Twinteresting: why can’t we curate tweets?
15th May 2012, 11:24 am by Hamid Sirhan
It is no secret that Pinterest is a great way to share discoverable content. The “waterfall stream” format can really help rapid skimming of visual content. Take, for example, the ‘Pinterest for Facebook’, Friendsheet, or Pinstagram, the Pinterest-style Instagram feed. People are finding ways to curate images from a variety of sources, but what about the ability to do this with items that are primarily textual, or links?
Using favourites as a stopgap
I use Twitter prolifically, but a lot of my usage focuses on finding new information – blog posts and news stories, language resources and videos – and I often ‘favourite’ posts of interest to keep tabs on the links and commentary provided.
A thousand favourites later, and this system is incredibly difficult to manage. I’ve used an interim solution in the form of sending these favourites to Evernote, but it’s not great. I need something that will let me curate these posts – divide them into categories, automatically fill out previews and be presented in an easy way to skim and share. If it can let me keep track of conversations as well, then all the better.
Curating tweets
I suppose what I’m looking for is something that crosses Storify with Pinterest. Let me very quickly ‘pin’ tweets to boards, assign a category and review them later at my leisure.
This is something that Twitter itself needs to do. I know it has a focus on providing simplicity, to ensure that all users have easy access. This doesn’t mean that heavy users should be ignored. We’re talking about improving the favourites system. It’ll be easier for me to a keep a track of others’ Tweets and it should also make it easier for brands to discover content of interest. Twitter lists let me keep a track of other people – why not let me keep track of Tweets? Why can’t I create galleries of interesting thoughts?
Image credit: liveandrock on Flickr
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Katie Sayers:
The only workaround I have found for this is to copy the links into delicious and add keywords from there. Not ideal by any means.
15 May 2012, 4:39 pmMaarten van Leeuwen:
I like Katie’s solution of using Delicious. another option could be using Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows you to archive messages. http://help.hootsuite.com/entries/20757068-how-to-create-an-archive
15 May 2012, 9:46 pmdepending on your account type you can save more messages into your archive.
Hamid Sirhan:
Hi guys, thanks for the comments.
Katie – good idea, though as you say not ideal.
Maarten – not the biggest fan of Hootsuite and I’ve tried archiving tweets with a variety of services but still doesn’t feel right in terms of categorising and being able to browse through those Tweets.
I saw a blog post from Storify yesterday, a few hours after this was published, highlighting that you could pin tweets in a lovely-looking way to Pinterest boards. This comes *fairly* close to what I’d like to do but still doesn’t quite cut it. Looking back at the Storify service I think it’s more likely to be able to do this than Pinterest or something in a Pinterest style, with some slight modifications to the service, e.g. allowing you to create clear categories with an emphasis on browsing.
I think the official Storify Chrome extension is close to what I’m after, though I’d want greater ease of categorisation or perhaps some automation. Looks like it’s headed in the right direction!
16 May 2012, 11:39 amGemma Thompson:
You might want to have a look at scoop.it. It is a bookmarking site but it allows you to gather the posts you ‘scoop’ into categories. It is very appealing visually as it is laid out in a magazine style format.
I really don’t use it enough but I have created two categories; ‘The growth of social search’ and ‘blog writing’.
It also has a social side where you can follow other people’s scoops on topics that interest you, and re-scoop blogposts onto your own scoops if you wish. This means it’s also a good way of sharing your own posts!
Aside from that it presents blogposts to you for consideration for your scoops, based on keywords and a bit rough and ready you will nevertheless find the odd diamond this way!
Here’s my profile there if you fancy a nosy … http://www.scoop.it/u/gemlthompson
28 May 2012, 8:08 am