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Comment by bobobob420 | Hacker News Reader

People seem to care way too much about twitter. I don’t use Twitter and am under the impression I am not missing anything. I get my internet comment reading through Youtube and reddit. Writing an article about what anonymous people think about a social media engine is quite cringe. What people post on twitter is not news and does not substantiate a news article

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I'm personally convinced the popularity of this site is due to journalists kind of living there 24/7

This position ("I don't use the website, therefore it's not important") is puzzling. There is objective data, after all, SimilarWeb estimations, for example:

1. google.com 83.9B visits (~ user sessions, per Apr)

2. youtube.com 32.7B visits

3. facebook.com 16.8B visits

4. twitter.com 6.4B visits

5. instagram.com 6.3B visits

I think these days top apps would be a better gauge of relevance, for which twitter ranks much lower

These numbers mean nothing. Just raw numbers in a vacuum. Facebook is worthless and it's visit count means nothing. Same with instagram or twitter. The only reason google is so high is due to it being a search engine. These numbers are not the gotcha you seem to be implying they are.

>Facebook is worthless and it's visit count means nothing. Same with instagram or twitter.

This sounds just like your strongly held opinion.

I don't think they argued their point well, but I do see it. The argument is that Twitter is an important website at least to the point of not dismissing the troubles of Twitter's users with "I am not missing anything". It hardly matters if a particular person is not missing anything; many other people (who are actually on Twitter) are also not missing anything but they also happen to be invested in Twitter as a social media platform.

Someone who doesn't visit this website could say, "People seem to care too much about HN. I don't use HN and am under the impression I'm not missing anything." They wouldn't even be wrong. But it's also dismissive of everyone who does use this site and ultimately irrelevant to any issues which the HN community might have with the service.

Earth means nothing. Just a tiny planet in a vacuum. Humans are worthless and what happens to them means nothing.

What gives these estimations any credibility versus the numbers provided by the platforms themselves?

This also naively doesn't consider people who access the services via apps instead of visiting a website, which in 2023, are going to be a minority for a consumer-oriented social media platform.

Twitter can give you access to the beta version of 'The Narrative'. It's a little messy and there are trolls, but you can kind of see how stories and media are shaped. It's like a peak into the process instead of seeing the finished product. I would say it's generally 12-24h ahead of the news.

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