7 ms·

I am probably in a very small minority, but I have never seen the point of Twitter. It has almost limitless potential to destroy your life by taking something o

by SeanDav 10y ago

I am probably in a very small minority, but I have never seen the point of Twitter. It has almost limitless potential to destroy your life by taking something out of context and copying it to millions. I shudder to think of the number of times I have made a tasteless throwaway comment or colourful joke that, if taken out of context, would have had dire consequences. It has almost limitless potential to take up all your attention, trying to stay up to date with what everyone is saying. I can't think of a single thing I am missing out on, by not having an active Twitter account, but can think of many reasons to not have one.

jomamaxx 10y ago
You're not in the minority, you're in the majority. Not that many people actually use Twitter. That you think you are in the minority is a weird cultural phenom - people with the loud voices behaviours signal to us what is 'normative' even if it is not! Because you see a lot of people using Twitter, you think 'everyone's doing it'. In reality - most people are far more neutral/central than the voices in the web. And most people just don't care about such things. Try ignoring Twitter for a few months. You won't feel left out, trust me. It's mostly noise.
- gaius 10y ago
  It's not helped by organizations such as the BBC who report on what happens on Twitter as if it is actually news.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    "It's not helped by organizations such as the BBC who report on what happens on Twitter as if it is actually news." Ah. That's a trick used by 'credible news outlets' to promote an ideology when they're supposed to remain 'neutral'. When a journo wants to say something ideological, but is limited in editorial scope by supposed 'neutrality', all he needs to do is find a Tweet somewhere that says what he wants, and can then publish it and say 'people are saying XYZ' - as though it represents a 'popular view' - even though it does not. I am not ideological or political, but it's far more common among left-ish leaning editorialists. About 85% of people working at the BBC, CBC, CNN are left of centre, they are professionals and are pretty good at trying to remain neutral, but the biases come out one way or another. The editorial chiefs don't care because they're cut from the same cloth - so as long as the veneer of professionalism is there (and they're not offending advertisers) it flies. 80% of news - even at the 'reputable sites' is total fluff. They need to keep writing about something. So they invent the news. In another sense this is not a new phenom: in the old days everyone read/watched local news. They report on the most inane thing: cats stuck in trees. But people loved it because it was super local and relevant to them, i.e. 'gossipy'. Twitter is the 'gossip' for the new urban types that don't have strong local social networks to gossip within. At my grandmothers house, people would stop in, chat for 20 mins with Gran, and after they were gone I had no idea why they stopped by! It was just gossip. That's the 'old timey' Twitter!
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      I should add, there are actually very few news outlets that make the pretence of being centrist. In particular, Western state agencies such as BBC and CBC and the US, arguably CNN 'kind of' long that vein. They are definitely left of centre in actuality, though not an obvious editorial bias, it's definitely there. As far as other agencies (Sky, NBC, Fox, MSBNC, FT, WSJ etc), well, the aforementioned 'trick' is used a lot.
- hacker_9 10y ago
  Twitter had 350 million active users in Q1 of 2016, this is quite a lot actually.
  - pmontra 10y ago
    Still a minority if you think how many are sharing their thoughts on fb or are using whatsapp for group messaging.
  - VLM 10y ago
