5 ms·

Why has it become so popular to break what should be blog posts into endless streams of tweets? The content is unreadable.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
i just skip it, along with js-only sites. i used to get frustrated like you. then i realized that both correlate heavily with crap content, which makes sense, since the same person writing is also choosing the platform. these days i say thanks for their self-filtering and move on to the next link. there is more content than i can read as it is.
- mark-r 6y ago
  This is why I like Hacker News. If the content transcends the medium, it will get a high enough ranking to bubble to the front page.
stevewodil 6y ago
Probably audience reach, I'm guessing tweeting the information directly as opposed to a link to a blog results in more engagement. As for why Twitter specifically it's because that's where their followers are, it will get the most views presumably vs. other platforms or mediums. FWIW I personally enjoy tweetstorms, I'm not sure why. I think the break in between each tweet is nice, it's like reading a series of messages rather than a blog post and I find myself more engaged. It also means the author has to be fairly concise
- saurik 6y ago
  This is largely why I do it. I have half a million twitter followers, and while I can write it on my blog and then tweet a link, it is nowhere near as effective as just publishing the content directly on Twitter. FWIW, I used to despise it when people did this (post massive threads of messages), but frankly I think they fixed the UI for this years ago, and just don't understand the complaints anymore: you click the link, and can scroll through messages as if it were an article. Between it auto-flowing the messages and the longer tweet length of 280 characters, I honestly don't see any advantage to those "thread readers" people keep linking to... they don't even have larger information density, which is ridiculous. (Hell... they frankly seem to make the text harder to read!) (And yeah: I carefully write my tons of text on Twitter such that every single message is a carefully enough crafted thought that they could just about stand alone, which I think is actually good for the content.)
  - stevewodil 6y ago
    Wow, it is SO weird to see the name "saurik" replying to my comment. I remember in middle school jailbreaking my iPod touch to install all kinds of cool tweaks from Cydia, and I'm sure that exposure led me to continue messing around with electronics. Thank you for all you did for the community, I attribute a lot of my interest in computers and coding to the early jailbreak days.
  - enw 6y ago
    Hey, sorry for being off-topic. Just wanted to say thanks for making Cydia! It feels very nostalgic to me.
  - tjoff 6y ago
    you click the link, and can scroll through messages as if it were an article. No you can not. Often times the posts are not in order. You have to expand multiple times and if you are unlucky you get pulled into another direction and miss half the story. Unreadable isn't hyperbole. Maybe you have to have an account for it to be usable? Note: the posted twitter-thread is the first I've seen that actually works for me. Not sure why that is.
  - sundarurfriend 6y ago
    > frankly I think they fixed the UI for this years ago, and just don't understand the complaints anymore "fixed the UI" is a big overstatement - they improved the UI from utterly horrible to barely usable (for this purpose). > you click the link, and can scroll through messages as if it were an article. Imagine if someone wrote an article by creating a phpBB forum thread and posting every couple of sentences as a post on the thread. That's what this is like, for the rest of us - since you have a half million followers, your brain is probably used to filtering out all the crap and parsing the posts quickly. But the vast majority of us don't use Twitter as much or at all, and this adds a mental tax for all of us. That's why the thread readers are so successful - you're not the target audience of them, but most of the rest of the Internet users are.
    - 300bps 6y ago
      I never use Twitter but I have an account and the app installed on my iPhone. This particular story displayed in an extremely easy to read format for me on my phone. Was very similar to reading a blog page.
justinv 6y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347677573900242944.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347677573900242944.html
hyakosm 6y ago
You can comment or share individual blocks in one click, I guess it's the point of that.
lscotte 6y ago
I don't know but agree it's unreadable and terrible, so I don't bother to read them.
pengaru 6y ago
convenience and laziness are powerful forces
markmark 6y ago
Because most people don't have blogs these days and it's not worth setting one up for a one-off short thing like this. It's also perfectly readable for its target audience of people who use twitter.
sumnole 6y ago
agreed, but still better than reading a book for what could have been a blog post.
sidewinder128 6y ago
I cancel my twitter/FB/Google etc, all that sns no-sense so I cannot read it, I think is a good thing.
globular-toast 6y ago
The most addictive games are those with a small marginal commitment of playing another game. It's incredibly easy to rack up hours on such games, yet if you asked people if they were prepared to commit hours to the game they'd be likely to say no. Twitter is even worse. Not only does it not make the time commitment clear up front, the tweets are short enough that you read them automatically. Then you're hooked into the doom scroll as you keep automatically reading one after another. As a writer it means you don't need to bother with structure and other classical writing skills to keep your reader interested. You can just write disconnected chunks of text and rely on twitter to keep them interested.
sundarurfriend 6y ago
I too find this type of posting horrible, and avoid opening these generally. Part of my problem is specifically with Twitter UI and slow load times though, so when I do feel like it's worth opening, I use a Nitter redirect addon in my browser. Loading via Nitter instances is much faster for me, and works without even needing Javascript.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

i just skip it, along with js-only sites. i used to get frustrated like you. then i realized that both correlate heavily with crap content, which makes sense, since the same person writing is also choosing the platform. these days i say thanks for their self-filtering and move on to the next link. there is more content than i can read as it is.

