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How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

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Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#51

This is like acting surprised that a skateboard is not a suitable vehicle for going on a long vacation with.

Not surprising though, we live in a world where developers seem continually surprised that a document format isn't ideal for application development.

XML can (be made to) do anything, man.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#52
Twitter was founded as a micro-blogging service, not a forum. It evolved into the anonymous comment section for the entire internet somewhere along the way.

Seems like neither side were being self aware in this case.

I'm also not sure exactly what the product problem is with Twitter. The only exposure I have to a group of people upset about Twitter are the folks that Joe Rogan had on his podcast, and their complaints are just that it's toxic.

However Twitter unlike Google and Facebook is the least functional as a utility, so refraining from using it if you don't like it seems like a no brainer. You're not losing anything functional

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#53
Getting lost in all this noise is Jack's willingness to have a conversation and also admit his product's shortcomings. How many other CEOs subject themselves to a similar, unscripted experiment? Kudos to Jack for being transparent and accessible.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#54
post #6

Twitter is no more suitable to having conversations than SMS are. This is a case of trying to force a use case on a platform that isn't designed for it. Edit: It's getting very tiring to receive downvotes at every comment.

Agreed, but showing messages in order? That's doable isn't it? I'd be annoyed if my text messages started displaying out of order.

Mine do on a regular basis on my iPhone. And "annoyed" doesn't even begin to touch it.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#55
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, maybe for people who've been using it for years. When celebrities do AMAs without guidance by experienced users, they constantly reply to the wrong threads or even the thread itself. Formatting being hard (e.g. you have to press enter two times to do a single line break) also doesn't help.

Markdown is the worst kind of formatting except for all the others. I literally don't know how to write a sentence with more than one asterisk in on HN, and I've been here several years. Formatting is hard but Reddit at least follows a known standard and has a "formatting help" link right under the comment box if you need it.

And yet something as basic as a preview is missing. Reddit's community-driven browser plugin ([0]) at least adds that, HN's counterpart [1] sorely needs it.

---

Come to think of it, is there a definitive guide to HN comment formatting? Implementing a preview feature in [1] would be doable if the markup is documented.

[0]: https://redditenhancementsuite.com/

[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#56
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, maybe for people who've been using it for years. When celebrities do AMAs without guidance by experienced users, they constantly reply to the wrong threads or even the thread itself. Formatting being hard (e.g. you have to press enter two times to do a single line break) also doesn't help.

Markdown is the worst kind of formatting except for all the others. I literally don't know how to write a sentence with more than one asterisk in on HN, and I've been here several years. Formatting is hard but Reddit at least follows a known standard and has a "formatting help" link right under the comment box if you need it.

Or you could, you know, gasp, have a visual editor usable by 99% of the world's population, on Reddit.

This is a solved problem. Word solved it back in 1990.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#57

Getting lost in all this noise is Jack's willingness to have a conversation and also admit his product's shortcomings. How many other CEOs subject themselves to a similar, unscripted experiment? Kudos to Jack for being transparent and accessible.

Being transparent comes naturally when there's nothing there.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#58
post #4

Twitter sucks as a discussion platform but it excels as an insult delivery system.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_what_happens_when_onlin...

I saw this TED talk by Jon Ronson from 2015 titled "When online shaming goes too far", largely a teaser for his book on the topic, but nevertheless rather sobering. Basically how we're all one tweet away from disaster.

NOTE: NSFW due to using quotes of "normal" discourse on Twitter.

Re: How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t

#59
post #4

Twitter sucks as a discussion platform but it excels as an insult delivery system.

Which is strange because I see more targeted rage here on a VC forum.

The Twitter page I've cultivated has low/no rage and even interesting conversations. Sure, if I venture to gender, race, or politics, Ill be greeted by the rage machine. So volitionally choose to stay out of it.

Cultivate who you follow to a narrow tech field, and be very careful that whom you choose doesn't invest in hate and rage mechanics.

Facebook, for me, is the rage machine every few posts interspersed with cat/dog pics.

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