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The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

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Re: The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

#21

Post by edanm »

merijnv wrote: post #20
edanm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the big difference is usability. Other than a few techies, no one understands or uses RSS. In fact, even among most of my techie friends, I'm one of the few who actively reads RSS. It just doesn't work right now in terms of "normal" people being able to use it. And anyway, saying "we already have the web, why do we need Twitter" is wrong. That's like saying "we already have cellphones, why do we need SMS". Di…

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "why do we need Twitter?". While I consider it a useless service there are obviously a huge amount of people in disagreement with me, which would imply that it serves some purpose. What I am saying is "Why would we need a decentralized, open Twitter?" As far as RSS being to complicated goes, that (in my eyes) is a failure of browser authors then. Excuse my disconnect from the mainst…

Firefox has a similar feature.

I don't think that is the problem. It's more a problem of explaining the concept and having good readers. Even I, when I started reading feeds, spent a long time trying to find a reader and setting it up (Google Reader, by the way).

Contrast with Twitter - easy to explain the concept, 5 seconds to sign up and get started.

Re: The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

#22

Post by jellicle »

merijnv wrote: post #20
edanm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the big difference is usability. Other than a few techies, no one understands or uses RSS. In fact, even among most of my techie friends, I'm one of the few who actively reads RSS. It just doesn't work right now in terms of "normal" people being able to use it. And anyway, saying "we already have the web, why do we need Twitter" is wrong. That's like saying "we already have cellphones, why do we need SMS". Di…

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "why do we need Twitter?". While I consider it a useless service there are obviously a huge amount of people in disagreement with me, which would imply that it serves some purpose. What I am saying is "Why would we need a decentralized, open Twitter?" As far as RSS being to complicated goes, that (in my eyes) is a failure of browser authors then. Excuse my disconnect from the mainst…

There is just a tremendous difference in usability between RSS and Twitter.

RSS: find the icon (displayed differently on every website), follow a multi-step process to sign up (minimum of three clicks/choices), open another application which you've never heard of before to read this information. Or, click the orange icon on your browser, which is not prominent and is totally undescribed and undocumented. Same deal: minimum of three clicks/choices.

Twitter: click follow. Content magically appears in whatever app you're already using.

This should be a huge lesson for all developers. You made some shit, call it RSS or Atom, that does exactly what Twitter does, only it's hard to use. People sort of use it, once they can figure it out. Twitter came along and made it one-click to follow Brad Pitt. There are great-grandmothers and 2-year-olds using Twitter, but none using RSS.

Re: The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

#23

Post by zem »

alanh wrote: post #9

Well worth reading the whole thing. It’s not too long, and he’s already Readability’d it for us, if you will. But if you don’t have time: • #NewTwitter will make Twitter more mainstream, and will provide advertisement opportunities. • #NewTwitter is a shift away from being a platform towards being a destination (or “place of consumption,” if you will), and as such further complicates relationships with third-party de…

and here's a readable article about newtwitter for anyone else who doesn't have the patience to watch the video: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-twitter-tips/

Re: The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

#25

Post by bhjodokast »

As the developer of one of the first microblogs (2005), I have always understood Twitter and its purpose. I prefer it over traditional blogging, since I have little to say publicly. One-liners suit me.

I don't see #newtwitter as an issue because they are just plumping up their website. This shouldn't affect the API at all for third-party twitter clients, except to offer them more capabilities.

They should embrace both forks: #newtwitter website and the API. I think they are doing that.

Re: The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

#26

Post by Tichy »

merijnv wrote: post #11

Disclaimer: I never "got" really Twitter. The service still strikes me as mostly useless. Now this could just be me but he says: "Twitter needs to decentralize [...] my belief that all communications media will inevitably be decentralized, and that all businesses who build walled gardens will eventually see them torn down." So I heard we had this decentralized way of sharing which they call "the web" which is complet…

I think what Twitter added on top of blogs was just the following/followers lists. They were there to an extent with the blogroll, but blogrolls are very cumbersome to use.

Also, it integrates the reader with the publishing tool.

Re: The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

#29

Post by eavc »

zem wrote: post #23
alanh wrote: post #9

Well worth reading the whole thing. It’s not too long, and he’s already Readability’d it for us, if you will. But if you don’t have time: • #NewTwitter will make Twitter more mainstream, and will provide advertisement opportunities. • #NewTwitter is a shift away from being a platform towards being a destination (or “place of consumption,” if you will), and as such further complicates relationships with third-party de…

and here's a readable article about newtwitter for anyone else who doesn't have the patience to watch the video: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-twitter-tips/

I watched the video and was still in the dark.

Re: The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter

#30

Post by quanticle »

merijnv wrote: post #20
edanm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the big difference is usability. Other than a few techies, no one understands or uses RSS. In fact, even among most of my techie friends, I'm one of the few who actively reads RSS. It just doesn't work right now in terms of "normal" people being able to use it. And anyway, saying "we already have the web, why do we need Twitter" is wrong. That's like saying "we already have cellphones, why do we need SMS". Di…

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "why do we need Twitter?". While I consider it a useless service there are obviously a huge amount of people in disagreement with me, which would imply that it serves some purpose. What I am saying is "Why would we need a decentralized, open Twitter?" As far as RSS being to complicated goes, that (in my eyes) is a failure of browser authors then. Excuse my disconnect from the mainst…

The difference is in synchronization. If I subscribe to a Twitter feed, I get the contents of that feed no matter how I access my Twitter stream. With RSS, I have to make sure that my feeds are identical in all the browsers I use. Bookmark synchronization helps, but only for desktop browsers - I can't synchronize bookmarks (yet) between my desktop and my smartphone in a totally transparent way. Even with bookmark sync. taking care of synchronizing your subscriptions, there's still no way of synchronizing read items between instances. So items I read on my lunch break at work won't be marked as such when I get home.
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