5 ms·

I believe the problem with Twitter, as it's always been, is that it's just too polarizing. Either people get it, or they don't. It's not general enough, the mec

I believe the problem with Twitter, as it's always been, is that it's just too polarizing. Either people get it, or they don't. It's not general enough, the mechanics of hash tags, nonsensical short messages, retweeting, the signal to noise ratio is horrible, coupled with an often confusing interface, don't allow for the second half of the adoption curve to ever happen. For such a simple mechanic, they make it difficult for a lot of people to just "get it". I've got multiple accounts for various projects, my own personal account, and I still don't see the value in it for me personally.

WalterSear 10y ago
I acquired a masters degree in research psychology studying it, have a number of friends quite active on it, and I still don't see the value in it.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  What did you find out, if not the value?
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    I studied how people perceive each other over twitter, specifically how inferred gender changes our perceptions of personality. I tried to design the the study to make it's results inferable to any micropublishing platform, like this one, for example. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to run the study with enough participants to get significant results, I'm afraid. Academic politics and favouritism got in the way :(
- nuex 10y ago
  I think it's fairly valuable for lowkey discourse, learning, awareness and inspiration. Especially cool to be able to follow anyone (friends, role models, favorite authors) and see what's on their mind and what interests them.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    The bulk of a social network's value is in who is using it. Unfortunately, the medium that twitter provides is so crippled that, for me, that value is too low, no matter who I follow and interact with.
- TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
  I don't participate much on Twitter, but as a developer I find it's one of the easiest ways to stay up to date on what the software community is up to.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    I mostly follow fellow developers too, but I get most of my developer news from people's blogs and this site.
aantix 10y ago
Following conversation threads is confusing especially when there's multiple response forks.
noir-york 10y ago
Funny that, I think its too general! Its a blank canvas - when you sign up who do you tell? With FBK, you invite friends, with Linkedin its your colleagues. But Twitter?
- Nav_Panel 10y ago
  In my experience, you have that one friend who uses Twitter a lot, so you look through their mutuals and you discover "oh, these couple other real-life friends of mine use it," so you follow them any they follow back. You see them retweet or you poke through their followers/following and you see people you don't know, but who post good content, so you follow and maybe interact. Sometimes they follow back. Sometimes you end up DMing them and becoming online or maybe irl friends. Your network continues growing like this until you've got too much on your feed to follow, and you need to take a step back and maybe eliminate some follows. It's a pretty organic thing and you end up with a couple close friends plus a ton of other people semi-connected to your real life friend network.
helthanatos 10y ago
I see value in it as a news spreading platform... But the short messages and tagging system really mess with trying to have any sort of actual discussion. I think Twiiter spreads news better than Google Now/Plus, so it's what I use to stay current in news/tech.
- overcast 10y ago
  I guess I'm just not in a position, where I need news faster than Google News. Which seems to do just fine for me. If the only value Twitter is providing to people, is low latency news article posting, then I think they should position themselves to be that, instead of the 99.99999% of crap that just spread around. Thoughts?
  - helthanatos 10y ago
    Not sure. I see it as news distribution + a little chatter with friends. Others might see it differently. You don't see any use for it, really, so others might see uses in the other crap, as well. Sometimes streamlining a business or model results in something worse than the original mess.
    - wott 10y ago
      > I see it as news distribution + a little chatter with friends. It looks much more like "a little chatter with foes", IMO.
      - helthanatos 10y ago
        Lol, I guess that's true too
city41 10y ago
For those that do "get" twitter, can you tell why it's useful? I've been on twitter for about 5 years now. I go through phases where I visit just about every day, and tweet a decent amount, trying to find the worth. And I can honestly say I see almost no value at all. I'm really trying hard to cross into the "get" category, and it just isn't happening. Lately I've been considering closing my account and being done with it. The signal/noise ratio is horrific, and the insistence on 140 characters is far more aggravating and frustrating than anything. Nowadays I see people dividing their thoughts into 8+ tweets (prefacing each with 1/8, 2/8, etc) and I just shake my head.
- niccaluim 10y ago
  Early on, when someone accused Twitter of not being useful, Ev famously responded, "Neither is ice cream."
  - overcast 10y ago
    That's where Ev is wrong. Ice Cream is useful for being a dessert.
- fullshark 10y ago
  I enjoy using it to read quips from journalists primarily.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  Nothing on the Internet delivers news faster than Twitter. Every other platform is either too slow (websites with CMS's and editors), or too filtered (Facebook or chat apps, on which posts are private by default). If you want to know what's happening right now, Twitter will give you better results than anything else, including a Google search. Tweets famously beat an earthquake from Virginia to New York, fulfilling an XKCD joke. And it's almost all searchable by the public in real time. So that's one thing: it's a close as you're going to get to a real-time tap in the zeitgeist. Another use is comedy; you get everything from corny puns and "dad jokes," to multi-year character humor arcs, to biting political humor, all in one place, as fast as you want it. Another is the ability to drill down into a wide variety of subcultures. Various niches within politics, programming, sports, finance, etc. all have robust conversations going on constantly, and many of them internationally. Candidly, it took a long time for me to get Twitter. Ultimately for me the secret was to follow a bunch of folks I might like, see what they said, unfollow the ones I didn't like, and then follow the folks who the others (the ones I kept) retweeted. I spend more time on Twitter now than any other social network or app. And I only really started "gettting it" a year or two ago.

