5 ms·

Can someone explain the value of Twitter to me? I certainly can see its value for advertisers, or even to get breaking news, but I have a Twitter account and do

by rifung 12y ago

Can someone explain the value of Twitter to me? I certainly can see its value for advertisers, or even to get breaking news, but I have a Twitter account and don't use it at all. What do you guys use it for? What's the target market for this exactly? I certainly don't expect people to follow me, some random guy on the internet, so there's no incentive for me to tweet myself. Besides news articles, what interesting things do you read from tweets?

idlewords 12y ago
I find it to be a good medium for customer support, especially during an outage. It's also a good way to get news from very high quality sources. Lots of domain experts and freelance journalists tweet, and their feeds can be far more informative and timely than regular media coverage.
- mreiland 11y ago
  can you give an example of this?
  - idlewords 11y ago
    @ionacraig for the latest on what's happening in Yemen; @jonostrower for aviation and aerospace. The former is a freelance journalist who writes for the BBC a lot; the latter is a beat reporter for the WSJ.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Not the OP, but for instance: Peter Nickeas at the Trib does real-time crime reporting from the South Side of Chicago; @peternickeas I get a pretty constant feed of Middle East stuff that I don't see elsewhere from Laura Rozen (though I'm uncertain of her ideological tilt, she pulls in lots of random other sources); @lrozen There are a couple court reporters in Chicago that I've picked up. Saved You A Click does a pretty good job of condensing most of modern journalism into a short Twitter feed; @SavedYouAClick M&A/corpdev comings and goings in the Valley, startupland's "Weddings Section", that's @pinboard. Of course, there's @scotusblog. There are lots of kinds of news that Twitter is just a lot better at delivering than websites or (gag) RSS. Since it's so easy to compose twerps, especially once you get the hang of it, it seems like it draws a lot of reporters in who would not do real-time reporting so aggressively in a different medium, but will do it so long as the expectation is set that they only have to tap out 140 characters an hour. This is also an advantage Twitter has over Facebook.
thoughtpalette 12y ago
There's a lot of parody accounts that keep me entertained. @nihilist_arbys, @iamdevloper. Also It's interesting following @neiltyson and @ID_AA_Carmack
austenallred 12y ago
Imagine if you could be a fly on the wall at a party. You could invite anyone in the world to that party, and they'd come. Your heroes, the smartest people in the world, the best people in your field, your friends, the funniest people you know, etc. You get them all in a room and get to listen to everything they're saying, thinking about, reading, etc. That's Twitter.
- rifung 11y ago
  Ah I think I am just not the target market as most(all?) of the people I admire don't use it. Thanks for the explanation though!
- rifung 11y ago
  Ah I think I am just not the target market as most(all?) of the people I admire don't use it. Thanks for the explanation though!
armandososa 11y ago
Being an early Twitter user, I'd say that the value of Twitter is in who you follow, not who's following you. When Twitter started it was a geek medium and dominated by nerd types. Back in 2007 it was almost a guarantee that I could follow any one and find interesting (to me) conversations and topics. For someone with poor social skills and living in a part of the world with no tech scene, it was an amazing opportunity to meet people and be part of a nascent community. I'm pretty sure that if I have a career in tech today is in part due to my early involvement in Twitter. With time, as its usage broadened, it became more and more difficult to find who to follow. Twitter seemingly tried very hard to divorce itself from the nerd community and became pop culture. Once it became Obama's and Justin Biever's medium it was pretty much ruined. Today, it's still possible to find interesting communities buried within the nonsense but it's getting more and more difficult to do so. (Non native speaker, sorry if something does not make sense)
SixSigma 11y ago
I have found it useful since moving to a new city. Most of the time you are either overwhelmed with tweets or miss things because you weren't watching at the right time. But these people curate a retweeting session which I find interesting : https://twitter.com/HuddersfieldBiz https://twitter.com/HuddersfieldBiz : Use #HuddersfieldHour every Thurs 8-9 PM to discuss #Huddersfield, Promote your business & find out what's going on! I have also found value in connecting with other community groups in the locale. So, for me, it offers geographically related content which I don't seem to find elsewhere
jonathanmarcus 11y ago
Twitter has become the definitive source for breaking news, rumors and off the cough analysis in Sports. Scoops always appear on Twitter considerably faster than ESPN, etc. During free agency periods, all of the rumors and news breaks on Twitter first because all of the top traditional journalists and bloggers use Twitter as their primary distribution channel. If I were running ESPN, I would have tried my hardest to head this off years ago, perhaps by emulating the StockTwits strategy or something, but at this point, Twitter is the breaking source for Sports information, not ESPN. And that's why I use it multiple times per day on the web.
snowwrestler 11y ago
There is absolutely no faster medium for discovering information. Twitter is so fast that it beat an earthquake from DC to NY. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/tweets-move-faster-than-earthquakes/2011/08/25/gIQA4iWHeJ_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/tweets-mov... So, I follow a bunch of breaking news accounts and stuff like my power utility, my hosting providers' status accounts, etc. Prior to Twitter, the fastest medium for newsy information was web forums; Fark.com in particular was always very fast with breaking news. Twitter is faster. The other value is all the folks you can follow. It's good for entertainment--I highly recommend the @pinboard account for amazing tech industry satire. But it's also a great way to learn. I want to learn more about data visualization, so I started following accounts related to that. I started with Mike Bostock (D3.js author), and then looked at who he was retweeting, etc. And Twitter is not bad at suggesting accounts to follow once you move into a new area.

