Ask HN: Why Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why Twitter

I was talking to a famous technical author the other day, and the subject of Twitter came up. I mentioned that you could get 100k rewteets, end up with 300 visitors -- and still get bupkis as far as conversions or new customers.

"I really have no idea why I keep using it."

This is a really good question. I've been on many years, and I like using it to tell jokes and idly chat/help my friends. It's also a place I'd use language that I wouldn't use on my family-friendly FB account. But the place is a cesspool. It has internet-drama-of-the-day, people repeating the same tweet over and over again, retweeting rings, idiotic arguments that self-generate because you can't fit anything nuances into 140 characters, fake accounts trying to like and follow whatever you post, paid crap that you don't want or need, and so on.

So why bother? What are you guys using it for? Where's the value here?

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When I used it, the main value was communicating with people who used it. It allowed direct communication with relative celebrities of the sort roughly equivalent to an O'Reilly author of something on an Apache project.

I imagine at that level of 'fame' Twitter offers access to fame level commensurate perks of celebrity. Among those perks is an excuse to engage in behavior appropriate in a cesspool. By which I mean that being an asshole in the manner in which the junior high popular kids would treat the junior high unpopular kids can be written off as just the way Twitter is.

Since I am less a celebrity than the author of an O'Reilly Apache book, the value I got from Twitter when I used it was reaching upward on the popularity ladder. The most intellectually interesting part, aside from the social aspect, was composing literary tweets of exactly 140 characters...a perhaps underappreciated art.

Eventually, I stopped bothering when the negatives outweighted the jokes and chat...i.e. when the logical structure of cesspools began to dominate my experience.

Good luck.

Mainly news. For that I follow the news sites but am hesitant to follow editors, columnists, journalists etc as they tend to post useless comments that are supposed to be funny. I do follow them but unfollow once they become a wannabe comic with unfunny puns, oneliners etc. For similar reasons, I don't follow well known tech bloggers (though I read their blogs or medium posts).

Secondly, I follow handles for topics such as museum, history, science etc. I generally distrust curators who seem like enthusiasts, so try to follow authentic sources as far as possible.

Thirdly, I follow some highly opinionated people, many of whom are usually well known from all walks of life, while some I find by their responses to certain topics. It is fun to see how people can twist anything to fit their agenda.

Lastly, I follow official accounts of various national governments, and organizations like UNESCO, RAND, PEW etc.

I want to repeat this to make sure I got it.

The value for you in Twitter is news. You try to stay away from people who might be excitable and/or trying to be entertaining, and follow folks who tend to give immediate little chunks of news.

Among MSM journalists, the word is that Twitter is just creating a huge echo chamber, where one person starts a rumor and then seasoned reporters and editors have to rewteet/comment on it or miss out. By staying away from certain folks, are you able to keep the BS/noise level down?

Mainly news, yes. Rumormongering is big, though probably not as much as on other platforms where the origin of a message is hard to trace for ordinary folk, but again, if one has used this service for a while, and know the nature of the posts a handle typically makes, it becomes clear which is news and which isn't. Also, it is rare for all MSM people to RT the same non news without their colleagues raising suspicion, so it is not that bad. All that said, pruning is an indispensable activity for twitter.

I use it as a backend for Nuzzle :)

I have to admit I've thought of that also. Using it sort of as a more modern IRC.

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