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My reaction to this is that it's an effort to keep users within the "walled garden" of Twitter, which is not the best thing for those that write. Recall the st
by dend 4y ago
My reaction to this is that it's an effort to keep users within the "walled garden" of Twitter, which is not the best thing for those that write.
Recall the story with Medium - yes, you get broader reach with less effort, but at the cost of giving up control of your content.
I know that I am talking with an overly developer-focused lens (a-la "you can reimplement Dropbox in a weekend"), but self-hosting blogs outside the "walled gardens" is not super complicated even for non-power users. Ghost has existed for years and is a very user-friendly experience. Want to be a bit more technical - go the static site route.
It might be a lost battle to convince the majority of the social media audience of this (after all, can't beat the convenience and the cost of $0), but I really do not see this as beneficial to those that deeply care about their long-form writing accessibility and sustainability.
Twitter already has login walls to just read tweets, so I'd imagine the same is likely to apply to long-form content as well.
- phendrenad2 4y ago> not the best thing for those that write I disagree. I think this is mostly meant to steal market share from other walled-gardens such as Medium. People who write on self-hosted blogs and the like will continue to do so.
- caycep 4y agoWith the "walled garden" comment, I'm wondering - nowadays, all sorts of discourse seems to depend on these types of proprietary services/platforms, that employ armies of engineers to keep them running, develop new features, etc. Attempts to make things decentralized all seem to be aggregating into central controls, i.e. "Web3/crypto" -> coinbase, kraken, etc Why aren't older decentralized "services" protocols being looked at, or developed further - i.e. UUnet/newsgroups, torrent, etc?
- dend 4y agoYou don't need to look far for this. To be fair, my comment was much less about decentralization and more about the existence of tools for content portability and control. For example, you can have Markdown + Ghost + custom domain. Worst case scenario, you move to another hosting platform, but you're not locked to one particular service and its own goals of growth.
- caycep 4y agodistribution/eyeballs is the issue with having your own site/self hosting though. Albeit I feel like if there were momentum in that direction, someone should do the RSS reader killer app for that. I.e. something like Reeder w/ Overcast/Apple's podcast directory...
- dend 4y agoYou could also still post links to your content wherever your audience is - it's just a matter of being able to maintain control over the content itself.
- vorpalhex 4y agoYou don't need a new protocol. HTTP(S) is great for blogs and writing.
- rchaud 4y ago> Why aren't older decentralized "services" protocols being looked at, or developed further - i.e. UUnet/newsgroups, torrent, etc? Where will the money come from? The only reason there's any investment in software at all is so that a monetizable product can be built on top of it. And nothing monetizes better than vendor lock-in.
- lupire 4y agoGovernment, universities, hobbyists. That's how we did it the first time.
- fullshark 4y agoThe tools are available to them right now, nothing's stopping them except the fact that people want to spend their time in walled gardens.
- fercircularbuf 4y agoI can't help but think that walled gardens are attractive places to spend time, not that people want to spend their time in them.
- saurik 4y ago> Attempts to make things decentralized all seem to be aggregating into central controls, i.e. "Web3/crypto" -> coinbase, kraken, etc Coinbase and Kraken are not "central controls" as you not only can use either and they are exactly fully interchangeable, but you can use any number of other similar services--or even deal directly with another user and keep your credentials locally--all of which are exactly fully interchangeable.
- aardvarkr 4y agoOff topic but I wanted to say thanks for all of your contributions to the iOS jailbreak scene :)
- darth_avocado 4y agoWalled gardens exist because it costs money to keep the garden flourishing. Keep in mind, in this walled garden, all the walls do is make you log in, everything else is still free. Decentralization still requires someone to pay for keeping these services alive. You could argue every user somehow be able to own and run their own platform, but in reality most of the users will not opt for the overhead when you can get it for "free" from a provider. And in a semi decentralized world where a few separate providers keep the lights on, the providers would still need to be compensated for the time and resources they invest, which again brings you back to a different kind of a walled garden.
- dend 4y agoThe thing is - other providers exists, it's just they are not as convenient as the walled gardens. That's a big part of the challenge. You can own your blog on your own domain and site, but you need to be able to set that up, not forget to renew your domain, potentially deal with availability issues if the site goes down, etc. Compare that to basically just putting your content somewhere where someone else worries about all those things. It's a trade-off that folks are willing to make, and for the "average user" (definition can vary depending on service/area) that is a very straightforward choice. I just hope that more folks understand what rights they give up by becoming attached to one platform as their publishing medium.
- lobocinza 4y agoMore like "walled garbage"
- bombcar 4y agoBecause for the vast majority of users, they just need something they can post once in a while (if at all) and maybe the ability to form little groups. They care nothing more and need nothing more. But some of those become popular and famous, and then there's little incentive to move elsewhere, as their "fans" are on the platform and so it continues to grow.
