Stop Writing Twitter Threads

https://pierre.equoy.fr/blog/posts/2022/10/stop-writing-twitter-threads/

by sebst • 4 years ago

133 155 4 years ago

pierre.equoy.fr

posharma• 4 years ago

Completely agree. Whatever happened to long form writing!

browningstreet• 4 years ago

Medium

/s (but not really)

__derek__2• 4 years ago

I think the "/s" is appropriate. Yesterday, I visited Medium for the first time in a while to read a post shared by a local VC. The post itself was a long-form tweet: a series of punchy emotional lines with little substance, and the side-bar was full of ZergNet-style posts with click-bait titles (including the "Cheat Codes for Life" one that made the front-page this morning).

poulsbohemian2• 4 years ago

He's not wrong, but he's also overlooking that it's darn easy to open Twitter and start typing, and get instant conversation started, IE: it's a path of least resistance. Set up your own site? Sure, I wish more people would, but it takes some degree of knowledge to do that, and then your mom and your dog are the only people who will find your site unless you work really hard at self-promotion. Facebook would have been a good place for this in the past, but is a cesspool these days. There might be specialized forums and interest groups out there - but it can be hard to pin your content for general use, IE: it gets lost in some thread, whereas at least Twitter is tied to you.

Yes, there are various sites promoting themselves as places for long-form writing, but they have their own issues with copyright, walled gardens, etc. This is a space that needs entrepreneurial focus.

kspacewalk25• 4 years ago

Tweet a summary, supply a link. Discussion can take place on Twitter, but I won't have to use those thread unrollers (or rollers, I don't know) to emulate a functioning article.

poulsbohemian2• 4 years ago

I don't disagree that this would be more desirable, but then we are asking people to find a place to write their long-form content. For a lot of people, anything more complicated than a text message is too much - just keeping it real here.

pixl972• 4 years ago

darn easy to open Twitter and start typing,

signs in

[Your account is suspended until you give us your phone number]

never signs in again

shmageggy• 4 years ago

Opening twitter.com on my phone reveals no fewer than 4 (FOUR!) obstacles to doing or seeing anything.

Log-in with Google pop-up | “Use the app” nag box | Cookie modal | Log-in page

When I get bombarded like that I just “nope” right out

shever73• 4 years ago

Exactly. I don't have a Twitter account for precisely this reason. Without an account, you have to be very careful about scrolling before Twitter decides you've seen enough. If the content is really interesting, then I might resort to Developer Tools to remove the overlay, but most often I just close the tab.

yunohn3• 4 years ago

I agree with you, except for:

the only people who will find your site unless you work really hard at self-promotion

Twitter breakthroughs also need quite a bit of self promotion and luck for virality.

xigoi7• 4 years ago

Open the site and start typing? You mean this? http://txti.es/

agentdrtran4• 4 years ago

Does anyone outside of a small technical set care about this? I have no problem reading twitter threads — I think they're easier to read than this site!

corobo3• 4 years ago

I only really see it when Foone posts something interesting and HN agrees with itself repeatedly that Twitter threads suck

endorphine• 4 years ago

I find them significantly harder to read than this site, which renders fine in my phone.

The fact that speech is interrupted every 140 chars is ridiculous.

__derek__2• 4 years ago

They bumped it up to 280 characters some time back, but the point stands. Twitter is a poor medium for communicating ideas (let alone guides as linked in TFA).

xigoi7• 4 years ago

Enable network throttling in your browser (to simulate the experience of people who can't afford fast internet) and see which becomes easier to read.

_Algernon_2• 4 years ago

Tried it on the slow 3g preset in chromium for the Cory doctorow tweet linked above with cashing disabled (as a first load would be).

20 seconds load time - though readable before that. But you don't want to do that on a metered connection.

agentdrtran4• 4 years ago

This is true, but I also don't think anything but a tiny fraction of HN is on a slow connection.

lazzlazzlazz2• 4 years ago

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.

kspacewalk25• 4 years ago

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.

corobo3• 4 years ago

If you had to give a two-hour talk, would you post it as a Youtube video, or a series of TikTok snippets?

