There's a knowledge transfer/attention span problem. With the old 140 characters, or a picture meme, the best you can do is communicate like Frankenstein in th

There's a knowledge transfer/attention span problem. With the old 140 characters, or a picture meme, the best you can do is communicate like Frankenstein in the old horror movies: "Fire BAD!" "Sun good!" Life isn't like that. The is the same problem political ads face. If I've only got 10 seconds of your time before you click on to something else, as a writer, I'm going to have to punch you in nose. There's just no other way of using the medium. It's built into the system. But as others here have pointed out, it's not just Twitter, and it's not related to likes by any means. (I have no idea what Twitter thinks they're doing.) I never participated in Quora because of this same thing, and it's much more of a long-form site. For things worth knowing, things that will change your life? You have to invest some time and effort. It's a conversation. It's back and forth -- even when reading a novel. Drive-bys don't do that. So let's look at tech overall. Where we seem to have landed is this weird landscape where everything is either 10 seconds or 100 hours. Yes, there is some nice medium-scale content available, but even then, the creators will tell you that for the most part, people either consume in one of those two fashions. There are a lot of people purchasing long-form content that never use it. It just makes them feel better. We know this now -- and we didn't in the past -- because we instrument the hell out of everything users do. Looking at the stats across multiple sites, I think if you really want to make people's lives better -- and not just sell stuff -- you have to acknowledge human nature and take a stand: are you going to be the 10 second guys or the 100-hour guys? I'd love to see somebody create something that somehow manages both well, with "progressive elaboration" of deep topics and avoidance of anything created that's low effort.