Hacker News Reader

Comment by kafkaesque | Hacker News Reader

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 a story.

You could have easily gotten into those other areas via Google or following their conversations on their online communities, no?

And yes, your viewpoint is tainted, because, as the article says, it hasn't added active US users in 2015.

View on HN

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.

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.

With regard to point 2, isn't this what newsletters are for or email notifications? I get notifications of sites I have subscribed to via email. I find it is still a very reliable and good source because my email lists are curated to suit my needs all in one place. I get payment notifications, site update notifications, and correspondences to varying lengths with people. It's pretty great, actually!

As for point 3, text images seem like a poor way to digitise text, because it makes it very unsearchable and is prone to pixelation if you are writing a lot of it. It seems like a silly solution to something that was never a problem.

Actually, I sense a hostility in your response that I sense in Twitter users often when I bring up things I don't agree with. I am not at all attacking you, but rather find the way users use Twitter interesting, because it is something I no longer do. I know every single point you have made because I was a Twitter user for about 4 years -- I deleted my account last year.

Why would I Google arguments for and against Twitter when what I am interested is in your opinion? I would hate to put words in your mouth.

First para: I mention social network elsewhere. Give me group emails, with everyone replying to everyone else, and give me the ability to see only those emails that people I care about are sending, and give me a limit in the size of an individual emails so they don't get unwieldy, and you will have given me Twitter.

Yupp, text images are a poor way to digitize text. They're way backwards. And twitter has awful, almost non-existent indexing/search. And the bullying/harassment issue is out of hand. I still get utility from following people I follow.

I've been put in this position to defend twitter, and really man, I am not a particularly big twitter fanboy. It's a product that I enjoy using. I don't see a point in converting anyone ( I would, if it were MS vs Gmail argument). If you want to understand, just join in and follow people you aspire to be in conversations with. I follow popular professors, researchers, publications, celebs, etc, and I like it. You might too. That's all I can say.

I'm getting really tired of this argument because it's both wrongheaded, ignorant, and will not die.

Why can't you follow the experts in that field via their site or their online communities?

What's easier, entering your email address into every random person's website, or just clicking "follow" on their name on one website so you get notified when they post?

This sounds like the web service version of the "less space than a nomad" comment. Other people have different use cases, you know?

The depth of which they would go into their chosen subject would be much more enlightening, surely.

We've got this thing called hyperlinks - A headline and a URL easily fits in 140 characters. Of course nobody's reading academic papers on http://twitter.com, nor does anyone expect them to.

How much depth can a conversation that only allows 140 characters per response relay?

How much needs to be?

Twitter is not a primary communications medium - we have email for that. It's not meant to be a primary news medium, we have blogs for that. However, it serves very well as a pointer to those things. It's a centralized pub/sub notification system.

And if you want to have a "conversation" with someone on Twitter, you've got direct messages, which are not subject to the character limit.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com