How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design | Hacker News Reader

How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design

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25 pointsandrewbaron14 comments

I have a theory that one of the things that makes twitter appealing to many people is it's ephemeral nature. Seen this way it's historical flakiness is actually one of the the things that makes it popular. Whether valid or not, there is a sense in which twitter seems to be a good venue for casual social messages that aren't going to be archived and potentially used against you at some later date. Whereas facebook (again validly or not) sends a message that this is the repository of your accomplishments, and that it will be your permanent record.

The thing is that as human beings we need both fireproof digital libraries that can keep our memories safe, and the electronic equivalent of the floating world where the record of what was said evaporates with the morning dew.

You can see this principle at work in how 2ch/4chan's ephemeral nature shaped the behaviors of their users (and thus their culture).

I don't think it's quite accurate to call Twitter ephemeral, though. All kinds of third-party services are trying to index and archive as many tweets as possible, plus there's always the possibility that Twitter will cut a more formal deal with Google (or any other search engine).

Plus, there have been numerous documented instances where deleted tweets can still be found by Twitter's own search engine.

In short, the old rule of thumb still applies: if you don't want it archived and indexed and preserved forever, don't put it online in the first place.

It's the _perception_ of ephemeral, through the UI and the way twitter presents "real-time" (most recent first, difficult to scroll through older stuff, less than stellar search (at least compared to other services)).

I know exactly what the writer means by that problem. The first page is really useful to search for new tweets on a topic, but once you login to use what you found, you can't revisit the original home page without logging out.

I find that to be really annoying, especially when I want to tweet about multiple topics that I want to search for first.

I've run into that twitter logo thing on summize.com (search.twitter.com) so many times. Every single time I'm there like a fool I click on the twitter logo, I never learn.

As a side note though, if you really want this article to be taken seriously (especially by people at twitter), I would rename it. I'm sure they see a million "why twitter will fail" style posts every day, so the honest points of your article doesn't shine through.

That article would have benefited greatly from the N-list approach.

Too many too list :)

I have used Twitter daily for years

No, you haven't.

Twitter launched in early 2006, so I'm not sure how I see how this is impossible...

Sorry about that. I really should check my facts before being snarky. For some reason I thought twitter was only a year or so old. Maybe that's when it really took off or something.

Indeed I have. I began using it even before their major tipping point at SXSW and was there in Austin that year when it all happened. It was the U.S. digerati that all had the ah-ha moment together at once, due to the number of like-minded people within close proximity, in the wonderful outdoor spring of Austin, Tx. If not for this perfect storm, Twitter may not of ever hit the big time.

Indeed he has:

http://twitter.com/andrewbaron/status/35621952

Nevermind, i am on an intense fact-checking-spree tonight.

My post deserves negative four points (actually, it deserves worse) for two reasons: it's both false and rude.

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