- lamontcg 4y agoI would just love to get rid of the obnoxious writing style that twitter thought-leaders use when they're posting a thread. They always start with a fairly obnoxious click-baitey sentence. Then usually a fairly narcissistic hook about how "i'll explain" then "a <thread>" and "/1". And then each tweet needs to be punchy enough in 240 characters to keep people reading which produces a particularly annoying writing style. Then you need to use something like threadreaderapp to make it halfway readable. I'd rather have those posts just written long-form, where people didn't have to use weird-ly stilted language because of the post format.
- ryantgtg 4y ago“Let me explain” No thanks.
- dredmorbius 4y agoButtermilk is marrying Humperdink in little less than half an hour.
- joegahona 4y agoSame! This is what makes me realize I'm on the algorithmic feed rather than the reverse-chron feed. Almost nobody I intentionally follow uses this awful device.
- rchaud 4y agoDo you know that Twitter still does not show link previews reliably? It does for big sites like Youtube, but if you link your dinky little self-hosted blog, with all the right OG meta tags, it's 50-50 whether Twitter decides to show the link preview image. At this point, one must assume that Twitter will do nearly anything it can to disincentivize clicking out to a 3rd party site. At least it's better than Instagram, which doesn't let you post clickable links at all in your posts.
- dend 4y agoI think ultimately you're getting to the _why_ of the equation - there is a big desire to keep you, the customer, within the app rather than let you abandon the feed. Going back from a note to scrolling through Twitter is easier than jumping back from your browser app to the Twitter app. I haven't had issues with link previews on my own content, but that very well could be the case for other sites.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 4y agoAs a non twitter user but searching for my site a few times I've always wondered why that is and what I am doing wrong. I didn't know it is a general issue since I don't use it.
- nomel 4y ago> Do you know that Twitter still does not show link previews reliably? This seems like it might be a somewhat good thing, for privacy. User generated trackers could be included in topical tweets.
- manmal 4y agoIs that image not just resolved once, while posting? I remember Apple solving it in a similar way for iMessage - the sender always generates the preview.
- nomel 4y agoI've seen embedded videos auto play directly from external sites, in the app. Making the video fullscreen just expand what appears to be a frame, with ads and all present.
- _0w8t 4y agoIf one wants a blog with self-hosted comments, then there not so many options and those that exist are not particularly simple. For example, standalone Wordpress can do that, but setting it up and running with all relevant plugins requires skills that few authors have access to.
- dend 4y agoComments is a _secondary_ component to the core of what I am talking about - long-form content. I can still post a link to my blog post on Twitter and have all the commentary from my audience without donating the content itself to Twitter.
- lupire 4y agoWhat do you mean "donating the content"? Ad clicks? Subscription fee on your blog? Is your blog making you money?
- dend 4y agoYou can have your blog make you money if you want to, in whichever way you want to. "Donate content" is just that - when you write long-form on any platform that you have no direct control over, you're handing over the rights to said content. From Twitter's own ToS[0]: > By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed (for clarity, these rights include, for example, curating, transforming, and translating). [0]: https://twitter.com/en/tos https://twitter.com/en/tos
- warkdarrior 4y agoYou lose exclusivity, but you do not lose all other rights. Nothing stops you from posting your content on 10 platforms, even if each one gets a license to your content.
- 88913527 4y agoYou still need to engage with the major social networks to build up traffic to your own domain name. Otherwise, posting on your blog is like talking to a brick wall. You can choose where you publish, but there's no escaping the leveraging of existing audiences.
- dend 4y agoMy earlier comment is not contradictory to this statement. Indeed, you need to be on social media sites to reach a broader audience, but you can post links to your content that is external to those sites rather than giving it up wholesale within the network.
- bombcar 4y agohttps://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE is the term
- MAGZine 4y agoI love ghost but it's always been pretty expensive for just a blog. It seems like they've maybe shifted prices down a bit, it used to be more than $10/mo, and measured based on page views. Now they're really pushing their content creator angle.
- dend 4y agoGhost is also just one way to do it - there are others that still allow you to have ownership of your content and the portability/domain connection that allows you, the writer, to manage your content in whatever shape you want.
- rmason 4y agoWhat's wrong with linking to your blog? Twitter was once explained to me as short form blogging which I thought at the time was absurd but I kind of get it now. The problem is when you try to be all things to all people you fail. I'd so much like someone like Elon Musk to take over Twitter. In the case of Musk I trust his judgement over the team running Twitter now. Can you imagine a group of two dozen people working a year trying to reinvent blogging? Knowing Twitter, sadly I can.
- fknorangesite 4y ago> What's wrong with linking to your blog? Nothing, except that no one will click on your link.
- masukomi 4y agoi don't see that it's functionally any different than what was displayed in that gif. In both cases there's a card to the longer content that needs to be clicked on. If your argument is that no-one will click on the card then twitter notes will fare no better because it's literally the same presentation.
- fknorangesite 4y agoYou're right: it isn't functionally different. But the quantified user behaviour absolutely is.
- dorfsmay 4y agoI don't read thread, but I click on link to articles.
- fknorangesite 4y agoI believe it. Perhaps you are not representative of the general population.
