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The Decay of Twitter

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Decay of Twitter

#71

Post by rconti »

benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

This just sounds like a religious argument more than anything. I would have taken it more seriously if you said "I do not find Facebook to be useful for my needs".

Instead, you're actively angry about Facebook, which is really quite similar to Twitter in many ways.

I find value from Facebook and 0 from Twitter. I've tried many times over 5 years to find use out of Twitter, and I just can't.

That doesn't mean I want it to die in the hottest fires of hell. I just means I don't care.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#72

Post by leetNightshade »

kafkaesque wrote: post #68
benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

Why can't you follow the experts in that field via their site or their online communities? The depth of which they would go into their chosen subject would be much more enlightening, surely. It sounds like you just use Twitter to bookmark the links and "soundbites" experts say. How much depth can a conversation that only allows 140 characters per response relay? They are meant to be "soundbites", only telling part of…

I don't use Twitter for having in depth conversations in those fields I'm interested in. I use it for finding and sharing the sites and articles where you do go into depth. With the amount of people invested in Twitter, it's easy to find good posts on a regular basis.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#73

Post by napperjabber »

kafkaesque wrote: post #68
benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

Why can't you follow the experts in that field via their site or their online communities? The depth of which they would go into their chosen subject would be much more enlightening, surely. It sounds like you just use Twitter to bookmark the links and "soundbites" experts say. How much depth can a conversation that only allows 140 characters per response relay? They are meant to be "soundbites", only telling part of…

It's the commentary that has the value. Reading a paper is a large mental investment. Reading a conversation is a conduit into 'maker' time. It gets the juices flowing.

I get lost on twitter just to see what the world has to offer, and sometimes I find something amazing.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#74

Post by steveklabnik »

Jtsummers wrote: post #51
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with using Twitter to meet people IRL. It seems weird to force those artificial boundaries on your social networks.

Perhaps I've just missed it, but my problem with twitter is this: Is there a way to send messages to just these 10 people, and not all 100 followers? That's what I need from a social network. I need a public (everyone can see) channel, and I need channels (that I control) that are visible to specific individuals and groups. My soccer team (in general, some overlap obviously) doesn't need to know about my ballroom dan…

There are group DMs now.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#75

Post by J_Darnley »

sbierwagen wrote: post #52
J_Darnley wrote: post #25

Burn baby burn.

Hey James. You post your PGP key ID and fingerprint in your profile, but a key ID is just the last eight digits of the fingerprint.

Thanks. I know that but it might help someone who hasn't realised it yet. I'm sure I've also read that some servers require the 0x prefix when searching by ID.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#76

Post by benten10 »

kafkaesque wrote: post #68
benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

Why can't you follow the experts in that field via their site or their online communities? The depth of which they would go into their chosen subject would be much more enlightening, surely. It sounds like you just use Twitter to bookmark the links and "soundbites" experts say. How much depth can a conversation that only allows 140 characters per response relay? They are meant to be "soundbites", only telling part of…

Couple of responses:

0) Your arguments seem to be targeted at social media in general (eg. why I can't follow them on their sites, etc). Don't want to get into a conversation on benefits/disbenefits of social media

1) There was nothing in my comment to imply that my friends were from the U.S (they are not), but as I said, the user growth could be just for me.

2) >Why can't you follow the experts... Twitter IS their online community. As everyone has mentioned, it's like RSS, where everyone is, and they let me know when their 'communities' are updated. Because I wouldn't want to check a hundred sites every day.

3) A tweet is 140 characters. All large tweeters post texts as images to get over the limit. People often engage in multi-tweet conversation. The 140 char limit is useful there because twitter shows how many tweets the user has in the conversation. If you're not interested, you don't encounter a wall of text: you see a tweet, and then bail out. Subtlety is lost in 140 characters, but if both parties are looking for a fair conversation, they usually engage in multiple tweets.

4) I do indeed use twitter to bookmark. I also use twitter as RSS. And to get to know people I don't know and follow them too. As a public social media. You could also have Googled 'arguments for and against twitter' and be done with this entire thing, but you chose not to. : ) Twitter is a community, and that's what people are there for.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#77

Post by logfromblammo »

sdegutis wrote: post #3

> In other words, on Twitter, people say things that they think of as ephemeral and chatty. Their utterances are then treated as unequivocal political statements by people outside the conversation. This seems to point to the main problem of Twitter: it's not clear who your audience is. Are you talking to your friends? To your family? To people with similar interests? To people you're trying to convince to agree with…

About the only thing I have used Twitter for is writing topical one-liners related to the Comedy Central television show @Midnight's "Hash Tag Wars" segment.

It makes me think I'm funnier than I actually am. But I also have to sift through a lot of bad and mediocre humor in order to get a good laugh from all the amateur comedians that participate.

There may be future conflicts between the people using Twitter for casual socialization and jokey-jokes and those using it as a serious platform for news distribution, public relations, political activism, or announcements.

There's just no good way to keep your vaguely prejudiced or non-PC attempts at humor away from the social justice warriors that will pick it up, sharpen it to a razor edge, and cut your throat with it. If you're at an open-mic night, you just get booed. If you're on Twitter, you might get fired from your day job, too. But there's an upside. If you Tweet one of your baby steps on the long road to beating cancer to your 6 followers before going to bed, you might wake up the next morning to a Harpo Studios production assistant ringing your doorbell.

No one is really listening to you on Twitter, but anyone could be.

Richelieu's maxim: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Twitter's corollary: "If you give me 140 characters from the most unremarkable of feeds, I will find in them an excuse to dogpile upon the author."

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#78

Post by mgalka »

benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

Same here. I started using Twitter about a year ago. Before that I thought it was just silly status updates about what someone had for breakfast. I couldn't have been more wrong. It is the counterpoint to the decay of mainstream media, always my first stop when I want to know whats happening in the world.

I can understand why it doesn't have the same broad appeal as Instagram. My brother describes it as a bunch of people who take themselves too seriously ranting about some world problem or some academic concept that nobody understands. That's probably not far off, but that's also its appeal.

FYI - Twitter has already started adding tweets to the timeline from uses you don't follow. Seems like a curated timeline is inevitable.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#79

Post by rdtsc »

benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

> I really hope twitter somehow makes money.

Never really saw the benefit or value in Twitter. People I care about are not on Twitter most of the time, or if they post, they don't post stuff I care about.

In general I found 140 character sentences are not just good enough to have a discussion (it ends up sounding curt and snippy). For links and all I just follow communities on forums (reddit, hn, github, their own sites, mailing lists etc).

> I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain

Well, given that I don't see a value in it, I hope they start that too, because I think it will accelerate its downward trend and it will just be over sooner ;-)

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