Both tbh. The snippets being marketing for the whole video, which itself is marketing for the rest of the channel.

I'd wang it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even LinkedIn too if there's a biz link.

paulpauper• 4 years ago

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.

pixl972• 4 years ago

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.

TheCapn• 4 years ago

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.

Finnucane• 4 years ago

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.

lazzlazzlazz2• 4 years ago

It's probably fine if you're familiar with it

Could just end the conversation here.

cestith3• 4 years ago

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.

bsnnkv2• 4 years ago

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.

linuxdaemon• 4 years ago

DisplayName @username Do I want to read a full length article in bite size chunks? That are sometimes arbitrarily 1/4

DisplayName @username Split across a bunch of little cards with a number to piece them together at the bottom? 2/4

DisplayName @username No, I do not. It's a bunch of extraneous crap that I have to filter out to read the actual point 3/4

DisplayName @username It is the wrong platform for that kind of content, and people are cramming it in anyway. 4/4

pphysch• 4 years ago

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.

klodolph6• 4 years ago

Sounds kind of like a book.

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.

mattnewton• 4 years ago

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.

post-it• 4 years ago

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.

serf2• 4 years ago

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."

exolymph• 4 years ago

People write Twitter threads because they have an audience on there, and they're used to the form factor as are their readers. Also because Twitter heavily downranks external links.

zeptonaut22• 4 years ago

As someone that regularly writes long-form content on a blog, I have to say: this post completely misses the point.

People write Twitter threads because Twitter gives them distribution for what they want to say.

Sure, it may not be the perfect soapbox for what you want to say. But if you write something insightful, a zillion people may see it as opposed to your mom and best friend who read it on your blog.

time_to_smile2• 4 years ago

a zillion people may see it as opposed to your mom and best friend who read it on your blog

If you write solely for vanity than this is great, a zillion is better than 10 so you can feel important.

The problem is that Twitter threads are incredibly ephemeral and also written, inherent to the nature of the platform, to be more engaging than informing.

I would rather a few hundred people, or even a few dozen, carefully read and consider what I've written rather than a "zillion" mindlessly click on some basically contently stream of "sounds good" blips.

Of course I've basically left twitter because the ego boost from engagement was not sufficiently worth the pressure the platform puts on your writing to eventually become pure engagement obsessed drivel, devolving ultimately into the infamous "shit post".

I've had plenty of people I really respect I've met on Twitter and they go only one of two paths in the long run: increasingly writing meaningless content for the ego-driven thrill of likes until they become an intellectual parody of themselves or they leave Twitter baring occasional updates.

afavour• 4 years ago

I think you’re presenting absolutes where there aren’t any here. People read deeply on Twitter sometimes too. Let’s say there’s a 100% chance of a blog reader deeply considering what you’re saying but only a 10% chance of the same happening on Twitter. If your tweets get 10.1x traffic your blog does then Twitter is still a better platform for broadcasting your thoughts.

BitwiseFool2• 4 years ago

"If you write solely for vanity than this is great, a zillion is better than 10 so you can feel important."

I write because I want to share my thoughts. Sometimes I want to persuade people, and sometimes I just want to share interesting tidbits. I think it is self evident that people who want to share their ideas publicly would rather have their work seen by more people than fewer people. It seems like the optimal solution is to write twitter threads but also link to one's own blog.

PragmaticPulp2• 4 years ago

It also missed the point that Twitter is designed to be ephemeral. The content being passed around is meant to be fresh and in-the-moment. It's not where you go to post long-form content that serves as a reference for years to come.

Many of the people I follow have no problem embracing both dynamics: They write long-form blog posts, then use Twitter to add up-to-date nuance or link to the blog post in relevant discussions.

Twitter and Blogs aren't actually competing to replace each other. They're different platforms with different use cases and different formats. Trying to equate them or declare one better than the other misses the point.

gernb• 4 years ago

IMO twitter should drop the length limit and just add a `more...` after 280 characters

alexpotato• 4 years ago

Except in Twitter you can link back to past tweets. Instagram etc don't have this and are, in my mind, WAY more ephemeral.

