Following Twitter without the Twitter app or website

Twitter has changed, and not for the better. Killing the links to third-party apps was terrible for me. I used Tweetbot to filter and organise. Without it I could be lost in a soup of distraction.

As a journalist I can’t afford to walk away. Twitter helps me stay in touch with dozens of people and news sources. Mastodon doesn’t come close to replacing that.

Yet I need to prepare for a time when Twitter could become more unbearable, unusable or otherwise too messed around with.

So I’m following key Twitter feeds using my RSS feed reader. I use NetNewsWire: a free app for Macs, iPhones and iPads. In my experience it does a better job than the paid apps, but I open to There are plenty of alternatives to suit everyone’s needs, although not every RSS reader can deal with Twitter feeds.

That way I don’t have to miss anything that happens on Twitter, at the same time I don’t need to waste energy ploughing through the inevitable distractions that Twitter seems intent on making harder to ignore.

I’m interested to hear if other people have new Twitter strategies.

Bill Bennett @billbennettnz