How I use twitter to follow the MySQL Community

Here is a perfect post to read during your holidays :-)
There are many ways to get news on the internet : blogs, rss feeds, facebook, linkedin, twitter…
What I want to talk about here is how I use twitter to follow the MySQL Community and how I stay up to date of the latest news.
I use twitter only for focus on the MySQL news and the MySQL community, that’s why I would like to share this experience with you.

Step 1 : Choose your friends

Q: What is the most complicated with Twitter ?
A: Read all the tweets that we receive every day

Of course it can be complicated and that takes a long long time…
That’s why you must choose who is your best friends carefully.

Except for the MySQL rock stars, I advise you to use TweetStats before to blindly follow anyone who tweeted a dark grigri about MySQL.
It’s very simple, just enter the username of the woman, man, firm or product you want to follow on the home page of Tweestats and let the magic gone.
This tool let you know exactly how many tweets a user published by month (or day).

I recommend to follow only the people who don’t publish more than 100 tweets per month (or 4 tweets per day).
Yes, only 4 tweets per day, if you have 100 friends, this means you have to read 400 tweets per day. Are you really able to read all of them ?!
And don’t forget that behind the Tweet there is often a link…

Step 2 : Lists, Search and tools

Lists are one of the most interesting Twitter feature and I’m sure many of you don’t use them.
Lists are useful in many cases, take a look at this two examples :

You use Twitter to track different types of information (Family and Friends, Sports, MySQL, Geek news…)
The people you follow are cosmopolitan and speak different languages

So, how to stay focused on the MySQL news across this jungle ?
I use TweetDeck to read through the lists, one list for the UK/US twittos, another one for the French twittos and a special column for my favorites.

Another really awesome feature of TweetDeck is the research in live streaming, perfect for tracking a live events.
For example, I’m currently using 4 search columns : “MySQL OR Percona OR MariaDB“, ”#perconalive“, “MySQL AND slides” and “#OSCON”

Step 3 : The best way to tweet

If you want that your tweets are broadcast in a perfect fluidity, you need to use a Buffer.

This tool helps you to schedule your tweets, on twitter and linkedIn (very useful now that twitter no longer speak to linkedIn)

Q: Why I really need to use Bufferapp ?

A: Because your followers don’t want to receive all your tweets in the same time ;-)

And this tool will also let you know if your tweets are read, this is why you write them, isn’t it ?

Step 4 : One more thing (or two)

I like to backup my own tweets because these tweets are often some links to articles that I like.
My other vice is to receive my favorite tweets via email.

To do that, I put the internet to work for me with ifttt.