There are moments when you look at your Twitter timeline and all that springs to mind is ‘What the?’ Let’s face it, while some people’s tweets are well worth following, others clog up the timelines of their wary followers with (how do we put this politely?) mind-numbingly pointless junk. Others still may have reasonably interesting tweets of their own, but tend to re-tweet some weird and wonderful stuff you’d rather not see. Here are 3 Tips for Optimising your Twitter Experience, The first two of today’s tips deal with these scenarios.
Mute Function
Fairly recently added to Twitter, the mute function allows you to get rid of someone’s junk without having to go through the occasionally rather awkward process of ‘unfollowing’ them. Instead, simply mute the ‘offender’ by visiting his/ her profile page; clicking on the cog (right of page) and selecting ‘Mute’. That’s it – your timeline will from now on be free of his/ her drivel.
Dreadful Retweets
In cases where you appreciate a user’s original tweets, but hate their taste in retweets, it is again necessary to visit the relevant user’s profile page. Here, too, your first move is to click on the cog on the right. Selecting ‘Turn off retweets’ will then ensure you will still be able to see the user’s great original tweets, but you will no longer have to put up with all their inane retweets.
Finally…
This last tip deals with a little re-tweeting ‘etiquette’. Manually re-tweeting (re-tweeting another user’s tweet by using ‘RT’ at the start) is typically frowned upon unless a commentary is added. When leaving the content of a tweet unaltered, ‘RT’ should be used, but if part of an original tweet is changed/ removed, it is recommended to use ‘MT’ (modified tweet). When tweeting a link another user tweeted to begin with, identify it as a ‘hat tip’ by using ‘h/t’.
