If you're a celebrity, its a must-use product.
If you're a normal person, nobody cares about you on Twitter. You get virtually no feedback on the content you produce. It's a one sided tool for following, not sharing or creating.
If you're a normal person, nobody cares about you on Twitter. You get virtually no feedback on the content you produce. It's a one sided tool for following, not sharing or creating.
Is there any media in which a random person can shout content out into the void and expect immediate uptake?
> Is there any media in which a random person can shout content out into the void and expect immediate uptake?
Not into the void, no. But that's not how other social media platforms work, only Twitter.
It's true that if you're LeBron James everyone will pay attention to you instantly, and if you're a random programmer it will take an investment of time and energy to get anyone to pay attention to you at all, but that doesn't seem like a flaw in the platform so much as a description of how the world works.
Think about it like this. How long does a typical tweet live "above the fold" (where the user doesn't have to scroll down to see it)? It varies of course depending on how many people you follow and how frequently those people tweet. But on average the stream moves pretty fast, right?
Let's say, for the sake of discussion, it lasts 10 seconds. I'd be willing to bet the average is much lower than that, but whatever. You, tptacek, tweet something and you have 16,000 people who MIGHT see that within that 10 second window. The typical person with 50 followers or less needs one of their 50 followers to be looking at Twitter within that 10 second window... or their Tweet will never even be read by anyone, let alone commented on.
Don't you at least see how that leads to a negative-feedback loop that makes people not want to use the platform?
Most of my Twitter posts are hoping for serendipity; like at best, someone generating a funny reply to me. But if I want to set the date/location for the next ChiSec post, I'll post multiple times per day.
I think that is the flaw and issue that troubles Twitter most today. You shouldn't need to 'prime the pump' per se with activity because one day in the future you may want to use it for real. Especially a social media pump where one accident, typo, bad joke may ruin your life (I admit this is a reach, but certainly possible). This flaw make it mainly useless for the common man.
It is how the world works, but it makes Twitter almost useless for 99% of it's users.
I honestly don't know if its the 'right' answer for Twitter's survivability. I've always felt Twitter was a more evolved advertising medium, and they should pursue building out that product. It's in essence a 30 second commercial, in between interesting content for the user, and is why I view it as best used by celebrities.
In other words, because he too is Internet Famous.
The audience is definitely different, for sure. But if I post a question or thought to Facebook, I'm way more likely to get some response and an interesting conversation. Granted, it's just within my friend base, but if anything that just proves the point that actually posting to Twitter is a futile exercise for the "average user".
But you can have 200-1,000 followers, tweet something you feel is interesting, and get nothing in response. No replies, no retweets, barely clickthroughs on a link. It can feel like a wasteland.
If it feels like a wasteland trying to participate when you have 800ish followers, it must be seriously demotivating when you've just joined.
Where else are you going to see this kind of discussion in public where you can take notes and/or jump in?