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Twitter. Who Do You Think You Are?

16 points by anu_gupta 11y ago

austenallred 11y ago
The reality: Twitter doesn't even know, and Twitter has frequent internal struggles to decide that. So mostly it's an empty text box and people use it how they want.
dasil003 11y ago
Something inside me is deeply saddened by the fact that a 300M user social network that is novel enough to be undefinable is under constant attack from journalists and Wall Street to continue growing and to articulate clearly what it is. Frankly, Twitter is something much more interesting than Facebook, and something which could be even more interesting if it went back to its roots and embraced the role of infrastructure and being many things to many people. The problem is that anything less than being the biggest, most homogenized social network is now considered failure. The invention of the @-reply, the hashtag, and the first really viable way for celebrities to connect directly to their fanbase is worth nothing, it's just water under the bridge. Silicon Valley used to have a strong streak about creation of novel things for their own sake, but now it's dominated by the mass market thinking that is behind 100 years of sterilization of our first-world existence. Frankly, I couldn't possibly care less what media click-whores, and Wall Street thieves think about anything.
- ewzimm 11y ago
  The kind of paternalistic thinking in this article is wrong on so many levels. Basically it comes down to complaining about a "lack of leadership," meaning that Twitter should be doing more to tell people how to use it instead of letting them decide for themselves. I will never understand this idea that everything needs to be dumbed-down and spoon-fed to customers to be any good. There's even an extremely clear definition of what Twitter is laid out in the article and criticized. It allows a person to communicate with many people in real time regardless of what device they're using. That couldn't be clearer, and it's dismissed as nonsensical. The world does not need more programs and platforms that tell people exactly how to use them. It needs tools to inspire creativity! This "Black Mirror" video-exercise-bike-cult thinking will never get us anywhere good. If anything, Twitter needs to open up its API again and welcome the third-party developers back.
dajohnson89 11y ago
>It’s utterly insane that you still need to put a period before a person’s Twitter handle, such as “.@twitter,” if you want everyone to see it. Gee, I dunno. Maybe if someone wants to use the '@' character without it being parsed as a handle. >Marjorie Scardino, the former chief of the publishing firm Pearson, and another board member, has tweeted only eight times, ever. That’s like having someone on the board of Starbucks who doesn’t drink coffee. What utter bollocks. What next, should the CEO of Lockheed Martin fly every fighter jet his company manufactures? This entire article is an inane smear.
zghst 11y ago
I didn't use my twitter for the first few years I had it but if you actually start using it, it seems to be at the center of everything! It's an amazing social network that makes everyone a part of the conversation, although its lack of direction is very apparent. However that's all Twitter is, the conversation, and it goes anywhere really.

16 points by anu_gupta 11y ago

The reality: Twitter doesn't even know, and Twitter has frequent internal struggles to decide that. So mostly it's an empty text box and people use it how they want.

dasil003 11y ago

Something inside me is deeply saddened by the fact that a 300M user social network that is novel enough to be undefinable is under constant attack from journalists and Wall Street to continue growing and to articulate clearly what it is. Frankly, Twitter is something much more interesting than Facebook, and something which could be even more interesting if it went back to its roots and embraced the role of infrastructure and being many things to many people. The problem is that anything less than being the biggest, most homogenized social network is now considered failure. The invention of the @-reply, the hashtag, and the first really viable way for celebrities to connect directly to their fanbase is worth nothing, it's just water under the bridge. Silicon Valley used to have a strong streak about creation of novel things for their own sake, but now it's dominated by the mass market thinking that is behind 100 years of sterilization of our first-world existence. Frankly, I couldn't possibly care less what media click-whores, and Wall Street thieves think about anything.

ewzimm 11y ago
The kind of paternalistic thinking in this article is wrong on so many levels. Basically it comes down to complaining about a "lack of leadership," meaning that Twitter should be doing more to tell people how to use it instead of letting them decide for themselves. I will never understand this idea that everything needs to be dumbed-down and spoon-fed to customers to be any good. There's even an extremely clear definition of what Twitter is laid out in the article and criticized. It allows a person to communicate with many people in real time regardless of what device they're using. That couldn't be clearer, and it's dismissed as nonsensical. The world does not need more programs and platforms that tell people exactly how to use them. It needs tools to inspire creativity! This "Black Mirror" video-exercise-bike-cult thinking will never get us anywhere good. If anything, Twitter needs to open up its API again and welcome the third-party developers back.

dajohnson89 11y ago

>It’s utterly insane that you still need to put a period before a person’s Twitter handle, such as “.@twitter,” if you want everyone to see it. Gee, I dunno. Maybe if someone wants to use the '@' character without it being parsed as a handle. >Marjorie Scardino, the former chief of the publishing firm Pearson, and another board member, has tweeted only eight times, ever. That’s like having someone on the board of Starbucks who doesn’t drink coffee. What utter bollocks. What next, should the CEO of Lockheed Martin fly every fighter jet his company manufactures? This entire article is an inane smear.

zghst 11y ago

I didn't use my twitter for the first few years I had it but if you actually start using it, it seems to be at the center of everything! It's an amazing social network that makes everyone a part of the conversation, although its lack of direction is very apparent. However that's all Twitter is, the conversation, and it goes anywhere really.