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Comment by irl_zebra | Hacker News Reader

I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, a pretty competent programmer and data analyst, and I cannot figure out how to use Twitter. I mean, I know physically how to create an account and tweet, and I've made multiple tries of getting into it, but can't find a use for it. So much noise.

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If you think Twitter is too noisy, it's probably a sign that you're following too many people.

Yeah, you really have to cull it. If someone in your timeline isn't posting things you enjoy reading, remove them. I use it primarily as a media consumption device; I follow people who create and say things I enjoy. I only follow one or two personal friends. The idea of using it for any serious communication is ludicrous.

Or too many noisy people. Some folks can literally drown your timeline.

How is the user supposed to know how many people is a good amount to follow? I think that is Twitter's problem, not the user's.

It's definitely a problem, which is why I recommend following very incrementally. If you add too many power users at once, it gets noisy fast.

Doesn't even sound like the GP is even following anyone. I've known a few people for whom the twitter interface and, well, really, the whole platform, just doesn't make much sense. It never clicks with them. None of these people had the "whoah... you're following way too many people!" problem. Almost the opposite, in most cases.

The problem is that I want to hear x's opinion on rails but I could care less about what music he's listening to now or what country he's traveling to now.

This is the exact problem that an algorithmic timeline is intended to solve.

Maybe not every tweet is as important as all the others. Maybe I want to follow a lot of interesting people, but not necessarily see every tweet about how much they like the hotel breakfast, or whether the conference provided a good enough AV system, or how good the broadband is in various SF neighborhoods.

When I do check out someone's twitter post (e.g. sanders, or dan harmon) then the replies are total junk. HN has tons of interesting people replying, twitter posts have tons of junk/spam as replies.

This has been my experience as well. They could learn from the improvements that YouTube has made to its comment section.

Though, I realize that chronological tweet order is important to the core user-base.

I've been saying that for a while: twitter is YouTube without the video.

For me, every social media site is like this. The only reason I can even stand Tumblr is that half the blogs I follow only post once or twice a day.

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