By Mark O’Neill
I know I sometimes can’t stop talking about Twitter, but that’s because I am constantly amazed at some of the inventive apps that people come up with. The latest one had me in stitches – the ability to shut up one (or more) of your followers by hitting a “snooze” button on them.
I’m sure you know the kind of situation I’m talking about – one of your followers on Twitter is yapping non-stop to you about the messy breakup with the girlfriend. Or maybe they want your expert advice on every single piece of software they lay their hands on or every internet site they have discovered. Or maybe they just have the hots for you and won’t leave you alone.
But at the same time, you’re just too nice to “unfollow” them, or maybe there’s a bit of office politics involved – maybe the person is a paying client that you need to keep sweet or you need to keep the person happy to keep another person happy…..yeah, we’ve all been there, done that and bought a million T-shirts.
So, if you want to shut that person up for a few days to get some peace and quiet, how about hitting the snooze button on them instead? By doing so, you will be secretly blocking their tweets for the specified time period and they will be none the wiser!
I know what you’re thinking – how about the old-fashioned method of just ignoring them? Well, that might work to a certain extent, but if you are using a Twitter desktop client, say TWhirl, and the over-chatty person is sending you updates every 5 minutes, that constant ping, ping, ping will drive you nuts in no time. Much better to hit the snooze button for a few days and get some quality time in.