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I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

martinboss.com

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Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#91

Post by mrtksn »

kstenerud wrote: post #10

I 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 t…

The author himsel doesn't have any considerable following, the article is more like collection of thoughts and hypotheses. It's not that it's bad but IMHO shouldn't be considered authoritative.

There's this phrase "medium is the message" and I think it holds very well with Twitter. The message is outrage. The message is, be angry and be afraid and be insecure or no one cares.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#92

Post by Sakos »

colpabar wrote: post #9
zaphar wrote: post #7

I'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…

I started using it when the Ukraine war began. All I see is news out of the war. Nothing sensationalized or toxic or anything. You can avoid a lot of the cesspool if you put in a tiny bit of effort.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#93

Post by Sakos »

zaphar wrote: post #50
polynomial wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5. Block retweets which aren't quotes. What's the reason for this? I didn't even realize you could do that.

Just plain retweets tend to be viral tweets. And while some of them can be fun they also have a tendency to be low-content, high rage-factor tweets. In tweetdeck the block retweets setting blocks them. Retweet with quote isn't counted as a retweet.

> Just plain retweets tend to be viral tweets. And while some of them can be fun they also have a tendency to be low-content, high rage-factor tweets.

All the retweets I see are high quality and interesting. This heavily depends on who you're following, tbh.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#94

Post by lapcat »

time_to_smile wrote: post #77
lapcat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have found this to be the biggest myth of Twitter: it is nearly useless for content marketing. I've found Twitter to be essential to my business. Perhaps you're looking at it too "directly", in terms of traffic analysis. What's important in my opinion is "worth of mouth" advertising. You have a circle of friends on Twitter, your friends recommend your product to their friends, and so on. If your Twitter content i…

I'm genuinely curious if you've measured this, and how you determined the impact of twitter on your business. It's certainly possible that other people have different success with twitter. In my case I was looking over thousands of websites traffic history primarily concerned with long term patterns of growth based on activity among different social channels, SEO, news aggregators etc. The vast majority of sites prim…

> I'm genuinely curious if you've measured this, and how you determined the impact of twitter on your business.

Well, Twitter is basically my only form of promotion. :-)

I've tried a number of forms of advertising, the results of which I can measure directly, but I've lost money every time, so I usually don't bother with that.

There are times when I can measure Twitter's impact directly. For example, I once had a very viral tweet that immediately resulted in a massive sales week. Admittedly, that's pretty rare though.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#95

Post by HappyDreamer »

Sakos wrote: post #90
zaphar wrote: post #7

I'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'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: This also worked for Facebook back when I still had an account. All the posts I saw were ones directly related to my interests and local events that I was interested in. We have a lot o…

> just most people don't bother trying to make it work for them

Could one say that that's why TikTok is so popular? It works although people don't spend time configuring it?

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#96

Post by zaphar »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #85
zaphar wrote: post #7

I'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…

> you into Twitter cesspools. What % of the userbase is "Twitter cesspools" and how do you define that? What exactly is a "Twitter cesspool"? Viewpoints that don't align with yours? Radical politics? Is Twitter the platform of giving the 10-20% most fringed members of both political parties a voice? Why does what they post get "upvoted/liked/retweeted" enough to the point where it gets visibility instead of being dro…

Threads that are full of flamewars, name calling, and outrage farming is my personal definition of cesspool. I follow many that hold opinions I don't agree with. As long as the conversation is civil I'm perfectly happy talking. But if it drags me into an internet flamewar where I am expected to pile onto someone else out of manufactured outrage then count me out.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#97

Post by [deleted] »

pessimizer wrote: post #54

What is twitter? 1) Major-, mini-, and micro-celebrities making declarations in a quotable form, and 2) their fans and anti-fans either trying to figure out a witty way to compliment them, ridicule them, or become them by adding to or topping their declarations. How to do twitter well? Specialize in a subject or two. Join defacto voting rings through popular hashtags within your subject's community and subtle hot-key…

[deleted]

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#98

Post by walleeee »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #75
zaphar wrote: post #7

I'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 settled on a similar approach. I used to liberally follow all sorts of accounts that seemed even remotely relevant, but signal to noise was abysmal and there was way too much drama. Several times I was on the verge of quitting, even though Twitter was quite useful for promoting my own work and that of my students. But recently I decided to try a new approach and systematically unfollowed a lot of accounts. Now I st…

with 6 you miss some good accounts, anonymity is not always a bad thing

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#99

Post by zaphar »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #66
zaphar wrote: post #7

I'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…

Re (2), I always soft-block (block and then unblock) rather than unfollow, mainly because I view my twitter feed as a collection of friends, and I'd rather "terminate the relationship" than make it one-sided. If I want to preserve the relationship but find them annoying, I'll mute them.

I do this two, but I have sort of two mental categories. The people who only occasionally pull me in. I just mute or block then unblock. Then there are the people who consistently try to pull me in and view it as their duty to do so. Those I just unfollow, it's not worth the effort to keep them in my feed.

Re: I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it

#100

Post by affectsk »

kstenerud wrote: post #10

I 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 t…

It's primarily about what you want out of it.

The first few times I tried using Twitter to promote my stuff and failed miserably. If you're there purely for promotion you won't get far, and it's definitely not the best channel for that purpose. (Especially if it feels like a slog to you).

If you're there to interact with like-minded people AND share something you're working on in the process, that's a different story. Still takes effort, though.

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