Every Friday, I’m compiling a list of five things that meet one criterion. “What is that criterion,” you ask? Well, it’s going to change every week and you’re just going to have to try and keep up.
This week…
Five Twitter Feeds You Must Follow
Most of the buzz surrounding the rise of Twitter centered on celebrities keeping people completely abreast of their every move or friends and family keeping in touch every few minutes. While these two facets of the medium’s explosion are obviously valuable and popular, the service holds a far greater value for the purposes of promotion and meaningful information dissemination from non-individuals and I’ve listed five of the best of these sources below.
5. NBA
Though admittedly meaningless to those uninterested in professional basketball, even non-fans will have trouble denying that no professional sports league is as on-top of Twitter as the NBA. You’ll get live scoring updates on close and important games across the league at night and great deals on tickets/merchandise during the day (plus, y’know, news). And don’t worry: the person (people?) feeding us all the time clearly knows what they’re doing and what they’re supposed to be doing – the NBA will not give you any dumb Tweets.
Example Tweet: Balanced scoring helps @Celtics to 47-39 lead over @Spurs at Half. Perk, Allen, Parker all w/9pts. 2nd Half on TNT
Every newspaper will donate a tiny bit of web space and/or actual page space to odd stories all over the world but there really isn’t an easy way to synthesize the ocean of meaningful, substantial news down to a nice list of just the weird news. Until now.
Example Tweet: Penguin searches for winter coat http://bit.ly/7XbLVo
3. National Geographic Society
This is the perfect addition to your Twitter roll call for no reason other than the great daily pictures (like these).
Example Tweet: Top Ten Discoveries of 2009: National Geographic News's most popular coverage of 2009 scientific finds – http://bit.ly/87eDt2 What's yours?
Even if you try to check Amazon’s daily deals every morning, there’s invariably going to come a day when you forget or you overlook something because of a misleading thumbnail or you miss out on a great late-afternoon deal because you neglect to visit the site every hour and for all of those reasons, keeping tabs on Amazon Gold Box Deals via Twitter is awesome and helpful.
Example Tweet: Deal of the Day: $59.99 – Save on “How I Met Your Mother: Seasons 1-4”
Updated about fifty times per day, no other Twitter news feed will keep you up to date on important stories as well as the Times. Links to full-length articles are included unless it’s a wordy breaking news alert (perfect for text alerts or quick Tweetdeck skimming).
Example Tweet: Ancient Surfboard Style Is Finding New Devotees http://bit.ly/6dvFi0
And of course, if you're not following us on Twitter yet, check us out as well @primermag.