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An experienced Twitter user would know to add a “.” at the beginning of his message so that his followers would see it. Signed up for twitter on the day it lau

by zaidf 14y ago

An experienced Twitter user would know to add a “.” at the beginning of his message so that his followers would see it. Signed up for twitter on the day it launched(I think) and did not know that. Twitter is a painful product to use. It isn't made for humans. Twitter doesn't have to show a username in tweets; they can easily translate it to the name. Twitter doesn't have to require each reply to appear like an out of context note. They can easily group them as complete conversations(like facebook allowing comments). Twitter doesn't have to make lists so hard to use. They can easily make it very similar to facebook(except on twitter there is much more need to use this since they do not filter out tweets). Twitter doesn't have to insist on this 140 char limit that looks funnier every coming day and result in butchered communication. Twitter doesn't have to subtract 100 characters if I post a URL that is 100 characters; it could automagically shorten it or not count against the 140 at all. Instead, I am forced to manually use bit.ly to shorten it. Twitter doesn't have to show me a stream filled with url strings; it could easily show the title of the page or something similar to facebook. Dear Twitter, PLEASE stop this stubbornness in your product philosophy. It is hurting your users and it is hurting Twitter Corporation.

anu_gupta 14y ago
Well, if you're Zaid on Twitter, and that's your original account, you signed up about a year after Twitter launched.
- zaidf 14y ago
  Pretty sure I signed up on the day it launched because I remember reading the TC story:) Where do you see the sign up date? I either didn't tweet for a year or deleted my tweets at some point or held another account(unlikely since I don't think I'd get my 4 letter name a year after). edit: I have at least one other account: http://twitter.com/oonth http://twitter.com/oonth
  - anu_gupta 14y ago
    @zaid - member since August 2007. That's more than a year after Twitter actually launched, and your user number is in the 8 millions (ie more than 8 million accounts were created before that one). You signed up for your other account in March 2007.
Alex3917 14y ago
I've had an account since 2007 and this is the first I've ever heard of this also. Here is the explanation: "Place a period before the beginning of the @ if you plan on beginning your message with a mention, or else Twitter will only send that tweet to people who follow both you and the person you are mentioning." http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/09/15/a-list-twitters-language/ http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/09/15/a-list-twitters-lan...
- marshray 14y ago
  Why is this not documented on Twitter somewhere I would have seen it?
  - shinratdr 14y ago
    Because it's an unofficial workaround. Twitter didn't assume people would want their followers to see their @replies.
- zaidf 14y ago
  It is insane twitter is trying to reinvent irc in all the bad ways.
corin_ 14y ago
140 characters annoys me when I have something long to say, but overall it's something that I really like about it, and I know plenty of people who agree with me. I don't know if they'd do better by dropping the limit, but saying it's a bad limit is definitely subjective not objective.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  Email annoys me when I want to have a real-time conversation with my mother - which is why, when that happens, I use the medium that's intended for that sort of thing.
  - sigsergv 14y ago
    Twitter and email are both the same sort of medium.
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      My point was that I would use a telephone or skype. Using twitter for the wrong purpose and complaining about it is like complaining that it's hard to hammer in a nail with a screwdriver.
      - corin_ 14y ago
        Just to be clear, I wasn't complaining about it, I was saying I think the character limit is a good thing.
MattRix 14y ago
Sorry, but it's painfully obvious from your post that you don't actually use twitter, at least not regularly enough to "get it". - user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names - replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now. - lists really aren't that hard to use, I don't know what your problem with it is - and the 140 char thing is your craziest point... 140 chars is exactly what makes twitter so great and so interesting, if the messages were longer it would drastically affect how the service works and feels. Basically what I'm getting at is that Twitter is already fantastic for users... unfortunately it isn't making them enough money, which is why they're changing so many thing about the service, but let's not pretend they're changing things because the user experience is so bad... if the experience was so bad, they wouldn't have the millions and millions of users that they have now.
- zaidf 14y ago
  - user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names I am genuinely curious of the use cases where the username adds more value than the name associated with the account. I'd also like to know what type of service twitter is supposed to be in your view. - replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now. Technically they do, but visually they are a mess. The way humans naturally converse is by adding their comments to a topic. This is why facebook lets you comment on a wall post. If you read a wall post and the comments, they make sense. On twitter, it begins with reading some random comment and then having to reverse engineer the conversation it possibly may belong to. - lists really aren't that hard to use, I don't know what your problem with it is On twitter.com, in order to see a list, I have to click on an icon on top, click on "Lists" and then click on a list name. That is 3 clicks and a page reload compared to facebook's 1 click. Furthermore, so I click on a list, browse and want to click on another list. I must hit the "back" key resulting in a page reload, and then choose another list. it would drastically affect how the service works and feels Sure it may feel drastically different...but that could be for the better, no? 140 char was a great thing to launch with just as facebook restricting to college campuses was a great hook - but products evolve to accommodate wider audiences. Twitter hasn't. My personal reading is that twitter long passed the threshold where it would be some underground place and increasingly tries to present itself for the mainstream--without changing the product to accommodate the mainstream. The equivalent would be facebook opening up to the world but building features mainly for the college market.
thezilch 14y ago
Twitter doesn't have to subtract 100 characters if I post a URL that is 100 characters; it could automagically shorten it or not count against the 140 at all. Instead, I am forced to manually use bit.ly to shorten it. It doesn't subtract URLs at character value; it does automagically shorten URLs to a uniform tax. A bit.ly link will digest just as many characters from the tweet as a 1024 character link -- 20 characters per link. Not a recent development.
- zaidf 14y ago
  Ah, didn't know. I'll maintain that this is an even more random way of dealing with this and in my case, even worse since bitly links aren't even 20 characters. That there should even be such a thing as a URL tax is crazy.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  What is really dumb though is that it still uses a shortener, even though the functionality is now built in. Show me the damn link!

