News Ticker

Expert Feature: Don’t Mess With My Twitter Feed, Twitter!

changes to twitter feed

Good Bye Twitter Followers!

I was prepared to begin this story with a weepy farewell to my fellow Twitter followers, whom I’ve become attached to over the past 6 years, since I created my Twitter account in August 2008.

Articles like Twitter Exec Hints That Your Timeline May Soon Be Filtered, Just Like on Facebook by Matthew Ingram and The New Twitter Could Be Curated By Twitter, by Ellis Hamburger, suggest that Twitter is going the way of Facebook.

What a sad, sad day.

And it all happened around the time Joan Rivers passed away. She was one of my favorite comediennes, always so honest and unfiltered. . . like my Twitter feed.

For those of us who use Twitter regularly, we understand that Twitter offers a way of finding almost any type of conversation going on at any time of day or night based on keyword, location, people with certain qualities, hobbies, etc.

 

How My Twitter Addiction Helped My Business

When Napa Valley experienced an earthquake a few weeks ago, my husband and I were jolted awake in the middle of the night.

I immediately grabbed my phone and visited Twitter to see what happened – and immediately found the answer!

When I first found Twitter, I became instantly addicted.

The people that would connect with me was unreal. At the time, I was President of Melanie’s Fine Foods, a gourmet food company that produced the Big Acres Brand Gourmet Sauces & Rubs.

I quickly learned that Twitter would help me get the word out about our brands.

Editors, bloggers, even customers, connected and requested samples, order forms, etc.

Business rose to a whole new level.

The best part about all this activity was that it was FUN!

I could sit and tweet about ingredients, recipes, my favorite kitchen gadgets (a personal addiction), the gourmet food industry, the food show I was watching at the time . . . and people would immediately engage.

One of my biggest coups was the rogue customer who would never return my phone calls.

We talked on Twitter; he asked for an updated price list and BOOM! A new order arrived in my Inbox. Months of frustrating unreturned phone calls were suddenly reconciled in a single order.

 

What My Twitter Addiction Led To Next

Funny thing. . . one day, my husband caught me sitting in our living room, entrenched in full-on Twitter banter and he said, “If you’re going to do all that tweeting all the time, perhaps you should find a way to make money doing it.”

He’s a brilliant guy. . . My Twitter addiction eventually led me to sell the food business and to start Roaring Pajamas where I would help businesses grow their online presence via social media and search engine optimization.

Anyway, imagine my disappointment and dismay at hearing the news that Twitter may filter feeds so people will no longer see messages from everything they follow.

 

Or Is Twitter Not Changing?

Fortunately, another article arrived on the scene that may – or may not – have set my mind at ease.

Read No, a ‘Facebook-style filter’ isn’t coming to Twitter — yet.

In this article, Eric Geller of The Daily Dot, says that Twitter CTO Anthony Noto pointed to the problem of important content disappearing quickly.

And because of this problem, Noto said that Twitter might resurface tweets from people who the user already follows, if the company deems those tweets important.

How that would work is anybody’s guess.

But Geller says that Noto did not suggest that Twitter would start filtering or curating timelines.

So, for now, perhaps my favorite social media profile of choice is safe – or not. Who knows.

What do you think?

 

Related article

 

About Melanie Yunk (50 Articles)
Melanie Yunk, President, Roaring Pajamas Melanie Yunk started working as a social media and search engine optimization consultant early in 2009, when she founded Roaring Pajamas, a digital marketing agency in Northern California. Melanie is passionate about helping businesses market their products and services online. She brings more than 20 years of marketing, engineering and content experience to clients from various industries, including search engines, construction, retail, B2B, wholesale, heavy duty trucks, authors and more. Melanie previously founded Melanie's Fine Foods after purchasing Big Acres® Gourmet Sauces where she expanded the line to be distributed nationwide and in Canada. She also founded Yunk Consulting where she assisted software and semiconductor companies in implementing international standards for electronic databooks that she also helped developed while working at Intel Corporation. Her earliest career began at Honeywell Commercial Flight Systems where she worked on the Boeing 777 and MD11 cockpit projects. She continues to write on the Roaring Pajamas Blog and also as a guest blogger writing about all natural and gourmet foods. Melanie volunteers as a Board Member for the San Carlos Chamber of Commerce and former President of the Advisory Board for the Rosalie Rendu Center in East Palo Alto. She lives in San Carlos with her husband Kent and two Cornish Rex cats.