We all know that Twitter is an insane source of information. Once we start following more than 300-400 active users, the timeline can become tough to keep up with. Also, if your online reading habits are similar to mine, when you log on and start reading stuff, you would open atleast ten new tabs in no time. And then, being the good tweep you are, you want to share the karma and RT the original tweet. But, by the time you get to this step, your Twitter timeline has scrolled down by atleast a hundred more tweets. It is simply not possible to scroll down all the way hunting for it, especially with the web interface.
Here is how I handle this:
- Fave the tweet: If you’re a keyboard freak like me, and have scrolled to the tweet with ‘j/k’, just hit Enter and then press ‘f’.
- Open link in background tab: Each browser has it’s own way of doing it. If you don’t know how to do this, you shouldn’t be reading this blogpost.
- Read the link
- Time to decide: Was the link good?
- Yes: Great. Head back to your favourites (‘g + f’) and scroll to the original tweet. Now, share some Twitter love and RT it! The keyboard shortcut this time round is ‘t’.
- No: Bad luck! Head back to your favourites, scroll to the original tweet, and unfave it (‘f’ again). It’s good karma to keep your favourites clean. You wouldn’t want a prospective follower to be scared off if he checks your faves and finds strange links there.
- Job done! :smile:
This trick is also great when you’re up and about, accessing Twitter over the phone, and have a pathetically slow GPRS connection. Opening pages takes way too long, and some pages may not be readable on the phone. So, convert your favourites into a personal Read It Later. :smile: