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Comment by 40four | Hacker News Reader

A tangent if I may...

I freaking hate twitter 'essays' like this. What is it, 30+ tweets in a row? This is such a horrible way to communicate. 240 characters at a time is is not a good way to write, let alone to try to read. I guess it makes me angry I am expected to follow a long, disjointed, meandering stream of thought all the way to the end. Tiny chunk... by tiny chunk.. by chunk.. chunk.. chunk. It just feels bad.

I think I know why people do this, usually people with large followings, and they want to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. But if you have this much to say... please can we agree to just write a blog post and post the link on twitter? Then we can go read a long article in a comfortable manner, without all the other distractions of twitter, chunks spinning off a new threads of comments along the way. Meanwhile, you still get to put it in from of all your followers :)

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I don't remember who said it, but someone who tended to post twitter threads noted that they have massive anxiety about writing things, and would/have never managed to write a normal blog post, whereas a tweet is just below the threshold of what is Too Much for them. So, for some authors, we can choose between hearing nothing, or reading a thread of tweets.

You're probably thinking of https://mobile.twitter.com/foone

Foone's stuff is great. But that's a bit different to the [semi]official comms of a CEO.

That's interesting! I'm seeing responses from both sides now.

Some folks say they actually like reading in twitter rant form. It suits them. You are saying, some folks are saying, they like writing in twitter rant form. It suits them.

As a couple of commenters have pointed out (And I admit, I was unaware of), there are already services to handle the people who struggle with reading long, distracting Twitter threads (https://threadreaderapp.com/).

Maybe there is an opportunity to handle the other side? Maybe we need to create a service that handles the writing side of the problem. The side for folks, who feel like they can't manage the overwhelming feeling of writing a long form blog post.

An app geared towards writing in small chunks. Then in some way, the chunks could be managed, to try to make it easier to edit into a long form article?

Honestly, after spitballing about for a while, I feel like I could benefit from something like this. Personally, I do tend to wish I did more writing, but I tend to lack the discipline, or focus or whatever, to sit down and write something long-form.

P.S. - I like saying the word folks

Might help

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1243000487365861376.html

Oh that's awesome, thanks! I was unaware of this. Great product, clearly I'm not the only one this frustrates. Problem solved!

https://threadreaderapp.com/help/about#about-thread-reader

Opposing view - I really like it. Each tweet is a reasonable succinct piece of information that stands on its own. For me, it doesn't feel like a commitment to read like a medium article does.

Very similar to how I find movies hard to watch because of the length, but will happily binge a TV series.

> Each tweet is a reasonable succinct piece of information that stands on its own

You mean like paragraphs? What's the difference?

Is it that the platform forces people to have reasonably sized paragraphs in the form of tweets?

Not my preference, I prefer reading twitter for shorter, more 'one off' type of thoughts. I find the UI, comment threads, lots of buttons, etc. to be very distracting. For long form ideas, I prefer a more plain text approach.

But I acknowledge it is just a preference. It's interesting to hear other people say otherwise.

Twitter is the worst platform for communication like this. I stopped reading after the 5th blurb. Post a blog post and then a single twitter post with a link to the blob.

I totally agree and for the most part really dislike Twitter. I feel its format really encourages _very_ bad communication and does a lot of harm.

But, I think the reason people do this is because it will hook more people. You've already read the first tweet, the second one is right there, next thing you know you're reading the whole thing. If it was a link to a blog post, far fewer people would click to read it.

For sure, you nailed it. I just can't help but get pissed and check out after about 5-6 tweets.

However, nice people have pointed out this lovely site, https://threadreaderapp.com, so I will be using it in the future :)

For some reason, it seems impossible it build a long-lasting blog host. He didn't use Wordpress, Blogger (I'd ignore these, too), or Medium for this. My guess is that the network effects of social media are so strong that it's better to post a poorly formatted essay to a platform meant for shorter comments than to post it (and link) to a site that no one visits as a destination.

For sure the platform (Twitter) is why this has become such a common thing now. And why (commenters have schooled me), there are services trying to solve the problem https://threadreaderapp.com.

But (tangent), as far as building a long lasting blog host? I'm starting to believe that JAMstack (https://jamstack.org) is the solution. I think maintaining a full blown web server, for something that can be solved with a simple static website, is overkill. I'm working on implementing my own personal site in this fashion as we speak.

But getting the discipline and focus to write some actual blog posts is another story. So I guess I can actually understand the Twitter rants, even though I hate reading them :)

I think it's great. I would never read this if it was an essay. I love how you need to distill every point into a small tweet. The constraints forces you to compress it into a stream of tl;drs.

Interesting to hear the other side of it. Maybe there is an opportunity to build a writing platform that caters to this preference?

I'd normally agree but this isn't an essay - it is a timeline.

I see an opportunity for a tech startup here: compile a series of Twitter posts into a coherent and easy to read essay.

Are you talking about something like threadreader?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1243000487365861376.html

Indeed, I was unaware and another comment pointed it out. Great product, the exact solution to my frustration. I will become a user!

> an excruciatingly slow, annoying and information-sparse experience from Slack

Fits like a glove.

P.S. I hate Slack so much...

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