I also would point out that if Twitter search wasn't garbage, the linking back to old tweets and threads would be even more common as people made "threads of threads". I never got why Twitter never put more focus on searching past tweets given that people searching for things is the best signal of what they actually care about and can be used for more targeted advertising (see Google).

bachmeier2• 4 years ago

a zillion people may see it as opposed to your mom and best friend who read it on your blog.

The same zillion people will see your short summary and the link to your blog on Twitter.

rglullis2• 4 years ago

How many people actually click on a link, instead of scrolling down?

Alex3917• 4 years ago

No they won't. Twitter threads generate tens or hundreds of times more engagement than blog posts linked to from Twitter. Even getting 20 or 30k page views from making the front page of HN is nothing compared to the engagement that Twitter can generate.

jasode• 4 years ago

The same zillion people will see your short summary and the link to your blog on Twitter.

No, that isn't what happens and the author of this thread's article makes the same mistake when he writes:

do not use Twitter. Your ideas, your findings, your knowledge deserve better. Put your thoughts on your own website or blog, and share it with the World using whatever social network you see fit.

Agree that Twitter is terrible reading experience for long form text but the advice given above (by many complainers) misses a crucial issue: tweets with just a link to a blog article has less engagement and that's a penalty writers don't want pay.

https://blog.hootsuite.com/linkless-tweets-experiment/

Writers prioritize reaching maximum audience size.

tomjakubowski• 4 years ago

Probably less than 1% of those people would click the link, and 10% of those would read it after clicking. Maybe do both: write the thread with some detail, and link to your blog with even more detail in the first couple tweets.

shagie• 4 years ago

Twitter threads, as awkward as they are, give the option for people to engage with each tweet.

Engaging with a blog post involves leaving the site, reading it, returning to twitter, and then tweeting an out of context something.

simonw• 4 years ago

Twitter's analytics will reveal that a depressingly tiny portion of them will actually click on the link.

paxys• 4 years ago

They will see the link. They will not click on the link.

asenna• 4 years ago

I think I read somewhere recently that Twitter is actively throttling distribution for anything containing links externally. They want you to remain on their platform.

baxtr• 4 years ago

This is exact opposite of good product management. Don't introduce barriers for consumption. Instead realize that people are lazy. Some might click on a link to get them to a page inside their twitter app on their mobile. Most won't. Missed opportunity to get into the head of your audience. btw: Did you just read this comment? Would you have read it if I had linked out?

leephillips4• 4 years ago

How about: write it on your website and tweet a link to it.

Also I’m skeptical about the engagement that people think they get with Twitter. It may appear that more people are seeing your output, but they may not be actually reading or thinking about it. They won’t refer to it in one of their own articles two years from now.

What do you really want? Twenty clicks of the heart button? Or one person actually building on your ideas?

xboxnolifes• 4 years ago

How about: write it on your website and tweet a link to it.

The more indirect your content, the more audience you lose.

dendriti• 4 years ago

the Hacker News commenter with 20k karma says hey. go post your comments on your own damn blog.

pheasantquiff• 4 years ago

I see a possible solution. Have a tool which posts to your blog _and_ to twitter.

You get the engagement on twitter and also have the information in the open for other people to read too (you can link the blog post at the end of the inlined twitter long form post).

Eat your cake and still have it.

nonameking2026• 4 years ago

Threadreaderapp does a good job of making it readable

https://threadreaderapp.com/

draw_down• 4 years ago

Unfortunately these bots have people shitting up the replies with “unroll @somethreadbot”. Really annoying way to implement this.

yunohn3• 4 years ago

Indeed, feels like Twitter should add this natively.

Waterluvian• 4 years ago

Twitter threads are kind of nice in a way that every segmented idea has its own comments section and you can share them.

It gives the reader power to more easily share the part they’re interested in sharing.

gausswho2• 4 years ago

There is some utility that. I haven't seen blogs offer anchors per paragraph but would serve the same objective.

norswap• 4 years ago

This won't convince anyone. The truth is that Twitter thread get a ton of engagement that articles don't — even if you post them on Twitter. Leaving the platform, particularly on mobile, is additional friction that readers might not be willing to take on.

dekervin• 4 years ago

The reason twitter threads work is because it forces writers to be explicit in how they articulate their demonstrations. No matter how long the thread, it's easy to follow, easy to scan beforehand.

