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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

#241

Post by lmm »

oblio wrote: post #56
lmm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When has there been a visual editor that wasn't awful?

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

#242

Post by no_gravity »

aethertron wrote: post #239
no_gravity wrote: post #64

The main problem I have with Twitter is that when you reply to your own tweets, the reply will appear as a new tweet on your timeline. This way your timeline becomes total chaos. Unless you only tweet a single 280 chars text and never add anything to it. Otherwise, I would use it to post topics I am interested in. Reply to those topics to add more text or when new information becomes available. And have a discussion…

How about Wordpress? What you're describing sounds to me like the standard structure of a blog with comments. Twitter is a weird sort of blog platform. It is chaotic by design: the chaos is consequence of its distinguishing features. Everyone does get their own 'mini HN', i.e. a forum . But they lack the tools to rule over that forum. It's idealistically anarchic. Everyone's expected to get along peacefully, totally…

Wordpress is a tool to make websites. Yes, you can put your content on a website and then link to that from Twitter.

But that puts a big barrier in front of your content and the Twitter users. Visiting a website is usually a horrible experience. So people are very hesitant to do so. Click through rates from social media to websites are abysmal.

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

#243

Post by dllthomas »

hollerith wrote: post #213
dragonwriter wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The experience of using the internet to teach or learn about computers has not improved since 1992 I disagree. > The web was the first significant internet service to offer a GUI. No, it wasn't. > before the web you had to use terminal-based interfaces to access any internet service. No, you didn't. Most significant internet service had GUI clients before the web; this is certainly the case for all of news, mail, g…

I was using a terminal to access the internet till 1997. Not a terminal-emulation app on a computer, but an actual terminal. So I didn't have the relevant experience to support my claim that "before the web you had to use terminal-based interfaces to access any internet service" and I retract the statement. The web however was the first internet service that the majority of its users used a GUI to connect to. Actuall…

> In what ways do you prefer the experience of teaching or learning about computers on the internet of today to the internet of 1992?

Personally, I value the ability to watch videos of conference talks while I'm doing dishes or similar, which wasn't nearly so available in 1992 (principally for bandwidth reasons).

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

#244

Post by hollerith »

dllthomas wrote: post #243
hollerith wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was using a terminal to access the internet till 1997. Not a terminal-emulation app on a computer, but an actual terminal. So I didn't have the relevant experience to support my claim that "before the web you had to use terminal-based interfaces to access any internet service" and I retract the statement. The web however was the first internet service that the majority of its users used a GUI to connect to. Actuall…

> In what ways do you prefer the experience of teaching or learning about computers on the internet of today to the internet of 1992? Personally, I value the ability to watch videos of conference talks while I'm doing dishes or similar, which wasn't nearly so available in 1992 (principally for bandwidth reasons).

Also 1992 had nothing like wikipedia (and 2000 had it only in its most embryonic form) though 1992 did have the Free Online Dictionary of Computing.

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

#245

Post by oblio »

lmm wrote: post #241
oblio wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When has there been a visual editor that wasn't awful?

Despite the widespread techie comments against it, I've always found Word to be perfectly usable. I could always do my job with it, with minimal fuss.

Regarding rich text editors for the web, surely there must be one that's ok after all these years.

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

#246

Post by aethertron »

no_gravity wrote: post #242
aethertron wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Wordpress? What you're describing sounds to me like the standard structure of a blog with comments. Twitter is a weird sort of blog platform. It is chaotic by design: the chaos is consequence of its distinguishing features. Everyone does get their own 'mini HN', i.e. a forum . But they lack the tools to rule over that forum. It's idealistically anarchic. Everyone's expected to get along peacefully, totally…

Wordpress is a tool to make websites. Yes, you can put your content on a website and then link to that from Twitter. But that puts a big barrier in front of your content and the Twitter users. Visiting a website is usually a horrible experience. So people are very hesitant to do so. Click through rates from social media to websites are abysmal.

Good point. Users are willing to browse around Twitter (and Facebook) where the experience is consistent, tolerable. And functional enough for many kinds of content creators. They've achieved a sort of balance.

User hesitation to follow links out to the open web is lamentable, but wholly understandable.

Perhaps some 3rd party service with a recognisable URL could establish itself as a non-horrible, useful supplement to add extra structure to one's posts.

(Although I was suggesting something to use instead of Twitter, not something to use with it.)

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