Matthew Lang

Yesterday I wrote about the value of Twitter on a personal level. While I don't place much value on my personal Twitter account, I have found that having a seperate social media presence can let me split my time online and have that time spent in a more focused way.

I operate as a sole trader in the UK which means I trade as a business under my own name. It also means that I can use a trading name for my freelancing work. The added benefit to this is that I can give myself a corner of the web dedicated to that aspect of my life. I could publish technical articles under my own name and on my own personal blog but as I already blog on a frequent basis on other topics then I would end up two different audiences on the one blog. To keep them separate I decided to start a separate blog for my web development writing.

This year I decided to apply the same tactic on Twitter and so I created a new account (@digitalbothy) for my freelancing business. The idea behind this is to act as a social media funnel for the web development blog I mentioned above to be able to found on at least one social media network. As I’m already on Twitter it made sense to start there.

There’s another benefit to this. Lately I’ve been trying to limit the amount of people I follow on Twitter, but it seems that no matter what I do I end up with more people on the list that I would like. Fear of missing out syndrome is hard though, and even though I unfollowed most of the occasional tweeters there’s too many people to follow.

Instead of cramming all these people under one account, why not bump the web developers, freelancers and other people that mainly tweet about this topic over to my Digitalbothy account? So that’s what I did. I started following most people related to web development and programming from my freelancing account and unfollowed them on my personal account.

Having two accounts running side by side isn’t much harder to manage than having two lists under the same account. In fact I would say that it’s probably easier.

Tweetbot’s multi-column feature on OS X means that I can see both timelines through the day when I’m working. As a rule I don’t check my freelancing account out with my usual business hours. If I’m checking Tweetbot on my phone it only has my personal account on it which removes the temptation to check on work related topics when I’m not at home.

I might not place much value on my own personal account, but at least now I have a place for the work aspect of my life online and it's another way that I can be found by prospective clients.

I do. It was great. It's a shame it fell into obscurity and was eventually closed down.

After months of private beta testing, FriendFeed opened to the public in early 2008 to enthusiastic response. Louis Gray, an early adopter, saw the potential for a new kind of social networking. “[W]e can expect the service to grow tremendously,” he wrote, “kicking off the next wave of social networking services aimed not at posting busy profiles, but instead, aimed at collaboration, sharing and communication.” Tech and Web 2.0 journalists flocked to the site, using it as a kind of proto-Twitter to find breaking news and distribute their own stories.

— The rise and fall of FriendFeed, the social network that brought you the ‘Like’ button by The Kernel

I think of social media as one of those necessary evils in life. I'm well aware of the benefits of globally connected platforms that keeps people in touch, especially in the event of a natural disaster or event. Social media has proved itself as great way to keep people in contact with others. Like I said, that's all good, but a good social media platform has value. Things that interest me as a consumer. Links, text, images. Anything that falls within my interests is valuable.

Lately it seems that Twitter has been failing in this respect. There's doesn't seem to be any value in Twitter anymore. I'm in a constant battle of finding people to follow and unfollowing people that don't tweet anymore. This wasn't a problem when I first used Twitter as I could see the value from my timeline. Interesting tweets and links had value and it kept me checking into my timeline on a regular basis. Now, it seems that I can go a couple of days without checking Twitter and not miss anything.

I was an early user of Twitter. A year after it launched I created my Twitter account. After a few years though I wasn’t seeing the same value that I seen in the early years of Twitter and so I closed my account. I ended up re-creating my account on Twitter last year. There’s a problem though. The problem lies in the fact that I haven’t a clue what I’m using Twitter for. Since starting my Twitter account up again, I’ve had a few interactions with others and it serves it’s purpose in a few areas, but mostly I’m wondering if I even need it at all.

These days though I'm stepping back from Twitter and using it mainly as a source of content to consume rather than to publish things. I’m also keeping my use of it sporadic. I’ve noticed a few other people are changing the way they use Twitter as well. People that I know would tweet all through the day are now down to just tweeting a handful of times a day at most. I’ve even stopped using tools like Buffer for sharing content. I just don’t see the need in tools like that when I’m more of an infrequent visitor to Twitter.

So is Twitter still valuable? I think it’s largely lost it’s value for me. I only check it a couple of times a day. Twitter has it’s uses but I don’t see the great need for it like I did a few years ago. It still has a value for my freelancing business and I'm in the process of moving some of the people I follow to that account, but that is a topic for tomorrow's post.

I have been a Safari user for a while now. Safari’s built-in sharing on OS X and iOS and the ability to store tabs in iCloud means I could easily move between my phone and my latop. Aside from this, there isn’t much else that would make me choose another web browser. As long as I have the right addons for my browser then I’m happy with Safari.

Mozilla recently announced a new way of testing new features in Firefox without having to run the bleeding edge version of Firefox. Their Test Pilot program allows you to run new features in your stable version of Firefox. Not one to shy from trying something new, I decided to start using Firefox again and turn on all the experiments in the Test Pilot program.

So far the biggest impact has been the Tab Center. This moves the tabs from the top of the browser to the left. It’s running for a few days now and I’m still getting used to the column of icons in my browser down the left hand side. Naturally my reaction is to always move my mouse to the top of the screen but with the icons on the left it’s usually a case of “Doh! There they are!”.

So rather than using the mouse I’ve started using the shortcut keys for switching tabs. I do find it alot easier to switch tabs using the “cmd + number” shortcut for my pinned tabs and anything further down I end up just using “ctrl + tab” to open the right tab.

Also with Firefox now available on iOS, I can now share my tabs and bookmarks on my iPhone using Firefox Sync. It’s early days for this as well, as I’ve been using Safari for about three years on my iPhone.

I’ll give it a month and see if I’m still happy with the setup in June.

A great series by NB.