I actually have attracted friends on Facebook through my general wittiness and insight. But there, I'm not limited by some sharp character limit. With twitter, I really don't see the point (though I am writing a Twitter client just for thoroughness).
As the article says, what exactly makes anyone interested in my Twitter account. Especially - as far as I know, none of either my real or my virtual friends are on Twitter. If a few were, what would drag the others along?
A few of my Facebook friends do the one-random-sentence-per-hour thing. But usually those sentences are boring, the least interesting part of my "social networking experience".
Considering that a tweet is only 100-something characters, your use is essentially equivalent to following an RSS-like feed for a news site. The only difference is that the newsmaker can be anybody and you don't get to read a full version of the news article. Right?
(Personally getting news off Twitter isn't a reason I use it.)
If you follow a feed that basically just outputs an RSS-esque feed of titles and links, then yes, it's just an interface for RSS.
You can also follow people and/or organisations that editorialise in their tweets. For example, if you want tech news from BBC, you could get a basic RSS feed, or you could look to someone like Rory Cellan-Jones and could follow his work account (@BBCRoryCJ) which is basically just BBC stuff, but not the same info you would get from an RSS feed with some extras added in, or his personal account (@ruskin147) where you get more personal thoughts/opinions etc.
And another option, getting news from your friends - so, in theory, that can provide you with interesting content from random different sources that fit your interests, which an RSS feed won't do. So it's kinda like what a sub-reddit is to the reddit frontpage, except purely personalised on who you want to follow.
The other commenters said most of it already but here's what I do. I follow multiple headline accounts (BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, Reuters etc), those tweets usually have a headline and a link to the article if I want to read the rest.
I follow around 100 accounts at any one time, and frequently prune the list so it doesn't get to busy or full of stuff I'm no longer interested in.
I also follow specific journalists, politicians, science and tech people who also often link to things they're reading which are useful background for what's going on.
By far the most useful thing is creating custom columns in tweetdeck for search terms. Think of it like this: rather than subscribing to an RSS feed for a site and hoping they post stuff I'm interested in, it's more like automatically generating a news feed on any subject you're interested in. I have a bunch of saved searches on all kinds of subjects, some of them may only get one or two tweets a week, but it keeps me up to date.
Another benefit to using searches is that it's a good way to discover people who are consistently tweeting interesting stuff so you can follow them. Without the search I would never have heard of or thought of following some of the people I do.
Yes. It is like massively decentralized news aggregation.
You can just follow any-old tag and see what comes up, or you can try and improve the signal-to-noise ratio by following the people you generally enjoy reading and create specific lists.
I've also found it helpful in big conferences. at the WCC2010 I switched streams (there was 16) a few times because the quotes coming out of other sessions hinted that the other one was more interesting/relevant to me.
What it actually is is plumbing that you can configure more or less how you'd like. So it can be what you described. Or it can be any number of other things.
Then your curiosity, your imagination or both have failed to engage.
I got a job through Twitter once, along with countless examples of professional and personal advice, guidance and encouragement. I can easily communicate with far-flung friends without the freighted expectations of long-form letters. I can maintain a professional network and stay up to date on new technologies and open source code.
It's a decent chunk of why I have my career as it currently exists, if I'm to be honest.
Fair enough. I guess I just don't dig communicating via SMS-style messages.
EDIT: And, having pondered that some more, it's not even communcating. It's more like writing something on a wall hoping that your neighbors happen to see it and take interest. No, I certainly don't dig it. Although I can imagine following tweets of a person I'm really interested in, but that would only be 2 or 3 people--close people like girlfriend and relatives.
Once you have a decent set of friends you're mutually following, it's kinda like an open IRC channel. Dip into it when you have a moment, see what people are saying, maybe answer a question or congratulate a friend who had something to celebrate. Maybe dump a little rant. People you know might reply, and so might your hangers-on. Maybe you want to reply to what either of them has to say.
The message limit is like any other limit - sometimes it's a pain, sometimes it's a restriction that leads to succinctness and focus.
> it's not even communcating. It's more like writing something on a wall hoping that your neighbors happen to see it and take interest.
It needn't be even remotely like that.
