The End of Big Twitter
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The End of Big Twitter
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Re: The End of Big Twitter
#2The same frustrations (and more) are constantly levied against Facebook (as well as nearly every other platform). The reality is, however, that people are joining much, much faster than they're leaving. So even if 1 in 10 hates a platform and refuses to use it, that is negated by the 5 that are joining.
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#3Twitter is useful and interesting, but your idea of rich conversation is shallow or weak if it was ever satisfied by conversations that were had 140 characters at a time.
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#4The same frustrations (and more) are constantly levied against Facebook (as well as nearly every other platform). The reality is, however, that people are joining much, much faster than they're leaving. So even if 1 in 10 hates a platform and refuses to use it, that is negated by the 5 that are joining.
Basically, this is just the lament of the early adopters realising that as a space gains more and more users, the more it begins to reflect the mainstream regular person. That's okay, in my opinion, and I disagree with the premise of the article. Personally, I still get tonnes of value out of Twitter. I follow a lot of people I admire, and a lot of my friends, and my Twitter feed has none of the toxic bickering that it's come to be known by, so I disagree that Twitter has crossed a precipice and can only ever be a negative force in your personal life. But, hey, that's just like, my opinion man.
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#5Twitter is useful and interesting, but your idea of rich conversation is shallow or weak if it was ever satisfied by conversations that were had 140 characters at a time.
Don't undersimate the power of 140 characters. It helps you convey your thoughts. Take Plato's Republic as an example, most of the conversations could have happened in twitter-form, and not much would have been lost (assuming that some replies would be two or three tweets long).
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#6For me the benefit of Twitter is access to its social graph. I still don't personally see the benefit of Twitter as a communication channel. It is amazing for mining connections between people. In this respect I've found it an invaluable resource.
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#7The same frustrations (and more) are constantly levied against Facebook (as well as nearly every other platform). The reality is, however, that people are joining much, much faster than they're leaving. So even if 1 in 10 hates a platform and refuses to use it, that is negated by the 5 that are joining.
In my own limited experience, Facebook has changed less than Twitter from the perspective of conversation dynamics, to the extent that I now prefer FB, while I used to prefer Twitter.
For one thing, FB is less "flat". On FB, my updates only go to my FB friends, or optionally to "friends of friends". They are the only people who can either see or comment on them. So the size of my friend list has a large effect on discussion dynamics. That grows pretty slowly, so my FB experience hasn't changed too much. On Twitter, I could have a "locked" profile, but the norm is to post publicly, and certain things that are iconic of the platform (like retweeting) don't work if you're locked. There is also no "friends of friends" option, so you're either locked or public.
That wasn't a problem until recently, but in the past year or so, there seem to be a lot of people (sometimes called "randos") using the search functionality, and sending weird, often abusive, replies to people they don't even know, because of a tweet that came up in a search. The "virality" of retweets also accentuates that. Sometimes an offhand comment ends up read by 1000+ people because a chain of people retweeted it, and then there are all these really out of context replies by people who aren't even within three degrees of relationship to me. That can be welcome sometimes, and not welcome other times. Once in a while, if you're unlucky, something you say will get retweeted in a negative context by someone quasi-famous, which results in this weird swarm of mindless acolytes. And some of those acolytes feel the need to dig up your contact information and harass you outside of Twitter as well, even though 30 seconds ago they had no idea who you were, and still really have no idea who you are. These kinds of dynamics just aren't that enjoyable imo, and not worth the effort it takes to deal with them, so I've been using Twitter less.
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#8People are growing out of things, thinking platforms are getting old but forgetting that sometimes it is simply them that are in fact struggling to adapt to fast evolving ways to use a concept as generic as Twitter.
I'm not saying that he is necessarily wrong about the recent changes in the timeline but it does sound a bit like "things were better when we were the kings of the hill"... you don't hear the Bieber and Lady Gaga fans complaining about Twitter...
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#9For me the benefit of Twitter is access to its social graph. I still don't personally see the benefit of Twitter as a communication channel. It is amazing for mining connections between people. In this respect I've found it an invaluable resource.
It definitely shines as an ad-hoc organizational tool - from it's original coming-out party at SXSW where we all found a new way of figuring out where the best (or shortest lines for) parties were, to massive protests in the Middle East and beyond.
The days of caring about every person's every move may be waning, but I don't see Twitter becoming less relevant. Its original Big Bang of instant information dissemination for large loosely organized groups is still hugely important. Or so it seems to me.
Re: The End of Big Twitter
#10The same frustrations (and more) are constantly levied against Facebook (as well as nearly every other platform). The reality is, however, that people are joining much, much faster than they're leaving. So even if 1 in 10 hates a platform and refuses to use it, that is negated by the 5 that are joining.
> The reality is, however, that people are joining much, much faster than they're leaving.
I'm not saying this is the case with Twitter, but early adopters leaving (or reducing use) -- even while total adoption is on the rise -- might be a sign of unsustainable growth: http://data.heapanalytics.com/what-unsustainable-growth-look...
If your growth is always in new markets, that might be because "they're not onto you yet". Eventually you run out of markets. If your product is unchanged yet early adopters leave because some quality you have no control over changes the experience, that could be a really bad sign.