5 ms·

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.

by vyrotek 18y ago

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
    The problem is that you don't know what you don't know. I see a lot of libraries, articles, technologies, etc that I wouldn't otherwise see, and wouldn't know to Google. Not sure I explained that well, but I think you can get my meaning. Twitter can be a distraction (and I let it be more than I should), but like anything else it can be managed.
    - trapper 18y ago
      Not aimed at you, but too many people are searching for that magic "something" that will help them be awesome. When you get to the top of a field and talk with your peers, you realise that everyone else has the same questions as you, and that the answers come slowly and loudly. It's hard to miss truly great things.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Isn't the constant dribbling of e-mail distracting? No, because I can go check it when I want to. Twitter does, however, provide me with insights into the people I know (business or otherwise) and keeps me on the edge with developments in several communities I'm involved with. For example, I'm a Ruby guy, and so I follow a lot of Rubyists.. you can bet I'm pretty clued in to brand new Ruby libraries, etc, as they come out (or even just in a very quiet personal beta). Explaining Twitter is next to impossible. Unless you've been using it in anger for a few months, you don't have a clue what it is, but then suddenly.. one day you do.
    - neilc 18y ago
      Isn't the constant dribbling of e-mail distracting? Yes, it is. There's a reason why Knuth answers regular mail as a batch process (once every few months), for example. A common productivity tip is to limit yourself to checking email only a few times a day. The productivity harm caused be frequent context switching has been well-documented, especially if you're doing something context-intensive like programming.
      - 18y ago
azharcs 18y ago
It is actually more than that. I am following some 150 people and it is very rare that people tweet about what they are doing. When i started using twitter, i was skeptical that it would be of any value. But slowly i realize that it is much more powerful than i thought. It is like speaking on a stage where your followers are listening to you always. By just putting in 10 or 15 mins of your day, you will be able to generate a lot of value from your twitter account. It is like a brand, better you tweet, more followers you have (how you utilize them depends on you). Giving you an example, I have around 225 followers, so whenever i tweet a link, i get around 50 views. There are people with more followers like 1000 who i am assuming get around 250 views for every link they post. Mike Arrington has close to 25k - 30k followers, i am pretty much sure he get lot of traffic from twitter and he is also socializing with his users.
- petercooper 18y ago
  I have a Twitter account with over 10,000 followers (not my personal account to which I only have 1500 :)) and you're guaranteed about 80-100 clicks within the first few minutes of linking to something (yes, I've used a tracker). Typically, it sees about 250 clicks overall (within 24 hours) with 500 being a record (back when it had about 8000 followers).
  - azharcs 18y ago
    true, i think click-through rate increases as quality of tweets increases and also i think frequency of tweets matter a lot. ps: I like your books :)
    - petercooper 18y ago
      Thanks!
petercooper 18y ago
If that's true, then why are you on the Internet in the first place? If you have no care over what other people are doing and don't care if other people care about you, what utility can the Internet have whatsoever?
- petercooper 18y ago
  Actually, as a follow up here.. is there actually anything you can use the Internet for that doesn't require either you or a third party caring about the activity of another party? I suspect there is. Weather, perhaps? Stuff like e-mail, most news, IM, chat, or whatever are ruled out though, even this very site.
  - jmackinn 18y ago
    Research, shopping, gaming, news, movies, tv, downloading, and of course porn.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Gaming. I think his point relates to "say it for the sake of saying it" as opposed to "doing this for a reason." So, case in point, I come here to get in debates. I use Tumblr to store my ideas (I don't follow other users, and I've tried to disable the following count so I'm not influenced by my far-too-many followers). But for Twitter, I see it as "I'm here to talk for the sake of talking." I don't get it. As it is, now that my Twitter shows my Tumblr posts, I've been slowly picking up Twitter followers, and it baffles me. I follow people using RSS, and I've asked before to allow HN to give me a "new replies" RSS feed so I can centralize everything (and internally, versus on an open field like FriendFeed). I'm horrified at the thought of adding yet another outlet to post links and say random things - there're too many already. It's a shame because I like how minimal Twitter is. It's zen in a way. I just don't see the point to having one and keeping it: one site is enough, and my poison is Tumblr.
    - petercooper 18y ago
      You don't get much value out of Twitter if you just post for the sake of posting. It's like e-mail. If all you used it for was writing to a penpal, then there's limited value there. But.. most people have evolved beyond that. My grandmother would never have seen the point of e-mail beyond sending "letters" to each other.. but we all know now it goes deeper than that. People who don't see extended value in Twitter now are like my theoretical grandmother and her myopic view of e-mail.
vyrotek 18y ago
As a result of this I decided to give it a try. http://twitter.com/vyrotek http://twitter.com/vyrotek

