I admit it, I am not a power Twitter user. But I want to be, and here is why:

Twitter may be the single most effective digital information filtering tool available today.

What is an information filter? Anything that separates the things you want to read from the things you do not want to read. That is a good thing. With the abundance of digital information available to us, we must aggressively filter information to make it useful. Searching, tagging, sorting, and segmenting are all examples of filtering. Everyone must do this, but those of us who filter the best will get the most relevant information in the least amount of time. Time, being the most scarce resource, is very valuable, so Twitter usage may give you an advantage in a time-starved world.

Twitter helps you find the "golden nuggets" in less time

Why is Twitter the best digital information filter? Because people filter better than machines. The trick is to follow the right people. If you follow people who tweet a lot of new content that is of interest to you, you no longer have to go out and find that content yourself. It is like you have an army of information miners working for you to find the nuggets you are most likely to want to read. Internet searching and online recommendation services are great, but they can not beat (yet) an actual human brain for filtering information.

Recommended techniques for using Twitter to filter information. Here are six techniques that help get better results with Twitter:

(1) Follow people with a high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)

This is an engineering term, but it is a simple concept. The signal corresponds to the informative tweets that provide you with potentially useful information.  Noise refers to tweets that add no real value, like “I just ate a really good fried corndog.”  The higher the number of tweets in the “Signal” category relative to the “Noise” category, the better the S/N.  Just about everyone includes some noise in their signal, but too much noise will become a time-waster.  Avoid following people with a poor S/N.

(2) Make quick decisions on what is and is not worth reading

This is applicable beyond just Twitter, but it is especially important to be able to quickly pick out potentially useful tweets from tweets that are going to be a waste of time.  When in doubt, it is probably best to move on.

(3) Be purposeful by knowing what you are trying to get out of Twitter

Is it a daily dose of the latest news? Research on a specific topic? Following the whereabouts of celebrities? Twitter can help with all of that, as long as you have a purpose that aligns with what you are trying to get out of Twitter.

(4) Use Twitter lists

If you have multiple purposes for using Twitter (different topics of interest) then you should use Twitter lists.Twitter lists are a way to group and organize the people you follow on Twitter, and you don’t actually need to follow someone in order to include them in your list.  Once a list is created, you can view a tweet stream of only those included in the list.  Here is a good “how-to” guide for using Twitter lists.

(5) Get Twitter clients on all your electronic devices so you can access Twitter from as many places as possible

Small bits of free time will pop up frequently, and these can be good times to catch up on the latest Tweets. Twitter clients are available on just about any device with Internet access, so make sure you have access wherever you are.  NOTE: There is also value in escaping from the Internet sometimes, so don’t take this too literally.

(6) Participate

Posting your own informative tweets and retweeting tweets that you find useful is a great way to add value and attract followers who may become new recruits in your filtering army. Check out the people who are following you. The more you participate, the more likely you are to have followers that you can benefit from. Reciprocation is a great thing that only happens if you participate!

The caveat: When used the wrong way, Twitter can add more noise than it filters out. You want to avoid this by limiting the people you follow to those with good S/N. Like a garden, you will need to nurture your favorite plants with retweets and encouraging direct messages. You may also need to prune or pull the weeds that aggravate you by applying additional filters or un-following people.  It does take some maintenance, but I would argue that Twitter is worth the trouble.

Here are some people that I believe have a good S/N in the areas related to Fogo Media, and this blog:

@smashingmag

@ideasproject

@JohnEi

@VenessaMiemis

@visualthinkmap

@DanielPink

@Good

We would love to hear who you follow, as well as any other techniques for making Twitter more useful.

Additional Resources for the Curious Reader:

• Here is a very good guide for learning just all the Twitter basics.
• This is a highly-recommended article called How to Use Twitter to Build Intelligence.  Some similar points are brought up in this post, but it goes much deeper.
• There are those who believe Twitter makes the information over-abundance problem worse, not better.  Here is a well thought-out article on the impact of “activity streams” that claims our current toolset is not good enough.
• A video discussing why Twitter is such a big deal.
• This is a tool called Twiangulate that helps you find people to follow based on the connections of other trusted people
• A personal account of Twitter use that has lead to increased awareness, personal enjoyment, and fascination.  Also some good tips for how to use Twitter in a positive manner.
• What is the typical progression for Twitter usage?  I think The 46 Stages of Twitter comes pretty close.