Twitter: What do you do when you follow too much stuff?

I use twitter quite a bit to keep up with news and occasional funny things Bob Mortimer says. However, I have got to the point now where I’m following too many people/companies who tweet about all sorts of things, and it’s difficult to actually gain anything from it.

Does anyone here use any (free) services to organise it a bit more? Or just have any tips for how to use it better? At the moment I just scroll down the timeline on my home screen…

Stop following so many folks/companies?

Unfollow.

Or http://twurly.org

use lists?

People you want to read everything they say
People you can take or leave
companies that you follow for the info/competitions.

?

OK fair point I can stop following people but then when they share something interesting I wont get to read it.

I’ll have a look at twurly

Unsubscribe and just look at the feeds when you want to. Then enjoy all the extra time out on your bike rather than checking in on Z list celebs and being profiled for adverts.

Z list celebs

You calling Bob Mortimer Z list?

EDIT:

and being profiled for adverts

I think I’ve said this before on here but I honestly don’t give a monkeys if I’m “profiled for adverts”. Better than people selling me Tena lady

Lists.

I maintain two lists, historically “friends” and “celebs”, which have been repurposed to be ‘people I want to read most Tweets from’ and ‘people I want to read occasionally’.

And it sounds obvious, but apply some quality control to who you follow. As a random example, I followed Kevin Smith for a while, I figured he’d be hilarious and I’d get insider scoops on new films. Turned out, his entire output was variations on “just smoked a joint, now off to shag the wife.” Which, I’m sure, is fantastic if you’re Kevin Smith (or, one would assume, his wife) but not so engrossing for the rest of the world.

I hadn’t heard of lists either, I’ll have a look at that too.

Then enjoy all the extra time out on your bike rather than checking in on Z list celebs and being profiled for adverts.

Said the man on the internet.

I’ll look at the lists but I get twitter in emails – usually in batches of 10 or so – and find that works for me.

The trouble is, if you get caught up in some moral adventure, you suddenly end up with a hundred extra people to follow. I’m at that point now where I end up just whizzing past all the posts in a day, I need to set up some lists though. That’d make that sort of stuff easier. Friends on one, computers another, art people on another and then the put the rest in a ‘things I like to get angry about’ list.

I use Twitter only occasionally, hardly ever look at it, yet I still get people ‘following’ me! God knows why…

great thread, i was thinking the exact same thing this morning.

twitter is quite good but ive got to the point i need to cull who i follow.

What I don’t get as a twitter newbie is why I am getting loads of crud in my feed that I am NOT following. Anyone explain?