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.

by 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
  The problem is that you don't know what you don't know. I see a lot of libraries, articles, technologies, etc that I wouldn't otherwise see, and wouldn't know to Google. Not sure I explained that well, but I think you can get my meaning. Twitter can be a distraction (and I let it be more than I should), but like anything else it can be managed.
  - trapper 18y ago
    Not aimed at you, but too many people are searching for that magic "something" that will help them be awesome. When you get to the top of a field and talk with your peers, you realise that everyone else has the same questions as you, and that the answers come slowly and loudly. It's hard to miss truly great things.
- petercooper 18y ago
  Isn't the constant dribbling of e-mail distracting? No, because I can go check it when I want to. Twitter does, however, provide me with insights into the people I know (business or otherwise) and keeps me on the edge with developments in several communities I'm involved with. For example, I'm a Ruby guy, and so I follow a lot of Rubyists.. you can bet I'm pretty clued in to brand new Ruby libraries, etc, as they come out (or even just in a very quiet personal beta). Explaining Twitter is next to impossible. Unless you've been using it in anger for a few months, you don't have a clue what it is, but then suddenly.. one day you do.
  - neilc 18y ago
    Isn't the constant dribbling of e-mail distracting? Yes, it is. There's a reason why Knuth answers regular mail as a batch process (once every few months), for example. A common productivity tip is to limit yourself to checking email only a few times a day. The productivity harm caused be frequent context switching has been well-documented, especially if you're doing something context-intensive like programming.
    - 18y ago

azharcs 18y ago

It is actually more than that. I am following some 150 people and it is very rare that people tweet about what they are doing. When i started using twitter, i was skeptical that it would be of any value. But slowly i realize that it is much more powerful than i thought. It is like speaking on a stage where your followers are listening to you always. By just putting in 10 or 15 mins of your day, you will be able to generate a lot of value from your twitter account. It is like a brand, better you tweet, more followers you have (how you utilize them depends on you). Giving you an example, I have around 225 followers, so whenever i tweet a link, i get around 50 views. There are people with more followers like 1000 who i am assuming get around 250 views for every link they post. Mike Arrington has close to 25k - 30k followers, i am pretty much sure he get lot of traffic from twitter and he is also socializing with his users.

petercooper 18y ago
I have a Twitter account with over 10,000 followers (not my personal account to which I only have 1500 :)) and you're guaranteed about 80-100 clicks within the first few minutes of linking to something (yes, I've used a tracker). Typically, it sees about 250 clicks overall (within 24 hours) with 500 being a record (back when it had about 8000 followers).
- azharcs 18y ago
  true, i think click-through rate increases as quality of tweets increases and also i think frequency of tweets matter a lot. ps: I like your books :)
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Thanks!

petercooper 18y ago

If that's true, then why are you on the Internet in the first place? If you have no care over what other people are doing and don't care if other people care about you, what utility can the Internet have whatsoever?

petercooper 18y ago
Actually, as a follow up here.. is there actually anything you can use the Internet for that doesn't require either you or a third party caring about the activity of another party? I suspect there is. Weather, perhaps? Stuff like e-mail, most news, IM, chat, or whatever are ruled out though, even this very site.
- jmackinn 18y ago
  Research, shopping, gaming, news, movies, tv, downloading, and of course porn.
- unalone 18y ago
  Gaming. I think his point relates to "say it for the sake of saying it" as opposed to "doing this for a reason." So, case in point, I come here to get in debates. I use Tumblr to store my ideas (I don't follow other users, and I've tried to disable the following count so I'm not influenced by my far-too-many followers). But for Twitter, I see it as "I'm here to talk for the sake of talking." I don't get it. As it is, now that my Twitter shows my Tumblr posts, I've been slowly picking up Twitter followers, and it baffles me. I follow people using RSS, and I've asked before to allow HN to give me a "new replies" RSS feed so I can centralize everything (and internally, versus on an open field like FriendFeed). I'm horrified at the thought of adding yet another outlet to post links and say random things - there're too many already. It's a shame because I like how minimal Twitter is. It's zen in a way. I just don't see the point to having one and keeping it: one site is enough, and my poison is Tumblr.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    You don't get much value out of Twitter if you just post for the sake of posting. It's like e-mail. If all you used it for was writing to a penpal, then there's limited value there. But.. most people have evolved beyond that. My grandmother would never have seen the point of e-mail beyond sending "letters" to each other.. but we all know now it goes deeper than that. People who don't see extended value in Twitter now are like my theoretical grandmother and her myopic view of e-mail.

vyrotek 18y ago

As a result of this I decided to give it a try. http://twitter.com/vyrotek http://twitter.com/vyrotek