Twitter seems to be in this weird space where they have enough usability positives over other social media (pretty broadly accessible, doesn't pester you to log in, you can post NSFW content without it getting taken down) that I guess people just force themselves to use it, even if a blog post would be better formatted.
I use Twitter as a sideblog (a part of my blog sidebar where I put any posts that I don't feel like developing past the 140 character mark.) I've never once gotten into a conversation on Twitter, nor, I think, would I want to. But, of course, I still use it, because it has a killer app that none of the other sites seem to appreciate: it's embeddable without needing a whole bunch of gaudy "widget" framework.
Several reasons. a) It's much faster to put something on Twitter. b) It's much better for conversation. c) Many more people see it on Twitter. d) When I have time, I can write a blog post, incorporating feedback from the Twitter discussion.
I have been on Twitter since the beginning but I have no idea why people use it. The length restriction is totally lame, UX is rough, and it seems infested with wannabe's (followers), selfish people that live to share their lives with hashtags and pics of innane shit, Ashton, self-proclaimed "social media experts"), and hookers. Facebook has old people, and I'm one of 'em.
It's not hard to use. Make an account and visit the web page or use a client app. But people feel they don't have a valid reason _why_ they'd use it over Twitter.
So geeks explain the geeky benefits, which are substantial, but virtually no non-geeks care about.
The only people I know with twitter accounts are journalists. One friend in particular has a hard time understanding how you can function without twitter.
I tried using it, like most people, but when you work a job that doesn’t involve trolling the internet for news, it’s really hard to use twitter in any meaningful manner.
You’ll post something and a few days later you’ll have time to post a reply. Or you’ll follow a few interest points and miss everything they post because you don’t visit every hour and it’ll drown in the feed if you don’t.
I honestly think all the regular people on twitter are either unemployed or spending so much work time on social media that they ought to be fired.
I like social media by the way, but I don’t think it has a lot of value when it’s done primarily with strangers. I mean, my friends use Facebook groups and events to organize stuff and it’s really, really good at that. We use discord/WhatsApp chats to keep in touch on day to day chitchat - which would be better in person but we live in different cities/have children etc. So that sort of social media is great.
But talking with strangers? I mean, I’m home in bed with the flu right now, and we’re having this conversation, except I can’t be sure you’ll ever read what I post or if you’ll find it interesting or reply, and even if we do get to have a talk, we’ll likely never have another one. So it doesn’t hold a lot of real value aside from wasting time, and that’s kind of what twitter is all of the time.
My opinion of Twitter is ambivalent. It is actually the only mainstream social platform I use. And I use it with a fake account where I change name and photo every couple of weeks.
Having said that it seems to me that Twitter - opposed to FB and YT - comes with the advantage that you can quite easily specify what you want to see on your wall. I have a lot of investigative journalism outlets on my Follow list and special interest groups. So it seems to offer some value.
Then again it is indeed inviting to endlessly scroll in boredom hoping to find something that triggers some Dopamine.
I am a pretty heavy Facebook user and can't see the slightest use in Twitter. Or rather, it seems like an actively awful thing.
Facebook already allows and even encourages short posts. Forcing them seems like recipe to produce horrid dreck and that does seem just like what Twitter does.
Because twitter has a vast public reach, more so than an individuals blog. It's also really easy to use by journalists who get pre-made sound bites, which is a bonus for the sources too - they can more easily edit and shape how they are quoted.
While a blog would be much better quality, quality journalism doesn't sell nearly as well as highly-polarised, bite-sized clips.
I've yet to figure out why anyone would consume any kind of content on Twitter.
I've used it for a while, and what I got is that it's goos for (and people use it) to spam others about your projects or show off. However, if you try to use it to get news or updates on anything it is the least efficient, most stressful thing I've ever used.
I see Twitter as a good tool for outages, natural disasters, and protests. That's pretty much it.
It feels like a semantically-strained take, but I think Twitter is more of a place for people to say things, than it is for having conversations. Most people seem to use the site to broadcast something to their audience without really engaging.
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