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Comment by jhunter1016 | Hacker News Reader

Despite what many comments here might suggest, Twitter is a microblogging site. You do not have to consume other tweets in order to contribute your own tweets to Twitter. That’s why you can follow 0 people and still tweet.

That’s why I love this idea. Imagine writing a blog but everyone suggesting to you that you have to consume other people’s blogs in order to contribute your own. Twitter can be toxic. But it can be great. If you are not in a mental space to consume the doom scroll, this is a good way to post your thoughts while protecting your mental health.

I’ve been tweeting from the command line for a few weeks now but will probably switch to this.

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Wow I couldn't have said it better. This is exactly what we're trying to achieve with Typefully, thanks for expressing it so nicely.

Unfortunately the author cannot read your thanks, see upvotes, engage in a conversation, or learn from others’ input. They use a write-only client to access this community.

That would be funny, but there is a difference between Twitter and HN.

In this case, the author wants to use twitter as a microblog -- the use case it was designed for. If they don't want to read other input on their twitter, why would they?

Meanwhile HN is explicitly designed as a community with a focus on curiosity, exploration, and discussion... none of which your comment provides.

Twitter has features to Share, Like, Subscribe, Explore via Hashtags. Twitter does not have a feature to "Edit". I'm unclear how we can look at these core strategic choices and decide it's designed not as a community, but as a blogging engine.

The point is not that twitter cannot be used as a community, but that it has been a microblogging platform as long as it has existed. In addition, each of the features you listed can be quite useful for discovery in a blogging type situation.

For external sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging

> However, by 2006 and 2007, the term microblog was used more widely for services provided by established sites like Tumblr and Twitter.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Twitter

> Twitter, online microblogging service for distributing short messages among groups of recipients via personal computer or mobile telephone.

Regardless, another client that treats the microblogging side of twitter as it's sole focus is not unreasonable. Much like reddit.com being better suited to memes and images and old.reddit.com is better suited to discussion, different clients can have different focuses, which is a Good Thing.

Twitter, true to its name, is a bunch of little birdies chirping all around one big tree. Mostly noise, worth it for the occasional song. Like most chit-chatter at most parties. I could show up to a party, get on a soapbox, do my monologue, then leave. But I won't make any friends or impact that way, even if these parties is where the audience is.

Even the "Stoic & Enlightened" accounts like Naval regularly engage with the birdies around them.

> Mostly noise. Like most chit-chatter at most parties. I could show up to the party, get on a soapbox, do my monologue, then leave. But I won't make any friends or impact that way, even if these parties is where the audience is.

Good point. However, making friends/impact is not what everyone wants from twitter.

Some people just want a place to put their thoughts out, and don't really care what anyone else is doing.

Edit: I'd like to apologize for being overly aggressive in my first comment. That was uncalled for. This chain clearly has started a discussion, for which I thank you.

> Some people just want a place to put their thoughts out, and don't really care what anyone else is doing.

Not being snarky: this is what personal journals are for.

It's difficult for me to reconcile "I want to put my thoughts out, but for as many people as possible to see them, and without caring about impact". At best, it feels like void navel-gazing, and at worst it might be a source of so much thoughtless/marginalizing content on Twitter: because the author did not care what their words will do to the reader. The feedback loop is essential not only for enriching the overall community, but for enriching our own understanding.

> "I want to put my thoughts out, but for as many people as possible to see them, and without caring about impact".

I suppose I've interpreted the thought process differently. I see it as "I'm going to put my thoughts out, maybe someone will find it interesting.", with the key difference of not caring about many people see/interact.

> at worst it might be a source of so much thoughtless/marginalizing content on Twitter: because the author did not care what their words will do to the reader.

Alternately, this could be caused by echo chambers where people scream endless affirmation at you because you said something that lines up with their political views.

Neither method of using Twitter is more wrong or more right, just different.

Props to both of you for keeping it civil. Genuinely interesting to see slightly opposing views work out through discussion - something that wouldn't be possible in a write-only scenario...

> Genuinely interesting to see slightly opposing views work out through discussion[.]

One of the reasons HN is one of the few places I actually post on the internet. People here are generally willing to discuss in good faith.

> something that wouldn't be possible in a write-only scenario...

/me sighs

yes. That was the whole point of the conversation, and why we are having this discussion in a forum designed for discussion, instead of in a platform that is equally designed for microblogging and discussion.

In addition, it's perfectly possible to put contact info in your twitter bio. Someone is just as capable of looking at that and emailing you as they would be if you were blogging off your own website.

Twitter allows for this just as many blogs (like books) don't have comment sections but have the author accessible via email or not at all. This doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to publish.

Where it's written, if it's designed so, doesn't really matter. I mean it's not practical to do so over text, but email? Yes.

There are even a subsection of people who never engage in twitter and just consume...

You can still allow people to visit your site and email you... But many people tweet successfully without replying to anyone.

If you disagree with what these non repliers say, stop reading.

Other readers don't need protection. They need exposure to more ideas, not fewer.

> Twitter does not have a feature to "Edit".

If you don't care at all about others interacting with your tweets, then Twitter has an edit button: delete the tweet and post a new one.

When we were texting our tweets to Twitter a decade ago they didn’t respond with 200 random retweets.

Hacker News would actually be the opposite if I was going to go single-sided with it. I don’t normally participate in the conversations but I love reading them.

This conversation though just happened to touch on something I’ve been experimenting with so I was compelled to comment.

That said, give me the read only client for HN (I know this exist already) :)

> Imagine writing a blog but everyone suggesting to you that you have to consume other people’s blogs in order to contribute your own

It would be pretty weird to write a blog, but never read others. Especially if you avoided reading blogs because you thought it was bad for your mental health. Why make more of a bad thing?

People want different things. This reads to me like why date if you’re not gay and also your own type.

I think it's more like an oncologist who avoids smoking for health reasons being on the board of a cigarette company.

Because it makes people feel good.

Twitter is toxic, yet people enjoy that echo-chamber.

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