News Stream
Love it or hate it, Twitter is great source of news and happenings around the world. I joined Twitter nearly 3 years ago and have used it on and off during the past few years.
Personally I don't regularly post stuff to Twitter so much (0.8 times per day), if I find a quality link or want to share a quick photo with people i'll use it for that, I also announce posts from :D.com on it as well as soon as they are published.
However in recent times it's become a great way to get current news and happenings around the internet, sometimes within seconds of an event occurring.
As I write this I currently follow 169 people, that might sound like a lot, but the amount of posts from these people varies greatly, some might not even post once during an entire year.
So much that I love using Twitter as a news steam it's a permanent fixture on my computer on the right hand side of the screen (taking 1/8 of the space).
As the day goes on posts scroll by, often I gaze at it for only a couple of seconds to see what's happening, if I see something interesting I make a note to look at it later (more on that another time).
It's basically behaving as my own personal news ticker. You might think it's distracting being on the screen at all times with so much content flying past but it isn't at all, each post is so short and to the point. I treat it as a never ending stream, if I miss something, too bad, I don't often scroll back past more than an hour.
Recent events like the Christchurch earthquakes, tsunami in Japan, Queensland cyclone and other major events are examples of how I kept track of the world using Twitter, reading first hand accounts.
It might not be everyones cup of tea, but it's a tool I really love using.
Today I updated my Twitter page on this site to represent who i'm currently following with my own comments.
It took a couple of weeks to organise but it's a pretty neat tool as it allowed me to analyse why i'm following these people, remind me of people who hadn't posted in awhile as well as clean up my following list.
Technical explanation: Every hour a query is sent to Twitter's servers to get the people I follow. Results are scanned and either added, updated or removed from my database to keep it synced, later on I add a comment to explain why I like following the particular account.
