Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Buzz Kill

leoville.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 84 posts

Re: Buzz Kill

#21

Post by ams6110 »

nkassis wrote: post #6
makmanalp wrote: post #2

tl;dr: Dude was posting things on google buzz, for some reason it stopped posting, no one noticed including the author.

Yeah but if Leo Laporte can go that long without anyone noticing, what are the chances anyone cares about us tweeting. He has a large fan base, and I believe is well liked. I think he points out that twitter isn't building up peoples attention span but making it much shorter. The vast amount of tweet poring in just drowns out the individual posters. I can tell you right now, I wouldn't notice if a couple of people I…

I've never heard of him, until now.

Re: Buzz Kill

#22

Post by gbhn »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #16
telemachos wrote: post #12

I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. This reminded me of something from one of Joel Spolsky's last regular blog posts ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/03/14.html ): Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to be valuable, I find it a truly awful way to exchange thoughts and ideas. It creates a mentally stunted world in…

Two words: Learning curve . It takes time to understand what new media are for. Real , human-scale time, measured in years. The inventors of the telephone thought it was a B2B technology, didn't really grasp that everyone was going to have a phone in their home and use it to talk to relatives. The inventors of the phonograph, amazingly, thought of that as a business technology as well, for recording memos and stuff.…

The kind of throttling you're talking about here is something these "statusphere" products need to get better at. I don't necessarily want to unfollow someone, or unfriend them, or whatever the local idiom is. I just want to see less, and preferably just the best stuff. I need something like those huge mixer boards with a slider for each source, which I can tune to adjust the overall info mix.

Re: Buzz Kill

#23

Post by jasonkester »

Funny, but not at all surprising. I don't think I've ever read anything on Twitter. I can't imagine why anybody ever would.

What is the use case where a human being would ever actually read a piece of text coming from Twitter? The only one I can think that of is searching for one's own product name to see if anybody is writing about it. Is there another reason I'm missing?

Re: Buzz Kill

#24

Post by jschuur »

jasonkester wrote: post #23

Funny, but not at all surprising. I don't think I've ever read anything on Twitter. I can't imagine why anybody ever would. What is the use case where a human being would ever actually read a piece of text coming from Twitter? The only one I can think that of is searching for one's own product name to see if anybody is writing about it. Is there another reason I'm missing?

The use case is that people are online, at their computer and see their Twitter client notify them of an interesting sound update while they were wasting away time, procrastinating or just plain looking for some diversion. They see an update from a source they trust and decide to click through to read it.

That's not a very far stretch. People read things from Twitter all the time, that's not the problem. The issue is they only read the most recent stuff river of news style and who knows how many people they follow?

Leo's Buzz to Twitter cross-poster should have had some kind of link tracking built into the URL to tell him if people were clicking on his updates.

Leo says he had 15 updates in 2 weeks not broadcast, but when you look at his usual posting style, it's all notifications about his recent shows (which I get via iTunes automatically) and (self confessed) pictures of food he's eating. That's not exactly quality material that people will click through to. Had he posted more appealing content, his lack of updates would have been a greater loss.

Re: Buzz Kill

#25

Post by thorax »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #19
nkassis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if Leo Laporte can go that long without anyone noticing, what are the chances anyone cares about us tweeting. He has a large fan base, and I believe is well liked. I think he points out that twitter isn't building up peoples attention span but making it much shorter. The vast amount of tweet poring in just drowns out the individual posters. I can tell you right now, I wouldn't notice if a couple of people I…

I think you hit it on the head at the end of your post. His status as a nerd celebrity essentially ensures that many of the connections he has via these social networks will be tenuous at best. You can't classify the connection you have a to guy who's heard your podcast the same as your good friends and co-workers (or your wife! ;)). This will sound conceited, but I think most people I'm associated with via Twitter w…

Why not try it? Go silent without mention and see what happens.

Re: Buzz Kill

#26

Post by djacobs »

jasonkester wrote: post #23

Funny, but not at all surprising. I don't think I've ever read anything on Twitter. I can't imagine why anybody ever would. What is the use case where a human being would ever actually read a piece of text coming from Twitter? The only one I can think that of is searching for one's own product name to see if anybody is writing about it. Is there another reason I'm missing?

For me, the use of Twitter is:

1. I see X happening when I'm walking around (protesters, fireworks, concert, police barricades). 2. I search where I am in Tweetie. 3. I find out what's going on and, if I'm interested in it, might join.

Twitter is all about discovery. Not communication.

Re: Buzz Kill

#27

Post by duskwuff »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
makmanalp wrote: post #2

tl;dr: Dude was posting things on google buzz, for some reason it stopped posting, no one noticed including the author.

This is closely related to some people that are 'dead' on HN and don't notice. They're still shouting to themselves though, some of those have been doing it for so long that it's scary.

Case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos

Re: Buzz Kill

#28

Post by bbgm »

jasonkester wrote: post #23

Funny, but not at all surprising. I don't think I've ever read anything on Twitter. I can't imagine why anybody ever would. What is the use case where a human being would ever actually read a piece of text coming from Twitter? The only one I can think that of is searching for one's own product name to see if anybody is writing about it. Is there another reason I'm missing?

I actually get a ton of value out of Twitter both personally and professionally (it's a question of who you choose to follow). However, what your expectations from Twitter are shouldn't be the same as your expectations from a blog. It's great for finding out about events or what might be happening at an event, about getting instant feedback on something (your example, although it can extend beyond a product), and finding material that other smart people find. But if you want to understand and hear someone's thoughts or wisdom, it's not the right venue, and that's what some people are finding out.

Re: Buzz Kill

#29

Post by Tichy »

m0nty wrote: post #17

I've never understood the appeal of Twitter and I think it would help if more "social media people" (and web app developers) could try to understand why. They are obscure little techie tools that a huge percentage of the population will never use. When Leo says "I was shouting into a vast echo chamber" what he really should say is "I was shouting into a miniscule echo chamber". And nobody was really listening because…

In what way would it help to understand why?

Re: Buzz Kill

#30

Post by olalonde »

In the comments:

Why traditional blogging is a better medium than micro-blogging or social media - via Twitter

Quite ironic.

Post reply on HN