Every now and again I'm asked about the Favorites option built into the Twitter interface. People want to know what it's there for. While the answer is somewhat self-evident, I'm starting to use it as a kind of testimonials page," favoriting tweets that contain business-related compliments from followers. (I say "starting," because there are only a couple in there right now.)
Of course, Favorites can contain any tweet you want. Twitter help says, "Some twitter updates are just too good to be forgotten. When you stumble upon such a gem, mark it as a favorite by hovering over the update and clicking the yellow star that pops up at the end."
It's just that I'm using Twitter primarily for business purposes, so it makes sense to keep favorite business-focused as well.
I read one blogger who noticed that the Favorites RSS feed was public, so he's importing it into Friendfeed as a Custom RSS/Atom feed and now has a stream of all the Tweets he finds interesting, shared as another item. Not a bad idea.
In what ways are you using the Favorites option?
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When something tickles my fancy, I hit the favorite button -- and make a point of telling the person I gave them a gold star!
Does that mean I use it to:
1) pause to reflect on great ideas and
2) build relationships?
Posted by: Laura Bergells | June 02, 2009 at 09:55 AM
I also use Favorites as a way to tracking testimonials. It's very powerful to be able to capture a screen shot of real time tweets and add them to a sales page.
Posted by: Denise Wakeman | June 09, 2009 at 10:54 PM
Excellent post, Paul! Thanks for the heads-up. I had never really paid much attention to the Favorites option on my Twitter interface. But after reading this post, I immediately scrolled through my list of updates and starred a number of them as “favorites,” thanks to you. I highlighted ones in which my tweeps wrote especially meaningful tweets to me. My next step is to flag some of my outgoing tweets, too, so that altogether, my Favorites will serve as a sort of “best of” portfolio of tweets.
Like I said in my tweet the other day about you, Paul, you are a kind, generous man and it comes across in your social media activities. You have so much to share with others. Thanks again.
Posted by: Bob Cargill | July 02, 2009 at 11:27 PM
@Bob - Thanks for saying such nice things about me. Tweet that would you, so I can add it to my Favorites! :-)
Posted by: Paul Chaney | July 06, 2009 at 09:52 AM