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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

#151

Post by Jorge1o1 »

Asooka wrote: post #72
aboutruby wrote: post #26

I think only Reddit has mastered the large-scale discussion involving thousands or ten of thousands of people at the same time.

I prefer 4chan's system with automatic reply linking. The issue with Reddit and HN is they model conversation as a tree, but real written conversation between several people is usually a DAG with one person replying to several posts at once. The UI can definitely be improved, but trees ain't it.

Agreed, it’s so much better. Just being able to reply to two people at once is incredible.

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

#152

Post by u801e »

StavrosK wrote: post #45
aboutruby wrote: post #26

I think only Reddit has mastered the large-scale discussion involving thousands or ten of thousands of people at the same time.

You're downvoted, but I tend to agree. Regardless of the community, reddit's full-width, compact layout is the easiest way I've found to follow a tree-based conversation.

The one thing that reddit and Hacker News lack is the ability to easily see new posts on an existing thread (though you can get this with a reddit gold subscription or becoming a moderator). The other thing they lack is an index of comments (like you would see with a mail reader).

Those two features made something like usenet with a good news reader easier to use compared to reddit or Hacker News.

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

#153

Post by saas_sam »

theNJR wrote: post #132

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know…

Do you think the rate of improvements that have happened to the internet would be sustained if it were run by the government? I sure don't. Moving decision-making capabilities away from the public and into the hands of bureaucrats sounds like a good way to increase surveillance, decrease innovation, and lord knows what else. I really hope that idea does not take off.

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

#154

Post by dalbasal »

theNJR wrote: post #132

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know…

I don't think Twitter is a conversational medium, essentially. It certainly isn't a good one, for complex conversations.

It's hard to find the horse-and-boogie analogy for something that's essentially new, but bumper sticker, or billboard is more apt.

On the public utility front... email exists, RSS exists, the www exists... all open platforms, public by some (the right) definitions.

The problem is that an open field (especially when there're multi-$bn opportunities) is innovative, resourceful and will often outcompete the public utility.

How are you going to stop the next twitter from winning the get users game, ban texting apps?

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

#155

Post by 7Z7 »

paganel wrote: post #89
Ntrails wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite some examples of people being prosecuted for saying things on twitter that aren't, you know, bomb threats or holocaust denial etc.

Here it goes, from a few days ago (I'm not the OP): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arre... Sorry for the Daily Mail link but it looks like the mainstream press hasn't catch up on the subject. Afaik transphobia is not on the same level with "bomb threats or holocaust denial" but apparently people get arrested for it.

The Daily Mail is in the top three newspapers, by circulation, in the UK. And far far more read than the broadsheets. How is it not considered the "mainstream"?

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

#156

Post by erwan »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #22

Regardless of what Twitter is or isn't, how in the world is the CEO surprised by how his product works? And we're not talking some obscure corner case, but basic use case? Having a conversation was a learning experience for him and his team? Such a basic level of unfamiliarity with their own product gives me a lot of pause that he can do anything to guide the company on fixing rampant automated accounts or making it…

It seems like lots of consumer products relying on advertising as a revenue model fall prey to the same problem.

They aggressively optimize for a panoply of metrics that make them appealing to advertisers. Often this means hacking the algorithms governing the interactions between users (viewership, timeline visibility, feed) until the outcome yields satisfying metrics, meaningful or not.

At this point a complex web of chaotic feedback loops has formed and it becomes hard to change anything. The system's stateful complexity far exceeds the engineering/product team's understanding of it. It's like trying to debug a neural network.

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

#157

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

smacktoward wrote: post #122
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you think the inherent design — “microblogging” — encourages a toxic environment? Most people aren’t poets or great writers, so I just frequently see people talking past each other or misreading what has been said because there is zero nuance.

I wrote a whole thing making that very argument: https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/

Great read, this perfectly expresses how I see it. I really like the "medium is the message" idea, haven't heard that before, but it definitely makes sense.

It's why the "happy birthday" messages in Facebook have always felt so hollow (especially because facebook is really nudging you to do it), but those same words sent via text message to the person are received differently (or even via Messenger within Facebook).

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

#159

Post by robbles »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #22

Regardless of what Twitter is or isn't, how in the world is the CEO surprised by how his product works? And we're not talking some obscure corner case, but basic use case? Having a conversation was a learning experience for him and his team? Such a basic level of unfamiliarity with their own product gives me a lot of pause that he can do anything to guide the company on fixing rampant automated accounts or making it…

My impression after following him on there for a while: he still uses, and sees the platform as if it's the original version of Twitter from ~2006. Most of his tweets are written in a way that sound like a person writing in a public diary, not someone expecting to have a conversation.

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

#160

Post by hopler »

theNJR wrote: post #132

A lot to unpack recently with Twitter and Jack. A few thoughts. 1. Jack doesn’t seem passionate about product, especially Twitter. 2. Kara seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about product which is both surprising and confusing, given her niche and time spent in it. She also doesn’t understand that Twitter has evolved way beyond Jack. “Why don’t you know, it’s your product!” she kept asking. The fact he doesn’t know…

> She almost asked a great question about needing fire, police and garbage.

Twitter already provides a garbage fire service, that's why users are begging for police.

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