Twitter Whitelist Filtering
Cut out the noise and stay up to date
Twitter is a nice thing to leave open, particularly for the loan-freelancer or home-based worker. It’s the water-cooler, technology chat, peer review, support network, or somewhere to ask (or answer) a quick question.
So you know, just in a little tab over there to the left. Just to stay up to date. Certainly not something to check all the time, because that would be a waste of time – and we’ve got work to do. But, those updates.
Here’s a quick tip for cutting down the noise drastically, while still maintaining the sense of connection and the all important “staying up to date”: create a Twitter search whitelist.
Creating the Whitelist.
Twitter’s web based search understands the OR operator, among others, and also allows you to search within People you follow. With these two simple functions you can create a powerful ‘whitelist’ filter for the topics you’re interested in, from the people you’re interested in, while cutting out all the other random chatter going on throughout the day.
The resulting page can be bookmarked in your browser for easy future access, although I’ve found Twitter’s own ‘Save Search’ function (from the menu under the little cog button) has some trouble saving the larger queries. The browser bookmark is probably better anyway.
As an example, here’s my Twitter whitelist, which cuts things down to the following topics:
php OR javascript OR html OR laravel OR angularjs OR github OR javascript OR bitbucket OR ireland OR dublin OR inishowen OR buncrana OR glitch OR gay OR pride OR LGBT OR meetup OR engineyard OR nerdbo.at OR nerdboat OR micflan
It’s important to include your own Twitter handle at the end in order to keep an eye on mentions.
One slight downside, this type of search only seems possible while using the Twitter.com web site at the moment. No other app I’ve seen allows a search within ‘People you follow’ – including Twitter’s own Tweetdeck.
As soon as it’s available within Tweetdeck I can see myself setting up a number of ‘whitelisted’ columns and doing away with the main Timeline almost altogether. I’m finding it a really nice way to use Twitter without the danger of getting sucked in by the gossip of the day.
Email me when Michael Flanagan publishes or recommends stories