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Comment by dangoor | Hacker News Reader

Other commenters seem to be missing a critical point here: tweets continue to have a 140 character display with some sort of "read more" that you click to see the rest.

To me, that actually sounds pretty great. One thing that's nice about Twitter is that it's fairly skimmable. All of those "1/ Some thought", "2/ some thought continued" threads damage that. Combining them into a "My thoughts on... read more" tweet would be much nicer.

If they implement the feature like that, which is implied in the article, this would be a big improvement to Twitter in my opinion.

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One thing I've wanted to see tried with Twitter is the idea that you have your typical stream of tweets (vertical), but that any tweet can have depth (by swiping horizontally). Your "my thoughts" example would indicate "1/8" automatically, updating as it was created.

Means that someone can read as usual, or delve for the full series of tweets. They could provide an indication to the writer of what percentage of people read to which depth, for example.

It could work well for presenting news articles (sentence or paragraph at a time), photo galleries/essays, slidedecks, stories, advertising, etc. Using a news article as an example, some people will be interested in just the headline, others in the first three bits, a few in the full story to its end.

This is a really cool idea. It's a really simple solution to the same problem that would be really beautiful and easy to use on mobile especially. It doesn't quite reach the same depth, but I think it's a good way to start.

Always had it on my list to build a prototype of the concept and pitch it to media companies. Baffles me that they do so much work plugging Twitter handles for newsreaders, journalists, etc but then use a platform that hardly helps them.

Kind of like Moments but horizontal instead and right on the main feed.

Someone mocked that up a while back for a different app. I remember seeing the video for it come back up not long ago.

This is exactly what Paddy Adams was talking about with Cards, and I agree strongly with both of you: https://medium.com/intercom-inside/why-cards-are-the-future-...

- Cards seem quite similar to a carousel with maybe different movement options.

- Twitter character limit is already exceeded by people writing somewhere and posting the screenshotted image of the text, which is awful.

- 1/N.. N/N style can be expressed better by extended character limits, but that will decrease the number of tweets, which a public company may see as a deteriorating metric.

Unfortunately Twitter has more usability problems than char limit in the main timeline user interface.

- Viewing a conversation is pretty much confusing. You click on a tweet, it expands and it's not obvious how the conversation with a tree-branching structure proceeds

- "Read later" is needed independent of "Like"

Ugh. Marc Andreesen is the worst with this. I had to stop following him. Twitter is the wrong platform if you want to smear 1500 characters worth of information across multiple tweets.

Only Marc Andreesen can get away with it, he is good at establishing break points. I can easily follow.

Vivek Wadhwa, on the other hand... his rants were a mess.

> Other commenters seem to be missing a critical point here: tweets continue to have a 140 character display with some sort of "read more" that you click to see the rest.

So Twitter wants to be RSS with better discovery. If there were discovery and UX for blogs like there is for podcasts (Pocketcasts, Overcast, etc.), then Twitter wouldn't even have a leg up on RSS at all.

I've often dreamed of a decentralized "Twitter" that allows you to subscribe to any Twitter, Facebook, or blogging feed and makes them all equal, first-class citizens (including the ability to reply/retweet/etc.)

Ask 99.9% of Twitter users what RSS is, and I think you'll have an idea of the "leg up" that Twitter has.

* Not to mention, even if folks knew what RSS was, they don't necessarily want to host their own blog.

Twitter already was tech jargon just a while ago. Maybe we just need the right marketing campaign. RSS = "I'm Ready for Some Stories!", the Oprah way: http://www.backinskinnyjeans.com/2006/09/how_to_explain_.htm...

Ask 99.9% of Sticher/Pocket Casts/Overcast/iTunes users what RSS is. They'll have no idea, and yet those apps rely on RSS to subscribe to podcasts.

The application can obfuscate the underlying technology. You don't need to know what RSS is to use it every day and love it, just as you don't need to know about DNS, TCP/IP, or most other internet technologies to enjoy the web.

Ok, that makes sense, although the content creators for iTunes, etc, still often have to find out what RSS is.

I'm still not sure what your point is - you said Twitter is trying to "be" RSS, but that's just the format, not the application. Twitter is not trying to aggregate content from elsewhere, either.

> "Twitter is not trying to aggregate content from elsewhere, either."

Maybe not directly, but they sure make it easy for third party sites to have "Share this article via Twitter" buttons.

The decentralized twitter idea is great! Better privacy and interconnectivity is even better!

I don't get it. Twitter is a one to many broadcast channel. Its point is to be public. Privacy doesnt factor in. I think you could make a fake email, but twitter serves as a public channel so if you want privacy and twitter you are sort of asking for an sms message?

You give up privacy in many ways on Twitter, not just when you publish content.

Twitter can track you across third-party sites using its widgets, and it also knows your subscribing/reading behavior.

A decentralized system could be self-hosted and only pull in data through RSS, keeping you as anonymous as the IP address that you use. You'd only give up anonymity by replying to posts.

The existing users will preserve the character of twitter as new users arrive(http://i.snag.gy/kdu77.jpg).

aka FriendFeed/Google Buzz. Neither of which were at all successful or exist anymore.

The problem is that there is no incentive to use them as platforms. People just output their other primary sources through them, and then engage on their primary platform.

That makes them horrible for users (who write comments and never hear back).

With this addition they will have officially become a user-focused Reddit. It's certainly not a bad thing but I doubt it's where the Twitter devs saw themselves heading. I'm sure people will continue to write 140 character messages but they'll probably become a minority over time. The bulk of tweets will just become title+link to external content or title+discussion starter.

