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Twitter Notes

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Re: Twitter Notes

#241

Post by lobocinza »

caycep wrote: post #87
dend wrote: post #76

My reaction to this is that it's an effort to keep users within the "walled garden" of Twitter, which is not the best thing for those that write. Recall the story with Medium - yes, you get broader reach with less effort, but at the cost of giving up control of your content. I know that I am talking with an overly developer-focused lens (a-la "you can reimplement Dropbox in a weekend"), but self-hosting blogs outside…

With the "walled garden" comment, I'm wondering - nowadays, all sorts of discourse seems to depend on these types of proprietary services/platforms, that employ armies of engineers to keep them running, develop new features, etc. Attempts to make things decentralized all seem to be aggregating into central controls, i.e. "Web3/crypto" -> coinbase, kraken, etc Why aren't older decentralized "services" protocols being…

More like "walled garbage"

Re: Twitter Notes

#242

Post by dend »

darth_avocado wrote: post #208
caycep wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the "walled garden" comment, I'm wondering - nowadays, all sorts of discourse seems to depend on these types of proprietary services/platforms, that employ armies of engineers to keep them running, develop new features, etc. Attempts to make things decentralized all seem to be aggregating into central controls, i.e. "Web3/crypto" -> coinbase, kraken, etc Why aren't older decentralized "services" protocols being…

Walled gardens exist because it costs money to keep the garden flourishing. Keep in mind, in this walled garden, all the walls do is make you log in, everything else is still free. Decentralization still requires someone to pay for keeping these services alive. You could argue every user somehow be able to own and run their own platform, but in reality most of the users will not opt for the overhead when you can get…

The thing is - other providers exists, it's just they are not as convenient as the walled gardens. That's a big part of the challenge. You can own your blog on your own domain and site, but you need to be able to set that up, not forget to renew your domain, potentially deal with availability issues if the site goes down, etc. Compare that to basically just putting your content somewhere where someone else worries about all those things.

It's a trade-off that folks are willing to make, and for the "average user" (definition can vary depending on service/area) that is a very straightforward choice. I just hope that more folks understand what rights they give up by becoming attached to one platform as their publishing medium.

Re: Twitter Notes

#243

Post by nmilo »

robocat wrote: post #201
ckastner wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with all of what you said, but this stands out: > And then each tweet needs to be punchy enough in 240 characters to keep people reading which produces a particularly annoying writing style. I also find this writing style insufferable (every sentence a punchline), but though it may seem obvious in hindsight, the explanation that otherwise people won't keep reading had escaped me. I thought that…

/1 The existing Twitter limitations strongly encourage conciseness, which I often like. /2 Blogs, articles, and HN comments like this, can ramble on and make diversions that I don’t always care for. /3 I would like a dynamic slider control where I could contract someone’s writing to their essential point (tl;dr) or expand it (longreads). /4 Bonus boffin round: a control to vary depth/complexity. I mostly would use si…

You already have a "dynamic slider control" for everything you read, it lives in your brain and it's called "skimming." Well-written articles already expose the essential point in an easy-to-find way, and I couldn't imagine what a "give me the tl;dr now" button would do to our already ruined attention spans. The tl;dr might exist for some articles, but most of the time, the essential point requires a lot of build-up and context to understand; you can't just take that context away.

Re: Twitter Notes

#244

Post by baby »

I have this theory that, the bigger a company is the harder it is to pivot and change things. The reason is simple: it could mean killing your own business.

With that in mind, how can a big company innovate on what they have? I believe there's two ways:

1. Keep your tool, but change the users

2. Keep your users, but change the tool

I like to sort every new company's announcement as a one of these types of innovation.

Today twitter decided to do the second: keep the users, but introduce a new tool: blogging. Interestingly, any social network companies, be it Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. can introduce these tools, and as such they can sometimes overlap. For now, twitter owns the public space, and facebook owns the "friends, neighbors, etc." space. But there's no reason that twitter couldn't create a twitter for your friends only. Facebook did try to do "facebook for the public space" but they integrated it too hard inside of the main tool instead of making it an extra tool on the side.

An example of 1 is workplace: facebook but for work.

Re: Twitter Notes

#245

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

baby wrote: post #244

I have this theory that, the bigger a company is the harder it is to pivot and change things. The reason is simple: it could mean killing your own business. With that in mind, how can a big company innovate on what they have? I believe there's two ways: 1. Keep your tool, but change the users 2. Keep your users, but change the tool I like to sort every new company's announcement as a one of these types of innovation.…

This is a pretty well-known theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma

Re: Twitter Notes

#246

Post by BryantD »

dend wrote: post #76

My reaction to this is that it's an effort to keep users within the "walled garden" of Twitter, which is not the best thing for those that write. Recall the story with Medium - yes, you get broader reach with less effort, but at the cost of giving up control of your content. I know that I am talking with an overly developer-focused lens (a-la "you can reimplement Dropbox in a weekend"), but self-hosting blogs outside…

I strongly agree with this comment in general.

One small nitpick: Twitter says there will not be a login wall for reading Notes[1]. "Additionally, Notes will have unique URLs that people can navigate to from outside of the Twitter platform, whether or not they are logged in to Twitter, and even if they do not have a Twitter account."

So that's nice and somewhat unexpected. However, I don't see any signs of an RSS feed, which is table stakes if you care about interoperability at all.

[1] https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/notes

Re: Twitter Notes

#247

Post by phailhaus »

Pxtl wrote: post #229
lamontcg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just love to get rid of the obnoxious writing style that twitter thought-leaders use when they're posting a thread. They always start with a fairly obnoxious click-baitey sentence. Then usually a fairly narcissistic hook about how "i'll explain" then "a " and "/1". And then each tweet needs to be punchy enough in 240 characters to keep people reading which produces a particularly annoying writing style. Then…

Really? I like the Twitter writing style. It forces authors to cut to the chase and avoid fluff. Brevity is the soul of wit.

Counterpoint: it also rewards oversimplification and hyperbole.

Re: Twitter Notes

#248

Post by werid »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #213
nomilk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always hated the long multi-tweet essays I'm very new to twitter but I love them because feedback can be given on a (near) per sentence basis.

I never figured out how to see the comments on a tweet which was part of a thread, it seemed to just push all the comments down below the thread no matter which tweet I had selected.

you have to select the tweet, then scroll down past the rest of the thread to see replies to that specific tweet. then go back and load next tweet and do the same.

the scrolling down in a long thread is maddening

Re: Twitter Notes

#250

Post by stefan_ »

woliveirajr wrote: post #143
dgs_sgd wrote: post #4

I welcome this. I always hated the long multi-tweet essays and have often just given up on reading them, especially when I'm not logged in I can't even make it to the end before twitter blocks me from scrolling further. As of now it doesn't look like you can reply to a note with another note? That might go a long way for improving debate and discussion.

Well, the first 3 links from the twitter annoucement gives a "page not found". Seems that they avoided starting with the right foot.

Got the same. Classic Twitter execution, nothing ever changes.
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