How To Get Off Twitter and Still Stay Informed

How To Get Off Twitter and Still Stay Informed

TLDR: Keep your Twitter account but delete the app, then sign up for Twurly.

If you're like me, Twitter provides a lot of informational value at the price of your emotional wellbeing. After deleting my Facebook account, I found it hard to leave Twitter because I actually discovered interesting things there every day.

Yes, the world is terrible and unfair, and I care deeply about making it better, but I don't need to be reminded of that every time I want to kill a few minutes on the internet.

Eventually I realized that most of the interesting things I found worthwhile were actually just links people posted to other sites. Was there a way I could just get the links without all the outrage gasoline?

My first thought was that maybe I could build an app that just crawled my Twitter feed and created an RSS feed of links that people post. So I went looking to see if anyone else had already built it and instead I found Twurly, made by Darren Greaves.

Twurly creates an email digest of the best links shared on your Twitter feed so you don't even have to scan your timeline. While not its intended purpose, the removal of vitriolic commentary is a pleasant side-effect. Twurly grabs the page titles of links so you can decide for yourself how you feel about the content on the other side.

This single service has allowed me to reclaim immeasurable time and sanity. Feel free to delete the Twitter app from your phone after you get setup.

If you really enjoy the commentary on Twitter and just want to see more of the good stuff, take a look at Nuzzel.

*I'm still interested in an RSS feed if anyone out there knows of one.

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