My “following” list on Twitter is made up primarily of people who I know in real life (who aren’t too verbose on Twitter), with a few choice “entertainment” gems. I like it this way, it keeps the noise to a level where I can generally keep up with folks I care about.

At WordCamp San Francisco this year I realized I’ve been falling out of touch with fellow WordPress developers because much of the “water cooler” activity is happening on Twitter (and I’m not following it). I can’t add a few dozen people to my main stream and keep it manageable, so I’m trying something different.

I’ve created a couple of topical lists of friends and folks I want to follow, and I’m now using TweetDeck to read the lists. This keeps my main timeline sane and allows me to keep up with other folks I want to keep up with. It’s working so far. For example, I would have missed that a discussion about reviewing plugins was going on had I not been trying this.

I thought I’d be using the Twitter list feature long ago, but this is my first real adoption of it. We’ll see if it sticks.