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Twitter is a poster child for why diversity is key. Not racial, but socioeconomic. Twitter is very popular with people who have reached a certain threshold of t

• monk_e_boy 11y ago
  Your dad sounds like me! I can #not @understand @twitter #at #all. Every message is 90% noise. Facebook on the other hand, is full of interesting news from people I love. Technology has come a long way when I get more accurate news from my mums friends than I do from the local TV news station. Our village had floods and the local pumping station failed, Facebook friends (and shared posts) kept us all in the loop and organised sands bags, pumps and help for the elderly.
  • julian55 11y ago
    I've never got on with Twitter either. Most people I am interested in are on Facebook if they use any social media. Twitter is just boring stuff.
    • JBReefer 11y ago
      Twitter is the Two Minutes of Hate mixed with memes
  • irl_zebra 11y ago
    I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, a pretty competent programmer and data analyst, and I cannot figure out how to use Twitter. I mean, I know physically how to create an account and tweet, and I've made multiple tries of getting into it, but can't find a use for it. So much noise.
    • wyclif 11y ago
      If you think Twitter is too noisy, it's probably a sign that you're following too many people.
      • coldpie 11y ago
        Yeah, you really have to cull it. If someone in your timeline isn't posting things you enjoy reading, remove them. I use it primarily as a media consumption device; I follow people who create and say things I enjoy. I only follow one or two personal friends. The idea of using it for any serious communication is ludicrous.
      • toyg 11y ago
        Or too many noisy people. Some folks can literally drown your timeline.
      • GotAnyMegadeth 11y ago
        How is the user supposed to know how many people is a good amount to follow? I think that is Twitter's problem, not the user's.
        • deleted 11y ago
          [deleted]
        • wyclif 11y ago
          It's definitely a problem, which is why I recommend following very incrementally. If you add too many power users at once, it gets noisy fast.
      • mgkimsal 11y ago
        Doesn't even sound like the GP is even following anyone. I've known a few people for whom the twitter interface and, well, really, the whole platform, just doesn't make much sense. It never clicks with them. None of these people had the "whoah... you're following way too many people!" problem. Almost the opposite, in most cases.
      • 11y ago
  • fenomas 11y ago
    Meaning absolutely no offense, I don't understand how this is possible. The whole point of twitter is that you choose who you follow - if someone is noisy, why not unfollow them and never hear from them again? Is it maybe that you haven't followed anyone yet, and twitter is showing you miscellaneous junk because they're too daft to show you a "hey you should search for some people you're interested in" dialog?
    • petra 11y ago
      While in theory it's possible , it takes a lot of work to curate twitter for a high signal/noise level, if it's even possible. Personally i find that if you care for higher snr, curating blogs and newsletters works better. Besides that , twitter is sometimes nice for conversations. But not so much as to be worth the hassle of using it.
      • fenomas 11y ago
        Unless you're following spambots I guess we have different notions of signal/noise. If I follow e.g. William Gibson because I'm interested in hearing what he has to say, and he says something about a topic I'm not interested in, is that noise?
        • petra 11y ago
          Gibson is smart and interesting, sure. But if he says something i'm not interested in ,yes , for me, on the web, it's noise.
    • monk_e_boy 11y ago
      Maybe trying to cram everything into 140 characters including links and hash tags is just too much for me. Look at all the replies to me, they are all written in normal English words with not a single #tag in sight.
  • samsolomon 11y ago
    I've mentioned this before, but Twitter is what you make of it—your experience is entirely dictated by who you choose to follow. If you want to have a good experience on Twitter, here are my suggestions: - Keep the number of people you follow under 1,000. I follow about 600. Any more than 1,000 and it starts to become information overload. - Keep the quality of the people you follow exceptionally high. Look through their recent Tweets and see if they post content you're interested in before following. - Unfollow accounts that add to the noise. Don't want to see every TechCrunch article? Unfollow them. One thing I've discovered is that individual journalists are much more interesting than following publications wholesale.
    • coldpie 11y ago
      Holy crow, 1000? I follow about 40 :)
      • zimpenfish 11y ago
        200 here but I'd guess at least 50 of those are dormant these days. Even with that, it's still quite spammy some days.
      • throwaway049 11y ago
        I follow about 4, but I heavily use hashtag searches for real time information. I started using it during the 2011 riots in London to see how my commute was being affected.
      • csixty4 11y ago
        I follow about 1200 but the number of accounts that are still active are probably around 100. Lots of failed startups and joke accounts in there.
  • overcast 11y ago
    I never got it either, beyond spamming links and self promotion. To me it was like sitting in an IRC channel, where everyone was force to write in a shortened, convoluted way. Trying to engage message threads was infuriating. I do see a positive side to it, mentioned earlier. It's a decent way of broadcasting real time news, and I think Twitter should focus on that aspect.
• facepalm 11y ago
  Facebook is pretty hard to use, though. I started using it late and it was tough. You just don't notice the complexity of FB because you are used to it by now. Also, I am not convinced Twitter has to be liked by everybody. No product has to be liked by everybody.
• gabriele 11y ago
  They needed to really hire non SF based techno geeks and advisors Twitter should be led by someone who is strong in PR. PR is where Twitter has excelled most. I believe neither Jack Dorsey nor Dick Costolo are even known outside of the tech industry, how can they manage a PR product if people barely knows them? Even Scooble would be a better fit than Jack Dorsey. If I were Twitter I'd put in charge some well known public figure with connections in the media and movies industries.
