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Comment by fourside | Hacker News Reader

I feel like you ignored the many qualifiers in the parent comment. I read it as painting broad generalizations rather than stating universal facts about all twitter users.

It wasn’t just the OP who noticed people posting fluff. It was a meme for a while that some people would recite their day to day via tweets. I remember conversations from everyday people on not knowing what to post on the app.

Niche communities formed but its utility was limited beyond that as evidenced by the growth of FB, YouTube and Instagram while Twitter plateaued. U

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> I feel like you ignored the many qualifiers in the parent comment. I read it as painting broad generalizations rather than stating universal facts about all twitter users.

I read them as broad generalizations too, just wildly incorrect ones based on my own perspective from having been a Twitter user at that time, even if they're broad generalizations.

Also if you start your comment with "Author is completely wrong" and then put a bunch of broad generalizations that don't match with people's own experience, expect those people to also share their own experience.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/04/23/le-twittre

“I’m a twitter shitter!” - Penny Arcade, 2008

Lots of people were confused about the purpose or utility of 'micro-blogging.' It only really clicked for people once you had minor celebrities using the platform to crowd-source information, advice, and ideas from fans.

My understanding of Twitter is that it is or was like your official personal Gazette[0] where you could broadcast what you are up to or whatever is on your mind at the moment. It has definitely different use cases for regular users and so for celebrities and government entities.

Also you can think of Twitter as a standalone spinoff of Facebook status updates user behaviour but with hashtags. I actually find Twitter more compelling than Facebook but somehow Twitter's management was able to ruin Twitter. Now we have not only Twitter but X, Threads, Bluesky and Mastadon. It is way too fragmented but imo they should all interop and work as an one ecosystem.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazette

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