google-site-verification: google65e716d80989ba07.html Tuesday's Tip - Creating a Twitter Paper | The Armchair Genealogist

Tuesday's Tip - Creating a Twitter Paper

On my last Tuesday’s Tip post, I discussed maximizing your Google Reader.  We looked at how Google Reader and its many features can really help you to stay up on your internet reading. 

Another great way of staying on top of the latest blogs is to follow them on Twitter.  I love twitter, however I do not have time to have twitter deck open all day and scroll through all the tweets from the #hashtags that I follow. Enter the twitter paper. Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format.  You can subscribe to already existing papers or you can create your own. 

Each day I have several twitter papers delivered to my inbox. I’ve listed some of favourites at the end of this post.  I can quickly open them up and see who has been tweeting. If any of the headlines catches my attention, I simply click through and read the post. Not only do I catch some posts that are not in my Google Reader but I also find the occasional new blogger to follow. 

Subscribing or creating a paper is a very quick and easy process. 

How to Create a Twitter Paper
) Go to paper.li and click the “Create your own daily paper” button.
2) Sign in to your Twitter or Facebook account to authorize the app’s access to your account.
3) Choose the type of paper you wish to create

There are four types of Twitter account based papers a user can create, and one Facebook account based. The intended audience of your paper, or how you propose to use your paper, is 
going to influence the type of paper you wish to create.

A Paper Based on Your Twitter Account
This paper is generated from the content of your twitter account; the content tweeted by yourself and the people you follow. My twitter paper is The Armchair Genealogist Journal. (I know it’s a bit of a mouthful)

A Hashtag Based Paper
You can create a paper based on a #hashtag. Anyone create a paper based on a #tag, however  the paper belongs to the community and one person does not own them. For instance, I get the #genealogy paper to my inbox.

A Paper From a Twitter User List
You can create a paper based on a defined list of twitter users. This is a great way to define a paper with very specific topics and a common focus.

A Custom Newspaper
This option is for those who have a very specific set of ideas about their paper and want more control over the focus of their paper.

You can keep your personal paper for your own use, seen only by you, or you can publish it to twitter for the world to follow. You can also put a widget on your blog so others can follow your paper or subscribe to other papers that have already been created.

Twitter papers,  save me a lot of time, collect some of my favourite followers in one place much like Google Reader, they offer me an opportunity to find new reads and keep me in the loop on industry news.

There are a few bugs in the twitter paper format. If someone re-tweets a post, then sometimes they are credited in the paper rather then the original source. 

If the news day is slow, there maybe a lot of repeats from the previous day. 

However, these days I actually find paper.li more accommodating to my personal lifestyle then tweet deck. 

Some of my favourites

GeneaBloggers Daily
#genealogy
Family History Express
#Irish Daily
The Armchair Genealogist Journal

Do you have a favourite twitter paper; leave me a note in comments.