For quite a while I've been mulling the issue of topics & context on Twitter. By which I mean this: not ALL of the people who are following you on Twitter are interested in ALL the topics you tweet about so why not create a mechanism so that your followers can almost tune in to the bits they want.

update: "key points to grasp about Twitter Shushes" (might be best to read first)

Update: A Youtube video I've just uploaded about this...

(Note: perhaps Twitter Annotations will ride in on its white horse and save the day but, until it does that, we have to find a workaround to the above problem...)

Ok, my basic solution is an extension to something I outlined previously in how NOT to swamp your followers during Twitter chats - i.e. if you prefix certain tweets with an account which only you (or a portion of your followers follow) then you've got a way to hide certain tweets from non interested parties.

E.g. I created @wcTALK to help gather the world cup tweets which I was likely to tweet about. This meant I could tweet without annoying my regular followers and such tweets would only be visible to people following that account or (more likely) to people following the World Cup #WorldCup and #wc2010 hashtags (which most tweets would be using).

...but then I thought...why not extend this to ANY topic?

so in steps my concept of a "ssssh (shush) account". Shush as in sssssh! As in silence....as in fingers to lips. Shush because it gives you a method to silence certain tweets from your regular followers. 

So what IS a "ssssh account"?

It's just a regular Twitter account - but it probably won't tweet at all. It simply exists to be followed by people who are interested in that topic.

My idea is that there would be lots and lots of ssssh accounts - different ones for differing topics. Perhaps there'll be a website where you can search for the ssssh account for a topic but, until there's a need for me to create that, I'll just blog instead :)

Do I HAVE to use a shush?

Of course not! My thinking is that, by defintion, you'll have some default topics which you always tweet about. And if folks don't like that then they'll just have to jog on. However, you might have secondary topics - this is where shush accounts can help.

What Ssshhh accounts exist?

Short answer? Not many!

wcTALK - for World Cup tweet

sh4SQc - for 4SQ Checkins (note that I think it's better for sssh account names to start with a lower case sh)

shBBerry - for Blackbery related stuff

shEbayL - for Ebay listings

..more coming soon!

...feel free to create your own shush accounts for whatever topic is needed! But remember, such accounts should not tweet - as a rough convention it would be nice if such accounts started with "sh". Please do let me know if you create one though so I can list it.

Spreading the Sssshh!

Like many things on Twitter - things happen organically. And the same goes for sssh accounts. People will only use sssh accounts if they know about them so I'd probably recommend the following:

1. spread the word! Tell folks about the ssssh concept and this page
2. add to your Twitter background which sssh accounts you "broadcast" on
3. don't hide EVERY tweet behind a sssh account - be selective as that let's people know the channel as well :)

Please shout out if you have any questions.

@Joel_Hughes