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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

#141

Post by tonguez »

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…

this advice from twitter users is always the same and its always so bizarre. just invest thousands of hours into cultivating your own feed through the following process: every time you get insulted by some child/idiot/bot, just select the account of that individual person then block them or mute or unfollow. do this thousands (or millions?) of times for every individual person on twitter. jesus christ i cant think of something more unappealing.

the worst part of this is the more you invest into making it useable, the worse it is when big brother blocks/mutes you; the more enmeshed you are into this MCI tool for manufacturing consent. it sounds like the type of person who would be into twitter is the type of person who likes to spend a lot of time researching which credit card gives the best 2% cash back or whatever. genuinely just gross and boring to the point of being repulsive to most people on earth

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

#142

Post by beepbooptheory »

tonguez wrote: post #141
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…

this advice from twitter users is always the same and its always so bizarre. just invest thousands of hours into cultivating your own feed through the following process: every time you get insulted by some child/idiot/bot, just select the account of that individual person then block them or mute or unfollow. do this thousands (or millions?) of times for every individual person on twitter. jesus christ i cant think of…

How are bots insulting you? That's just impressive more than anything.

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

#143

Post by tootie »

WalterBright wrote: post #28

I discovered that Twitter replaces having an email list for business. You aren't spamming people, they sign up to follow you. The idea is to keep your tweets interesting to people who are using your products and services. A corollary is to not use it to post personal stuff or politics. I wish the technical people I follow on Twitter would leave the politics out, I follow them for their technical insights.

The addressable market of Twitter users is probably 1% that of email.

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

#144

Post by lapcat »

fleddr wrote: post #134

A lot of people are familiar with the 90-9-1 rule regarding social networks. 90% is just lurking and never tweets, 9% might occasionally tweet, and 1% writes most tweets, or more accurately...writes the tweets that generate the most engagement. What not everybody understands is that this rule pretty much also applies to every individual. If you have a 1000 followers, you should very much assume that 90% never even se…

I wonder if Twitter wasn't better in the early days when there were no stats, and a "retweet" was just someone typing "RT" followed by copy and pasting the tweet.

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

#145

Post by fartcannon »

madeofpalk wrote: post #128
RajT88 wrote: post #103

I don't know if you really "get" twitter until you've had a throw-away tweet from 7 years ago dredged up and used to try and destroy you.

The best I've had is being suspended for a 7 year old "kill all boomers" tweet :(

How old were you when you posted it?

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

#147

Post by tootie »

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…

This is accurate. Casual users will not ever acquire a following and may never tweet. It was advertised back in the day as "public text messaging" to send small updates to your circle. That died a long time ago and they never really updated the branding. Now, it is for celebrities big and small. Lady Gaga can reach a few million people, a charismatic geologist can reach a few thousand with earthquake facts. It's good for industry people discussing niche topics with an open audience. It's good for some businesses to reach customers. There's a modicum of interactivity. I setup a pretty solid feed of high-quality commenters and publications. I still quit in under a year.

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

#148

Post by alliao »

sriram_sun wrote: post #38
wnevets wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Unfollow anyone who consistently pulls you into Twitter cesspools. There are certain cesspools I like checking out. For example Grady Booch dunking on cryptobros is still funny to me.

Create lists, but don't follow those folks. You'll probably miss timely rebuttals, but only click on "politics" or whatever when you want to waste (additional) time!

real pro tip here, when you follow they can block you if you're not their cup of tea, while lists allow you to continue sleuthing as a member of a public

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

#149

Post by AstralStorm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #135
rodgerd wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only talk of "public forum" comes from people who are desperate to force others to listen to them. I don't need TERFs and neo-Nazis in my feed, but they want to be there.

> The only talk of "public forum" comes from people who are desperate to force others to listen to them. Occasionally, it's used by other people properly to refer to a space used by government for official purposes; I suspect much of the other use is dual purpose, that is, it intends to discredit the proper use as much as to advance a more overt purpose.

Twitter is of course completely unsuitable as means of official communication - just the word limit makes it terrible for the purpose.

What it is good for is sending sound bites at each other.

(For emergency communications SMS is better and sufficient.)

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

#150

Post by kstenerud »

baisq wrote: post #20
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…

Others read what you post and you read what others post. What is there to get? I can understand not liking the format or similar concerns, but if you don’t get Twitter… did you not get irc also?

Ugh... IRC was one of the most infuriating platforms to use. I was so happy when forums took off enough to replace it. Having to use IRC was one of the worst parts of working at canonical.
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