How I use Twitter

Next week I’m going to start a new job as a data scientist at Twitter and I am thrilled. Aside from Google search, no other website has had a more positive impact on my life than Twitter. Twitter is just so much fun, and I have learned so much from it. 

Because my experience has been so good, it saddens me to hear that some people don’t really “get” Twitter. Some people who try it feel frustrated and stop using it. Others use it occasionally but don’t really see what all the fuss is about.

I want to share my approach to using Twitter so that others can try. There are probably other ways to enjoy it, but this approach has worked well for me:

• I don’t necessarily follow my friends, and I don’t expect them to follow me. I use Twitter for a limited set of interests, and not all of my friends tweet about those interests.

• I generally don’t follow organizations. They tend to tweet too much and their content is often too promotional.

• Instead, I follow opinionated people who tweet about a small set of topics that I’m interested in.

• I make sure that my tweet stream is slow enough that I can read every tweet. I do this by limiting the number of people I follow and by making sure that I don’t follow people who tweet too much, even if they have good content.

That’s it. Follow opinionated strangers who tweet about topics you are interested in. Maybe you have a different approach that works well for you. But if you are still trying to figure out the incredible appeal of Twitter, you might want to give my approach a shot.