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Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

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Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#191

Post by tedunangst »

mxschumacher wrote: post #62
intoverflow2 wrote: post #9

Anyone still actually having a good time on this service? Just feels a cacophony of (US Centric) political screaming and foot stamping from both sides the past two years. Just utterly draining to scroll through my timeline some days and I only follow artists, devs and designers. I grew to rely on Twitter to find interesting content after Google killed Reader. But starting to think it really needs a big "Politics" che…

I'm @mxschumacher on the platform and it took me three years to "get Twitter", but now I love it. Went from following 1500 to only 400. Almost no politics now and high granularity & outstanding signal to noise ratio. An insight-machine that I would not want to miss. Selection criteria I use: - don't pay too much attention to profile, better to check actual tweets. Plenty of smart/impressive sounding tech/science peop…

Annoyingly, Twitter doesn't let you view that list without logging in. It's possible to browse tweets by individuals without logging in, or even many individuals given a collection of names, but viewing the list? Not in my garden, pal.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#192

Post by patrickg_zill »

Twitter has been actively banning various accounts, usually alt-right but some even satirical in nature. They banned GodfreyElfwick for instance.

Each time that happens, Twitter loses some of its appeal.

They could very easily put more filtering power in the hands of their users, but don't (to give me more control over whose tweets show up as response to my tweets, which is the main complaint people have about accounts they vehemently disagree with).

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#194

Post by Yizahi »

Karunamon wrote: post #102
krapp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but I feel Twitter isn't really structured to handle the flow of conversations well. I've seen good conversations on Youtube, as well, but like Twitter that seems to happen in spite of the restrictions of the platform, not because of it. Also, the quality of Twitter comments doesn't seem to translate to HN, so much as the quality of the posts. Which, when those posts are emotive and lack sufficient conte…

I hear this complaint often and still don't understand it. Twitter has had threaded conversations for a while now and they flow just as easily as HN comments.

For an outsider Twitter looks like a UI hell. I can't figure it out in any 5 minute long attempt when I happen to open a twit. And I don't see a real incentive to spend more time digging through that messy UI, when there is a FB, RSS aggregators, HN, etc. Tons of distraction feeds in use already and forums too. Frankly it is a mystery for me how Twitter is still popular.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#195

Post by blister »

Twitter has caused serious harm to myself and my family. I'm a big fan of the platform, but I've been "doxxed", harassed, and was even SWATed once by different people trying to get me to give them my username.

I'd release it, except that'd be almost as big of a pain. I'd have to release a new edition of my book, change all my websites. Ugh. People are dicks. I wish I'd picked a less desirable handle.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#196

Post by r721 »

mxschumacher wrote: post #134
heymijo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that. Twitter has a lot of usability imperfections. Lists is one, but I still use them. Anywhere from 0 - 200 people, depending on how much they post, is about the maximum I can handle in any one stream. So I segregate into lists. I see you have about 400 people you follow, which would overwhelm me if they were all in my main feed.

Most of those people are have a low tweet frequency though.(it would be great if Twitter provided better statistical insight into these matters) if people start spamming or their signal/noise ratio goes down I unfollow them quite quickly.

>it would be great if Twitter provided better statistical insight into these matters

Yeah, that's my greatest wish too - something like average tweets per hour/peak tweets per hour/average tweets per day/peak tweets per day stats.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#197

Post by rchaud »

Every discussion on Twitter on HN talks about UX issues like the threaded comment layout, as though these are what's responsible for driving away Twitter's audience.

I think the simple answer is that you don't actually have to ever visit Twitter to know what Trump, Nicki Minaj, Drake etc. are saying.

Whatever is said on a tweet will be screen-capped and re-reported on your favourite gossip website, news site, Instagram page, reddit, etc. That's what you get with a 140-character limit. Whatever you said or pic you snapped can easily be reproduced on a different medium in its entirety.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#198

Post by pzone »

kasey_junk wrote: post #55
tormeh wrote: post #38

Twitter is amazing, but it needs to ditch the 140 chars, improve discoverability, and get more modest in its expectations. Twitter is an interest network, where you follow interesting people and read what they write, re-tweet what they write and sometimes interact with them. Given that a lot of people don't have that much interest in things that can be expressed in Twitter form, Twitter has a low ceiling on how big i…

I think I'd probably stop using Twitter (the only social network I use) if they ditched the 140 character format. I don't want to see long form facebook style posts there, its literally their differentiation.

Well if they remove the 140 character limit I'll start using Twitter again. Looks like they're breaking even.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#199

Post by good_vibes »

I follow 44 accounts, a mixture of Eastern philosophy, interesting entrepreneurs/economists, Quanta/Nautilus, Patagonia, one design showcase, a few people in tech industry.

Twitter is mostly noise, little signal. Social media in general is to be honest. I get a little value from each of the major platforms. Reddit and Instagram are my two favorites.

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