> With this addition they will have officially become a user-focused Reddit.

I totally disagree. I still find it impossible to follow threads of conversation on Twitter. I'm a software developer and don't consider myself to be an idiot, either.

(Unrelated: I accidentally downvoted you when I was trying to copy-and-paste, and I'm terribly sorry!)

Agreed. Ive been frustrated looking at the tweet at the root of what I know is a long, branching conversation with many participants, unable to see the flow or follow it at all. Slashdot and Kuro5hin solved threaded/nested conversations over a decade ago. How does Twitter still suck at it?

Sounds more like tumblr than reddit.

I do think there is a tendency for social media sites to converge towards the same thing. As features are added, and limitations are removed, the lines between different types of sites begins to blur. Something that started as some simple niche site, starts allowing users to host content, create forums, have their own chat app, adds features from discussion sites, etc. Eventually we will end up with some kind of hyper-FaceTubeRedditumblrkype.

> The bulk of tweets will just become title+link to external content or title+discussion starter.

This is already what the bulk of tweets are today. What Twitter (and Facebook) want is for people to not have to leave to read external content.

> One thing that's nice about Twitter is that it's fairly skimmable. All of those "1/ Some thought", "2/ some thought continued" threads damage that. Combining them into a "My thoughts on... read more" tweet would be much nicer.

If people want to use twitter in that way than it's not the right place for them, there are already similar platform out there. Twitter's core and unique feature is micro blogging platform and i think it's never loose that unique feature.

> Twitter's core and unique feature is micro blogging platform

Trust me, from many, many discussions with people at Twitter, they absolutely do not see themselves as a micro-blogging platform, and do not enjoy the comparison.

If going beyond the 140 visible limit (or however many it ends up being) is highly discouraged (by the rest of the content being highly unlikely to be seen), I could see this working OK without lessening the magic of Twitter too much.

Also, this fixes an existing usability and accessibility nightmare of Twitter. People already post longer texts, just either split into multiple tweets (a horrible distraction if you don’t want to see it and incredibly hard to read if you do) or as screenshots (throwing accessibility completely out of the window – also not as nice an experience whenever reception is flaky).

I honestly see this more of a fix. All these horrible ways of using Twitter which are already commonplace will no longer be necessary. I don’t think it will fundamentally change how Twitter is used. People already use it in that way.

I don't think it will be a big improvement - I think it will become Medium Nano. Which is bad, because Medium and Wordpress (etc) already own that space, and a nano version adds nothing useful.

140c is great for one-liners and linkbait, which is - apparently - the main reason people read Twitter.

If it turns into a micro-blogging stream of extended self-expression, I think a lot of people won't have time for that.

> Medium Nano

Tumblr?

One more click to get to content. Millenias worth of clickbait scrolling. Why not summarize Medium articles into 140 characters and slap on a multiplexed feed?

actually we get the implementation, but it is bad UX practise. it adds friction to the reading experience and will increase the quantity of tweets with truncated text within the first 140 chars. Twitter poorly handles this already with its URL preview cards. from a UX side, it's bad no matter how much spin Twitter will bring.

Bad UX practice according to whom?

I was initially really against this, but parent comment brings a compelling argument: people are already using the service to say more than 140chars worth of stuff. The current methods to do it result in a far worse user experience than the tried and true "Read More" button would.

That said, I'm skeptical of it just in terms of product definition. Like Instagram adding portrait/landscape photos, more than 140 characters to a tweet does nothing but obscure what exactly the product is and how you're supposed to use it (even if people circumvent that anyhow).

I agree ethanbond with your 3rd para. It will muddle the product definition even further. It's rather telling to me that Twitter is willing to AB this without concern for its image or userbase - one that is mostly providing negative sentiment.

UX is something many businesses seem to really struggle with. If unnecessary friction is added, it really should cause stakeholders and designers to pause. The "read more" CTA will lead to more truncated tweets within the first 140 chars, something that is visually unappealing and breaks the reading experience by forcing a manual action. The workarounds you describe are not used by everyone and I'd wager that most users simply keep their posts within the 140 char limit rather than pict-tweet or storm a longer convo. Yes it forces brevity, but that is the Twitter identity which supports the product's skimmability usefulness. Give users a read more option, and many will post a few extra chars just because they don't have to put much thought into their wording now. Short term: usage goes up. Long term: quality decreases as Twitter becomes just another Facebook or Medium. It will be worse than Medium though because the audience Twitter is going after is more generic.

I've always argued that Twitter's userbase is more influential and valuable because of its forced brevity and fact that it was unique.

I already avoid truncated tweets and want to read long-form content elsewhere. So, I won't be using Twitter more. Maybe others will, but again, I'd wager that Twitter is simply sliding down a path that will be ultimately more harmful for its long term sustainability.

Personally, I love aspect ratios on Insta. It's a far better posting experience. As far as browsing, it's pretty much the same as before, I'd say. I haven't noticed anything, other than fewer awkwardly letterboxed images.

The way i know it from imgur comments it's not that bad. There the comments are not nessecarily sorted by time. What's the issue? It still discourages longer rants because every write up- and download cycle forces a short wait.

Agree with you. Twitter is way more easy to skim than FB or LinkedIn.

To be honest, I find the limit of 140 characters as its best feature because it is something that forces me to distill my thoughts in as less words as possible. A kind of exercise.

Based on tweets with the #Twitter10k hashtag, many users don't think it sounds like a good idea. Wall Street and the userbase seem to both agree for once.

So now tweets will be just like proper git commits :)

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