How Flipboard Changed My Tweet-life

Once upon a time ago there was Jaiku. I liked it very much, the groups, the chained jaikus, everything. Except for the downtimes caused by some or the other technical problems that it seemed to suffer of just a bit too often. Then along came Twitter. Quite similar, yet so different. My Jaiku-pals seemed to gradually slide to Twitter and abandon Jaiku, as it seemed to be more down than up.

Twitter wasn't really my cup of tea. I felt lost with the #s and the loss of groups and loose answers that were in no way connected to the original message. Well, still aren't. I let it be and concentrated my social media energy to Facebook. By the way, while everybody seem to complain about its interface (let alone privacy) changes, I have more or less lived with them without too much stress. The only thing I haven't really liked, are the multiple different mobile and platform dependant UIs. I just want to use the real webpage. Even on my phone.

Tweetdeck was the first application that got me somehow inside the Tweet-world. At least I could group my interests in columns and make lists of friends etc. And it automatically shortens urls, which is very important with the 140 char limit. I still use Tweetdeck, both on my laptops and on my Galaxy Tab, for as far as I know, there is no better platform for Twit-feeds. Twitter as it is, is lacking, to put it simple.

Even using the Tweetdeck I have restricted my Twitter followings drastically, because with the constant flow of stuff into the Tweet flow, I feel like suffocating. Too many too small information packages and I can't keep up with the flow. The Flipboard came along, when I got the iPad. It's not all Twitter (neither does Tweetdeck have to be, but to mix in Facebook etc.? Nooo, too much!) and it's good for more than only Twitter, but it changed my Twitter experience more than it did my Facebook or News readers experience.

So what's so awesome about Flipboard? It reads the feeds, from etc. your Twitter follows, and makes them into a virtual magazine. Instead ot a steady flow of 140 char mini-info-bits in a constant flow, the Flipboard retrieves pictures and excerpts of the articles and text behind the tweeted links. Instead of needing to determine by a few short words whether the subject is interesting or not, in Flipboard I can easily scan through the excerpts and make much more enlightened decisions on which ones I want to read and which ones not.

This option, though in different UIs, is more or less available for news feeds in my other favorite news readers such as Pulse and Wave too. And the preview is more or less avaible for Facebook shares too. But for Twitter, it is quite different from the normal Twitter experience! And with all these, the news, Facebook and Twitter, Flipboard has definitely become my very favorite reader, my number one virtual magazine.