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My .02 on Twittering and hockey blogging
by Tony on 06/23/09 at 01:36 PM ET
Comments (11)
The Confluence has “officially” been on Twitter for several months now, here’s my account. Up until maybe a month ago, I solely used that account to feed my blog entries.
Then, during one of the slow periods in the playoffs, I decided to download TwInbox, an application that allows me to send and receive my Tweets within my Outlook.
So now, after some streamlining of the people that I follow, and monitoring the Tweets that I still get, I have a few thoughts. Bear with me.
On the positive side of things, in a hockey and blogging point of view, Twitter does provide an avenue to disseminate “breaking” news. I particularly saw that during morning skates and pre-game skates, discussing things such as line changes and scratches.
It’s also been beneficial when I receive Tweets from someone I follow who has “re-Tweeted” (RT’s) someone who I would like to follow, but didn’t have on my “follow” list. Those who are on Twitter know that their search feature is not the greatest, to put it politely.
I’m sure as soon as July 1st hits, we’ll get overloaded with Tweets trying to beat each other out reporting on what team has signed which free agent. That’s cool, I’ve got no problem reading that stuff.
But as with plenty of gadgets, there are things that aren’t so great as well.
There isn’t really any sort of filtering you can do on the Tweets you receive from those you follow, so while you might get some decent Tweets such as “Sykora’s in the lineup tonight”, you also get Tweets talking about Jon & Kate or Perez Hilton.
In addition, there are some that can’t wait 5 minutes without Tweeting something, anything. By the way, I don’t follow that many people, so if you’re on my list, you know who you are !!
I know, I know, the easy answer is to just remove them from my “following” list. And most likely, that’ll be what I end up doing.
So I raise the question to my fellow hockey blogger colleagues and readers. What are your thoughts when it comes to hockey and blogging and Twitter ??
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Comments
If the cons outweigh the pros of Twittering for The Confluence’s purposes, then I’d say get rid of it...or perhaps Twitter outside of the Confluence and do the filtering yourself.
Admittedly, I don’t Twitter so I don’t quite understand the specifics, but it sounds like a convoluded mess that is making things more complicated for you.
So as a member of The 19, I want you to have as quality a blog as possible...so that your fellow Pens followers will leave us the hell alone and focus on you. 
Posted by Animal Drew from A Nightmare on Helm Street on 06/23/09 at 02:01 PM ET
I have had to “weed” out many “twitterers” who would post duplicates. I don’t need to know that there is a new “Snapshots” blog post from 6 different people. I do like the day of game tweets, plus the breaking news.
I wish that one could have different lists of “tweeple” so that I could sort them by the type of news I am in the mood to read.....
Posted by VermontWingsFan from Vermont on 06/23/09 at 02:04 PM ET
I rally haven’t seen the value of Twitter yet. From the standpoint of people’s personal accounts, it seems like a glorified Facebook status. I think it can be useful for blogs and businesses and such, but I am the kind of person that checks my favorite sites all day anyway, so I don’t need to know if there is something new on the site. Also, weren’t RSS feeds meant to tell us when our sites have new posts. I understand they’re good for breaking news, but blogs seem fine for that to me as well…
Posted by NHLJeff from Boston, MA on 06/23/09 at 02:22 PM ET
I found some really great info from Sykora, Satan, and Fleury’s agent (Allan Walsh) about the purported deals in the KHL being false. Kevin Allen of USA Today has had some great tweets as well.
I think I will continue through the draft and free agency and see where it goes.
I’m not sure why the PensBlog has an infatuation with Jon and Kate and Perez Hilton though. 
Posted by DigitalGypsy66 on 06/23/09 at 02:47 PM ET
Twitter does provide an avenue to disseminate “breaking” news. I particularly saw that during morning skates and pre-game skates, discussing things such as line changes and scratches.
Posted by Fire Science Degree on 06/23/09 at 03:55 PM ET
Tony, there’s an application called Seesmic Desktop that will solve all of these problems and make it easy to REALLY follow only the people you care about, while also being able to add and follow regular twitterers who you’re not so interested about.
It has a grouping feature which lets you see tweets only from the most important people you’re following.
On top of that, you can use Seesmic Desktop or an application like Twirl to follow the #pens tag.
All in all, twitter is a superb tool for bloggers of any kind, and if you try out a couple different apps, you’ll find one that lets you filter and get only the stuff you’re really interested in at a particular time. So if you’re a hockey blogger, you can get only hockey tweets if you put them in a group, and you can get all your other personal tweets at another time.
Posted by LGP8771 on 06/23/09 at 07:13 PM ET
So as a member of The 19, I want you to have as quality a blog as possible...so that your fellow Pens followers will leave us the hell alone and focus on you.
LMFAO, you made my day with that one Animal…
Posted by Tony F from Virginia Beach, VA on 06/23/09 at 08:18 PM ET
Have you tried TweetDeck? It’s a pretty good way to organize all the people you are following. Plus it makes it easy to search, DM and RT. I’m still pretty new to the game but so far am likeing the layout in TweetDeck.
Thanks for the suggestion UC, that’s a pretty nice app.....
Posted by Tony F from Virginia Beach, VA on 06/23/09 at 09:10 PM ET
The inability to filter is the biggest drawback. On my blog, it’s always hockey. On my twitter, it’s hockey, technology, sci-fi, business, random nonsense, etc, etc. The people following me range from friends to coworkers to hockey bloggers to spam marketers. Trying to figure out how much value to put in and how much noise to leave out makes me think more than I really ought to when sending out a twit. I don’t want to annoy people but at the same time I want to get my thoughts out.
And though apps have grouping capabilities, they’ll never be able to do something like filter out all of someone’s non-hockey twits.
But at the same time, our brains are adjusting to this extra noise (IMO) and we’re getting more adept at filtering out distracting twits vs ones we want to read. Just like we skim online content, we’re skimming online tweets. Which means we’re step shy from just giving up communicating, really 
Posted by Shane from Saskatoon on 06/23/09 at 11:19 PM ET
If you really want to see Twitter in a crazy way, check out twitterfall.com
Posted by Steve-o from Pittsburgh on 06/30/09 at 07:56 AM ET
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Welcome to The Confluence, a Pittsburgh Penguins blog since 2006. Originally at Blogspot, then at MVN, The Confluence has over 1000 articles reporting Penguins news as well as jumping on my soapbox to opine constructive Penguins criticism. My posts are regularly linked by hockey websites such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Empty Netters and Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy, and I’ve done guest blogger spots on such websites as the New York Times. I invite you to spend a little time and peruse the archives at all of the sites for some of my better work. I am a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, but don’t confuse me with my fellow Chief at A2Y.
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Have you tried TweetDeck? It’s a pretty good way to organize all the people you are following. Plus it makes it easy to search, DM and RT. I’m still pretty new to the game but so far am likeing the layout in TweetDeck.
Posted by Used Cars from Canada on 06/23/09 at 01:26 PM ET