Ask HN: Want to optimize reading of Twitter - need your help!
A quick intro: with time I grew quite frustrated with how inefficient reading of twitter was. I tried finding an on-line solution to the problem, initially the one which would simply take all the new items and convert them to RSS.
I couldn't find one, so I built one myself, using some simple node.js scripts and adding the feed into Google Reader.
Having RSS feed in compact view helped a lot, nearly cut the reading time in half.
The next stage I see is grouping the messages into categories, and presenting the categories in the order of importance. Say, all the news first, then RTs, then social stuff like 4sq/twitpic/yfrog etc.
I think that the service should allow viewing tweets in real-time (using twitter's SiteStreams API) as well as having an ability to expose the categories as RSS feeds.
However I am as blind and subjective as anyone else is, so that's why I am asking you to point out some obvious deficiencies of the idea.
Also I'd like to get your help in identifying the important categories of messages and ranking them in this short survey
http://is.gd/gSCvo
Thanks a lot! Art