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How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design

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11–16 of 16 posts

Re: How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design

#11
post #6

I have a theory that one of the things that makes twitter appealing to many people is it's ephemeral nature. Seen this way it's historical flakiness is actually one of the the things that makes it popular. Whether valid or not, there is a sense in which twitter seems to be a good venue for casual social messages that aren't going to be archived and potentially used against you at some later date. Whereas facebook (ag…

I don't think it's quite accurate to call Twitter ephemeral, though. All kinds of third-party services are trying to index and archive as many tweets as possible, plus there's always the possibility that Twitter will cut a more formal deal with Google (or any other search engine).

Plus, there have been numerous documented instances where deleted tweets can still be found by Twitter's own search engine.

In short, the old rule of thumb still applies: if you don't want it archived and indexed and preserved forever, don't put it online in the first place.

Re: How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design

#13
I've run into that twitter logo thing on summize.com (search.twitter.com) so many times. Every single time I'm there like a fool I click on the twitter logo, I never learn.

As a side note though, if you really want this article to be taken seriously (especially by people at twitter), I would rename it. I'm sure they see a million "why twitter will fail" style posts every day, so the honest points of your article doesn't shine through.

Re: How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design

#14
post #11
post #6

I have a theory that one of the things that makes twitter appealing to many people is it's ephemeral nature. Seen this way it's historical flakiness is actually one of the the things that makes it popular. Whether valid or not, there is a sense in which twitter seems to be a good venue for casual social messages that aren't going to be archived and potentially used against you at some later date. Whereas facebook (ag…

I don't think it's quite accurate to call Twitter ephemeral, though. All kinds of third-party services are trying to index and archive as many tweets as possible, plus there's always the possibility that Twitter will cut a more formal deal with Google (or any other search engine). Plus, there have been numerous documented instances where deleted tweets can still be found by Twitter's own search engine. In short, the…

It's the _perception_ of ephemeral, through the UI and the way twitter presents "real-time" (most recent first, difficult to scroll through older stuff, less than stellar search (at least compared to other services)).

Re: How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design

#15

I have used Twitter daily for years No, you haven't.

Twitter launched in early 2006, so I'm not sure how I see how this is impossible...

Sorry about that. I really should check my facts before being snarky. For some reason I thought twitter was only a year or so old. Maybe that's when it really took off or something.
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