Today I had the privilege of joining the Star-T's Bud Kennedy and the DMN's Travis Hudson on a Dallas Public Relations Society of America panel discussion on social media (finally!) blending with traditional media.

I'm frankly used to being at the head of the class in such confabs, but today I'll have to admit that I absolutely got schooled on the topic of our Twitter feed(s). The upshot is that I think we've fixed it, but here's a longer explanation, which will be particularly germane to those already following @pegasusnews.

First, some backstory: While I use, if not early-adopt, almost every bit of communications geekery that comes down the pike, I have been very slow to warm to Twitter. Lots of things I dislike about it, but that's for another post. The fact is that Mike B. was way ahead of me when he suggested a while back that we actually do something with @pegasusnews. And as an erstwhile media mogul who didn't want to expend effort on a technology I didn't like, I growled something to the effect of "So long as it doesn't take any time. Automate it."

Mike dutifully did as I asked and also created a feed for our lost pet finder.

So what we wound up with was a Twitter feed that automatically posted every damn story on the site. I finally started using Twitter personally in the last few weeks (largely because it made FriendFeed more useful) and started wondering if others found the string of as many as ten consecutive @pegasusnews posts annoying.

My suspicion was confirmed at the PRSA meeting, as one questioner asked about feeds with too many posts and I learned that our colleagues were limiting posts on their feeds.

So, I came back and huddled with Mike to rejigger our setup. Here's what we've done:

@pegasusnews will henceforth autopost this blog, where we generally talk about offbeat local stuff; promotions; and the site and how we can make it better for you. It will also include lovingly hand-picked postings on stuff that you absolutely shouldn't miss. I think I'll also post the weekly newsletter there.

IF you really liked the firehose approach we were taking, never fear. You can still get it @Pegasusnewsall. The only change is that we've set it to post in realtime instead of several batches a day.

We've also added some more segmented feeds you might enjoy that focus on

• Theatre coverage



• Music



• Movies



• Dining

If there are other categories you'd like to see Twitter feeds on, let us know and we'll see what we can do. These are all based on RSS feeds, so you can follow that way too. And in our redesign, we'll make sure to make it clearer how to subscribe to the various Twitter, RSS and [Insert Next Week's Technology Here] feeds for our more than 3,000 content categories.

Jeremy even says that we may just be able to put together customized Twitter feeds for our Daily You users, that will deliver personalized news and info via Twitter. (We'd considered RSS but had privacy issues there.)

One point that I wasn't entirely brought around on in the panel discussion was that every Twitter account has to be hand-curated and two-way. I agree that's ideal, but I also think it is impractical given time constraints. My theory is that people's Twits should be personal, but it is OK for an organization to provide an auto-feed as a convenience for those who want it. Those who don't, don't have to subscribe.

(Hey, my other theory du jour seemed to be popular among Twitterers at the event.)

All that said, I'm slowly warming to Twitter, despite my gripes, and have my own account @mikeorren, which I follow closely. And while I don't think that we have the time to hand-tweet everything, I hope more of our staffers and community members will get on Twitter and use it as another tool to connect our community. Anybody who does, post their handle in the comments.