    The majority might be bots. Surely for financial reasons the most tenuous definition of "active" will be applied. Still, its like the old saying about email, I don't care if 99% of email is spam, as long as I get my electric bill email on time, I'm all good. Twitter might become like TV, where everyone knows everyone watches, but it turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches. Its like the endless debates about religion where its a ritual to say X where X is "I believe in Y" and people endlessly argue about the difference between doing something and being something, as if they have to be linked.
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      " but it turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches" ... ha ha .. ha ... People still watch a lot of regular TV and will continue to do so for quite a long time.
ScaryRacoon 10y ago
I use it strictly to connect with other software engineers. Outside of that, I agree with you. I'm extremely careful about what I tweet or like or re-tweet. I don't think most folks would find Twitter that useful. I didn't really get it until I joined, and the only thing I've found it helpful for is to network with other engineers.
jonknee 10y ago
> I can't think of a single thing I am missing out on, by not having an active Twitter account, but can think of many reasons to not have one. The same thing can be said for any social network. Some people see value, others see nothing but stress.
jnevill 10y ago
Same here. I have an account, but I've never found any use for it. I've tried a few times, but it offers nothing that I want. I tend to be more "Social" on sites that focus on a specific topic like StackOverflow, Blogs that I follow, Facebook for friends and family, so Twitter offers nothing there. Others seem to use twitter as a new aggregator where stories they care about get bubbled up by their followers. I use feedly though to track the hundreds of sites I care about and I've gotten very adept at filtering through the content I don't care about using it. When I have used twitter, I've found the amount of content overwhelming and I hate that I feel this need to "Catch up" since last time I looked at it. It's endless monotony.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I think the real promise of Twitter is that it offers a platform to engage directly with movers and shakers. The short form makes it possible to exchange ideas with high-profile people that otherwise would never be able or willing to read all the long-form mail they get. @pmarca has addressed a tweet I made before, totally unsolicited. That's the only element that I feel it really brings to the table; it's digestable for busy people, and busy people actually sometimes engage on it (though often to their detriment).
aphextron 10y ago
I was right there with you for the longest time, until I realized it's all about very carefully curating your feed. Only follow thoughtful, interesting people who's opinions you respect, and purge the nonsense with extreme prejudice. It's probably the best way of staying on top of what's happening in any particular industry/field of study if you look at it that way.
- ultramancool 10y ago
  I tried doing this and just wound up with a bunch of garbage content from interesting people who's opinions I respect at a rate of hundreds of garbage posts per day. Then I uninstalled. I just don't get it. Maybe I just like crap people or something.
rdtsc 10y ago
Neither have I. I comment here, sometimes go to Reddit for some subreddits. Programming language specific mail lists and so on. I send email to people I want to talk directly. There was no time in the last decade were I felt "Gee, I wish I could put this in a 140 charter blurb and broadcast it to the world". There are obviously millions who do do that, and that's fine. I just personally don't understand that drive. I don't even go there to consume stuff. Very few times I remember looking there and seeing "Oh I have to keep coming back for more". Maybe I'd see an announcement of a release of my favorite tool or platform, but I am already subscribed to their mailing list. And can actually have meaningful discussions there as well.
hacker_9 10y ago
