I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
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I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
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Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#2No post body was provided.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#3> Finally, I felt irrelevant on Twitter.
This is like the first boss of tbe internet. Glad someone can at least confess to this, clarify this point. Understanding & welcoming this is a key pivot.
People will slowly trickle in & follow you if you contribute. The reward ks highly chaotic, statistical, makes little clear sense. But just showing up & saying reasonable things is a pretty lock long term win.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#4> Finally, I felt irrelevant on Twitter. This is like the first boss of tbe internet. Glad someone can at least confess to this, clarify this point. Understanding & welcoming this is a key pivot. People will slowly trickle in & follow you if you contribute. The reward ks highly chaotic, statistical, makes little clear sense. But just showing up & saying reasonable things is a pretty lock long term win.
Yes, I agree on this. I am writing machine learning topics on twitters and researchers flock to my blog and comments. Great to see collaboration
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#5> Finally, I felt irrelevant on Twitter. This is like the first boss of tbe internet. Glad someone can at least confess to this, clarify this point. Understanding & welcoming this is a key pivot. People will slowly trickle in & follow you if you contribute. The reward ks highly chaotic, statistical, makes little clear sense. But just showing up & saying reasonable things is a pretty lock long term win.
Yep, and the cool part is you don't need a lot to start feeling relevant.
At least I didn't. A few weeks of consistently showing up and interacting with the same people made them start recognizing me, and that was enough to stop feeling like I'm just tweeting into the void here.
Now a few months and a few hundred followers later I'm finally at a point where I can simply ask "my" Twitter for feedback or share a thought and actually get some engagement. That felt like going from 0 to 1, and it was the hardest part.
A few hundred followers is still nothing in the grand scheme of Twitter things, but it's enough not to feel irrelevant since they're genuine and actually engage with me.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#6> Finally, I felt irrelevant on Twitter. This is like the first boss of tbe internet. Glad someone can at least confess to this, clarify this point. Understanding & welcoming this is a key pivot. People will slowly trickle in & follow you if you contribute. The reward ks highly chaotic, statistical, makes little clear sense. But just showing up & saying reasonable things is a pretty lock long term win.
Yes, I agree on this. I am writing machine learning topics on twitters and researchers flock to my blog and comments. Great to see collaboration
Yep, I've found that if you're really good at what you do and/or have a narrow enough niche you'll have a much easier time getting people to interact with you.
If you're just alright and/or don't have a narrow niche, you need to give them more reasons to follow/interact with you. This is my case. I don't consider myself an expert in anything, and being a generalist I'm interested in a lot of stuff.
So even if people don't find my tweets or articles unique or extraordinary, many of them tend to stick around because of my personality. At least I got that!
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#7I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed.
I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engagement are:
1. Never look at the algorithmic feed. Switch to most recent or use https://tweetdeck.twitter.com for list consumption.
2. Unfollow anyone who consistently pulls you into Twitter cesspools.
3. Follow the people who you find interesting and who doesn't break rule #2
4. Use the mute and block buttons as frequently as you need to.
5. Block retweets which aren't quotes.
Everyonce in a while someone will link to a tweet in a different forum and I'll take a look. 90% of the time I'm shocked at what the author of that Tweet's experience of Twitter is like. My experience is 180 degrees different.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I agree on this. I am writing machine learning topics on twitters and researchers flock to my blog and comments. Great to see collaboration
Yep, I've found that if you're really good at what you do and/or have a narrow enough niche you'll have a much easier time getting people to interact with you. If you're just alright and/or don't have a narrow niche, you need to give them more reasons to follow/interact with you. This is my case. I don't consider myself an expert in anything, and being a generalist I'm interested in a lot of stuff. So even if people…
Awesome!
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#9I've been using Twitter since it was invite only. I'm not a Twitter personality, I don't have impressive follow counts or viral tweets. I do tweet but mostly only so I can interact with my feed. I've left every other social network. No longer on Facebook. No interest in Instagram or TikTok. But Twitter I've continued to get value from. This is entirely because I'm able to curate my feed. My rules for twitter engageme…
I think the fact that you got in early and are now a pro at using it is why you don't hate it. twitter seems like such a simple platform that should be great, but as someone who has tried it out a few times over the years, it just seems horrible. As soon as you create your account, you are bombarded with whatever outrage-inducing topics are popular that day, and the recommendation system on who to follow seems pretty biased.
All of the things you listed seem like they should be the default. But they aren't, which means 99% of people do not even know they are options, and so the site is dumpster fire for most people.
Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
#10I still don't get it. Nothing in this article makes sense to me, either. Not to denigrate the author - I'm sure what he posted makes a ton of sense, just not to me.
I made a twitter account shortly after it first started, made a few tweets, and then it languished and I think it's probably long deleted by now. Last year my wife made me another one because "you need it to promote your OSS stuff". Okay so I made a few tweets ... aaaaand it's been sitting dormant for months.
I just ... I dunno how to even describe it. Can't see the point, maybe? Can't build any enthusiasm to get involved? Find it about as interesting and engaging as cutting my toenails?
But it's been the same with facebook and ... I think it was instagram or one of those newer ones - the one with the icon that looks like a ghost. It's such a hassle to use them! HN is the only place I ever post anything, and even that's a few days of posting stuff and then weeks of nothing.
I mean, I do understand how it can be beneficial to work those social networks for your projects and passions and such, but yeeesh what a slog!