5 ms·
I use Twitter mainly for the news, since Twitter enables me to get a much more complete picture of events compared to traditional media. But it took me a long t
by wsc981 10y ago
I use Twitter mainly for the news, since Twitter enables me to get a much more complete picture of events compared to traditional media. But it took me a long time to really grasp that I could use Twitter in this way. Initially I just followed some work colleagues when I had to create a Twitter account as employee of a company I worked at. Otherwise I would have probably never created a Twitter account as I just didn't see the purpose.
I think one of the biggest challenges for Twitter is on-boarding new users.
With regards to the platform itself: it would be nice if Twitter would had some sort of article quoting mechanism. It's not uncommon to see a Tweet with text from an online article included as a picture. I also do this myself sometimes, since it seems to me people are more eager to click a link if they get a much better grasp the linked content and 140 characters is just too little for this purpose.
- theinternetman 10y ago>I think one of the biggest challenges for Twitter is on-boarding new users. This is worse than ever, they invest most of their effort in getting you to follow their cherry picked celeb users for your country. Then they spend the rest of their effort trying to ban you. - Don't give us an email > account locked - Don't give us a phone number > account locked - Don't change your egg avatar > shadow banned
- manigandham 10y agoIf you're a new user that they know nothing about, then recommending the "popular" users from your region is a good default option. Also they don't lock out your account because of a lack of an email or phone number - you just need 1 of those to signup.
- CoolGuySteve 10y agoIt would be nice if Twitter had something equivalent to multireddits, where different follows could be attributed to different tabs on an account. Then I could have one tab for news, one tab for comedians, one tab for math/programming stuff, etc. From there it follows that Twitter might prepopulate a few tabs with News, Entertainment, Video Games, etc. for new users the same way reddit does a default front page.
- criddell 10y agoCan't you do that with Tweetdeck? I have a column for friends, a column for news, a column for tech, and a column for people I follow but are very noisy (ie people that would end up dominating one of the other columns).
- manigandham 10y agoTweetdeck should really be twitter's default UI. Simplify for new people but keep all the functionality.
- elechi 10y agoIsn't that what the lists for? You can make your own list of twitter accounts to follow for certain topics.
- manigandham 10y agoYes but twitter handles lists poorly - barely any UI or workflow around making lists easy to use and browse. Most new users dont know anything about lists or how to use them.
- ci5er 10y ago> when I had to create a Twitter account as [an] employee of a company I worked at. How does that work? Were you in social marketing? If not, a term-of-the-employment-agreement required this? If the latter, that's the most horrendous thing I've heard today (other than, you know, assault, rape, murder, mayhem, and war)
- wsc981 10y agoI can't remember exactly the context, but there was a new website up for the company and they wanted to add employee profiles to the website. I don't believe I was forced to create a Twitter profile, but somehow I was inclined to do it anyway. I would think this functionality is removed from the site by now. After all, employees might state things on their personal Twitter profile that the company does not agree with. These days I try to keep my Twitter account more or less anonymous, so I can be free to say the things I believe or want to say. I make sure my Twitter account can not be linked to my LinkedIn / StackOverflow / Github profiles.