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Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by brianwawok on Thursday June 02, 2016 @09:48PM (#11827758)
Why don't you ask them if you want to know what they are doing?

I still don't get it.

Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by Sacho on Friday June 03, 2016 @03:54AM (#11828933)
I am amazed this sentiment keeps popping up over and over in this thread. Asking them is exactly the kind of synchronous, flow-breaking communication that programmers should be keenly aware of. People are naturally discovering that polling is worse than event driven notifications, and it's great to watch.

There are plenty of arguments to make in favor of synchronous, face-to-face etc communication, about the loss of privacy when you broadcast everything you do, about the lack of personal engagement in this kind of communication, and so on. I can see making a judgement call whether to participate in this kind of communication, because there are plenty of drawbacks and negatives.

However, it's obvious to me why people are willingly switching some(most?) of their communication to it. Just as we learned to use asynchronous I/O in place of synchronous, we started using multicast messages and event-driven notifications instead of polling over all your friend-handles "hey what did you do today". It seems like a natural progression to me.

Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by danso on Friday June 03, 2016 @11:01AM (#11830698)
Great way to put it so that a technologist can understand. A lot of my best friends came from passive serendipitous interactions on FB that built into the kind strong and familiar enough to turn into "synchronous" interactions.
Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by vidarh on Friday June 03, 2016 @09:07AM (#11830076)
I think this may be largely an introvert vs. extrovert type distinction. I'm with you - I don't see the point. Twitter is the social network I've come closest to enjoy using, because of the loose expectations around it. I share stuff I find interesting on occasion, but very rarely anything about myself.

In terms of "social" I see it as a mostly-write type environment - I don't sweat that I ignore 90% of what the people I follow write, and I mostly follow people for updates/news/commentary rather than social contact.

But then I'm very aware that I'm very introverted. I like social contact in moderation, but it exhausts me, and every now and again I just get "social burnout" and turns into a total recluse for months on end.

What doesn't work for me about Snapchat is primarily that it is video. Video to me is "high touch" - it takes much more energy than writing a tweet, and similarly watching a video requires magnitudes more attention than rapidly scanning past a bunch of tweets.

Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by andresgottlieb on Thursday June 02, 2016 @09:58PM (#11827792)
One word: friction.
Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by ChazDazzle on Thursday June 02, 2016 @09:59PM (#11827795)
pictures and videos are more expressive than words
Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by adrianratnapala on Friday June 03, 2016 @12:12AM (#11828241)
I didn't understand that statement, could you perhaps draw an explanatory diagram for me?
Re:Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage by cik2e on Friday June 03, 2016 @12:23AM (#11828273)
Thank you, Gilfoyle.

I'm with you though.