  • toyg 11y ago
    So you're basically saying Twitter should be the next Yahoo!. That didn't work out so well for them. Besides, media people are the ones who actually like Twitter as it is now: top-down broadcasts in a controlled environment with ads and analytics. If I were Twitter I would poach Amazon executives and make them flog the company into shape: lean, dogfooding, pushing out services to the tech community, and letting new paradigms emerge before co-opting them.
    • gabriele 11y ago
      To my knowledge, Yahoo! has always been led by some tech geek from the Valley, too.
      • toyg 11y ago
        Yeah but it basically lived on contracts from traditional media and ad companies, which they proactively courted. When those markets tanked, so did Yahoo.
        • gabriele 11y ago
          I think Twitter is in a different position because Yahoo! has never build a bi-directional connection between producers and consumers. Obviously, that's not limited to media and ads companies. Any kind of industry is investing in PR. I believe Twitter could succeed as a PR company but will probably fail as a tech company.
• pjc50 11y ago
  Hang on, wasn't it a couple of years ago that people were talking about "Twitter revolutions" in the Middle East? Tahrir Square and all that? Someone posted a "show a completely random tweet" page the last time this came up, and I noticed that few of the ones I saw were in English and quite a few in Arabic. Twitter isn't the best tool for family-and-friends; Facebook has that use case covered. But trying to turn Twitter into FB will destroy its usefulness for all the people who want it because it's not like FB. Twitter is best for the question "what's going on in the world now?"
  • jusben1369 11y ago
    I think the confusion here is you've assumed I meant that Twitter needs to become more like FB from a content perspective. I mean from a usability perspective. My father would like to follow along with current affairs/breaking news/sports and other celebrities.....he just can't get it to work the way he wants.
    • pjc50 11y ago
      I meant that lots of people outside of the "geek" demographic clearly are using it successfully, whereas they're not e.g. using Linux on the desktop, or GNU social, or IRC, or Ello or whatever. I wonder if this is website vs app usability or similar?
• matwood 11y ago
  It took me awhile, but I found 3 use cases for Twitter. 1) Follow interesting people in the tech industry to see what they are thinking about semi-real time. I often see links on Twitter days or weeks before they end up on HN for example. 2) Add to the entertainment experience of TV. Watching The Walking Dead, the Super Bowl, or the debates with Twitter going in the background provides insight and comedic relief. 3) Publicly shaming companies. I've done this multiple times with Comcast and they have reached out and made it right. What I don't do is follow friends or people I know well for the most part. I already know what they think, so a stream of their thoughts does not provide much value.
• jonawesomegreen 11y ago
  I totally agree with the Dad comment here. Both my Mother and Father are hugely into Facebook, but don't understand twitter. They have both signed up for accounts, but haven't really used them, because they don't get it. To be honest, I also didn't really understand twitter until I had to sign up for it to promote a talk I was giving at a conference. Then after playing around with it a bit, I found some interesting people I ended up following. Before that though I didn't really see the appeal. And this is coming from a tech and news junkie.
• qq66 11y ago
  Also, diversity as it pertains to "hiring people who dislike Twitter and don't use it," which would be a great source of change from the inside. However that's very hard to do, both for the company (you want me to hire this guy who hates what I built?) and the employee (why would they join?)
  • pjc50 11y ago
    "hiring people who dislike Twitter and don't use it," Anti-dogfooding!
  • MiddleEndian 11y ago
    >why would they join? I don't use twitter and I'm not looking for a new job, but it seems like an interesting enough place to work.
• snowwrestler 11y ago
  The things that would make Twitter work better for non-techy folks are the things that would make Twitter power users the most angry: longer tweet limits, no more #hashtags and @handles, and an algorithmic timeline. Twitter is besieged by directly contradictory demands: "Make it easier for everyone to use!" vs "Don't kill the things that make it unique and useful!"
  • DanBC 11y ago
    > and an algorithmic timeline I'd be reassured about algorithmic timelines if Twitter's attempts were not so terrible. A year ago I started following Bob (an Internet famous personality.) Bob has made one post to twitter, and I've forgotten that I'm following him. Until one day Twitter puts a post from Ann - a friend of Bob that Bob follows - into my timeline. Ann and Bob post exclusively about eg Minecraft. I post and read exclusively about mental health treatment and stigma in the UK. I immediately unfollow Bob (because he never posts anything and I'm not interested in anything people he follows posts) and I dismiss the post and say that I didn't like it. And Twitter will do this week after week after week. It'll post something to my timeline that my twitter account is clearly not interested in. (High end bicycles; alcohol ads; cars; etc etc). I wouldn't mind if it was purely random - "hey, we're going to show you random shit and maybe you'll like some of it" is better than "hey, we think we know what you're interested in. We've spent time and money developing these algorithms. How about Pianos? Cod fishing? Teaspoons?"
    • snowwrestler 11y ago
      Developing an algorithm is not the hard part. Adapting it to customer data and wishes, is. If/when Twitter launches an algorithmic timeline, it is probably going to suck at first. Only by measuring huge volumes of user interaction with the feature, will they get enough data to make it work well. I mean, look at this thread--people are praising Facebook's ease of use, but back when Facebook starting filtering their timelines, a) power users were super pissed, and b) a lot of random stuff showed up. For a long time there was a semi-hidden "show me all posts" option for the timeline, which power users turned on. That doesn't exist anymore, and most people don't miss it, because the filtering is good enough now. There's not really one algorithm. There's a learning system that creates, on the fly, a billion custom algorithms--one per user. Learning systems need two things to work well. They need a huge corpus of data, and they need clear guidance on the desired outcome. Twitter has a lot of tweets, but they won't really have clear guidance until people start actually using the feature. I'm sure they're trying to collect some now, with their "while you were away" feature, and tracking interactions like you unfollowing Bob after seeing that tweet from Ann.