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Twitter is Pivoting

daltoncaldwell.com

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Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#101

Post by skrebbel »

code_duck wrote: post #85
danso wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the rise of Twitter's own official client, it really was an elegant way to handle the problem of having a minimal interface (i.e. no reply button). But yes, it was basically something you wouldn't "get" unless someone told you, or you used twitter enough to eventually notice that someone's direct-tweet did not make it into your overall timeline. And the many screwups with direct-messages is pretty well known..…

Aha, until I read about the SMS issue, I'd forgetten how incompetent Twitter was in the past. The whole 'scaling' debacle, etc.

I'm not certain that's fair. They grew by an order of magnitude every half year or so. That's very difficult to keep up with, especially when you have no idea how to turn all those signups into money.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#102

Post by jopt »

fusiongyro wrote: post #97
anonymouz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for bringing this up. The present trend of prefixing everything with "full disclosure" seems to me to misunderstand the whole issue, and dilutes the legitimate cases where disclosure is needed.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#103

Post by Leynos »

pbreit wrote: post #72
spot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/Why-do-some-tweets-have-a-per... i knew twitter was broken but this takes the cake. i have been using twitter for years and had no idea.

I'm still confused. If I'm on someone's profile, the tweet box already includes @user. So if I go ahead and tweet in that box, it will not show up in my follower's feeds? It was not a "reply". I would agree that's totally broken but live feeds aren't even usable past 10 or 20 followees anyway so maybe it doesn't matter that much?

Tweets preceded by "@user" appear only in the timelines of the sender, the user in question and people following that user.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#104

Post by Leynos »

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…

This almost sounds like a case of Stockholm syndrome.

I use Twitter. The 140 character limit is definitely not a feature. In addition, they could be tokenizing mentions and hashtags to save space (e.g., as a Unicode private use point followed by a 64-bit int).

When you see the amount of XML crap that is included with every tweet, the artificial limitations imposed seem all the more laughable. (See: http://www.slaw.ca/2011/11/17/the-anatomy-of-a-tweet-metadat...)

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#105

Post by chalst »

dbecker wrote: post #42
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 don't follow the social media space very carefully, so I had no idea who he was. I read the article, and thought it was insightful. Perhaps it was old news from a same source if you follow the space carefully, but I suspect most readers are in my position. And it's hard to fault a posting that is genuinely insightful for most readers.

I guess that a majority of HN regulars read Dalton's posts closely, and found this to be news. Peter Chernin's appointment was certainly news for me, and it added flesh to his account of what Twitter's pivot is looking like.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#106

Post by karl_nerd »

fusiongyro wrote: post #97
anonymouz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't need so much. The sidebar could say 'founder of app.net' instead of the machismo bullshit that's there now.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#107

Post by mmcnickle »

pyre wrote: post #88
sbochins wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, these posts (have been far too many lately) are annoying for three reasons. 1) There are better apps to build with Twitter's api than boring twitter clients. 2) There are plenty other clients to build for other web services if that's your thing. 3) As repeated by many people before, if you use someone's API they have control of how you use it. No point in whining, it's not like there is anything hidden or har…

> if you use someone's API they have control of how > you use it "You have no right to complain about my behavior, because I'm perfectly within my rights to be an asshole." Somehow I don't think this fits with the way the world works.

No, a direct translation would be

"There's no point in whinging about my behavior, because I'm perfectly within my rights to be an asshole"

Which is entirely different to what you stated.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#109

Post by ZoFreX »

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…

What is really dumb though is that it still uses a shortener, even though the functionality is now built in. Show me the damn link!

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#110

Post by mtrimpe »

mmcnickle wrote: post #107
pyre wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you use someone's API they have control of how > you use it "You have no right to complain about my behavior, because I'm perfectly within my rights to be an asshole." Somehow I don't think this fits with the way the world works.

No, a direct translation would be "There's no point in whinging about my behavior, because I'm perfectly within my rights to be an asshole" Which is entirely different to what you stated.

Or back to:

"There's no point in trying to sway public opinion against me, because I'm perfectly within my rights to be an asshole"

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