Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

Re:Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around? by rdiddly on Tuesday February 28, 2017 @10:17PM (#13760722)

There is no technical reason. The reasons are all non-technical and irrational. Starting with the word-imagery: Have you ever heard a songbird go "tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet?" No, it ceases to be a tweet at that point. It's a squawk or scream or warble or something else. And probably it's annoying AF too. You probably think that's unimportant or has nothing to do with it.

Twitter is about the tweet. It's how they got big in the first place. It's the word they added to the dictionary. If you're thinking of pivoting away from what you are, you'd better consider it carefully and be sure it's not the main irreplaceable source of your claim to fame.

PS 10 years is hardly long enough for "always," "traditional" or "nostalgia" to apply.

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Re:Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around? by Godel_unicode on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @01:47AM (#13761784)

The core problem is that the length of a tweet should be "one concisely-stated thought", but that's hard to write into an API's documentation :)

> PS 10 years is hardly long enough for "always," "traditional" or "nostalgia" to apply.

Not in the real world no, although people are nostalgic for the pre-crash US, but on the Internet I think it definitely is. Put another way, if you changed Twitter into Medium people would be talking about "the old Twitter" with nostalgia.

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Re:Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around? by rdiddly on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @10:14AM (#13764270)

Well, that's why I said "hardly" and not "not." :)

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