9 ms·

I'm more interested in knowing if anyone doesn't have a twitter (and if so, why not) also, http://twitter.com/zadr http://twitter.com/zadr is mine if anyone's

by Zev 18y ago

I'm more interested in knowing if anyone doesn't have a twitter (and if so, why not) also, http://twitter.com/zadr http://twitter.com/zadr is mine if anyone's remotely interested.

unalone 18y ago
I have one, but all it does is parrot my Tumblr account. I don't check it, don't actively use it, and until I got the ability to parrot Tumblr posts, I didn't use it. Reason being: Tumblr does everything I'd want to do with Twitter, but it's more flexible. I can write more, express myself. I don't see the point in small blurb updates, I don't care to post small, clever quips, and above all I find the interface bland after more than 5 minutes of usage. I tried Twitteriffic, but I had applications that do nothing but connect to the web. EDIT: /unalone/
nx 18y ago
I don't, because I don't feel necessary to post every single thought I have, because I might not know what to post, or just basic laziness. But I'll probably get one in the near future.
- bdotdub 18y ago
  I feel like thats a common misconception. It certainly not every single thought of mine, and very little substance even. It's nice because the whole system is async, so you can get to it when you can, if you want, care or not care. the barrier to tweet is non existent :)
  - nx 18y ago
    I know. So maybe some tweets are interesting, they usually contain links to blog posts worth checking out. I'll get to them through Reddit or HN, maybe I just don't like to be so connected.
- bbgm 18y ago
  I know very few people (that I follow or care about), who tweet all their thoughts. With search tools and things like Tweetdeck, following is not even that important. You follow a keyword, and it works wonders.
vyrotek 18y ago
I dont twitter because I dont care what other people are doing. And so I return the favor by assuming other people dont care about what Im doing.
- larrywright 18y ago
  I had the same feeling, initially. Here's what I've found though: there are really two kinds of relationships on Twitter. Allow me to elaborate. On one end of the spectrum, I follow people who have similar interests as me (Ruby, Rails, Clojure, Arduino, Macs, etc). Lots of them are well-known in their various niche communities. Yes, you do get some degree of "drinking coffe" and "walking the dog" type of notifications, but a lot more "hey, this piece of software is cool", and "I just released this new library" messages. The signal to noise ratio is really pretty good, assuming you are choosy about who you follow. If you follow interesting people, they will help you find interesting things. I wrote about this a little bit, particularly about how I read RSS feeds much less now because of Twitter: http://larrywright.me/blog/articles/209-the-coming-decline-of-rss-and-atom http://larrywright.me/blog/articles/209-the-coming-decline-o... On the other end of the spectrum, I do follow people that I know personally, or that live in the same town (it's small). What I get from these people is different. It's more akin to meeting down at the local coffee shop and catching up. There's value in this as well. It's very easy to dismiss Twitter unless you look closely. You're right, in a sense: I don't care what a random person is doing right now. But that's not really what Twitter is about, and until you use it for a bit, that's hard to understand. If you want to try it, find some people whose blogs you enjoy reading, and follow them for a bit on Twitter. I think you'll be surprised at what you find. If you do, you can find me at http://twitter.com/larrywright http://twitter.com/larrywright
  - biohacker42 18y ago
    But isn't the constant dribbling of information distracting? Wouldn't you be able to find the same valuable information, when you need it, by googleing?
    - larrywright 18y ago
ejs 18y ago
Because my life is just not that interesting I guess, although this does not seem to deter others...
run4yourlives 18y ago
I don't. What need do I have for it? (EDIT - Why would you downvote me for answering his question? Someone explain why twitter is such an amazing tool that I should incorporate it into my already busy life...)
- bd 18y ago
  I was also very skeptical, but finally I found one good use for Twitter. If there is some real-time trouble (e.g. you couldn't access your Gmail account, or Hacker News), Twitter is the first place where you can confirm your suspicions (and sometimes even find a solution/explanation). On Twitter you can find out in minutes if there is anybody else having the same trouble as you, instead of hours till Google indexes blogs with complaints. Searching Twitter is now my default reaction to figure out what's going on: http://search.twitter.com/ http://search.twitter.com/
- jaxn 18y ago
  I have had quite a few opportunities b/c of twitter. I will be speaking at GlueCon in Denver b/c of Twitter. I am much more deeply connected to my local tech community b/c of Twitter. And there are friends that I have a deeper relationship with b/c of Twitter. Now, having said that, there is absolutely no reason anyone should have down voted you for answering the question. Do you need it? No. Can it be highly beneficial? Yes.
Tangurena 18y ago
I don't have a twitter profile. Some reasons: I see no need for it. I don't like exposing myself that much. It doesn't allow for material long enough to be useful. I also don't have a facebook profile, nor a Myspace, but I will make a Linked-In one. I stood for election last year, and I wasn't thrilled that I had to make my name, address, email address and phone numbers as publicly available as it was. I guess some folks don't care much about their privacy, and some folks care too much.
- unalone 18y ago
  If you're running for election I'm guessing you're old-ish? (From the point of an 18-year-old, where old-ish is 28+?) In high school I worked with a bunch of teachers on Internet-related stuff, and I found that there's a disconnect in how people across the gap view privacy. For people 18 year old and younger, there's never not been an Internet. When I was 8 I had already been told a bunch of horrifying "keep your security" stories. I was probably younger than 15 when I first heard about sites like 4chan terrorizing people for years on-end. The result, though, isn't that you hide yourself (which is the reaction I see in my father especially). It's that you decide exactly how you'll let yourself be seen online, you avoid things that'll get you in trouble, and you don't take the Internet too seriously. Most harassment things won't happen if you sound reasonable, don't botch up spelling, avoid fanfiction, and don't actively taunt Anonymous. Similarly, a lot of stuff online is less serious than you can let yourself believe: if you get threatening calls, they almost never mean a thing. People troll. It's easy, and it's become a part of society. In the end, the sheer amount of information means that almost nobody gets targeted. You're a small bubble in a vast ocean. We young brats see it like that, anyway: now, everything is considered public information but still under your control. (I was called into a teacher's office for something I said on Facebook: I said that it was my private space, that the teacher had no right accessing my information, and that the person who took my stuff off of Facebook was violating terms and against the law. She couldn't do anything after that.) So it doesn't become a matter of privacy or not: it becomes a matter of just what is most public. I agree with you about Twitter, though. Constraints aren't particularly useful in its case.
  - Tangurena 18y ago
anthonyrubin 18y ago
I already have an outlet for shallow conversation: IRC.
- unalone 18y ago
  Oh, God. Every time I try to use IRC I turn off my computer hours later wondering what just happened to my time. Do people ever use IRC productively? I'm curious how that would work.
  - anthonyrubin 18y ago
    Actually, many of the technical channels on Freenode are quite good.
  - RobGR 18y ago
    I use IRC channels to ask arcane mysql, asterisk, and other tech questions, on the freenode channels. It's kind of hit or miss. However, a couple of times I have found good help on the #asterisk channel, and ended up talking with someone via private message who I recommended that my customer just pay to do the work instead of me.

