3 ms·

Twitter seems great for celebrities. Not being a celebrity, however, my experience with twitter has been one of extreme isolation. I'd bet most of my followers

by jere 14y ago

Twitter seems great for celebrities. Not being a celebrity, however, my experience with twitter has been one of extreme isolation. I'd bet most of my followers are either bots or marketers. The rest are mostly strangers with whom I share no common interests. The result feels like standing on an empty street corner and shouting to one in particular. There's no interaction and no indication that anyone is reading anything I post, ever.* At least on HN or reddit, I get near instant feedback on just about everything I post. * I did get a response from Darude one time, which was pretty cool.

stfu 14y ago
This is similar to my experience. It probably depends on how many people you already know and who are willing to interact with you on that basis to give you a good start. I am still trying to get into this but the problem is that I often end up falling back into some "broadcasting" mode instead of engaging into conversations. Depending on your personality and pseudo popularity it is difficult and takes a lot of time and effort.
daigoba66 14y ago
I think what makes my experience a little bit different is that many of my real-life friends and family use twitter. And most of them use it fairly regularly, much more so than Facebook. It actually makes me feel closer to them (as close as "status updates" can make you). Coincidentally I don't follow any mainstream celebrities. But I do follow several prominent figures in technology.
borplk 14y ago
I agree. Twitter always felt weird for me because of its broadcasting nature. Makes sense if you are a celebrity or a business and you need to make an announcement or something to a lot of people but not for me. There is so much junk and noise around these days that I'm struggling and always on search to find quality content. Since the rise of internet everyone has been empowered to be a writer, as opposed to older times where you'd need to be more committed to publishing to be able to publish anything in the first place. The quality has diluted, the volume has increased many times and we are busier than before, that's why things like Twitter doesn't really appeal to me.

by jere 14y ago

stfu 14y ago

This is similar to my experience. It probably depends on how many people you already know and who are willing to interact with you on that basis to give you a good start. I am still trying to get into this but the problem is that I often end up falling back into some "broadcasting" mode instead of engaging into conversations. Depending on your personality and pseudo popularity it is difficult and takes a lot of time and effort.

daigoba66 14y ago

I think what makes my experience a little bit different is that many of my real-life friends and family use twitter. And most of them use it fairly regularly, much more so than Facebook. It actually makes me feel closer to them (as close as "status updates" can make you). Coincidentally I don't follow any mainstream celebrities. But I do follow several prominent figures in technology.

borplk 14y ago

I agree. Twitter always felt weird for me because of its broadcasting nature. Makes sense if you are a celebrity or a business and you need to make an announcement or something to a lot of people but not for me. There is so much junk and noise around these days that I'm struggling and always on search to find quality content. Since the rise of internet everyone has been empowered to be a writer, as opposed to older times where you'd need to be more committed to publishing to be able to publish anything in the first place. The quality has diluted, the volume has increased many times and we are busier than before, that's why things like Twitter doesn't really appeal to me.