When I open a medium link, there is a high chance ( > 50%) it will be full of uninteresting filler, just to make the point look important.

The only reason I would follow a link to a blog on a non technical topic, is if the author had already built a brand with me, in my brain. For example by writing good twitter threads.

klodolph6• 4 years ago

There are some people I read on both Medium and Twitter, and so I’ll see someone tweet about an article they posted on Medium. The same person that articulates themselves clearly and effectively on Twitter will sometimes post a rambling, conversational mess of Medium.

kasajian2• 4 years ago

Especially when posting something on Medium means that a lot of people won't see it since Medium blocks your post if the reader has read too many Medium posts that month, asking them to login or subscribe. I basically block people who tweet Medium posts for that reason. If I can't click on something on mobile to read it right there and then, it's a waste of my time. Same with paywalls.

lbhdc• 4 years ago

I really dislike reading twitter for similar reasons as tfa. I usually skip posts here where the link from twitter because I find the experience to be user hostile and I would rather not engage.

AndrewGaspar2• 4 years ago

I think there are decent critiques of the Twitter Thread medium, but complaining about the bandwidth inefficiencies is just kind of silly. 22MB of data (uncompressed, uncached)?!

The good (and bad) aspect of Twitter Threads is that, adapted appropriately to the medium, individual points can be individually addressed and pulled from their original context to start new discussion, or to emphasize the most important part of the essay. I think this is probably good for sparking additional discussions, though of course it can have the down side of removing context.

prepend2• 4 years ago

I recently switched to a cheap mobile provider that only gives 2GB of data per month. 20MB per tweet ads up fast.

I think it’s relevant to consider content bloat, especially when it’s 100x more than is actually needed.

Telling me and other users to just suck it up and pay more isn’t a good solution. $15 vs $50 is a big difference for a monthly fee for 2GB vs unlimited.

AndrewGaspar2• 4 years ago

His numbers are incorrect because he's assuming every tweet is loading nothing from cache, which is wrong. If you're regularly browsing Twitter, you're not going to load 7MB per tweet thread.

diebeforei485• 4 years ago

He's correct that Twitter should do a better job with threads. Thread reader apps shouldn't be a thing.

I like that Twitter threads force people to be concise and doesn't allow for giant paragraphs.

yunohn3• 4 years ago

I often find the conciseness to convey very little substance though. Always feels too vague but agreeable for virtue signalling purposes.

evouga4• 4 years ago

I think the article misses the two bigger reasons to avoid writing Important content on Twitter:

- Twitter forces people to log in to read it. The... dozens?... of us who have a burner account but don't use Twitter regularly and have no interest in doing so probably can't be bothered to log in to read what you're writing.

- Twitter could delete your posts for any reason, or no reason, at any time(*). Given the ongoing Twitter-Musk struggle and Twitter's generally dubious financial outlook, this is not idle alarmist speculation.

(*): The content on your blog could also disappear at any time, however, unlike your Twitter thread (1) the material will be archived by the Internet Archive and (2) you have full control over your data and if/when to stop hosting it.

nine_k• 4 years ago

- Twitter nudges you to log in to read. This can be sidestepped. Also, https://nitter.net exists (and you can run your own copy if you want to).

- Any third-party service can delete your post. Keep a copy of the source material. OTOH possibly more people lose interest in their blogs and stop keeping them online than old but important Twitter threads get deleted.

- There are apps that create nice blog-like pages from Twitter threads. If you re interested mostly in reading, they do a really adequate job of turning a Twitter thread into a compact page not overburdened with heavy / slow scripts.

evouga4• 4 years ago

OTOH possibly more people lose interest in their blogs and stop keeping them online than old but important Twitter threads get deleted.

I agree with you that this is true for now. However I expect that in the not-so-distance future, all Twitter threads will get deleted.

xigoi7• 4 years ago

The author of Nitter wishes Twitter didn't exist, they created Nitter just to make Twitter slightly more bearable.

