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Digital cleaning up, and how I try to balance between Twitter and Google Reader

During the last months I just suddenly realized that Twitter had turned into my RSS reader. My Google Reader was filled with plenty of news feeds that I hardly ever read. I decided my Google Reader and Twitter needed some restructuring.

In Google Reader I did some major cleaning up. I dropped all the news feeds, and moved them to Twitter. I want it to be my pulse of the outside world, the hub where I follow people and news that truly matter in the business I am in, internet and media.

Twitter is my collaborative filter, that works thanks for all the great people I follow. I also did plenty of grouping of feeds in TweetDeck, and now the people and news feed are separeted in a way that makes more sense to me.

But at the same time I feel that in the busy world of today I need to dig deeper into other fields and ideas that I don't face daily. I want Google Reader to become a center for inspiration, a place for content that allows me to take a break from the continuous pulse of the world. Most of the feeds that I left to my reader are actually outside the business I'm in.

I arranged the remaining feeds into two major categories: Something to think about and Inspiration. The first consists of thoughtful writings by many people around the globe, whereas the latter is more visual: videos, photos, advertising, fashion etc. I want to challenge myself to find something fresh, that is not already re-tweeted hundreds of times.

Will it work? I don't know, but I will give it a try.

I'd also be happy to get more ideas of thought provocing people and sites that I should add to my Something to think about -list. Here you can see what I'm reading at the moment.

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Sep 25, 2009
Antti Vilpponen said...
I've done something like this as well, although I'm not moving anything to Twitter. The problem with twitter in my opinion is that there is simply too much noise. Then again if you calculate in that all the good stuff will get filtered anyways, then that's no problem. But in my case, I haven't found twitter that useful.

What I have done with my Google Reader though is that I've taken out all the "real timeish" news feeds. I want to use Google reader as the weekly digest of media that I want to follow when I have the time. It's sort of becoming the monthly addition to newspapers, "Kuukausiliite".

Sep 27, 2009
Pirkka Aunola said...
I like the idea of using Google reader as a weekly digest, and I'm pretty positive that we all need also slower pace media services online. Not everything can or should be fast, real time.

I used to have a same problem with Twitter and clutter, but I just changed my attitude towards it. It's not that I have to follow it all the time, I just jump into stream every now and then, and feel the vibe of the moment.

Facebok has also helped me. People share much more content and links there nowadays, so that's one more filter for me to follow.

 
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