by zaidf 14y ago

anu_gupta 14y ago

Well, if you're Zaid on Twitter, and that's your original account, you signed up about a year after Twitter launched.

zaidf 14y ago
Pretty sure I signed up on the day it launched because I remember reading the TC story:) Where do you see the sign up date? I either didn't tweet for a year or deleted my tweets at some point or held another account(unlikely since I don't think I'd get my 4 letter name a year after). edit: I have at least one other account: http://twitter.com/oonth http://twitter.com/oonth
- anu_gupta 14y ago
  @zaid - member since August 2007. That's more than a year after Twitter actually launched, and your user number is in the 8 millions (ie more than 8 million accounts were created before that one). You signed up for your other account in March 2007.

Alex3917 14y ago

I've had an account since 2007 and this is the first I've ever heard of this also. Here is the explanation: "Place a period before the beginning of the @ if you plan on beginning your message with a mention, or else Twitter will only send that tweet to people who follow both you and the person you are mentioning." http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/09/15/a-list-twitters-language/ http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/09/15/a-list-twitters-lan...

marshray 14y ago
Why is this not documented on Twitter somewhere I would have seen it?
- shinratdr 14y ago
  Because it's an unofficial workaround. Twitter didn't assume people would want their followers to see their @replies.
zaidf 14y ago
It is insane twitter is trying to reinvent irc in all the bad ways.

corin_ 14y ago

140 characters annoys me when I have something long to say, but overall it's something that I really like about it, and I know plenty of people who agree with me. I don't know if they'd do better by dropping the limit, but saying it's a bad limit is definitely subjective not objective.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
Email annoys me when I want to have a real-time conversation with my mother - which is why, when that happens, I use the medium that's intended for that sort of thing.
- sigsergv 14y ago
  Twitter and email are both the same sort of medium.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    My point was that I would use a telephone or skype. Using twitter for the wrong purpose and complaining about it is like complaining that it's hard to hammer in a nail with a screwdriver.
    - corin_ 14y ago
      Just to be clear, I wasn't complaining about it, I was saying I think the character limit is a good thing.

MattRix 14y ago

Sorry, but it's painfully obvious from your post that you don't actually use twitter, at least not regularly enough to "get it". - user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names - replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now. - lists really aren't that hard to use, I don't know what your problem with it is - and the 140 char thing is your craziest point... 140 chars is exactly what makes twitter so great and so interesting, if the messages were longer it would drastically affect how the service works and feels. Basically what I'm getting at is that Twitter is already fantastic for users... unfortunately it isn't making them enough money, which is why they're changing so many thing about the service, but let's not pretend they're changing things because the user experience is so bad... if the experience was so bad, they wouldn't have the millions and millions of users that they have now.

zaidf 14y ago
- user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names I am genuinely curious of the use cases where the username adds more value than the name associated with the account. I'd also like to know what type of service twitter is supposed to be in your view. - replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now. Technically they do, but visually they are a mess. The way humans naturally converse is by adding their comments to a topic. This is why facebook lets you comment on a wall post. If you read a wall post and the comments, they make sense. On twitter, it begins with reading some random comment and then having to reverse engineer the conversation it possibly may belong to. - lists really aren't that hard to use, I don't know what your problem with it is On twitter.com, in order to see a list, I have to click on an icon on top, click on "Lists" and then click on a list name. That is 3 clicks and a page reload compared to facebook's 1 click. Furthermore, so I click on a list, browse and want to click on another list. I must hit the "back" key resulting in a page reload, and then choose another list. it would drastically affect how the service works and feels Sure it may feel drastically different...but that could be for the better, no? 140 char was a great thing to launch with just as facebook restricting to college campuses was a great hook - but products evolve to accommodate wider audiences. Twitter hasn't. My personal reading is that twitter long passed the threshold where it would be some underground place and increasingly tries to present itself for the mainstream--without changing the product to accommodate the mainstream. The equivalent would be facebook opening up to the world but building features mainly for the college market.

thezilch 14y ago

Twitter doesn't have to subtract 100 characters if I post a URL that is 100 characters; it could automagically shorten it or not count against the 140 at all. Instead, I am forced to manually use bit.ly to shorten it. It doesn't subtract URLs at character value; it does automagically shorten URLs to a uniform tax. A bit.ly link will digest just as many characters from the tweet as a 1024 character link -- 20 characters per link. Not a recent development.

zaidf 14y ago
Ah, didn't know. I'll maintain that this is an even more random way of dealing with this and in my case, even worse since bitly links aren't even 20 characters. That there should even be such a thing as a URL tax is crazy.
ZoFreX 14y ago
What is really dumb though is that it still uses a shortener, even though the functionality is now built in. Show me the damn link!