This is a hack that will save you lots of time and make you a more productive knowledge worker. It’s very easy to setup and use. How many times do you come across a tweet that you don’t have time to read at the moment or that you want to share with someone and keep a record of? For years, people have used Twitter’s ‘Like’ button to bookmark tweets. But this system has several drawbacks including:1. Others can see the tweet’s you’ve liked – your list of favorited tweets are accessible to everyone2. Likes indicate a positive sentiment and what you save may be misinterpreted by others3. People are alerted to tweets that you like4. There’s no way to group tweets – they are all just in one big bucket5. There’s no way to annotate the collection of tweets6. You can’t easily share the tweets you’ve bookmarked with othersHistorically, Twitter users have created all manner of workarounds to bookmark their tweets. Typically they either send the tweet to their email, copy and paste them to a document they review later or they DM them to someone else – even themselves.
Twitter to the Rescue! Sort of…
Earlier this year, Twitter released a new way to bookmark tweets. While an improvement over the previously non-existent way to bookmark tweets for future review, this new bookmark feature is still very limited, only works with Twitter’s mobile app and doesn’t address the drawbacks noted above.If you’re using Twitters mobile app, this new approach Twitter came up with allowed you to do the following:
But this is not available for Twitter desktop version. You have to update the ‘www.twitter.com/handle’ URL by replacing ‘www.’ with ‘m.’ so you use ‘m.twitter.com/handle’ so you access Twitter’s ‘mobile’ code set. Otherwise you’re limited to the following functionality.
Notice that you’ve now lost the ability to ‘Share Tweet via…”
Do You Have a Moment? Here’s How to Use Unpublished Twitter Moments to Bookmark Your Tweets
Twitter’s Moment feature provides a very powerful way to bookmark tweets that address ALL of the limitations described above. I call this Bookmark Moments and here’s how it works. 1. Create a Twitter Moment 2. Give the Twitter Moment a name3. Add a short description (optional)4. Add an image to the Moment (optional)5. Decide whether you want to share your bookmarks with othersIf you want to share your ‘bookmarked’ tweets, go ahead and ‘Publish’ the Moment, otherwise leave it unpublished to keep your bookmarks private. 6. Repeat the above steps for each ‘bookmark folder’ you want to create. See below for some sample bookmark categories.
Bookmark Away!
Now, whenever you encounter a tweet that you want to bookmark to read later and/or share with someone else, simply add the tweet to one (or more) of the Twitter Moments you’ve created as follows:1. Click on the “V” to the right of the tweet Desktop Version
Mobile Version – Android
2. Add the tweet to one of the Moments you’ve created. Desktop Version
Mobile Version – Android
You can browse to any of the Moments you’ve created or even create a new Moment on the fly.Viewing your “Bookmark Moments”
Later on, when you want to review the tweet, simply browse to the Moment you created! No futzing with changing the URL in the desktop client. And no browsing through a potentially huge list of uncategorized tweets! Maintaining Your “Bookmark Moments”
You can access your Twitter Moments via the Twitter menu:
To remove tweets from a Bookmark Moment, simply delete it from the Moment.
Move tweets between Bookmarks Moment by accessing the Moment and using existing Moment maintenance functions.
Share your Bookmark Moment by simply publishing the Moment.Embed Your Bookmarked Moments in a Web PageAnother cool feature of Bookmark Moments is that Twitter generates HTML code that allows you to easily embed anyTwitter Moment’s you create in a web site. This offers all kinds of additional flexibility.
Save & Organize Your Tweets in Unlimited Ways
Create a Twitter Moment to categorize each of the types of tweets you want to keep. Think of these as folders.
I’m not aware of any limitations as to the number of Twitter Moments you can create. While everyone has their own unique requirements, the following are probably useful for most people:To Share with Others
To Read – High Priority
To Read – Low Priority
Reference/Evergreen Content
I’ve created dozens of Bookmark Moments in a number of categories. Here are some of them:Conference Related
Content for Client ABC
Content for Client XYZ
General Catch-All
HITConfGuy & Related
Share with Family
Social Determinants of Health
Social Media & Marketing
To Share With Others
Tools & Resources
Tweetchat Topics
There You Have It! Easy Peasy!
The above approach is quite simple to set up and use. Most importantly, it addresses all of the issues with the current approach for bookmarking tweets.Tweets you bookmark can be kept private
You can choose to share your bookmarks with others
People won’t interpret a Tweet you’ve bookmarked as something you ‘Like’
People won’t be alerted each time you bookmark a tweet
You can categorize tweets – and even add a description and an image if you want
Your bookmarked tweets will be available wherever you have access to your Twitter account – which is everywhere you have an Internet connection.