mark-r 6y ago
This is why I like Hacker News. If the content transcends the medium, it will get a high enough ranking to bubble to the front page.

stevewodil 6y ago

Probably audience reach, I'm guessing tweeting the information directly as opposed to a link to a blog results in more engagement. As for why Twitter specifically it's because that's where their followers are, it will get the most views presumably vs. other platforms or mediums. FWIW I personally enjoy tweetstorms, I'm not sure why. I think the break in between each tweet is nice, it's like reading a series of messages rather than a blog post and I find myself more engaged. It also means the author has to be fairly concise

saurik 6y ago
This is largely why I do it. I have half a million twitter followers, and while I can write it on my blog and then tweet a link, it is nowhere near as effective as just publishing the content directly on Twitter. FWIW, I used to despise it when people did this (post massive threads of messages), but frankly I think they fixed the UI for this years ago, and just don't understand the complaints anymore: you click the link, and can scroll through messages as if it were an article. Between it auto-flowing the messages and the longer tweet length of 280 characters, I honestly don't see any advantage to those "thread readers" people keep linking to... they don't even have larger information density, which is ridiculous. (Hell... they frankly seem to make the text harder to read!) (And yeah: I carefully write my tons of text on Twitter such that every single message is a carefully enough crafted thought that they could just about stand alone, which I think is actually good for the content.)
- stevewodil 6y ago
  Wow, it is SO weird to see the name "saurik" replying to my comment. I remember in middle school jailbreaking my iPod touch to install all kinds of cool tweaks from Cydia, and I'm sure that exposure led me to continue messing around with electronics. Thank you for all you did for the community, I attribute a lot of my interest in computers and coding to the early jailbreak days.
- enw 6y ago
  Hey, sorry for being off-topic. Just wanted to say thanks for making Cydia! It feels very nostalgic to me.
- tjoff 6y ago
  you click the link, and can scroll through messages as if it were an article. No you can not. Often times the posts are not in order. You have to expand multiple times and if you are unlucky you get pulled into another direction and miss half the story. Unreadable isn't hyperbole. Maybe you have to have an account for it to be usable? Note: the posted twitter-thread is the first I've seen that actually works for me. Not sure why that is.
- sundarurfriend 6y ago
  > frankly I think they fixed the UI for this years ago, and just don't understand the complaints anymore "fixed the UI" is a big overstatement - they improved the UI from utterly horrible to barely usable (for this purpose). > you click the link, and can scroll through messages as if it were an article. Imagine if someone wrote an article by creating a phpBB forum thread and posting every couple of sentences as a post on the thread. That's what this is like, for the rest of us - since you have a half million followers, your brain is probably used to filtering out all the crap and parsing the posts quickly. But the vast majority of us don't use Twitter as much or at all, and this adds a mental tax for all of us. That's why the thread readers are so successful - you're not the target audience of them, but most of the rest of the Internet users are.
  - 300bps 6y ago
    I never use Twitter but I have an account and the app installed on my iPhone. This particular story displayed in an extremely easy to read format for me on my phone. Was very similar to reading a blog page.

justinv 6y ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347677573900242944.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347677573900242944.html

hyakosm 6y ago

You can comment or share individual blocks in one click, I guess it's the point of that.

lscotte 6y ago

I don't know but agree it's unreadable and terrible, so I don't bother to read them.

pengaru 6y ago

convenience and laziness are powerful forces

markmark 6y ago

Because most people don't have blogs these days and it's not worth setting one up for a one-off short thing like this. It's also perfectly readable for its target audience of people who use twitter.

sumnole 6y ago

agreed, but still better than reading a book for what could have been a blog post.

sidewinder128 6y ago

I cancel my twitter/FB/Google etc, all that sns no-sense so I cannot read it, I think is a good thing.

globular-toast 6y ago

The most addictive games are those with a small marginal commitment of playing another game. It's incredibly easy to rack up hours on such games, yet if you asked people if they were prepared to commit hours to the game they'd be likely to say no. Twitter is even worse. Not only does it not make the time commitment clear up front, the tweets are short enough that you read them automatically. Then you're hooked into the doom scroll as you keep automatically reading one after another. As a writer it means you don't need to bother with structure and other classical writing skills to keep your reader interested. You can just write disconnected chunks of text and rely on twitter to keep them interested.

sundarurfriend 6y ago

I too find this type of posting horrible, and avoid opening these generally. Part of my problem is specifically with Twitter UI and slow load times though, so when I do feel like it's worth opening, I use a Nitter redirect addon in my browser. Loading via Nitter instances is much faster for me, and works without even needing Javascript.