start following these interesting strangers.

Next thing I know I've got hundreds of people following me and in turn I'm following hundreds of people. That means I'm now getting as many as five or ten tweets every minute! Thank goodness I found TweetDeck! This nifty little app runs on PC, Mac and Linux. TweetDeck lets you filter the tweets you receive so you can see more of what you want with less of what you don't.

The key is that TweetDeck allows users to group the folks they are following into categories. I have a category for people I know, one for other people I find interesting and one each for direct messages and replies. Everything else goes into an All Friends category. The categories can be arranged into columns and the columns can be arranged or hidden as desired. Users can click on Tweets and get profile information regarding the sender, follow or unfollow the sender and more.

As a user, you can Tweet directly from the app. TweetDeck even includes a utility that allows you to shorten URLs using any of several programs. Best of all users can post simultaneously to their Facebook account with a simple check of a box. I really enjoy being able to browse the hundreds of Tweets I get and unfollow the hucksters and nutjobs that seem to crop up wherever you go.

For me the jury is still out on Twitter, but now that I have a tool that filters out all the noise I think I'll stick with it a while longer. Now if they'd create a similar app for my phone...