I genuinely don't understand why a small number of people think Twitter threads are so difficult to read. They're not.
Threads can also create new conversations — just like the comments here on Hacker News — but what's better is that each Tweet (like a paragraph) can have comments and discussions corresponding to that Tweet. There's a finer level of detail in the overall conversation.
It's just fine and posts like this read like oldheads struggling to adapt.
Are you an active Twitter user? Have you been for a long while?
I'm not. I never have had an active account. I get linked to a Tweet and I'm not sure whether I'm at the beginning or the end. Is the embedded tweet a quote of someone they're jumping off of? Or a continuation of an active thread. Where does the thread start and end? Why are other names interjected between the parts? Is there more I'm missing in context?
The UI sucks. It's probably fine if you're familiar with it, but for outsiders trying to figure out what the latest hubub being talked about in the link is, it's pretty unapproachable.
Yeah, this. If you don't have a twitter account and/or use the dedicated app, trying to follow a thread (if it even lets you) is awful. If I follow a twitter link and it's more than one or two posts deep, I give up.
Meanwhile HN doesn't notify you of the thread being updated. You have to click a few times just to see if anyone has replied to you. Long threads on HN have all this indentation to follow, while Twitter doesn't. Both UI decisions have pros and cons.
Some people have a much easier time writing one paragraph at a time and then replying to themselves. It's a self-editing technique. It can be especially useful to neurodivergent folks, but some neurotypical folks find it easier too.
Twitter is really good for stream-of-consciousness regular thought updates as the thoughts come to you. A blog post is usually expected to be a complete topic crafted as one piece.
This is a strawman. The best Twitter threads incorporate a coherent idea into ~1 tweet, sometimes accompanied by an illustrative image or link to further reading.
It turns out that forcing conciseness and having simple embedded media can make for engaging reading. It's not the right format for all writing, and not everyone knows how to use it (see your example), but it is fantastic for commentary and analysis.
You split text into arbitrary page boundaries, cut off a sentence in the middle, and then put a number at the bottom to tell you where you are in the book.
I’m honestly surprised that people have a hard time filtering this stuff out. Do you get distracted by the chapter headings at the top of a page in a book, or the page numbers? At least with a decent Twitter thread, the individual tweets will be coherent paragraphs. Some people do write Twitter threads where they simply write and place breaks wherever they run up against the 280 character limit, but I rarely see it.
you forgot to put extra comments in the middle of the thread and to have the link you arrived at be in the middle so you have to scroll up, click and then scroll down.
I've basically given up on going to twitter and only try to follow links that are sent to me of content I can't find elsewhere. I can't tell if there is some good reason for the user experience of the platform that I would enjoy if I pushed through, if I am just not the target user, or if it's genuinely just terrible and held afloat by network effects.
It's just so pointless and unnecessary... There are far better platforms for this. If you had to give a two-hour talk, would you post it as a Youtube video, or a series of TikTok snippets?
Twitter conversations are marginally less vacuous and pointless than YouTube comments, but not significantly so.
>what's better is that each Tweet (like a paragraph) can have comments and discussions corresponding to that Tweet. There's a finer level of detail in the overall conversation.
So there are people out there in the wild who actually unroll those mid-thread tweet replies and read them? Huh.
If the content is truly good, then my incentive is for as many people to read it as possible. Therefore, why should I not advertise it? What's the point of good writing if no one is around to read it? Sure, you can write for yourself, but again, if you think the content is good, you should want as many people to read it as possible.
Yeah, I agree completely. I'd host the thing on YouTube (where content belongs) and promo it on TikTok, Twitter, Insta, etc (where promos, hot takes and bitchfests belong). So it is with written article of some length/substance, only instead of YouTube you can substitute any number of platforms, or even a self-hosted website.
Posting a link on twitter will not go as viral as breaking it up into into text-only posts. Twitter's algorithim gives higher rankings to plain text posts compared to posts with links or link to YouTube.
Eh, if you're not signed in Twitter threads are a nightmare that force me to use things like nitter.net. Why don't I sign in, well because this company wants your phone number without providing adequate protections to ensure they don't immediately lose it to some 2-bit hacker or nation state.
>It's just fine and posts like this read like oldheads struggling to adapt.
Call me old, fine. If that's the line that needs to be drawn, go for it.
I guess I just prefer reading long-form things without the visual distraction of an avatar every few lines, a forced 'page-gap' that has nothing to do with the reality of paper pages, page margins and view space that are entirely dynamic to the device and uncontrolled by the author, moving status notifications in the corners, unrelated authors speaking in the middle of the 'cohesive' thread, etc.
Here's a new definition for 'oldhead' that just struck me : "Those that have witnessed better."
Sorry that you got down-voted for this. I tried to balance it out by voting it up.
In general I think all of the possibilities that you mentioned with threads making new conversations etc. are true. For me, the issue is more in the UI/UX of both the Twitter website and the Twitter mobile applications and how threads are presented.
Yeah, I've never had any issues reading Twitter threads. I like that you can easily comment and share specific chunks, and that you can easily see other people's comments on those chunks. It also encourages authors to be concise.
Threads can also create new conversations — just like the comments here on Hacker News — but what's better is that each Tweet (like a paragraph) can have comments and discussions corresponding to that Tweet. There's a finer level of detail in the overall conversation.
It's just fine and posts like this read like oldheads struggling to adapt.