Monitoring Twitter direct messages and blog comments with Safari RSS

Thanks to a helpful blog comment from Sue Waters, I learned this week how to use TweetScan to create an RSS feed for the direct messages I receive in Twitter and monitor those both in Google Reader as well as Safari RSS. If you are a Windows user (or like me, predominantly a Mac user who has to use Windows frequently) you can download the free public Beta of Safari 3 for Windows.

I’ve been using the RSS support features of the Safari web browser for several years to keep track of new comments on my blog. By saving an RSS feed in the “bookmarks bar” which is just below the the top toolbar, Safari displays a number whenever a new blog comment is received on the toolbar itself (the folder name) and I can quickly select the appropriate feed to view the comment(s):

This is very handy because it does not require me to actually visit a link to see if I have new comments. If new comments have been posted, they show up as a number that is readily viewable in the upper left corner of my web browser. I have been thinking a lot in the last six months about attention, the “attention economy,” and how our attention is similar to a radar screen.

As the quantities of information and conversations continue to grow all around us, I think it is not only sensible but MANDATORY that we find better and more efficient ways to construct and manage our personal “dashboards” for digital information to which we want to pay attention. Using Twitter, Tweetscan, and Safari RSS in this way is an example of creating a personal information dashboard which facilitates communication in the attention economy.

Safari will automatically check saved feeds periodically during the day. I have mine set to check feeds every 30 minutes. This update schedule is not fast enough to use Twitter as an IM client, like Twitterific does, but it is excellent to periodically “check in” on new comments.

Since I’m able to regularly monitor Twitter direct messages this way, I’ve added Twitter to my primary contact page. Twitter now joins my email address as well as blog comments as my preferred asynchronous contact options. My POTS number and Skype userid remain my preferred synchronous contact options. I’m so glad to be able to add Twitter to this list!

As I mentioned earlier this week, remember to change your @reply settings in Twitter if you want to receive Twitter direct messages from people you are NOT currently following, as well as those you are.

Incidentally, Sue is an Australian based in Perth. How wonderful to be taught and helped by Sue on the other side of the planet from Oklahoma, where I’m living and working.

We must be living in a completely transformed infoverse than the one in which I was predominantly schooled in the 20th century…..

THANKS SUE! 🙂

To learn more about available features and tools to extend the use of Twitter, check out the Twitter Fan Wiki!

Technorati Tags:
twitter, twitterific, tweetscan, communication, rss, web2, dashboard, attention, economy, information

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