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I think that was more common to hear as people didn't seem to understand @messages and #hashtags. So when they saw: > .@jack #awesome They didn't know what th

I think that was more common to hear as people didn't seem to understand @messages and #hashtags. So when they saw: > .@jack #awesome They didn't know what that meant. Now that hashtags and @ style messaging are just about everywhere, I don't think it is a valid theory.

dnr 11y ago
As a non-twitter-using software engineer, when I land on a twitter page, I still find it fairly intimidating and requiring special knowledge. For example, why is there a dot before the @ in your example? (I actually know the answer to that because I looked it up once, but it's totally not obvious.) What's with all the slashes in numbered lists? Because of the character limit, people use a lot of abbreviations and shorthand that I can usually figure out with some puzzling, but I shouldn't have to do that. I still see url-shortener urls all over on twitter, when I should just see regular urls. These may be minor points, but it adds up to giving off the feeling that there's an in-crowd and I'm not invited. It is much better than it was a few years ago, though, so maybe it'll get there. (I'm not even getting into the difficulty of actually following a conversation on twitter! Reverse-chronological order plus the lack of linking replies to their parent messages make it nearly impossible, but that's a well-known issue.)
- jay_kyburz 11y ago
  I agree that the @ at the beginning or the @ in the middle is a problem. here is my opinion Jack if you are reading. Every tweet needs some extra field when you are creating them. * to: field like email. A list of people or "everybody" * body: 140 characters. * tags: relevant tags so that your tween can be found by non followers interested in a specific topic. * url: seperate url so as not to use up your 140 chars. Nobody wants to use a link shortener.
  - alexschleber 11y ago
    More fields... less compliance...

dnr 11y ago

As a non-twitter-using software engineer, when I land on a twitter page, I still find it fairly intimidating and requiring special knowledge. For example, why is there a dot before the @ in your example? (I actually know the answer to that because I looked it up once, but it's totally not obvious.) What's with all the slashes in numbered lists? Because of the character limit, people use a lot of abbreviations and shorthand that I can usually figure out with some puzzling, but I shouldn't have to do that. I still see url-shortener urls all over on twitter, when I should just see regular urls. These may be minor points, but it adds up to giving off the feeling that there's an in-crowd and I'm not invited. It is much better than it was a few years ago, though, so maybe it'll get there. (I'm not even getting into the difficulty of actually following a conversation on twitter! Reverse-chronological order plus the lack of linking replies to their parent messages make it nearly impossible, but that's a well-known issue.)

jay_kyburz 11y ago
I agree that the @ at the beginning or the @ in the middle is a problem. here is my opinion Jack if you are reading. Every tweet needs some extra field when you are creating them. * to: field like email. A list of people or "everybody" * body: 140 characters. * tags: relevant tags so that your tween can be found by non followers interested in a specific topic. * url: seperate url so as not to use up your 140 chars. Nobody wants to use a link shortener.
- alexschleber 11y ago
  More fields... less compliance...