Andreessen Says He’s ‘Free as a Bird’ Since Quitting Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Andreessen Says He’s ‘Free as a Bird’ Since Quitting Twitter

bloomberg.com

15 pointsswamp4019 comments

>“I think they’ll get by,” he said when asked how his 595,000 followers were taking his silence. Twitter “will be okay too,” he said.

To journalist Sarah McBride, the most interesting angle isn't his Twitter silence nor his hiatus. (Lots of celebrities take a break from Twitter.)

What's really puzzling was that he deleted all his tweets. Did you ask him about that?

I'm very curious about that too. Many famous people have taken breaks from Twitter but to delete every single tweet is an interesting way to go. It's public so I can't see him trying to hide something but why else would you do it? To avoid and further Twitter interaction or something?

Exactly this. It removes the temptation of someone commenting on an old post and then having media contact him to ask what he thinks about someone's opinion of something he said a long time ago.

Could someone have archived all his tweets and still bring it up? Sure, but it's far less likely.

His twitter posts are double posted in his Facebook profile. It's a hassle to delete all your online skeletons.

That's too bad. @pmarca had one of the smartest accounts on Twitter. I'll miss reading him.

I can't believe this is getting downvoted. So let me add to it: The thing about @pmarca was that his tastes were eclectic and many of his thoughts were original, so whether he was tweetstorming his opinions to be met with furor, or retweeting other accounts, you had a high density of tweets you'd want to read. There are a lot of spambots and content marketers on Twitter, and he wasn't one of them. So it's a loss to the ecosystem. On the other hand, he got into trouble on Twitter, and as a famous person, he was probably accosted and harrassed by pseudonymous morons, which is a much wider problem Twitter has to address. I personally think that if Twitter tires you out, you're not doing it right: turn off the notifications, allow yourself to interact for 30min out of every 24h and you're golden.

i'm a 18-30 millennial in tech who has never used twitter, is it really more addicting than reddit, facebook, et al.?

Nobody I know uses Twitter, I think its a California thing.

As a Californian, nope.

I can already see what my friends are doing on Facebook.

I try to follow interesting people, but too much of the content is uninteresting or unrelated. I follow some F1 drivers, but most of the time they're tweeting about random crap only their friends care about. And/or I'm getting race spoilers when I can't watch live. Every user is such a firehose of information that it's impossible to get the type of content I want.

You also either get WAY too much in volume, or too little. That's aside from their terrible usability problems where promoted tweets and "while you were away" and other such junk clutters your feed. Somehow, a longer, more graphic-intensive Facebook feed (with content on the left and right side as well) is still more information-dense than a "140 character" Twitter feed. How they make such poor use of real estate, I have no idea.

IMO Twitter is more for broadcasting/receiving information, often with celebrities or famous people or news organizations, and Facebook is more for interacting with people you already know. But the aforementioned problem of people you follow spending 95% of their time tweeting about their breakfast or unrelated interests, and 5% the type of content you care about, remains.

I've really enjoyed using twitter at conferences, though, where you can at least interact with people via hashtags. (why you still cannot follow a hashtag, however, is beyond me).

Meh, I've had my Twitter account for a day before abandoning it, since nobody I know uses it except for a netadmin who gets alerts through it.

I guess it becomes addictive if you start getting thousands of followers and start feeling like some sort of "influencer". Just like Facebook or Instagram for that matter.

Depends on who you ask and your interests.

Nearly every journalist/news junkie/policy wonk/social activist I know where I live loves Twitter, largely because you can follow other interesting journalists/writers/professionals and converse with them on Twitter. I've had conversations with pretty notable people on Twitter which would never happen on Reddit (save for IAMA) or Facebook. I'm glad that there's a platform for anonymous users (Reddit) and identified users (Facebook/Twitter).

Whenever people trash Twitter, I'm always baffled, because the experience is what you make of it. I can follow interesting people like Snowden, Musk, Gladwell, William Gibson, Degrasse Tyson, Zach Lowe etc. and have endless list of links to browse or interesting thoughts to ponder on... the experience can be far more edifying that either Facebook or Reddit.

Great point about the journalists - being on Twitter is how I've ended up being found by journalists and appearing in some TV interviews on BBC & Al Jazeera. That isn't why I'm on Twitter, but it's been a fun side benefit.

I also know some people who say they get most of their clients for their freelance business directly from their Twitter feed now. They tweet they have availability & get enquiries instantly.

I am in the same boat. I created my account +4 years ago and have never tweeted a message before nor I have followed anyone. In fact, besides taking ownership of my recurrent nickname on the Internet I have no other use case for Twitter and other popular social websites. HN, Reddit, and (maybe?) LinkedIn are my go-tool for socializing with virtual strangers. Ironically, I would be more than happy to work at Twitter just because of how interesting it would be to work in a company with that infrastructure, but personally I think their business, product, service or whatever you want to call it is mostly dead.

In professional consulting (usually through user group meetings) I see a lot of people obsessed with it because they feel it's a critical part of their networking strategy to make them feel like they are notable and to keep their name out there. If you aren't exposed to those sorts of people then you probably wouldn't find the same level. It's similar to people who have a very well curated email list for their customers/clients.

If you follow the right people in your fields of interest you will have an endless stream of interesting updated content. You can't personalize HN to have the exact sort of news you want but you can tune the people you follow in Twitter and get the best source of curated news there is for you. I frequently find stuff like new library releases/interesting blog posts from someone I follow well before they appear (if they ever do) in places like HN/Reddit subs I frequent.

Not unless you tend to have a lot of arguments. Reddit is by far more addictive. I think that is because people are more open to talking their mind when they are anonymous.

Are you saying that there are fewer arguments on reddit?

It's more immediate. The whole system is more or less 'real time'[0] so actual conversations are possible[1]. I can see that being more addicting than Facebook or Reddit, where conversations tend to happen over longer periods of time. One of the biggest benefits I get from Twitter is real time news from people who are actually there instead of relying on what passes for journalistic integrity these days.

On the other hand, Twitter is an interesting experiment in weaponized language, which can turn some people off. 140 characters isn't enough room to actually explain anything or provide proof or even simple logical arguments, so every argument on twitter is about invoking as strong an emotional response as possible. That emotion is usually anger. Also, the structure of twitter itself makes it unbelievably easy to organize lynch mobs.

[0]: Yes, it's not an actual, formal real time system, but it feels real time to the user.

[1]: I still prefer Jabber-style chat or IRC to twitter, but I will admit the 'broadcast' design of twitter makes it easier to participate in conversations across many different areas of interest at the same time.

Burnout from excessive tweeting...

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