I Hope Twitter Goes Away • Hacker News Board

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#201

Post by throwawayaway » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 10:48 AM UTC

stormbrew wrote: post #66

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…

Conversation (yes, often about announcements) is the main thing I use twitter for. To me twitter, at its best, is basically a giant irc channel with some filtering features. Now you've seen one. I think you're confusing emergent with wrong, tbh.

totally agree. at least you can have someone moderate channels on irc though.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#202

Post by toyg » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 10:57 AM UTC

Alex Gaynor can be a bit of a troll. This time he wrote a blog post about things he (allegedly) doesn't like about Twitter, added a couple of "flammable" statements here and there to clickbait, and meanwhile he still has a Twitter account.

It's not the first time he acts like this, regardless of his technical contributions. This is why I don't follow him and will keep discounting everything he says, sorry; he goes in the same bucket as Dave Winer and Eric Raymond, people who can code but whose overall opinions I really don't care for.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#203

Post by tempodox » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 11:01 AM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #37

penprog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> People who think twitter is a conversation platform are #doingitwrong. Period. If millions of people insist on using your product as a conversation platform, it is a conversation platform, no matter what you intended it to be. A thing is what it is.

  A thing is what it is.

That depends on what the definition of “is” is.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#204

Post by tempodox » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 11:03 AM UTC

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?

Looks like classic trolling clickbait to me.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#205

Post by taude » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 11:25 AM UTC

RBerenguel wrote: post #193

taude wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But this is not a problem of the platform, but of how users are using the platform. I rarely have conversations on twitter (i.e. most are just a couple of replies long at most) but I occasionally have a 20+ post. If you hit proper reply, it works. If you don't, it doesn't (or does really badly), but this is a user fault, not a platform fault.

Also consider when there's say four people tagged in a conversation, and then someone needs the extra characters to make their point and they remove one of the names, then that person loses the context too.

Also, conversations look different when you're looking at them from one of your lists, or if the people you are following are different than the people I follow.

So many clunky issues that you need to be on top of for it to make sense, and this is what's lost on the general person.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#206

Post by boomlinde » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 11:35 AM UTC

jshevek wrote: post #144

forgottenpass wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. You say "seems," but it doesn't just seem like that, it is exactly that. The terminology he uses is "safe space." It doesn't mean zero joking or disagreement, but only the type and levels he approves of (minor point, but I'll clarify because I don't want conversation to degrade to pedantics). Why should he care if others use Twitter…

>> The terminology he uses is "safe space." It doesn't mean zero joking or disagreement, but only the type and levels he approves "Safe space" is a much abused phrase. The meaning of 'safe' as it applies to physical harm is fairly easy for us to agree on. When it comes to emotional and psychological harm, what does it really mean? Where is the line drawn? It seems that some people will not hesitate to demand the comp…

> Where is the line drawn?

I think that's the point. With a more community oriented system the line could be drawn at the single user's discretion. Like on Facebook. I don't agree with the author of the article that twitter should die, though.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#207

Post by gtirloni » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 11:41 AM UTC

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…

Sorry to be pedantic but perfectly executing a flawed design doesn't mean the design isn't flawed.

I agree twitter is not suitable for conversations, and also don't understand why it must go away. Like you said, it does one thing and it does it well.

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#208

Post by galfarragem » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 11:46 AM UTC

I hope twitter doesn't go away.

I was a very late adopter of Twitter because I always thought that Twitter and Facebook were the same. They are not. Twitter is slowly replacing my RSS and news reader. Twitter is not a community thing, it's about broadcasting (in real-time, if you need it, most people don't, they are just addicted). I don't tweet and I'm just following 11 people. I don't follow friends, I just follow who has something to broadcast. Twitter is great for that.

Facebook is more noisy by concept. Their focus in communities and friends makes broadcasting side noisy. I had to turn off almost all my friends wall notifications, I don't have the time or will to read that one friend that I meet once a year went to the restaurant or played a game. It's just too much noise. That's why FB for me is nowadays mostly a chat/email friends app. FB is great for that once most people are there. (Not to be confused with: FB is great doing that..)

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#209

Post by masklinn » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 12:03 PM UTC

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #25

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?

And his Twitter feed is nothing but promotional one-way blasts (not to mention his tweet-followers-following numbers are consistent with shady accounts).

> not to mention his tweet-followers-following numbers are consistent with shady accounts

A ratio of 20:1 is consistent with sole individuals having some contextual visiblity within an ecosystem/community, e.g. being a lead developer on a language's primary alternative implementation, which he is (pypy). It's similar to David Nolen (Om, 20:1) or Armin Ronacher (Flask, 40:1).

Re: I Hope Twitter Goes Away

#210

Post by start123 » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 12:13 PM UTC

Twitter was never meant to be a social network. The author himself writes: "Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages", which is what Twitter is good at - a broadcast and a news consumption service. I don't see any other service that tracks realtime events as good as Twitter.