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Comment by vaksel | Hacker News Reader

In regards to twitter...they should just give pg this guy's twitter account http://twitter.com/paulg

He only used it once, and that was back in 2007. I'm sure the twitter guys would pull some strings to get pg as a user. Especially since they have no problem securing unused accounts "We have a rough guideline of 9 months of non-use."

Other viable alternatives:

http://twitter.com/realpg - only used 2 times a year ago.

I've also registered http://twitter.com/pgyc so you can use that if you want(registered so some asshole doesn't go and hold it hostage). I figure YC is something you'd be known for...and even if you stop doing the whole YC program...it'll still be part of your legacy. And it's a short username.

View on HN

Just going out on a limb here...maybe pg doesn't want a Twitter account and "no good names available" is just an excuse for folks like Scoble who can't believe he's still a holdout.

It's really true. I ignored Twitter initially because it was described as micro-blogging. As a macro-blogger I assumed it wasn't for me. By the time I realized it was actually a new messaging protocol, all variants of my name were taken.

This sounds like a fixable problem. What would some acceptable variants of your name be? If you email me (avi@twitter.com) I will see what we can do. I'd certainly love to see you on Twitter.

Why should twitter give anyone's account to anyone else?

Besides, you're assuming because they're not posting publicly that they're not DM'ing or anything else. I'd be pretty peeved if I had registered an account and when I finally decided to make use of it had discovered that it had been removed to give it to some other person of the same name.

Twitter should leave people's accounts alone unless there is a good reason (preferably legal) for interfering with it.

I guess the question is - why should someone (non-paying) be able to reserve an account name and not use it for nine months or more and expect to be able to keep the account? It doesn't serve any benefit to the community to have squatted accounts.

>Why should twitter give anyone's account to anyone else?

(Because) it's happened before: http://foreign.peacefmonline.com/entertainment/201007/63667.....

"pg", "paulg", etc. are probably too generic to warrant giving it away, but I think it's okay to deal with nick squatters in most cases.

twitter has access to the accounts...I'm sure they check whether or not the guy logged in or DMed within the past 3 years before transferring an account.

Either way, he can have the pgyc one I got...and the other people get to keep their accounts.(although based on their twits...I'd bet that they are the logged in once and test and never used again types.)

I think the real reason he isn't on twitter is that he prefers writing in essay format (I think the thing about not getting a good username was slightly tongue-in-cheek). When asked about twitter he didn't seem to enthused about it.

What is the difference between an essay and a blog post?

Between one of pg's essays and a typical blog post?

Pg spends weeks writing a typical essay of his (or at least he used to), editing it and getting feedback from colleagues and HN alumni before, whereas a typical blog post is banged out in a couple of hours, with little or no rewriting.

Also, just look a the page of one of his essays versus all the visual clutter on the typical blog post. Maybe superficial you may say, but I don't think so. It speaks volumes about the motives of the author. Maybe the blog writer wants to SEO optimise, promote their business, serve AdSense ads...whereas a pg essay is an extremely refined stream of thought on a specify topic. And his primary motive appears not be to sell you something, but figure stuff out as he writes.

So the difference between an essay and a blog post? Huge differences I think.

Where did that question come from? This is about Twitter, so the more relevant question is "What's the difference between an essay and a tweet?"

I'm not sure how to define that difference without something weak like "essays are longer", but even abstracts are typically expected to have more words than a tweet has characters.

I was asking because the OP wrote "he prefers writing in essay format" which seems to be giving PGs writings some sort of prestige beyond calling it a blog post. Yes, PG has lots of experience and writes well, but I don't see a need to elevate his blog to something more.

Essay implies you follow some actual style guide, even if it's unwritten. Blogs require no structure.

To me the difference is the amount of effort one puts in. Originally a blog post, as the name "web log" implies, was something one wrote that day-- a log entry. Whereas essays sometimes take weeks. The distinction has gotten blurred, but insofar as there is a distinction I think that's the root of it.

That's a fairly snobbish response. So basically an essay is not a blog post because you say so?

The style ideas you have for essays almost certainly don't match what Paul Graham sees an essay as. Read http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html for details.

write essay -> twit out a bit.ly link -> get retweeted -> more exposure

I don't think pg is too worried about more exposure. I find out that he has a new essay out on HN, and I'd imagine it's the same for a lot of people.

There's a lot of cross-pollination between sites like Twitter, HN, Reddit etc. (the demographic being early-adopter techie crowd) so if a person didn't get the new essay from one of these sources, they'd get it from another. People who aren't likely to frequent any of these sites probably aren't likely to read his essays anyway.

Can't he be content to let his fans tweet it for him, if they want to?

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