You're kind of arguing from ignorance. And I can't, for the life of me, see why. It's okay to not know about some things. And it's okay to not have your curiosity draw you to certain things. But when it's pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about, why go on asserting that ignorance as fact instead of asking questions and learning more? Why enshrine your ignorance in lengthy words, insisting others take a bite?
Here's what it's most like, for me:
IRC. Where you're the bouncer and the channel contains whomever you'd like.
The messages are brief but that's their only resemblance to SMS. 140 characters is more than ample to share thoughts or directions toward interesting content. There's plenty of communication, if you choose to use it that way.
> You're kind of arguing from ignorance. And I can't, for the life of me, see why.
You can't see why because I'm not arguing in the first place. I'm just describing the things as I undestand them. I may be wrong, but that's why I'm describing them: so that other's can explain them to me if they feel like doing it.
Now to the point. I am trying to learn about Twitter and see if there is any value to me. I visited your twitter account, and I saw that most of your tweets don't have replies. I don't see this as communication. To me, it feels more like begging for attention. I don't feel like this is something I'd like to be doing (or at least feel like I'm doing).
And, as I wrote in another thread, I think I now know what my problem with Twitter is. I'd like to follow some developers I like, but every time I go to their twitter account, I see a lot of personal and/or vacouous stuff. I just don't feel like reading about their personal life or random thoughts on things. And this seems to be a big part of any personal Twitter stream.
"I visited your twitter account, and I saw that most of your tweets don't have replies."
When I look my TV, or read a book, I rarely answer the writer, anchor, redactor... Still it is communication. Not like "communication with friends", more like "mass communication". It still allows you to share your opinions, bring new ideas, etc. People will only answer if they think they can add additional value or disagree, else they'll just read and enjoy or not.
Look, you are on HN, and comment here. You don't expect every member of HN to answer all your comments. Think of Twitter has an enormous HN where you can choose who you read comments from.
> I'm not arguing in the first place. I'm just describing the things as I undestand them. I may be wrong, but that's why I'm describing them: so that other's can explain them to me if they feel like doing it.
It's fine to post-rationalize it that way but your initial comment left very little room for that interpretation. Questions generally work better than assertions for addressing curiosity.
> I don't see this as communication. To me, it feels more like begging for attention. I don't feel like this is something I'd like to be doing (or at least feel like I'm doing).
Not really sure what to tell you. You're also not seeing all the direct messages that pass between people, responding to certain things privately, or the many @replies that aren't parsed into the public web interface due to flakey clients. But whatever — you're finding ways to reassure your preconceptions and that's totally your privilege. In the end, though, "not my cup of tea" is a very different sentiment from "I fail to see any other legitimate use of it."
What you call vacuous I call personality. The people who work on interesting things are worth getting to know personally. I've enjoyed meatspace drinks and, again, entire paid gigs through getting to know people this way. A good friend who was fucked in unemployment land scored an amazing gig through just being fun and personable on Twitter. Thus same friend managed to introduce me to some people I really admire through the same means.
So if you want to view Twitter through this boring-ass lens where you have no curiosity about your fellow humans, well, I guess it's not surprising you're not going to get much value from it. Like much of life, it's what you make of it.
> It's fine to post-rationalize it that way but your initial comment left very little room for that interpretation. Questions generally work better than assertions for addressing curiosity.
Please re-read my initial comment. It _was_ a question followed by a statement of truth. I'm not post-rationalizing anything.
I don't like the way this conversation is going. Thank you for your interest.
Come on, dude, just be real. Your "question" was so loaded a team of pack mules couldn't shift it:
"Isn't the whole purpose of joining Twitter is to get your ego stroked?"
And it got, appropriately, down voted into the earth's core. You showed up, you were a little flip, it turned out you're not seeing the whole picture. Just own it and we'll all have a good time learning things.
> You're kind of arguing from ignorance. And I can't, for the life of me, see why. It's okay to not know about some things. And it's okay to not have your curiosity draw you to certain things.
Please, ignorance has nothing to do with it, the author has kind of hit the nail on the head. First of all, he's correct insofar as nobody really wants to follow uninteresting or anonymous people. And the hard truth is that the majority of us are not interesting nor famous (me included, I've only got 2-3 followers, even though I follow around 30 people).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_win_friends_and_influenc...