If you making any sort of product it's a great way to reach your audience (speaking as a game dev here). Also I can follow other dev progress as they post updates to their feed, which I find really interesting! Some people post great stuff. Additionally I can see all the latest industry news by just scrolling down a simple list. I subscribe to what I want to see, not to all the ISIS propaganda that is news websites these days.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Anecdotally, I found that within my niche, Facebook was much more effective than Twitter. A subculture was associated with my niche and Twitter was home of the impossible-to-please elitists, who really just wanted to live in their own vacuum chamber and lashed out at practically anyone who was trying to hold a real discussion with them. Facebook had a much better response. There's just something about Twitter that makes it even more hostile than your typical online forum. Maybe it's because it's so easy to isolate a tweet external to its context and get people worked into a lather over it, maybe it's that people are forced to truncate their thoughts such that they can't possibly add all the expected niceties and disclaimers and thus inevitably offend someone whenever they make any substantive statement, or maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, Twitter is usually not a nice place. If I were primarily interested in product updates, I would probably follow the company on Facebook (the layman's feed reader).
timmytokyo 10y ago
What I've never understood about Twitter is why it's so slow to evolve. Why doesn't it have better search and filter features? Why doesn't it give users better tools to organize their timelines? Why is its user interface so limited? Why doesn't it let you edit tweets you wrote in the last five minutes? In terms of features, Twitter today is pretty much the same as Twitter 3 years ago. That's insane. It makes me wonder what's wrong with their management.
dzmien 10y ago
Some of my friends started using Twitter back in 2008, right when it starting gaining traction, so I tried it out as well. I quickly grew bored with it and didn't use it until earlier this year. I tried it again, encouraged by its popularity, and again I stopped using it after a day or two. Twitter has managed to hook millions of people, but it can't seem to hook me. Though I'm sure that says more about me than it says about Twitter.
coldcode 10y ago
I use twitter as a secondary subscription mechanism to my blog besides the usual RSS. That's it.
antihero 10y ago
I met my ex through trolling a bunch of people we mutually hated. Got an awesome five year relationship out of it. Other than that, no idea. Oh sometimes TV shows use what you've said, which is neat. Having this little gem read out by Daniel Radcliffe on Have I Got a Little Bit More News For You (Christmas 2012 I think?) https://twitter.com/ratsupremacy/status/280347060031614977 https://twitter.com/ratsupremacy/status/280347060031614977 made my evening.
overcast 10y ago
You're obviously not in a small minority, most of the world does not use Twitter. I've had accounts on there for my name, random projects I've started, and I've to this day not found anything worth my time. Coupled with overall disinterest recently in social platforms, I've been systematically just removing myself from them. The amount of time wasted on things like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc, is now redirected towards reading more, traveling more, finishing projects, sleeping more, and enjoying a social life outside of a virtual one. I'm going to say something crazy, but I don't think the future of the internet is going to be a MORE social one. We're already at the saturation point, where people are just getting completely sick of updating their status, keeping up with a thousand conversations on Tinder that go no where, posting pics, tagging people, and on and on. I think there is going to be a breaking point where people are just going to actively unplug. You're already seeing it with the resurgence of board games. People want real human interactions.
atria 10y ago
I deleted my twitter account last week and deleted the twitter app after Milo was banned. I wasn't a follower of his, but I perceived an active bias against conservatives or filtering trending tags that comment on trending news that are negative towards Hillary as just too much, as well as the fact that it is a cesspool of bullying, huckster marketing, plagerism, and cry-bullying. It was the second time I gave twitter a go. I must not be the target market.