ISL2• 4 years ago

Login is not forced. I was surprised to read the assertion above. Popping open https://twitter.com/EricTopol in an incognito window allowed me to read posts and threads without login.

Public-square distribution without login has been one of Twitter's key differentiators from Day 1 -- it is the reason that reporters/news-channels like it so much. You can cite it and everyone can see the same thing in real time.

jklinger410• 4 years ago

Whether or not Twitter blocks you from viewing a tweet before logging in is not consistent.

evouga4• 4 years ago

On my phone I get a popup demanding that I "verify [my] password to get the full Twitter experience" with no way of dismissing the popup. But you are right that on my desktop in incognito mode it let me view the threads unmolested, so I was wrong in my original post.

AlanYx• 4 years ago

Popping open the link you provide only works for me in incognito mode on desktop. In regular mode on desktop, it appears to work, but very shortly after beginning to scroll, it pops up a box saying I have to log in to see more. On mobile, I can't read anything at all; there's a box saying I have to log in.

It's not really public-square distribution in any general sense. Hence the popularity of proxies like nitter.

PragmaticPulp2• 4 years ago

The... dozens?... of us who have a burner account but don't use Twitter regularly and have no interest in doing so probably can't be bothered to log in to read what you're writing.

This right here is why this doesn't matter. Those "dozens?" of people are a drop in the bucket relative to the overall distribution these people are getting on Twitter.

Twitter could delete your posts for any reason, or no reason, at any time(*). Given the ongoing Twitter-Musk struggle and Twitter's generally dubious financial outlook, this is not idle alarmist speculation.

This also misses the point of Twitter. Twitter threads aren't meant to be blog posts. They're meant to be ephemeral and in-the-moment. They're passed around for a few days or weeks and then mostly forgotten, with a few exceptions. Blog writers will scoff at the idea, but Twitter writers have embraced this dynamic and made the most of it.

I think the core error is trying to equate Twitter threads to blog posts on a different platform. They're not. They're different formats with different use cases and different target audiences. Dropping a blog post into a Twitter thread wouldn't make for great reading, just as dropping a Twitter thread into a blog template usually looks out of place and incomplete.

People write to their audience and they write for the platform. There's a place for both Twitter threads and blogs, but we don't have to pick one or the other as the sole source of distribution.

evouga4• 4 years ago

Twitter threads aren't meant to be blog posts. They're meant to be ephemeral and in-the-moment.

But regardless of what they're meant to be, in practice, they are also used as blog posts (as in the three examples linked to by the OP). I don't think the OP is complaining about Tweets raving about the new sandwich place down the block.

neals• 4 years ago

Should be aimed at Twitter, allowing some type of article flow style tweeting

Retr0id4• 4 years ago

I tweet regularly, and I also have a personal blog.

Tweeting a link to a blog post, no matter how interesting, generates a fraction of the engagements of direct-to-twitter content.

I write blog posts rarely, and the frequency of my blog posts dropped off dramatically once my twitter following grew.

Part of this is self-imposed rules. I hold my blog to a high standard - it is for completed and whole ideas/thoughts/projects only. On the other hand, Twitter is where I can dump my random ideas and work-in-progress.

I would love to say that all my projects are done purely for my own enjoyment, but that's not true. I do things because I want other people to look at it, to think about it, and to talk about it. Twitter is generally the best way to make that happen.

In an ideal world I would blog more, and I try to - but tweeting is easier and more readily dopamine-inducing.

rileyphone• 4 years ago

Twitter penalizes posts with links in their algo I think.

Retr0id4• 4 years ago

Yup, they prioritise on-platform engagements.

black_puppydog• 4 years ago

While I agree that twitter is a terrible medium for long form posts, this is not a battle I'm picking. I have a dedicated nitter instance that works perfectly. I had to invest 5 minutes of admin time on it within the last... 3 years? dunno, feels long anyhow. Automatic redirect configured in all my desktop/mobile browsers. I essentially never see twitter proper, this is the 80/20 solution that works really well for me.