by Zev 18y ago

I'm more interested in knowing if anyone doesn't have a twitter (and if so, why not) also, http://twitter.com/zadr http://twitter.com/zadr is mine if anyone's remotely interested.

unalone 18y ago

I have one, but all it does is parrot my Tumblr account. I don't check it, don't actively use it, and until I got the ability to parrot Tumblr posts, I didn't use it. Reason being: Tumblr does everything I'd want to do with Twitter, but it's more flexible. I can write more, express myself. I don't see the point in small blurb updates, I don't care to post small, clever quips, and above all I find the interface bland after more than 5 minutes of usage. I tried Twitteriffic, but I had applications that do nothing but connect to the web. EDIT: /unalone/

nx 18y ago

I don't, because I don't feel necessary to post every single thought I have, because I might not know what to post, or just basic laziness. But I'll probably get one in the near future.

bdotdub 18y ago
I feel like thats a common misconception. It certainly not every single thought of mine, and very little substance even. It's nice because the whole system is async, so you can get to it when you can, if you want, care or not care. the barrier to tweet is non existent :)
- nx 18y ago
  I know. So maybe some tweets are interesting, they usually contain links to blog posts worth checking out. I'll get to them through Reddit or HN, maybe I just don't like to be so connected.
bbgm 18y ago
I know very few people (that I follow or care about), who tweet all their thoughts. With search tools and things like Tweetdeck, following is not even that important. You follow a keyword, and it works wonders.

vyrotek 18y ago

I dont twitter because I dont care what other people are doing. And so I return the favor by assuming other people dont care about what Im doing.

