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Filed under: Business, Social Software, web 2.0

Mixero's "reducing the noise" tagline appears to be ironic

There's an entire class of Twitter clients that focus on filtering "noise" from Twitter by allowing you to group the people you follow, so you only have to read what you want. Tweetdeck is the most popular of these, and Mixero is a new one that looks like it could be big. The problem this kind of client solves is entirely artificial. In fact, I'd say there's a very good chance that the people clamoring for groups and fllters are "social media marketing gurus" who follow huge numbers in hopes of getting more follows in return.

Marketers buy and use apps too, in a big way, so I'm not blaming Mixero for being smart enough to have a built-in target audience. Mixero is chock full of features, and lets you customize groups six ways from Sunday, but the tradeoff is a UI that makes "reducing the noise" sound a bit ironic. I don't mean to single out Mixero, but I'm increasingly starting to think of these widescreen Twitter apps as "business class." If you don't treat Twitter as a business, and you still prefer them, we'll have to agree to disagree. That's the cool thing about Twitter, though: we all get to use it our own way.

But the popular refrain "there's no right way to use Twitter" only applies up to a point. If you're just using it for marketing, and you're following as many people as possible, you may have discovered the elusive way to do it entirely wrong. If you're not a marketer, but you're following so many people that it's not enjoyable for you without "reducing the noise," you may need to stop worrying about "Twitter etiquette" - which seems to be mainly dictated by marketers looking for mutual follows, anyway - and unfollow some folks until you find a happy number.

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