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A Twitter Usage Pattern

Twitter means different thing to different user. So the usage may vary. Some people use Twitter as a game to find as many followers as possible. I use Twitter mainly for feed aggregation. I read tweets more than I tweet myself. Thus, follower count is not my concern. I think follower count is distracting. Some even suggest that Twitter hide follower count.

I follow tech journalists like @TechCrunch, @rww, @slashdot, @alleyinsider, @techreview and @databazaar. I keep on looking for tech journalists with great sources to follow. Well, there are too many tech news that I can chew in a day so I just skim their headlines. Twitter's short text makes it easier to skim the headlines. Each tech line is accompanied with a link to the blog post where the full news is published. Because I am living in a different time zone I will read the news few hours late. I consider being late is an advantage to me because I can also read the comments.

I use the comments to check my own opinion on the subject. Controversial news will invite many comments where some of them are much longer than the actual news. Haters also leave comments. Sometimes I am amazed to the frequency of those hate commenters who keep on coming back to the blog although they had earlier threaten to abondon the blog.

In summary, here is my Twitter usage pattern. I skim through my Twitter's Home time line looking for tech news. Once a news catches my eye I will click on the link accompanied in the tweet. It will open in a different tab on my browser. I keep on openning up all selected news of the days while reading tweets. I will only read the news after I have done with Twitter. I read each news and follow with its comments. When I have something to say then I tweet. I will blog when a subject is harder to keep in a tweet.

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