Tag: twitter

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Convention tip: Vacation-ize your Twitter

Some people take vacations where they can ditch all their tech, or at least keep it in the hotel room for after-hours perusal. I am not one of those people, at least at a Celebration. As a news-blogger, it’s my prerogative, nay, my duty, to keep at least an iPhone on me at all times. Because while yes, while there will be plenty of real-life socializing, I must tweet.

I have no idea how many people I was following during Celebration VI, my first Twitter-enabled convention, but right now I am following almost 300 people. That’s a LOT of tweets, so the first thing I want to do is see how I can – not to be heartless, ahh screw it – ditch some folks temporarily. (Temporarily.) Luckily, Twitter has a built-in feature that will serve me well in not only keeping all the unfollowed people together, but allow me to even backread – Lists.

I decided that my first target would be mostly professional entertainment sites and journalists that are unlikely to cover Celebration. For them, I created a list called Entertainment. Next, for the science fiction/fantasy and comics crowd I suspect won’t cover the con, I created the imaginatively named SFF-Comics. All together, that’s 60 accounts that will be safely out of the way while I’m frantically trying to keep up.

I haven’t actually unfollowed anyone yet, but the lists will make that easy. A day or so before the con, all I’ll have to do is go to the list members pages and unfollow. After the con is over, I can follow them all back. And best of all, I can still check up on them, via the list, whenever I have a spare moment. (Hello, airport.)

Granted, most of these accounts are people who don’t follow me back/barely know I exist, so I don’t think there’ll be many hurt feelings when I unfollow – but keep that in mind. A ‘If I unfollow you today, it’s only temporary’ tweet may be in order if your choices are otherwise. Or, you could always create a special list just for Celebration, and avoid the issue entirely! Lists are cool that way. For what it’s worth, here’s mine.

Stay tuned for more tips!