larrywright 18y ago
I had the same feeling, initially. Here's what I've found though: there are really two kinds of relationships on Twitter. Allow me to elaborate. On one end of the spectrum, I follow people who have similar interests as me (Ruby, Rails, Clojure, Arduino, Macs, etc). Lots of them are well-known in their various niche communities. Yes, you do get some degree of "drinking coffe" and "walking the dog" type of notifications, but a lot more "hey, this piece of software is cool", and "I just released this new library" messages. The signal to noise ratio is really pretty good, assuming you are choosy about who you follow. If you follow interesting people, they will help you find interesting things. I wrote about this a little bit, particularly about how I read RSS feeds much less now because of Twitter: http://larrywright.me/blog/articles/209-the-coming-decline-of-rss-and-atom http://larrywright.me/blog/articles/209-the-coming-decline-o... On the other end of the spectrum, I do follow people that I know personally, or that live in the same town (it's small). What I get from these people is different. It's more akin to meeting down at the local coffee shop and catching up. There's value in this as well. It's very easy to dismiss Twitter unless you look closely. You're right, in a sense: I don't care what a random person is doing right now. But that's not really what Twitter is about, and until you use it for a bit, that's hard to understand. If you want to try it, find some people whose blogs you enjoy reading, and follow them for a bit on Twitter. I think you'll be surprised at what you find. If you do, you can find me at http://twitter.com/larrywright http://twitter.com/larrywright
- biohacker42 18y ago
  But isn't the constant dribbling of information distracting? Wouldn't you be able to find the same valuable information, when you need it, by googleing?
  - larrywright 18y ago

ejs 18y ago

Because my life is just not that interesting I guess, although this does not seem to deter others...

run4yourlives 18y ago

I don't. What need do I have for it? (EDIT - Why would you downvote me for answering his question? Someone explain why twitter is such an amazing tool that I should incorporate it into my already busy life...)

bd 18y ago
I was also very skeptical, but finally I found one good use for Twitter. If there is some real-time trouble (e.g. you couldn't access your Gmail account, or Hacker News), Twitter is the first place where you can confirm your suspicions (and sometimes even find a solution/explanation). On Twitter you can find out in minutes if there is anybody else having the same trouble as you, instead of hours till Google indexes blogs with complaints. Searching Twitter is now my default reaction to figure out what's going on: http://search.twitter.com/ http://search.twitter.com/
jaxn 18y ago
I have had quite a few opportunities b/c of twitter. I will be speaking at GlueCon in Denver b/c of Twitter. I am much more deeply connected to my local tech community b/c of Twitter. And there are friends that I have a deeper relationship with b/c of Twitter. Now, having said that, there is absolutely no reason anyone should have down voted you for answering the question. Do you need it? No. Can it be highly beneficial? Yes.

Tangurena 18y ago

I don't have a twitter profile. Some reasons: I see no need for it. I don't like exposing myself that much. It doesn't allow for material long enough to be useful. I also don't have a facebook profile, nor a Myspace, but I will make a Linked-In one. I stood for election last year, and I wasn't thrilled that I had to make my name, address, email address and phone numbers as publicly available as it was. I guess some folks don't care much about their privacy, and some folks care too much.

unalone 18y ago
If you're running for election I'm guessing you're old-ish? (From the point of an 18-year-old, where old-ish is 28+?) In high school I worked with a bunch of teachers on Internet-related stuff, and I found that there's a disconnect in how people across the gap view privacy. For people 18 year old and younger, there's never not been an Internet. When I was 8 I had already been told a bunch of horrifying "keep your security" stories. I was probably younger than 15 when I first heard about sites like 4chan terrorizing people for years on-end. The result, though, isn't that you hide yourself (which is the reaction I see in my father especially). It's that you decide exactly how you'll let yourself be seen online, you avoid things that'll get you in trouble, and you don't take the Internet too seriously. Most harassment things won't happen if you sound reasonable, don't botch up spelling, avoid fanfiction, and don't actively taunt Anonymous. Similarly, a lot of stuff online is less serious than you can let yourself believe: if you get threatening calls, they almost never mean a thing. People troll. It's easy, and it's become a part of society. In the end, the sheer amount of information means that almost nobody gets targeted. You're a small bubble in a vast ocean. We young brats see it like that, anyway: now, everything is considered public information but still under your control. (I was called into a teacher's office for something I said on Facebook: I said that it was my private space, that the teacher had no right accessing my information, and that the person who took my stuff off of Facebook was violating terms and against the law. She couldn't do anything after that.) So it doesn't become a matter of privacy or not: it becomes a matter of just what is most public. I agree with you about Twitter, though. Constraints aren't particularly useful in its case.
- Tangurena 18y ago

anthonyrubin 18y ago

I already have an outlet for shallow conversation: IRC.

unalone 18y ago
Oh, God. Every time I try to use IRC I turn off my computer hours later wondering what just happened to my time. Do people ever use IRC productively? I'm curious how that would work.
- anthonyrubin 18y ago
  Actually, many of the technical channels on Freenode are quite good.
- RobGR 18y ago
  I use IRC channels to ask arcane mysql, asterisk, and other tech questions, on the freenode channels. It's kind of hit or miss. However, a couple of times I have found good help on the #asterisk channel, and ended up talking with someone via private message who I recommended that my customer just pay to do the work instead of me.