Using Tweepml to Manage your Twitter Contacts and do away with #ff and #tt

In January 2009 I complained how slow the Twitter interface is.
Not much has changed since then for the better, especially since Twitter took away their pagination of tweets and from followers and following. Until then you could at least figure out where you had to look by fiddling a bit with their pagination. Now you have to wade through window after window.
Looking up an old tweet it is also difficult, because there is a limit of (I believe) 3200 tweets the Twitter API allows you to look up. Unfortunately the way around that Storytlr has ceased to exist and changed into a community project that I have not been able to figure out yet
If you want to look up a contact it’s not easy, especially if you don’t remember the exact name of who you are looking for. In January 2009, as proliferate list maker, I had set out to manually compose such list of my contacts and incorporate it here on a page to be able to look up a contact quickly by Avatar. Also I want such contact list alphabetically organized. I dicontinued that a year ago, because it was too cumbersome to do manually. In addition I got more and more followers.
Fortunately, in the meantime Twitter has introduced Twitter Lists and Tweepml is building on that
Although I do like the #ff and #tt principle, it annoyes me no end to see everybody doing nothing more than reiterating their love, which in my view is boring and a waste of twitterspace. Therefor it is ideal to make a couple of niche lists on Tweepml and give them #ff or #tt love. For your followers it is less cumbersome and if they want to, they can in one click follow your entire list if they want
I myself am still in the process of curtailing the number of tweeps I follow. Especially since I use twitter on my mobile…the more tweeps you follow the more cluttered your mobile can get.

How to do it?

Go over to Tweepml and sign up
Make your own list. You can use one of your twitter lists if you’ve made them. For the list of inner tweeps I’ve created I used this one: Twitter/@Happy-Hotelier.
In order to make a Tweepml list alphabetically, you simply copy the list of tweet names from the Tweepml creation page and then paste them in a spreadsheet, sort them alphabetically and copy and paste them back from the spreadsheet in the Tweepml interface.
If you wish so, you can copy and paste (part of) the resulting html code into your blog and use it there.
However, you can also pull the entire Tweepml page into a page of your blog. Do not pull it in a post because the list will be all over your side bar, unless you can figure out how to curtail that overflow.
But then you have to get the Embed Iframe plugin for WordPress and install it
and copy and paste the list page as an Iframe into your WordPress Blog.

I use the following code [between square brackets] in stead of these: {}
{iframe http://tweepml.org/HappyHotelier/ 920 3000}
920 is the pix width of the Iframe and 3000 the lenght. The ones you chose depend on the with setting of the main body of your Blog. You’ll have to experiment a bit.

Voilà: Here is the result at my My Inner Twitter Circle

More
I started fiddling with the idea in the week before #TBEX and created a list with 250 (currently the maximum at Tweepml) #TBEX10 attendees. According to Tweepml it generated 29.435 follows. Which is amazing, isn’t it?

Other interesting lists to look at:

Hotel Marketing My list
Hoteliers on Twitter My list
Travel Insights 100 The travel top 100 over at Uptake
My The Hague Tweeps list for my new Absolutely The Hague! project.

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Dan @ JFK Parking July 24, 2010 at 1:23 pm: Thanks for the nifty tricks on managing Twitter followers and for finding new tweeps to follow. This should come in handy for me, though I must admit my own participation on that site is spotty, at best. I’d definitely give this one a try. Cheers!
2 Josiah August 7, 2010 at 1:12 am: This looks interesting, but do you see it as an advantage over Twitter’s native lists?

I know Twitter lists are extremely helpful in general for me, and the only real way to combat the overwhelm of information if you’re trying to watch all of your followers at once.

Thank you for including me on your hotel marketing list!
3 GJE August 8, 2010 at 2:51 pm: Josiah
Three things stand out for me:
1) Tweepml is very handy to alphabetically order Twitter’s native lists. As from the days my following and followers grew over the number 100, I had always problems finding someone back who twitters not very frequently (like you and I do for instance).
2) I was able to incorporate the Tweepml list here on a page in order to look some people up quickly. After all my blog is a sort of scrapbook for me to order thoughts, encounters and what all.
3) Has something to do with my insatiable curiosity who is behind a certain account. By looking at such lists from time to time I have a feeling I can keep track of my network and manage it is some way. Has also to do with my hammering on correctly using avatars…I get highly confused by people who like to change their avatar every now and then.
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