A note about Twitter

John wrote earlier about Twitter feeds for the various aspects of the site. I'd like to add a different note.

My own Twitter use has gone from occasional reader (and Tweeter) to fully engaged, both on the receiver side and the sender side. I'm shocked at how important Twitter has become to me.

As a reader of tweets, I'm finding that I get news first from Twitter. I have a set of people I follow who use Twitter pretty heavily, and who send stuff they see faster than they put it into a blog post or a news item. These include the full range of writers, from blog posters to news professionals. It's a hand-crafted set, and I love what I get from it.

As a sender of tweets, I'm finding that the discussions in my mini (and self-defined) community of tweeters is lively, smart, thoughtful, and engaging. For example, I "follow" all the blog posters I regularly read, interact with several, and for the same reason I read their posts, I learn from their tweets. And lot of very readable people are heavy Twitter users, and quite responsive to comments.

Just to name a few, digby (@Digby56) is very active, as are Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald), John Aravosis (@aravosis), Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh), Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes), and someone who writes far too rarely these days except on Twitter, Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller).

This just cracks the surface; there are literally thousands of valuable Twitter users that readers can benefit from.

Twitter is a far livelier, and more active, part of the Internet that I realized at first. I strongly recommend that at the very least, consider "following" everyone you read regularly (@NYTimesKrugman? @ChuckTodd? @KeithOlbermann? @markos?). You won't be sorry.

For those who read this site, the main accounts are:

@aravosis
@joesudbay
@Gaius_Publius

@Americablog
@AmericablogGay
@AblogElections

By the way, Twitter names are not case-sensitive. @gaius_publius = @Gaius_Publius, @aravosis = @Aravosis, etc.

And there are many useful Twitter apps; you might start with Tweetdeck to get a fuller view of your personal Twitter world. (If you have other Twitter tools to recommend, please add them in the comments, along with pros and cons. That would be a help to all of us. Thanks!)

GP