Every March some 50,000+ people descend on my hometown of Austin, Texas to check out the latest in music, film and interactive tech in a giant marketing orgy called South by Southwest. As an Austin resident, it's the kind of thing where you either want to attend the event, or GTFO.
It's one of the few times of year when I use Twitter on a regular basis. For the rest of the year, I use Twitter to post random thoughts and short quips. I have set up the "Twitter for Facebook" application to re-post all my tweets to Facebook, so that I can share those self-indulgent remarks with my friends & family in a more directed manner.
During SXSW, however, I'll be tweeting at a breakneck pace (relatively speaking) and don't wish to inflict this deluge on my unsuspecting friends. Boingboing recommends the Monsanto approach: tell your readers how to suppress SXSW from your Twitter stream. I'm taking the opposite approach and suppressing the republishing of my tweets temporarily. Here's how (based on the current Facebook UI):
- Log into Facebook
- On the top-right click the "down arrow" then Account Settings
- On the left menu click "Apps"
- Find the Twitter app and click "Edit"
- Change the "App activity privacy" setting to "Only Me"
This will effectively disable the re-publishing of your tweets to your facebook stream, without having to revoke access & re-enable it later. This implementation assumes you're using the "Twitter for Facebook" application. If you use another method to republish your tweets, please share your solution in the comments below.
If you want to follow my activity at SXSWi this year, follow me on Twitter: @bgcb