Who’s Doing the Talking on Twitter? | Hacker News Reader

Who’s Doing the Talking on Twitter?

theatlantic.com

25 pointsjeo123415 comments

I've long suspected that that the vast majority of activity on Twitter is famous people, brands/marketers, and people trying to win free sub sandwiches.

And then there's me, some random schlub who tweets far too often despite a relatively small audience. But I just can't help myself.

Perhaps, but similar things could be said about the internet as a whole. It's all about what you do with it (what links you click on, what accounts you follow).

I find Twitter to be an amazing tool for communicating with just about anybody who might have something interesting to say. I hope it stays that way.

I agree. I have a small few Twitter followers that I have to stop and wonder if they think I'm someone else, because they are significantly higher on the fame scale than me. It's not completely outside of the realm of possibility that they might be interested in virtual reality, and I do frequently tweet about VR, but it is in no way a balanced transaction. That would have never happened in real life, because I really like where I live and have no interest in moving to where they live.

For random niche communities, twitter is great. For instance, I can tweet any SQL Server question to #sqlhelp, and frequently see some of the best consultants in the industry take a look and help.

IMO This mainly occurred because some people who were interested in providing free help and working towards community building had a nice incentive to do so (getting paid via other mediums/getting mind-share.) Nonetheless, still a hashtag I follow.

140 character format seems very poorly suited to technical database questions. It's barely enough to name which version of the database you're using. I'm surprised this is a thing.

Twitter is the primary communications venue of the F# community #fsharp. You'd be surprised how much you can communicate in 140 characters when links get compressed. It's mostly about micro-blogging (hey look at this link) and succinct conversations.

But great for URLs to technical database questions. :)

You would be surprised how much you can fit in when you want to, but most of the time you would use it to advertise a post on SO, your blog, or whatever if you couldnt fit the needed information.

Screenshots help a lot in this scenario, and the reality is that you are not asking super in-depth questions like "How do I take this proprietary database design and refactor it to do such and such" (generally, due to the volume issues with twitter) but more related to ops issues, performance, or other weirdness.

We can subscribe to hashtags? I had no idea.

After double checking, this is not a native twitter feature (why not?) but something tweetdeck (the desktop client I use for twitter) offers.

I honestly dont even have twitter on my phone or home computer, though I have signed into their web interface occasionally, I almost exclusively use it at work.

Investors and day traders are also huge on twitter - not sure how valuable it is to follow them though. :)

Social media is always whatever you put into it. For journalists, that means they can readily mold any story they want. G+ is a ghost town! Facebook is nothing but your annoying uncles! Tumblr is tweens sharing GIFs of Dr. Who and Orange is the New Black! Twitter is just Ashton Kutcher trying to do brand marketing!

It's like saying you can't find a finance job in SF or a public policy job in NYC or a high-tech startup job in DC. No, that's not what those cities are known for, but that particular thing does exist in some form there and the person willing to scratch beyond just the surface will find it.

I'm a big user of G+, and I love Ello -- though more for its progress and potential than actuality as of yet. But I've done repeated quantified research, and they are tiny.

The main Google in-crowd can be found around a handful of folks (Yonatan Zunger's a good magnet). Half of us have pissed off the other half. Then it's your random marketroids, SEO crowd, a bunch of Libertardian shills, and the odd YouTuber who's gotten sucked into a community-violating discussion leak (a hole that should hopefully be plugged soon).

But mass quantities of informed discussion? Not really.

"Tracking the Conversation: FP Global 100 Thinkers" (and guest appearance by KK) https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...

"Ballparking Ello's active user statistics" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/gxpvKs_tp-SL10nNJ1Rlbw

"Estimating G+ User Activity: 4-6 million active posters in January 2015 to date" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/nAya9WqdemIoVuVWVOYQUQ

(See also Eric Enge / Stone Temple Consulting for a far more comprehensive analysis: https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on...)

Sure, you can get a noisy stream if you want. But real gems are hard to find.

What I've noticed about Twitter: it's a medium where a bunch of people try to simultaneously sell the concept of Internet as this amazing network creating never-seen-before opportunities for communication, synchronization and learning as they're spending half their time complaining about "randos" and how they can't catch a break.

Which is really the Twitter equivalent of the humble brag: "I'm complaining about randos so that it's crystal clear that I am part of the enlightened elite and not one of those nobodies".

So in the end, the very premises of Twitter and other networks (connecting everyone, creating a network, fostering conversation) are provably false, they end up being the digital equivalent of the WASP country-club (or medieval Europe nobles) where a bunch of privileged people get to engage in inner-circle conversations with each other while simultaneously offering nothing but open scorn and contempt for the common people.

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