WalterSear 10y ago

I acquired a masters degree in research psychology studying it, have a number of friends quite active on it, and I still don't see the value in it.

JonnieCache 10y ago
What did you find out, if not the value?
- WalterSear 10y ago
  I studied how people perceive each other over twitter, specifically how inferred gender changes our perceptions of personality. I tried to design the the study to make it's results inferable to any micropublishing platform, like this one, for example. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to run the study with enough participants to get significant results, I'm afraid. Academic politics and favouritism got in the way :(
nuex 10y ago
I think it's fairly valuable for lowkey discourse, learning, awareness and inspiration. Especially cool to be able to follow anyone (friends, role models, favorite authors) and see what's on their mind and what interests them.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  The bulk of a social network's value is in who is using it. Unfortunately, the medium that twitter provides is so crippled that, for me, that value is too low, no matter who I follow and interact with.
TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
I don't participate much on Twitter, but as a developer I find it's one of the easiest ways to stay up to date on what the software community is up to.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  I mostly follow fellow developers too, but I get most of my developer news from people's blogs and this site.

aantix 10y ago

Following conversation threads is confusing especially when there's multiple response forks.

noir-york 10y ago

Funny that, I think its too general! Its a blank canvas - when you sign up who do you tell? With FBK, you invite friends, with Linkedin its your colleagues. But Twitter?

Nav_Panel 10y ago
In my experience, you have that one friend who uses Twitter a lot, so you look through their mutuals and you discover "oh, these couple other real-life friends of mine use it," so you follow them any they follow back. You see them retweet or you poke through their followers/following and you see people you don't know, but who post good content, so you follow and maybe interact. Sometimes they follow back. Sometimes you end up DMing them and becoming online or maybe irl friends. Your network continues growing like this until you've got too much on your feed to follow, and you need to take a step back and maybe eliminate some follows. It's a pretty organic thing and you end up with a couple close friends plus a ton of other people semi-connected to your real life friend network.

helthanatos 10y ago

I see value in it as a news spreading platform... But the short messages and tagging system really mess with trying to have any sort of actual discussion. I think Twiiter spreads news better than Google Now/Plus, so it's what I use to stay current in news/tech.

overcast 10y ago
I guess I'm just not in a position, where I need news faster than Google News. Which seems to do just fine for me. If the only value Twitter is providing to people, is low latency news article posting, then I think they should position themselves to be that, instead of the 99.99999% of crap that just spread around. Thoughts?
- helthanatos 10y ago
  Not sure. I see it as news distribution + a little chatter with friends. Others might see it differently. You don't see any use for it, really, so others might see uses in the other crap, as well. Sometimes streamlining a business or model results in something worse than the original mess.
  - wott 10y ago
    > I see it as news distribution + a little chatter with friends. It looks much more like "a little chatter with foes", IMO.
    - helthanatos 10y ago
      Lol, I guess that's true too

city41 10y ago

For those that do "get" twitter, can you tell why it's useful? I've been on twitter for about 5 years now. I go through phases where I visit just about every day, and tweet a decent amount, trying to find the worth. And I can honestly say I see almost no value at all. I'm really trying hard to cross into the "get" category, and it just isn't happening. Lately I've been considering closing my account and being done with it. The signal/noise ratio is horrific, and the insistence on 140 characters is far more aggravating and frustrating than anything. Nowadays I see people dividing their thoughts into 8+ tweets (prefacing each with 1/8, 2/8, etc) and I just shake my head.

niccaluim 10y ago
Early on, when someone accused Twitter of not being useful, Ev famously responded, "Neither is ice cream."
- overcast 10y ago
  That's where Ev is wrong. Ice Cream is useful for being a dessert.
fullshark 10y ago
I enjoy using it to read quips from journalists primarily.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 10y ago
Nothing on the Internet delivers news faster than Twitter. Every other platform is either too slow (websites with CMS's and editors), or too filtered (Facebook or chat apps, on which posts are private by default). If you want to know what's happening right now, Twitter will give you better results than anything else, including a Google search. Tweets famously beat an earthquake from Virginia to New York, fulfilling an XKCD joke. And it's almost all searchable by the public in real time. So that's one thing: it's a close as you're going to get to a real-time tap in the zeitgeist. Another use is comedy; you get everything from corny puns and "dad jokes," to multi-year character humor arcs, to biting political humor, all in one place, as fast as you want it. Another is the ability to drill down into a wide variety of subcultures. Various niches within politics, programming, sports, finance, etc. all have robust conversations going on constantly, and many of them internationally. Candidly, it took a long time for me to get Twitter. Ultimately for me the secret was to follow a bunch of folks I might like, see what they said, unfollow the ones I didn't like, and then follow the folks who the others (the ones I kept) retweeted. I spend more time on Twitter now than any other social network or app. And I only really started "gettting it" a year or two ago.