by SeanDav 10y ago

jomamaxx 10y ago

You're not in the minority, you're in the majority. Not that many people actually use Twitter. That you think you are in the minority is a weird cultural phenom - people with the loud voices behaviours signal to us what is 'normative' even if it is not! Because you see a lot of people using Twitter, you think 'everyone's doing it'. In reality - most people are far more neutral/central than the voices in the web. And most people just don't care about such things. Try ignoring Twitter for a few months. You won't feel left out, trust me. It's mostly noise.

gaius 10y ago
It's not helped by organizations such as the BBC who report on what happens on Twitter as if it is actually news.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "It's not helped by organizations such as the BBC who report on what happens on Twitter as if it is actually news." Ah. That's a trick used by 'credible news outlets' to promote an ideology when they're supposed to remain 'neutral'. When a journo wants to say something ideological, but is limited in editorial scope by supposed 'neutrality', all he needs to do is find a Tweet somewhere that says what he wants, and can then publish it and say 'people are saying XYZ' - as though it represents a 'popular view' - even though it does not. I am not ideological or political, but it's far more common among left-ish leaning editorialists. About 85% of people working at the BBC, CBC, CNN are left of centre, they are professionals and are pretty good at trying to remain neutral, but the biases come out one way or another. The editorial chiefs don't care because they're cut from the same cloth - so as long as the veneer of professionalism is there (and they're not offending advertisers) it flies. 80% of news - even at the 'reputable sites' is total fluff. They need to keep writing about something. So they invent the news. In another sense this is not a new phenom: in the old days everyone read/watched local news. They report on the most inane thing: cats stuck in trees. But people loved it because it was super local and relevant to them, i.e. 'gossipy'. Twitter is the 'gossip' for the new urban types that don't have strong local social networks to gossip within. At my grandmothers house, people would stop in, chat for 20 mins with Gran, and after they were gone I had no idea why they stopped by! It was just gossip. That's the 'old timey' Twitter!
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    I should add, there are actually very few news outlets that make the pretence of being centrist. In particular, Western state agencies such as BBC and CBC and the US, arguably CNN 'kind of' long that vein. They are definitely left of centre in actuality, though not an obvious editorial bias, it's definitely there. As far as other agencies (Sky, NBC, Fox, MSBNC, FT, WSJ etc), well, the aforementioned 'trick' is used a lot.
hacker_9 10y ago
Twitter had 350 million active users in Q1 of 2016, this is quite a lot actually.
- pmontra 10y ago
  Still a minority if you think how many are sharing their thoughts on fb or are using whatsapp for group messaging.
- VLM 10y ago
  The majority might be bots. Surely for financial reasons the most tenuous definition of "active" will be applied. Still, its like the old saying about email, I don't care if 99% of email is spam, as long as I get my electric bill email on time, I'm all good. Twitter might become like TV, where everyone knows everyone watches, but it turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches. Its like the endless debates about religion where its a ritual to say X where X is "I believe in Y" and people endlessly argue about the difference between doing something and being something, as if they have to be linked.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    " but it turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches" ... ha ha .. ha ... People still watch a lot of regular TV and will continue to do so for quite a long time.

ScaryRacoon 10y ago

I use it strictly to connect with other software engineers. Outside of that, I agree with you. I'm extremely careful about what I tweet or like or re-tweet. I don't think most folks would find Twitter that useful. I didn't really get it until I joined, and the only thing I've found it helpful for is to network with other engineers.

jonknee 10y ago

> I can't think of a single thing I am missing out on, by not having an active Twitter account, but can think of many reasons to not have one. The same thing can be said for any social network. Some people see value, others see nothing but stress.

jnevill 10y ago

Same here. I have an account, but I've never found any use for it. I've tried a few times, but it offers nothing that I want. I tend to be more "Social" on sites that focus on a specific topic like StackOverflow, Blogs that I follow, Facebook for friends and family, so Twitter offers nothing there. Others seem to use twitter as a new aggregator where stories they care about get bubbled up by their followers. I use feedly though to track the hundreds of sites I care about and I've gotten very adept at filtering through the content I don't care about using it. When I have used twitter, I've found the amount of content overwhelming and I hate that I feel this need to "Catch up" since last time I looked at it. It's endless monotony.

cookiecaper 10y ago
I think the real promise of Twitter is that it offers a platform to engage directly with movers and shakers. The short form makes it possible to exchange ideas with high-profile people that otherwise would never be able or willing to read all the long-form mail they get. @pmarca has addressed a tweet I made before, totally unsolicited. That's the only element that I feel it really brings to the table; it's digestable for busy people, and busy people actually sometimes engage on it (though often to their detriment).

aphextron 10y ago

I was right there with you for the longest time, until I realized it's all about very carefully curating your feed. Only follow thoughtful, interesting people who's opinions you respect, and purge the nonsense with extreme prejudice. It's probably the best way of staying on top of what's happening in any particular industry/field of study if you look at it that way.

ultramancool 10y ago
I tried doing this and just wound up with a bunch of garbage content from interesting people who's opinions I respect at a rate of hundreds of garbage posts per day. Then I uninstalled. I just don't get it. Maybe I just like crap people or something.

rdtsc 10y ago

Neither have I. I comment here, sometimes go to Reddit for some subreddits. Programming language specific mail lists and so on. I send email to people I want to talk directly. There was no time in the last decade were I felt "Gee, I wish I could put this in a 140 charter blurb and broadcast it to the world". There are obviously millions who do do that, and that's fine. I just personally don't understand that drive. I don't even go there to consume stuff. Very few times I remember looking there and seeing "Oh I have to keep coming back for more". Maybe I'd see an announcement of a release of my favorite tool or platform, but I am already subscribed to their mailing list. And can actually have meaningful discussions there as well.

