Hacker News Reader

It's funny you mention the "Oprah factor". I'd been feeling more and more skeptical about twitter the days leading up to the day Oprah showed up there. That was the peak of the celebrity wave, and it completely did me in. That night I deleted my twitter account. I still use the the API+Search to track what my close friends are saying, but have no interest in posting updates any longer.

View on HN

Ummm...what? What difference does it make how many celebrities are on there, especially if you're still using Search to track your friends?

I wasn't using search before, maybe I said that wrong. Before, I had an account and followed more people than I cared to keep up with (the you follow me, I follow you problem) then the celebrities came and really turned me off.

So I deleted my account and now use specialized searches through the API to just show me what my close friends who use twitter are up to.

Twitter has a pretty good specialized search for what your friends are up to: Twitter :) Why didn't you just unfollow the people you don't want to hear from?

I like to be able to stop "following" somebody without them being aware of it. I like following to work like RSS. Only I know who I am watching.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com