Very interesting material for the bit that I read, but I think I got tired of the Twitter interface of it. Had it been a blog post I would have kept reading. I don't use Twitter much so was surprised I reacted that way to it.
Was twitter really the right place for this?
Very informational piece, I liked it.
But having to read it in 12 sections was awkward.
Disclaimer, I already dislike twitter.
On the other hand, I’m not sure I would have sat through an entire blog post on the same issue. The tweet format is a highlight reel, especially for subjects I don’t even know I’m interested in yet (this wouldn’t go looking for long form content).
I was thinking the same thing about this working better as a blog post. It's so frustrating for each sentence to be it's own line and to be interrupted every moment. The content itself is excellent, but I really wish there was a better platform for it than Twitter.
The fact that this entire article was written on twitter is more interesting and remarkable to me than the actual content. Although they're both pretty interesting.
I don't mind the tweet follow-up articles at all - in fact I'd hope that writers with a platform would use said platform to expound on their twitter musings more often. Twitter is perfect for taking the temperature on an issue.
That said - I felt that this article was a bit of a waste of the initial interest the tweet garnered.
I actually agree with this, Twitter is far from my favorite way to consume content but I actually really enjoyed the format that this was presented in.
Twitter works quite well to captures some thoughts you just have on the moment. Though of course the reader experience is awful. The blog post format somehow implies more work and preparation, where you can just open twitter, start to write a short line, then continue message by message.
I don't know why twitter doesn't even try to improve the reader experience, threads are just a complete mess.
Agree to disagree I guess, but I have read a lot of things on Twitter that I found interesting and useful (amongst a lot of crap, obviously), and this I didn't like.
I mentioned in another comment, I enjoyed the structure and found it much easier to process. This is despite mostly reading long form articles and never having been a huge twitter user.
I was interested initially but lost it halfway due to the dozens of Twitter embeds throughout, often out of context and distracting to the article's premise. Reminded me of broadcast television.
I bet more people read more of the overall article if you publish it on Twitter. When you're faced with reading one big article, a lot of people would probably just skip it and not read any of it.
Not a huge fan of the blog-post-by-twitter-thread pattern.. read the first 6 posts, the. Need to click to read more, then find out it's 50+? tweets long?
Might be interesting, but feels like the wrong format.
There's definitely a lot of good content one can find linked on Twitter (not so much tweets themselves). But I ultimately decided it wasn't worth the opportunity cost when I have a house full of books I could be reading instead.
I only read it /because/ it was a twitter thread. I wouldn't have clicked the link if it had been a blog post (unless I read the comments here and found a compelling reason)
To defend twitter: each tweet in the thread has to have a point, something compelling about it - and in this case, an image with each. The limitations of twitter force the author to write concisely (as opposed to blogs, where paragraphs can be as rambling and long-winded as the author pleases). The medium also allows persons to reply to any individual tweet - performing a similar role as threaded comments on a site like HN, but more focused. Twitter is an ideal format for short-to-medium length content like this.
Part of the problem is that twitter is just awful. It’s really hard to find the relevant parts of the discussion. But it’s a fascinating research topic, so I’m quite enjoying the discussion. Thanks for laying out the links.
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