If/when that stops working I'll stop following twitter links. Done, now I can focus on some other soapbox. Semi-linear commits for example (anyone at github: pretty please?)

letmeinhere• 4 years ago

Cory Doctorow does Twitter threads in a very intentional manner, cross-posting a legible version on his blog, e.g. https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1584493419287973893

Beltalowda• 4 years ago

Anyone can write whatever they want on whatever medium they find works best for them.

Why should I have an opinion on what medium someone else chooses to express themselves? It's on the same level as being snobby about music style.

And for what it's worth, I dislike Twitter. I also dislike hip-hop, and Marvel movies, and a lot of other things. But if that's how people want to express themselves then more power to them. No one is forcing any of that on me.

chuckreynolds• 4 years ago

POSSE link at bottom is broken, extra > in there.

Ease of use & distribution supersedes ownership of content and compiled legibility. Same reason people used Medium and now Substack... and in another way patreon for paywalls etc.

klodolph6• 4 years ago

No.

I don’t find Twitter threads hard to follow. You click on them, you get a sequence of 280-character tweets, with the little reply/retweet/like/share buttons between each block of text. This is not at all onerous to follow.

Compare to your typical recipe blog or Fandom (.com) site. Is that any better? I’d say the recipe blogs are and sites like Fandom are far worse, because the page is constantly trying to hijack the browser to show ads. Recipe sites are barely usable these days.

The 280-character limit also has benefits. Writers know that tweets will be viewed in isolation, so they try to make each tweet as coherent as possible, individually. This style of writing is bland and simplistic but also clear. You can’t say it in 280 characters, you rewrite it.

I wrote this comment as if it were a Twitter thread. Each paragraph fits in 280 characters—and one fits exactly! This dry style may remind you of the papers you had to read or write in college, but I appreciate the clarity.

Twitter encourages clarity and brevity, and I like it.

rglullis2• 4 years ago

you get a sequence of 280-character tweets,

except when you get someone else's comment or response sandwiched between two items of the thread?

because the page is constantly trying to hijack the browser to show ads.

Ad-blockers are amazing. Brave's Speed Reader also give you every blog or article already formatted with a clean, js-free stylesheet.

This style of writing is bland and simplistic but also clear.

And also appealing to the lowest common denominator. It's like the McDonalds of an informational diet.

Twitter encourages clarity and brevity, and I like it.

Twitter encourages soundbites and shallow thinking, and I think we should do better.

klodolph6• 4 years ago

except when you get someone else's comment or response sandwiched between two items of the thread?

Can you give an example? When I look at Twitter threads, I see the main thread presented contiguously. If I want to look at replies, I have to scroll to the bottom or click on an individual tweet.

Maybe I’ve seen a sandwiched reply once or twice, long ago, but I haven’t seen it in a long time. Maybe there’s been an UI change, or maybe it’s the fact that you can post an entire Twitter thread in one click.

Ad-blockers are amazing. Brave's Speed Reader also give you every blog or article already formatted with a clean, js-free stylesheet.

Most people do not use ad blockers. I use different browsers, different computers and mobile devices. Shall I go through all the steps necessary to configure ad blockers on every device and browser combination I have?

And also appealing to the lowest common denominator. It's like the McDonalds of an informational diet.

Your information diet should be varied. It’s okay to eat at McDonald’s, but you will probably have a bad time if you have every single meal there. It is okay to read threads on Twitter, but you should not get all of your news there.

The content I read on Twitter is definitely not lowest common denominator content. It is generally highly technical, specialized content that is simply written for 280-character chunks.

Twitter encourages soundbites and shallow thinking, and I think we should do better.

Blogs and journals encourage people to waste words on the page and ramble on without getting to the point. It’s sloppy writing, and I think we can do better.

I’m not trying to be cute here; this is a serious problem and you should treat it as a serious problem. You should write and consume long-form content, but you should also write and consume short-form content. Professors and grad students have a perennial problem writing abstracts and summaries for their journal articles because they have underdeveloped short-form writing skills. They often assume that their readers are fellow experts in the relevant field, and can figure out that the research is important based on its content.

The result? The research remains buried, because the professors and grad students doing the research can’t effectively summarize it or explain it to people outside the field. They give long-winded explanations that never get to the point, or assume that their audience has all of the relevant context. If they used Twitter more, they would likely find it easier to explain their research to people outside their own field. The reason is simple—brevity and clarity take practice.