- reaperducer 4y agoyou get broader reach with less effort, but at the cost of giving up control of your content. And you never know when years of hard work will simply disappear. I'm not even talking about being kicked out for expressing opinions that aren't trendy. I once wrote for a large blog That just disappeared one day. It was after Google took over Blogger, and searching for help with the problem turned up hundreds of other people whose blogs disappeared. Some managed to get Blogger to admit it was a technical problem. A few for their content back. Most didn't. If you're going to trust someone else's platform for your livelihood, make sure you have a Plan B ready to go at all times.
- the_gipsy 4y agoMedium has turned in such a unusable shitshow now, it should be a lesson for anybody who seriously considers using twitter as a writing platform.
- emadabdulrahim 4y agoIt amazes me how Medium held the shrine for the BEST blogging platform and the best reading experience for a few years around 2015. Which didn't last long as it became one of the worst platform for writers and readers alike. How can a company shit the bed so bad?!
- the_gipsy 4y agoBait and switch, we see it every day. Acquire users with a good product, then squeeze the shit outta that without remorse.
- the_gipsy 4y agoTwitter itself used to be very usable. You used to be able to just open a link to a tweet, that was just rendered as HTML. Replies in thread below. Now it loads the SPA, you get a spinner, 1/5 times the API fails to load the actual tweet data. If you're not logged in you get bombarded with signup popups. Cookie banners come up from time to time even if logged int. Instead of the replies to the tweet, you get other supposedly related tweets as in replies, you have to click "Show more replies" over and over to load more of the fucking thread you opened.
- skybrian 4y agoHow does that follow? They are entirely different companies. Twitter will make its own mistakes. (Perhaps Musk-related, who knows?)
- the_gipsy 4y agoSame cofounders or some other strong relation, idr
- natly 4y agoI agree. However I doubt it'll be long lived. Twitter gives up on features all the time (fleets, I doubt spaces will be around in a year). They'll try this out and abandon it like most of their experiments.
- dend 4y agoI have the same hunch, to be honest. The core value proposition of Twitter, at least to me, is that it's short-form content - quick updates from the network that I care about. I don't go there to either write long-form content or consume long-form content directly (although I do get pointers to others' newsletter and blog pages). My guess is that this is an attempt to replace long threads (1/n), but those have their own place and mechanics and I don't see how getting people to write Twitter Notes is in any way a 1:1 replacement or improvement for that. Time will tell.
- notatoad 4y agoi think it's pretty easy to see the simplest motivation for this project: all the twitter users who post screenshots of the iOS notes app. they literally gave it the same name. is this better than a screenshot of the notes app? IMHO the answer is a pretty obvious yes. how it compares to various other blogging platforms isn't super relevant. it's not a blog, it's a feature for people who are already on twitter and already using twitter to publish longer-form content in suboptimal ways.
- dend 4y agoI would generally agree, _except_ with the fact then this just defeats the entire point of Twitter - it might as well become the next Medium then. Which, let's be realistic, can be a strategy too - become a content publisher rather than an aggregator of links and short opinions. But then again, that's not why I am personally on Twitter. YMMV.
- notatoad 4y agoagain, people already accomplish exactly this thing by posting screenshots of text. but that's less accessible, less searchable, and an overall poorer experience than letting people post actual text instead of screenshotting it first. and if you don't personally use twitter, i'm not sure how qualified you are to judge whether or not something defeats the purpose of twitter.
- dend 4y agoI am an active Twitter user and I know what you mean by screenshots of walls of text. There is no endemic use of such modality across Twitter, with few exceptions. I stand by the statement that Twitter moving into publishing long-form content puts it on the same pedestal with Medium and defeats the purpose of the platform. Which is OK - strategy evolves, and someone did the math that this is going to be more beneficial. My other comments reflect my stance on their decision, but I am neither a product manager at Twitter, nor do I have any knowledge of the "whys" so take this with a boulder of salt.
- BryantD 4y agoI strongly agree with this comment in general. One small nitpick: Twitter says there will not be a login wall for reading Notes[1]. "Additionally, Notes will have unique URLs that people can navigate to from outside of the Twitter platform, whether or not they are logged in to Twitter, and even if they do not have a Twitter account." So that's nice and somewhat unexpected. However, I don't see any signs of an RSS feed, which is table stakes if you care about interoperability at all. [1] https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/notes https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/notes
- jay_kyburz 4y agoIf I were a writer I would post my work to make it easy for twitter users to read, but I would sprinkle the writing with enticing links back to my own hosted site.
- tomcat27 4y agoPeople on internet seek engagement else why eve write a blog. Twitter is indisputably better for engagement.
- dangerface 4y ago> Recall the story with Medium - yes, you get broader reach with less effort, but at the cost of giving up control of your content. Exactly and no Medium seems to be dying, I haven't read anything on that site in a few years since they added popups asking you to login before you can read.
- o_m 4y agoMost blog content from companies, sad to say, are created to boost the authority of your domain in a SEO sense. I.e. if you got good content people search for and read your domain will appear higher. Posting to another platform, without a canonical link, is counterintuitive.