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I Hope Twitter Goes Away

alexgaynor.net

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Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#131

Post by mirsadm »

AYBABTME wrote: post #14

Alright, so twitter is terrible because its 'broadcast' instead of 'communities', and you don't like 'broadcast' but you like 'communities', so twitter should go away. a) "I hope Twitter genuinely ceases to be." b) "I want a product that enables me to build and participate in communities[...]." Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participat…

Twitter doesn't need to go away. I feel I'm not missing out on much by not using Twitter. Facebook is sort of forced upon me because I'd miss on a bunch of social activities if I didn't use it. With Twitter it exists and sometimes I use it. My life is not negatively impacted by avoiding it.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#132

Post by Kalium »

snowwrestler wrote: post #110
Kalium wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between the two, I can only conclude that he has something very, very specific in mind as the proper form a community should assume. I wonder what it is.

I think it's pretty clear what he wants. He wants the ability to selectively include some people, and exclude others. Like Facebook, where you can set your privacy policy to "friends only" and then you only get comments from people you've mutually agreed to converse with. This is defining a community in terms of its edges. He seems to believe that if you can't exclude anyone, you can't define a community. It's just,…

There's something very sad about defining a community by who is excluded.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#134

Post by hoggle »

taude wrote: post #121
pbreit wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just flat out wrong. That's why there's a tab dedicated to replies. Twitter conversations can be incredibly interesting and benefit all participants by being public. Twitter's setup hugely encourages @ing people in your tweets.

Except conversations are badly broken. So many people don't hit the actual reply, so conversations get cut off, often restarted, and thus become fragmented, which makes them hard to follow and participate in. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn't. I think this is what the OP was talking about.

I guess it depends on which Twitter client one uses, I've never had a cut-off conversation with Echofon.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#136

Post by morganvachon »

snowwrestler wrote: post #110
Kalium wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between the two, I can only conclude that he has something very, very specific in mind as the proper form a community should assume. I wonder what it is.

I think it's pretty clear what he wants. He wants the ability to selectively include some people, and exclude others. Like Facebook, where you can set your privacy policy to "friends only" and then you only get comments from people you've mutually agreed to converse with. This is defining a community in terms of its edges. He seems to believe that if you can't exclude anyone, you can't define a community. It's just,…

I think you've nailed it. He isn't happy that Twitter has no boundaries or walls for him to build and maintain. It appears that in his mind, Twitter should go away since it doesn't serve his specific needs, never mind the 200 million+ other users who are happy with how it works.

I don't care for Twitter myself, but I'm not going to call for its demise just because I don't get much out of it. Obviously it has a prominent place as a major social media engine, and that's just fine. But then, it's not all about me.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#137

Post by eropple »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #29
smacktoward wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to speak for the author, but an argument could be made that a product that: 1) Is massively popular; and 2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation ... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations , because that's where all the other peopl…

Exactly. Shotgun-blast your puerile thoughts to your dozens/hundreds/millions of followers. Don't bother reading any responses it might garner—they're going to be just as base. Now you're in the habit of just shotgunning statements into the crowd, so when you do the same thing on Facebook, you've forgotten how to engage in a more lengthy, rational discussion. Or, even worse, you've grown up with Twitter and don't und…

YMMV, but I have fairly long and extended conversations on Twitter all the time.

They're almost invariably not with tech people, though.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#138

Post by onewaystreet »

penprog wrote: post #33
smacktoward wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to speak for the author, but an argument could be made that a product that: 1) Is massively popular; and 2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation ... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations , because that's where all the other peopl…

Twitter doesn't have a design flaw, it sets out to do what it wants and it does so spectacularly. Twitter is a platform for announcements not for conversations (although many try to use it for that very thing). People who think twitter is a conversation platform are #doingitwrong. Period. People who try to use twitter for conversations and get angry when it doesn't work well or some random stranger barges in and star…

This. The way Alex uses Twitter now (tweeting links to his blog posts) is exactly how someone of his stature should use Twitter.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#139

Post by onewaystreet »

pbreit wrote: post #99
penprog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People use twitter for announcements and then for comments on those announcements. Very few people have actual conversations. When a conversation does happen, it's usually the root poster agreeing (or disagreeing) with the person that tweeted at them. I don't see anyone going to twitter with the initial intent of conversing with someone. Nobody goes onto their computer and says "Hey I'm gonna go message this person o…

You're just flat out wrong. That's why there's a tab dedicated to replies. Twitter conversations can be incredibly interesting and benefit all participants by being public. Twitter's setup hugely encourages @ing people in your tweets.

This is one of the many examples of Twitter not knowing what Twitter is. Twitter is a product that was a success in spite of the efforts of its founders.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#140

Post by bcj »

morganvachon wrote: post #27
cr3ative wrote: post #3

Wait, is this satire? His Twitter account is linked in the header, and it just posted about this article. He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled. What is this?

> He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled. That bothered me as well, especially his flippant attitude about it ("Comments are never going to happen. Stop trying to make comments happen"). I get the joke, it's from that Lindsay Lohan movie. But the cognitive dissonance that it creates is annoying. He's basically saying "I want Twitter to die because they don't allow proper conversations…

More likely, Alex does not want to spend the time to provide moderation for a comments section. His stance is that Twitter is bad because the kind of community it creates—it would be silly for him to create a comment section that similarly failed to meet his expectations.

It is perfectly fine for Alex to criticize Twitter without providing his own alternative (though he does tacitly recommend using IRC and Facebook instead). Alex is a Rackspace employee who also is heavily involved in the Python community. The expectations on him for providing a space to talk are completely different than a company who's business is providing a communications platform.

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