Differentiating Attention: I wish Twitter had grouping

 

Or, I like some tweets better than others.

After spotting this item in Read/WriteWeb — What People Say When They Tweet:

Our favorite high volume Twitter user, though is “chandraxray,” a space station that tweets its location up to 350 times per day.

— I checked on who @chandraxray is following and found a couple of science and space Twitterers I might like to follow, in addition to those already on my list: @space, @science and @astronomy2009.

I already follow @MarsPhoenix, @jodrellbank and @BadAstronomer.

I prefer the real people

Just before adding them though I realised that what I’d like Twitter to give me is something I have for my RSS feeds: a way to group those I follow and check their feeds separately. My Twitter client, Twitterific, although excellent doesn’t offer this feature. I don’t know if any Twitter client does.

I’d see such a client as offering one tab per group. I could put my friends — tweets I’d like to read as they arrive — in one tab that I’d keep visible. In another tab I may have science and astronomy tweets, in yet another the current affairs / news service tweets and so on.

Broadly speaking, I care more about tweets from real human beings than I do the disembodied expressions of ‘topics’ and current events.

Instant or delayed attention

Then, instead of a single stream of undifferentiated tweets, some of which interest me more or more immediately than others, I could pay attention to some all the time, and to others some of the time, just by switching tabs.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

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