How to follow conversations on Twitter

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After reading Dave’s post about Twitter being the new Facebook yesterday, I decided to give Digsby a go. (I’d heard of it previously, but I was semi-scared off by all the twittermania – it’s a bit like marmite).

Since I was only following a few tweeters there wasn’t of a flow – so I added a couple more higher profile tweeters, like Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror.

This morning Jeff tweeted:

I hate #region so much. DIE #REGION DIE!

I quite like #region in VS.NET, (it makes my code look/feel tidy). I was curious to why Jeff had a problem with it, so I tempted to reply to his tweet. But I stopped – thinking it was a bit of a fan-boy thing to do. Also I’m sure someone else would have asked the same question… which got me thinking how do you follow a conversation on Twitter?

I came across Summize (a search engine for Twitter) the other day, so tried that to see if anyone mentions #region or @codinghorror – which they do, but it’s a tad disjointed. I couldn’t follow a conversation.

So I turned to my old friend Google (how to follow conversations on twitter), and found Quotably!

Now I can follow the conversation: http://quotably.com/codinghorror/statuses/811735028

Quotably is powered by Summize, with some extra jiggery-pokery (and human intervention).

Update (03/01/2009): Quotably has now closed it’s doors. If anyone knows of a good alternative resource, please let me know in the comments.

5 thoughts on “How to follow conversations on Twitter”

  1. I’d not seen Quotably, I like Summize so I’m surprised I missed it, cheers for the find.

  2. hey i was looking for a solution to do this and noticed that quotably has shut down since you posted. :

    cheers.

    twitter.com/power9pro

  4. Thanks graff, I hadn’t heard of Tweetree!

    I’m not too hot on giving out my Twitter login details to 3rd parties. (Twitter desperately need an authentication system, something similar to Flickr’s).

    I took a look at some other Twitter profiles on Tweetree, and then tried replacing their username with mine. Which works fine! http://tweetree.com/leekelleher

    The big difference between Tweetree and Quotably is that if you view an original post, it doesn’t show any replies. However when you view a replied post, it also shows the original.

    Tweetree seems good for following your own conversations, but not those of others, (at least not yet anyway).