Twitter C/D

sitting in the dark shivering ... SARTRE
wish my life was more like Amelie's ... MONTMARTRE

:D

So I am a perennial quitter/restarter of Facebook because I kind of hate it but then I like receiving notifications about events and various other opportunities. Is Twitter any less compulsive? Probably not, right? I just don't really enjoy the feeling of being *on display* all the time and wasting precious hours staring at people's profiles. Definitely don't want both Twitter and FB, but thinking of switching? Tell me, I've never really used Twitter so don't exactly get it.

Things I hate about FB:
-The automatic assumption that if you friend someone on FB then you want to read every single thing they have to say.
- The AOL-style interface and the general clutter... reading FB is like trying to watch a movie with an audience that talks out loud and won't shut up.

Things I like about Twitter:
- Dozens of different clients. If you don't like the interface, try a different client. It's trivial to switch and you don't lose anything
- 140 character limit. You're forced to be interesting, witty, etc. immediately. Conversely, if you're boring - I'm unfollowing. Sorry dude.
- The ability to favorite a post (similar to "starring" an item in Google Reader). It's easy to come back to a post and then read the link you posted. (can't do that in FB)
- Conducive to partial attention. Most of the time I'm WORKING and don't really have the time to slog through your FB bullshit. With Twitter I can "get a sense of the zeitgeist" (as polyphonic says) and easily return back to what I was doing.

Elvis, your point about unfollowing is really important. If someone stops following you, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean they don't want to be your friend anymore, it just means they're not interested enough in your microblog to keep reading it.

If you unfriend a farcebook user it's like you murdered their children.

Although tbh there is the occasional entitled Twitter user who takes unfollowing personally, but I think that says more about them than it does about Twitter.

Haha, sounds like Twitter might be for me.

Now what if I wanted to promote an event? Is it easy to do that? I just "tweet" about it? Can you keep lists like "Los Angeles" and so on?

Yes but you need to be careful. If you exist to promote events it's fine because people will follow you for that reason; if you act like a real person and suddenly spam your followers you'll lose them.

ahhh, I see

sort of sounds like it does cut out a lot of the things I hate about FB

And yeah, you can add people to lists without following them. You have an enormous degree of control over what you see and how you see it.

There's no expectation of reciprocity. I follow people who follow me back, but that's only because I use Twitter for conversation, not because I'm a sad old tit who expects to be loved. If you're just promoting stuff, you don't need to follow everyone who follows you.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN TWITTER

santa broke it

http://status.twitter.com/

Okay, so what was this @serafinowicz tweet that has everyone so upset? It's been deleted, but apparently it involves Sarah Palin and the Pope is may or may not be libelous.

Evidence mounting that it was all a hoax: http://twitter.com/#search?q=serafinowicz%20tweet

i've been wondering that all day.

Ugh, comedians. Been so tedious reading about that all day

Is twitter down for good or something? Every time i get on in the past week or so it says "Wiki does not exist". Not that I miss it that terribly, but if so then I do feel sorry for all the 24-hour news channels.

I have not experienced any outages.

since twitter is down, i'll just post it here: I'M SITTING ON THE TOILET, YA'LL

Ugh nvmd, it works again.

Haven't used Twitter at all in a couple of weeks. Just opened it and realised why: RETWEETS. THEY HAVE RUINED TWITTER.

There is a button you can press to get rid of retweets by a particular user.

Yeah, thanks, but I don't think I can be bothered removing everyone's retweets. Easier to just not use it.

Retweets have been around for more than a couple of weeks.

Yep but being away from Twitter for a fortnight has broken my tolerance to them.

to? of?

I don't really get your issue.

My issue is that retweets are really really horribly annoying.

not always.

the button gets rid of RTs from specific users, not across the board

http://idea-sandbox.com/blog_images/transformer.jpg

That's what I mean, I have to switch off like 150 users' retweets.

Auto retweets are bloody stupid anyway.

annoying RTs: artists who RT every bit of praise they receive, and people who RT people like kanye/other famous people who, if i wanted to see their tweets, would be FOLLOWING MYSELF.

other RTs: fine and often helpful

pro-tip - if you follow annoying people, twitter will be an annoying experience for you. if you follow smart, witty, likable people, it won't.

same with fbook! i don't get people who are all GRARRRRR I HATE EVERYONE ON SOCIAL NETWORKS. hide them! block them! unfollow them! get better friends!

the crucial element that twitter needs to cop from facebook is the ability to "follow" someone w/o seeing their tweets, just like facebook allows you to be friends w/ someone w/o seeing them on your news feed

why would one do that on twitter, tho? unfollowing isn't as personal as unfriending

pro-tip - if you follow annoying people, twitter will be an annoying experience for you. if you follow smart, witty, likable people, it won't.

See I do do that, and I thought I was doing all right, but coming back to it has proved me incorrect. Retweets are still shit btw.

RT @Suppositori Spelling (Autumn Almanac) Retweets are still shit btw.

i dont get why retweets are shit

are people retweeting things you dont like

why dont you just unfollow these people

RT @Suppositori Spelling (Autumn Almanac) Retweets are still shit btw.

See THAT type I don't mind so much because at least you've the opportunity to comment. If it's just clicking the retweet button all you're doing is generating noise and shitting up my feed.

why do i get the feeling that anyone saying anything at all that doesn't directly pertain to autumn almanac would be classed as "shitting up my feed"

i appreciate the vast majority of RTs that my friends/followees, who are mostly capable of using the RT function judiciously, bring to me

Wow, read what I said earlier and chill ffs.

i still dont understand whats annoying about retweets

it doesn't strike me that i'm the one who needs to chill!!

Does anyone else use the Android app and can work out how to unfollow people in it, or can you only do that via the website?

I use twidroyd and It's pish easy.

I use TweetBird on the iPhone to manage followy stuff. It's great but takes up 23762874628743628374623874Mb of RAM for some reason.

Wait, TweetBird? I meant Birdbrain.