I’ve been using Twitter for a little while now, and while I do like it, I continue to feel it out and explore ways to get the most out of it for me personally.
For those not familiar with Twitter, start by checking out my account for DraftBuddy.com. You do not need a Twitter account just to see the main page for anyone’s account, although some people choose to protect their “tweets” (short blurbs people post on Twitter). If only some NFL players selected that option in recent months.
Twitter accounts connect together using a follow system. I can choose who I follow, and others can choose if they want to follow me. The tweets you see on my main page are tweets I’ve sent out, sorted chronologically from most recent to oldest. If people find them interesting enough, or care to be updated in this way about what is going on with the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy or DraftBuddy.com, then they will follow my account.
Of interest to me of course, is what other people have to say, so I choose to follow them. My main interests include breaking baseball news, football news and hockey news, plus some comedic sidebars and updates from friends are never a bad thing. Initially I followed a whole host of people across these sports topics and other people I knew.
The collected tweets of people I’m following builds a personal timeline. You can see your own timeline (you’ll need to have a Twitter account for this) by clicking “Home” at the top of your page. Now I have constant news and updates faster than any other resource short of being there in person, all in one convenient spot.
As a bonus, I don’t need to be at a computer to view my timeline. I can take it with me on my iPhone using any number of Twitter applications for mobile devices. I use Tweetdeck.
One thing I found though is the more people I follow on a whole mish-mash of topics, the more daunting viewing the timeline can be. If I want to get an update on football, I’d rather just look at updates from the guys who tweet about football. Keep me organized Twitter, please.
And they did. Twitter developed a new feature – simple enough – called lists. Now I can group people I’m following into lists, basically a group of people to follow on a particular topic. In fact, I don’t even need to follow them outside the list. So what I did is created three new lists at the DraftBuddy account. They are:
I believe you can see those even if you don’t have a Twitter account.
As it says in the list description, “MLB (or NFL or NHL) breaking news from media insiders, plus discussion and opinion from fantasy baseball experts.” Essentially, I’m looking for a nice mix of media guys who break the news most importantly, plus others focussed on fantasy whose thoughts and opinions are worth reading and discussing.
I guess the reason for this post in the blog is to introduce all of you to Twitter, and the Twitter lists. If you have a Twitter account, then you can follow the lists yourself, which is another nice feature of the lists. You don’t need to create your own list if you find another list that is useful to you and managed by someone else.
And even if you don’t have or want a Twitter account, then you can still go to the Twitter website at each of those list links and get updates that way. Maybe we’ll convert you over eventually.
Where I could use your help is to suggest new people to follow on each of the lists. We’ll leave out pro baseball, football and hockey players and stick to media and fantasy experts. If you know of worthwhile people to follow on Twitter that would be beneficial to any of these three lists, let me know and I’ll verify and add them to the lists.
At the end of the day, we’ll have one fine resource for each of those three topics that are near and dear to our hearts, or shall I say to further our fantasy sports fanaticism.