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Twitter is Pivoting

daltoncaldwell.com

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Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#91

Post by pyre »

marshray wrote: post #87
pbreit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh...because Hollywood is by far the biggest category of twitter traffic?

By what metric? Sorry, I know I'm being dense, I just don't see Hollywood stuff in my feed very often at all. And if Twitter is talking up Hollywood, doesn't that mean Hollywood needs Twitter more than Twitter needs a board member with connections into Hollywood?

A lot of famous people are on Twitter and some have rather large followings. Many interact with their fans daily (rather than just pushing out announcements). I thought that this was one of the big draws that brought more average people to the platform.

Not only this, but with respect to news media outlets, a number of their reporters/talking heads have active Twitter accounts.

Also, just because Hollywood can benefit from Twitter doesn't mean that they are going to show up at their door begging for a deal.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#92

Post by city41 »

madh wrote: post #56
lordlarm wrote: post #50

I actually have used and are using twitter. It is a horrendous user experience - but I know how to fix it. My main problem is my diverse interest in different subjects and twitters current inability to let me organize and follow what I like. I'm following approx. 200 people divided 30% technology, 30% cycling and 30% friends/locals. For me, it would be impossible to imagine following more than 250 or 300 people with…

I have a similar issue. I go to Twitter for many things -- work info, to laugh, friends -- and it doesn't work to have everything jammed into one stream. I would like to see something split the list of accounts I follow into subject-based lists or something so that I can consume with context. At some point, I think following becomes less important. Ideally Twitter could just show me tweets that I should enjoy. I'm no…

Have you tried tweetdeck? It does just this. Set up columns for hash tags that interest you, and you can see what the entire twitterverse is saying about those topics in real time.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#93

Post by zaidf »

MattRix wrote: post #83
zaidf wrote: post #35

An experienced Twitter user would know to add a “.” at the beginning of his message so that his followers would see it. Signed up for twitter on the day it launched(I think) and did not know that. Twitter is a painful product to use. It isn't made for humans. Twitter doesn't have to show a username in tweets; they can easily translate it to the name. Twitter doesn't have to require each reply to appear like an out of…

Sorry, but it's painfully obvious from your post that you don't actually use twitter, at least not regularly enough to "get it". - user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names - replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now. - lists really aren't that hard to use, I don't know what your problem wi…

- user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names

I am genuinely curious of the use cases where the username adds more value than the name associated with the account. I'd also like to know what type of service twitter is supposed to be in your view.

- replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now.

Technically they do, but visually they are a mess. The way humans naturally converse is by adding their comments to a topic. This is why facebook lets you comment on a wall post. If you read a wall post and the comments, they make sense. On twitter, it begins with reading some random comment and then having to reverse engineer the conversation it possibly may belong to.

- lists really aren't that hard to use, I don't know what your problem with it is

On twitter.com, in order to see a list, I have to click on an icon on top, click on "Lists" and then click on a list name. That is 3 clicks and a page reload compared to facebook's 1 click. Furthermore, so I click on a list, browse and want to click on another list. I must hit the "back" key resulting in a page reload, and then choose another list.

it would drastically affect how the service works and feels

Sure it may feel drastically different...but that could be for the better, no? 140 char was a great thing to launch with just as facebook restricting to college campuses was a great hook - but products evolve to accommodate wider audiences. Twitter hasn't.

My personal reading is that twitter long passed the threshold where it would be some underground place and increasingly tries to present itself for the mainstream--without changing the product to accommodate the mainstream. The equivalent would be facebook opening up to the world but building features mainly for the college market.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#94

Post by michaelkscott »

If you want more insights about the things discussed here, there's an interview that Mark Suster did with Joel Spolsky last year where they talk about the "API wars":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZWBtfSBlp8#t=2240s

They cover everything from the early days of Excel's API to the downfall of myspace and the rise of YouTube and Photobucket, and how twitter took off. It's worth your time.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#95

Post by zaidf »