by rifung 12y ago

idlewords 12y ago

I find it to be a good medium for customer support, especially during an outage. It's also a good way to get news from very high quality sources. Lots of domain experts and freelance journalists tweet, and their feeds can be far more informative and timely than regular media coverage.

mreiland 11y ago
can you give an example of this?
- idlewords 11y ago
  @ionacraig for the latest on what's happening in Yemen; @jonostrower for aviation and aerospace. The former is a freelance journalist who writes for the BBC a lot; the latter is a beat reporter for the WSJ.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Not the OP, but for instance: Peter Nickeas at the Trib does real-time crime reporting from the South Side of Chicago; @peternickeas I get a pretty constant feed of Middle East stuff that I don't see elsewhere from Laura Rozen (though I'm uncertain of her ideological tilt, she pulls in lots of random other sources); @lrozen There are a couple court reporters in Chicago that I've picked up. Saved You A Click does a pretty good job of condensing most of modern journalism into a short Twitter feed; @SavedYouAClick M&A/corpdev comings and goings in the Valley, startupland's "Weddings Section", that's @pinboard. Of course, there's @scotusblog. There are lots of kinds of news that Twitter is just a lot better at delivering than websites or (gag) RSS. Since it's so easy to compose twerps, especially once you get the hang of it, it seems like it draws a lot of reporters in who would not do real-time reporting so aggressively in a different medium, but will do it so long as the expectation is set that they only have to tap out 140 characters an hour. This is also an advantage Twitter has over Facebook.

thoughtpalette 12y ago

There's a lot of parody accounts that keep me entertained. @nihilist_arbys, @iamdevloper. Also It's interesting following @neiltyson and @ID_AA_Carmack

austenallred 12y ago

Imagine if you could be a fly on the wall at a party. You could invite anyone in the world to that party, and they'd come. Your heroes, the smartest people in the world, the best people in your field, your friends, the funniest people you know, etc. You get them all in a room and get to listen to everything they're saying, thinking about, reading, etc. That's Twitter.

rifung 11y ago
Ah I think I am just not the target market as most(all?) of the people I admire don't use it. Thanks for the explanation though!
rifung 11y ago
Ah I think I am just not the target market as most(all?) of the people I admire don't use it. Thanks for the explanation though!

armandososa 11y ago

Being an early Twitter user, I'd say that the value of Twitter is in who you follow, not who's following you. When Twitter started it was a geek medium and dominated by nerd types. Back in 2007 it was almost a guarantee that I could follow any one and find interesting (to me) conversations and topics. For someone with poor social skills and living in a part of the world with no tech scene, it was an amazing opportunity to meet people and be part of a nascent community. I'm pretty sure that if I have a career in tech today is in part due to my early involvement in Twitter. With time, as its usage broadened, it became more and more difficult to find who to follow. Twitter seemingly tried very hard to divorce itself from the nerd community and became pop culture. Once it became Obama's and Justin Biever's medium it was pretty much ruined. Today, it's still possible to find interesting communities buried within the nonsense but it's getting more and more difficult to do so. (Non native speaker, sorry if something does not make sense)

SixSigma 11y ago

I have found it useful since moving to a new city. Most of the time you are either overwhelmed with tweets or miss things because you weren't watching at the right time. But these people curate a retweeting session which I find interesting : https://twitter.com/HuddersfieldBiz https://twitter.com/HuddersfieldBiz : Use #HuddersfieldHour every Thurs 8-9 PM to discuss #Huddersfield, Promote your business & find out what's going on! I have also found value in connecting with other community groups in the locale. So, for me, it offers geographically related content which I don't seem to find elsewhere

jonathanmarcus 11y ago

Twitter has become the definitive source for breaking news, rumors and off the cough analysis in Sports. Scoops always appear on Twitter considerably faster than ESPN, etc. During free agency periods, all of the rumors and news breaks on Twitter first because all of the top traditional journalists and bloggers use Twitter as their primary distribution channel. If I were running ESPN, I would have tried my hardest to head this off years ago, perhaps by emulating the StockTwits strategy or something, but at this point, Twitter is the breaking source for Sports information, not ESPN. And that's why I use it multiple times per day on the web.

snowwrestler 11y ago

There is absolutely no faster medium for discovering information. Twitter is so fast that it beat an earthquake from DC to NY. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/tweets-move-faster-than-earthquakes/2011/08/25/gIQA4iWHeJ_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/tweets-mov... So, I follow a bunch of breaking news accounts and stuff like my power utility, my hosting providers' status accounts, etc. Prior to Twitter, the fastest medium for newsy information was web forums; Fark.com in particular was always very fast with breaking news. Twitter is faster. The other value is all the folks you can follow. It's good for entertainment--I highly recommend the @pinboard account for amazing tech industry satire. But it's also a great way to learn. I want to learn more about data visualization, so I started following accounts related to that. I started with Mike Bostock (D3.js author), and then looked at who he was retweeting, etc. And Twitter is not bad at suggesting accounts to follow once you move into a new area.