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A comment on Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion. Parent comment

Re:Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters E... by jacobwcarlson on Saturday October 10, 2015 @01:01AM (#10364569)
> Twitter provides 140 status messages. There is nothing wrong it, that is very cool. But I think there is a realization that it just isn't as cool as it was in 4 years ago. And it just became 3% less cool.

I can't tell if you're being ironic or facile, but Twitter has become quite a bit more than "140 status messages"(sic). It's a medium where politicians, dissidents, celebrities, the hoi palloi, brands, and anarchists all interact. Its a place of record quoted in headline news briefs and long-form journalism. It is used to organize rebellion and restricting access to it is viewed by many as a human rights violation.

Twitter as a business has problems, but being a fad isn't one of them.

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Re:Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters E... by scrollaway on Saturday October 10, 2015 @03:39AM (#10364830)
> being a fad isn't one of them.

I'd heavily disagree with that. The fad's not over, but it is a fad. The reason it sticks around is that people have an easy way to communicate with celebrities/popular people, and that was certainly not twitter's goal. The moment something better for this comes along, the fad will quickly fade.

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Re:Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters E... by exstudent2 on Saturday October 10, 2015 @01:19AM (#10364605)
They no longer allow sign ups via Tor, so I don't think it's as dissident friendly as it used to be.
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Re:Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters E... by mschuster91 on Saturday October 10, 2015 @04:06AM (#10364866)
That's more due to stupid retards abusing tor for spamming... with tor you have to draw the line somewhere.
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Re:Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters E... by gaius on Saturday October 10, 2015 @03:41AM (#10364836)
... in messages of 140 characters designed to provoke outrage and retweets, not to engage meaningfully with any of the complex issues of the day.

Their entire userbase could do a MySpace overnight.

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Re:Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters E... by roye on Saturday October 10, 2015 @09:29AM (#10365440)
Twitter is actually becoming quite popular in science. It's a great tool to hear of new papers, find out about new findings reported in conferences you can't attend, and communicate in a public forum. Don't think you would have had much of that in MySpace...
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Re:Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters E... by nsgi on Saturday October 10, 2015 @09:55AM (#10365522)
> restricting access to it is viewed by many as a human rights violation.

Restricting access to any website (except in some extreme cases) is viewed by many as a human rights violation. I don't see how Twitter is unique in this respect.

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