The "point" or benefit of a twitter thread as opposed to straightforward longform is that each tweet (sentence or paragraph) can stand alone (in terms of liked and retweet circulation) as well as being a part of a broader piece.
"Can" or rather "could", but never really does in practice. Take away the thread, and 99.99% of mid-thread tweets lose all meaning. It just makes things awkward for the sake of it.
It's funny, I mean, you're not wrong, but there was a period when I wrote a lot of twitter threads, and I enjoyed the challenge of making each tweet stand alone. I think it made me a better writer. But yes, many don't take advantage of this.
Re:Twitter confirms Twitter Blue
by gaius_baltar on Friday May 28, 2021 @12:06PM
(#27317104)
Well, these mid-thread tweets can still be taken out of context and used to create sh*tstorms.
I don't completely disagree but the point is mostly two-fold (which are related to your point).
1. Discoverability and engagement.
2. A tweet thread tends to be more conversational than a blog post and therefore can be more off the cuff (and therefore easier).
Some people here will probably remember twitlonger, which wasn't that great. That or posting screenshots of text. I think threads, the idea, are fine; but the implementation is not good. I don't understand why, when you load a tweet in a thread that's not too long (< 50 tweets), Twitter refuses to just show the whole threads and makes you click "show more" every 5 tweets. That's a really bad UX.
Twitter threads must die, they are an oxymoron and a fugly hack. Just bloody give people a "gist.twitter.io" for long form, or something like that, for goodness' sake.