This isn’t an example that I made up or picked out of thin air, this is a recurring complaint I hear from people working in communications in academia. A professor will say, “My research is important, maybe a journalist would be interested in reporting on it.” Then the communications department asks, “Can you give us a two-sentence summary of what your research is about?” It should be easy!

I like to think that academic papers can be clear and comprehensible, and don’t need to fall into the traps of traditional academic writing styles (obfuscated, incomprehensible, verbose). Likewise, Twitter threads can contain meaningful content, and don’t have to just consist of a series of quotable sound bites.

fknorangesite3• 4 years ago

except when you get someone else's comment or response sandwiched between two items of the thread?

Twitter fixed this years ago.

_Algernon_2• 4 years ago

Writers know that tweets will be viewed in isolation, so they try to make each tweet as coherent as possible, individually. This style of writing is bland and simplistic but also clear.

Imagine rediscovering the purpose of a paragraph in 2022

bakugo• 4 years ago

Thankfully twitter doesn't have to hijack a browser to show ads, because instead the ads are baked right into your timeline and you can barely tell them apart from real tweets at a glance. So much better!

magic_hamster• 4 years ago

Everybody needs to stop taking Twitter too seriously.

4ad• 4 years ago

I write on Twitter to engage with my audience, who voluntarily joined Twitter and voluntarily chose to engage with me. If you choose not to be part of my audience than you have absolutely zero standing to tell me how to write and where.

matthewmacleod• 4 years ago

There is no hill I’m more willing to die on than “people should write using whatever the fuck medium works best for them”.

pgt• 4 years ago

I wanted to like parts of this essay but couldn’t find the Like button under the paragraphs I agreed with.

thenerdhead• 4 years ago

It's easily the best way to get views for your content. Nobody is going to go to your blog organically, they need it thrown in front of their face. That's why modern social media is so powerful.

It does take some courage to post things like threads or your own videos online for the whole world to witness. It's not for the faint of heart given the whole world now becomes your stage because the content can now be explored when various algorithms think it's best to do so. (The whole notion of explore vs. exploit)

chad_strategic• 4 years ago

I think the real problem is twitter.

Rarely do I go on twitter and if I do I have firefox plugin that will filter out all the extra click bait features, such as you should follow...

If it's worth reading about then, then the author should take the time to construct an paragraph/article.

Full Disclosure: I suffer from Attention Surplus Disorder.

skybrian• 4 years ago

It seems like instead of "do not write Twitter threads," better advice would be to write a blog post and then a Twitter thread to summarize and promote it?

agentultra• 4 years ago

Ah, indie web. I gave up on it. Self-hosting is relegated to the dustbin of "meh, who has time for that." Most people, even savvy social media folks, wouldn't know the first thing about hosting a website (a good number of them might not even know that you can).

We're forgetting the technology only marginally slower than it took to get here and enter the public consciousness.

The problem is that the audience is on Twitter/FB/Insta/TikTok/etc. That's the first place people look/search/find things.

I still host my own blog, email, etc but... the reader numbers are about what you'd expect: next to zilch.

thomastjeffery• 4 years ago

How about a compromise?

Put a link to the long-form blog post at the top of the Twitter thread as an alternative. Still put the whole thread on Twitter for those who prefer it. Everyone wins!

hot_gril• 4 years ago

I can't read Twitter threads either, but luckily people usually link elsewhere. Tools for reading Twitter threads also work, even if they're hacks. WAI.

canadianwriter• 4 years ago

Twitter penalizes links. If you post a tweet with a link only a fraction of the people will see it compared to a twitter thread. They much prefer people stay on platform.

It's not just Twitter doing this - all social networks prefer you stay within their platform. Facebook is notorious for it.

If you put all that work into a blog post and only 5 people see it versus typing it out as a twitter thread and 1000 see it, it makes it obvious which ones ie better - even if its a worse UI.

serf2• 4 years ago

If you put all that work into a blog post and only 5 people see it versus typing it out as a twitter thread and 1000 see it, it makes it obvious which ones ie better - even if its a worse UI.

that's not some universal truth; the method creates certain feelings within the reader.