Alex3917 wrote: post #53
zaidf wrote: post #35

An experienced Twitter user would know to add a “.” at the beginning of his message so that his followers would see it. Signed up for twitter on the day it launched(I think) and did not know that. Twitter is a painful product to use. It isn't made for humans. Twitter doesn't have to show a username in tweets; they can easily translate it to the name. Twitter doesn't have to require each reply to appear like an out of…

I've had an account since 2007 and this is the first I've ever heard of this also. Here is the explanation: "Place a period before the beginning of the @ if you plan on beginning your message with a mention, or else Twitter will only send that tweet to people who follow both you and the person you are mentioning." http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/09/15/a-list-twitters-lan...

It is insane twitter is trying to reinvent irc in all the bad ways.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#96

Post by thezilch »

zaidf wrote: post #35

An experienced Twitter user would know to add a “.” at the beginning of his message so that his followers would see it. Signed up for twitter on the day it launched(I think) and did not know that. Twitter is a painful product to use. It isn't made for humans. Twitter doesn't have to show a username in tweets; they can easily translate it to the name. Twitter doesn't have to require each reply to appear like an out of…

Twitter doesn't have to subtract 100 characters if I post a URL that is 100 characters; it could automagically shorten it or not count against the 140 at all. Instead, I am forced to manually use bit.ly to shorten it.

It doesn't subtract URLs at character value; it does automagically shorten URLs to a uniform tax. A bit.ly link will digest just as many characters from the tweet as a 1024 character link -- 20 characters per link. Not a recent development.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#97

Post by fusiongyro »

anonymouz wrote: post #22
nemesisj wrote: post #2

I hate to be that (negative) guy, but I'm starting to get really tired of Dalton constantly pissing all over twitter. Particularly because he's competing against them. I'm an App.net backer, and I think it's cool what he's doing, but FFS, let someone else carry the water, if it even needs carrying at all. This all just feels really petty and whiney, particularly when you're already at work solving the problem.

I had no idea who he is, and that he is competing with Twitter. I would have welcomed a disclaimer about his conflict of interests somewhere in the post.

That's not what a conflict of interests is. There's only one interest there.

Things are going to get very tiresome if everybody is going to be expected to preface every published opinion with their entire background so you can decide whether their argument has merit without reading it.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#98

Post by zaidf »

thezilch wrote: post #96
zaidf wrote: post #35

An experienced Twitter user would know to add a “.” at the beginning of his message so that his followers would see it. Signed up for twitter on the day it launched(I think) and did not know that. Twitter is a painful product to use. It isn't made for humans. Twitter doesn't have to show a username in tweets; they can easily translate it to the name. Twitter doesn't have to require each reply to appear like an out of…

Twitter doesn't have to subtract 100 characters if I post a URL that is 100 characters; it could automagically shorten it or not count against the 140 at all. Instead, I am forced to manually use bit.ly to shorten it. It doesn't subtract URLs at character value; it does automagically shorten URLs to a uniform tax. A bit.ly link will digest just as many characters from the tweet as a 1024 character link -- 20 characte…

Ah, didn't know. I'll maintain that this is an even more random way of dealing with this and in my case, even worse since bitly links aren't even 20 characters. That there should even be such a thing as a URL tax is crazy.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#99

Post by sigsergv »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #82
corin_ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

140 characters annoys me when I have something long to say, but overall it's something that I really like about it, and I know plenty of people who agree with me. I don't know if they'd do better by dropping the limit, but saying it's a bad limit is definitely subjective not objective.

Email annoys me when I want to have a real-time conversation with my mother - which is why, when that happens, I use the medium that's intended for that sort of thing.

Twitter and email are both the same sort of medium.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#100

Post by saumil07 »

1. I like, support and (pay for) App.net 2. One tweet, by one famous media guy (admittedly a board member, yes, but really only known for being a great media executive) does not a strategy make. 3. The title "is pivoting" is extremely assertive and not really backed up by, well, a preponderance of facts or data.
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