hacker_9 10y ago

If you making any sort of product it's a great way to reach your audience (speaking as a game dev here). Also I can follow other dev progress as they post updates to their feed, which I find really interesting! Some people post great stuff. Additionally I can see all the latest industry news by just scrolling down a simple list. I subscribe to what I want to see, not to all the ISIS propaganda that is news websites these days.

cookiecaper 10y ago
Anecdotally, I found that within my niche, Facebook was much more effective than Twitter. A subculture was associated with my niche and Twitter was home of the impossible-to-please elitists, who really just wanted to live in their own vacuum chamber and lashed out at practically anyone who was trying to hold a real discussion with them. Facebook had a much better response. There's just something about Twitter that makes it even more hostile than your typical online forum. Maybe it's because it's so easy to isolate a tweet external to its context and get people worked into a lather over it, maybe it's that people are forced to truncate their thoughts such that they can't possibly add all the expected niceties and disclaimers and thus inevitably offend someone whenever they make any substantive statement, or maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, Twitter is usually not a nice place. If I were primarily interested in product updates, I would probably follow the company on Facebook (the layman's feed reader).

timmytokyo 10y ago

What I've never understood about Twitter is why it's so slow to evolve. Why doesn't it have better search and filter features? Why doesn't it give users better tools to organize their timelines? Why is its user interface so limited? Why doesn't it let you edit tweets you wrote in the last five minutes? In terms of features, Twitter today is pretty much the same as Twitter 3 years ago. That's insane. It makes me wonder what's wrong with their management.

dzmien 10y ago

Some of my friends started using Twitter back in 2008, right when it starting gaining traction, so I tried it out as well. I quickly grew bored with it and didn't use it until earlier this year. I tried it again, encouraged by its popularity, and again I stopped using it after a day or two. Twitter has managed to hook millions of people, but it can't seem to hook me. Though I'm sure that says more about me than it says about Twitter.

coldcode 10y ago

I use twitter as a secondary subscription mechanism to my blog besides the usual RSS. That's it.

antihero 10y ago

I met my ex through trolling a bunch of people we mutually hated. Got an awesome five year relationship out of it. Other than that, no idea. Oh sometimes TV shows use what you've said, which is neat. Having this little gem read out by Daniel Radcliffe on Have I Got a Little Bit More News For You (Christmas 2012 I think?) https://twitter.com/ratsupremacy/status/280347060031614977 https://twitter.com/ratsupremacy/status/280347060031614977 made my evening.

overcast 10y ago

You're obviously not in a small minority, most of the world does not use Twitter. I've had accounts on there for my name, random projects I've started, and I've to this day not found anything worth my time. Coupled with overall disinterest recently in social platforms, I've been systematically just removing myself from them. The amount of time wasted on things like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc, is now redirected towards reading more, traveling more, finishing projects, sleeping more, and enjoying a social life outside of a virtual one. I'm going to say something crazy, but I don't think the future of the internet is going to be a MORE social one. We're already at the saturation point, where people are just getting completely sick of updating their status, keeping up with a thousand conversations on Tinder that go no where, posting pics, tagging people, and on and on. I think there is going to be a breaking point where people are just going to actively unplug. You're already seeing it with the resurgence of board games. People want real human interactions.

atria 10y ago

I deleted my twitter account last week and deleted the twitter app after Milo was banned. I wasn't a follower of his, but I perceived an active bias against conservatives or filtering trending tags that comment on trending news that are negative towards Hillary as just too much, as well as the fact that it is a cesspool of bullying, huckster marketing, plagerism, and cry-bullying. It was the second time I gave twitter a go. I must not be the target market.