Saturday morning are meant for a little relaxing and fussing about cleaning or bike riding or messing with software for me. Cleaning can wait; things are overcast so I’m waiting for a clearer indication of what the day might bring and so I’m down to messing with software, one of my favourite things to do anyway.
I continue to mess around with the new Flock browser. I did add Chromed Bird as an extension to keep track of what’s happening in Twitter right in the browser but decided to take a deeper look at the support for Twitter that Flock offers.
Twitter itself has the list feature which can be a quick way to zero in on just who you would like to follow in a certain context. So, I have my “Ontario Educators” list, my “Keynotes” list, and so on. The list concept is fast and enabling. One of the powerful aspect is that you can share lists and many have taken advantage of this by following “Ontario Educators” as their own list. This is just another example of the power of collaboration.
Flock has a similar feature – they call it groups. It seems to be based on the concept of creating these groups by filtering from your list of followers. It’s a different approach to list creation where you can create a list of everyone without actually following them.
My friend Kelly introduced me to a term recently that I hadn’t heard for a long time. It’s the term “Go-To Person”. So, what the hey, I’m going to create myself a “Go-To Group” just to see how it works. Then, I’ll put it to the test.
The first step is to expand the sidebar and choose the option to “Edit your groups…” and I’ll create one called “My Go-To Group”. That was easy enough.
When you create a list on Twitter, it’s then a matter of going and finding those who you would like to add to the list. With Flock, since you’re going to be filtering existing users, the process is a little cleaner and certainly a lot more visual and intuitive.
A window pops open with the friendly avatars and names of the folks that I’m currently following. To add them to the group, it’s just a matter of identifying them and clicking on them.
This was a really quick process. I was able to create this group in a matter of seconds. The toughest part was to determine just who would be in my “Go-To Group”. As I scroll through the list, I quickly realize how much that I value the wisdom of all of the folks that I follow. I guess that only goes to make sense, doesn’t it? That’s why we use Twitter!
But, I need a screen capture so I’m scrolling through and see a couple of important people under the Ps. So, I’ll click on Go-To-@pbeens and Go-To-@peterskillen, two great go-to people in anyone’s books. As you note above, they’re now selected and added to the group and I save them.
Back to the browser and I open the sidebar. From the Group filter, it’s a quick pull down menu to filter to what these folks have been talking about recently. Neat.
What remains to be seen is if I can share this group across computers and then to a wider audience. Hopefully, that becomes apparent as the browser continues to evolve. I wonder how it would work if you share the group with another person who doesn’t follow someone who you are and have added to the group.
Time will tell but the skies are clearing and I’m off for a bike ride.