A plane trailing a banner for "EAT AT JOES" over a metropolis gets a lot of eyes, but there is a certain group of people below that plane that don't appreciate trying to squint at a banner in front of the sun while witnessing the waste of hydrocarbons and the cloud of AVGAS for such a trivial advertisement.

Likewise when i'm being asked to read a 2000 word essay that is composed of a cloud of tweets interspersed with reply tweets and advertisement/related(s)-pushed by Twitter it's similarly angering.

Why should the reader get the shortest end of the stick possible just to nudge some marketing numbers up? "Because the numbers aren't large enough." really isn't a suitable answer as the reader.

gausswho2• 4 years ago

Penalizing links algorithmically this way could be fodder for antitrust cases?

bsnnkv2• 4 years ago

Thank you for posting this. I have been on the anti-thread bandwagon for a long time, but something about your post really opened my eyes and convinced me to stop being so stubborn.

I had shared an article link on Twitter earlier today and it predictably didn't get much traction. So I just turned it into a thread in 5 minutes and re-posted it like that. If you can't beat 'em...

kasajian2• 4 years ago

This post is going to increase the occurrences of Twitter threads.

the-printer• 4 years ago

What does anyone have to say about the nature of how Twitter threads (and to a similar extent, TikTok/Instagram short-form content) can affect literacy and comprehension skills?

xcambar• 4 years ago

All of these comments are more true than the article itself, but I find one thing missing: Twitter threads drive a certain style of writing.

You write punch-lines of 280 characters because of the platform's constraints, while you'd certainly not do so in a blog.

Also, don't give me the proverbial "constraints drive creativity", please.

aarondf• 4 years ago

I spend a whole lot of time on Twitter and I want to agree with this post but it misses the point!

Threads are really great for distribution. I hate that it's true, but it's true. You can write a huge, wonderful article and tweet the link to it and very few people are going to retweet it. You can write a thread and get hundreds of retweets. It sucks, but it's reality.

This post sets up a false dichotomy though, he's saying not to write threads because your content deserves better. Well... just do both? I mean if your content really "deserves better," then it deserves the best chance of being read, and on Twitter that means a thread (currently!)

I personally don't like a particular kind of thread. The thread that's like "I read a Wikipedia article and I'm gonna pretend it's some groundbreaking thing." I try to find a middle ground with my threads.

The first thing I do is write the article. Write the article, flesh out the idea, give it a permanent home, put in a lot of work. Then I publish the article. Then, as a part of distribution I do a tweet thread about the article. I usually always put the link to the article in the very first tweet and then thread out the main concepts.

I have some data on the fact that Twitter won't promote tweets with links in them as much as tweets without, but putting the link in the first tweet drives more clicks and is less annoying, so I do it that way.

I wish things were a bit different on Twitter, but they aren't! I think using threads as a distribution mechanism for longer form content is a nice compromise.

Here are some examples of articles I've written that I've then turned into threads. There is just no way I would've gotten the same traction with a single tweet, no matter how good the tweet (or article!) was.

- 200 RTs: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1582797305404542976

- 120 RTs: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1577325434248757249

- 250 RTs: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1556327342955438082

- 100 RTs: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1458117107183497219

- 165 RTs: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1483127141675978760

- 120 RTs: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1545106513227923459

Let's say 2% of the people read the article, but the thread gives people something to read, understand, and share without reading the full article. It gives me a chance to reach more people, 2% of whom might read the article.

mcint• 4 years ago

Use nitter, one frontend at https://nitter.net/. Project at https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

Use https://threadreaderapp.com/

anotherevan• 4 years ago

Yes, you can replace "twitter.com" with "nitter.net" in the URL in your browser to get a readable version of a thread. The rest of the URL is the same.

Because I don't post that often, I actually use an add-on to automatically redirect from Twitter to a Nitter instance. Makes life just that little bit betterer.

mrblampo• 4 years ago

I like reading them. Forces small chunks of information/opinion, fun rhetorical style.

mplewis• 4 years ago

Uh, no? Twitter is where the eyeballs are.

Stop Writing Twitter Threads

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