<story><title>The Decay of Twitter</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>benten10</author><text>I &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I&amp;#x27;d rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I&amp;#x27;m interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, but make me explore the field in a much deeper level. Three of the fields that I have gotten &amp;#x27;into&amp;#x27; because of twitter are Urban &amp;#x27;renewal&amp;#x27; sort of projects (citylab, atlantic cities, etcetera), the book reviews circle, and a certain subfield of computer science I won&amp;#x27;t mention, because I&amp;#x27;d probably be the only intersection of those fields. : P&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, some people I follow tweet things I&amp;#x27;d rather not hear. So I simply mute them. Done. (This is however NOT a apology for all the awful harassment that does happen)&lt;p&gt;I cull my &amp;#x27;following&amp;#x27; list to get to 300 people once every couple of months, so it doesn&amp;#x27;t get out of hand, and it&amp;#x27;s worked perfectly for me. I can catch up with pretty much everything that appears on my timeline. I Like twitter because it doesn&amp;#x27;t &amp;#x27;curate&amp;#x27; my content for me. The day it decides to get rid of the &amp;#x27;everything&amp;#x27; timeline will be the day the &amp;#x27;decay&amp;#x27; begins.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps my viewpoint is tainted, but in the past six years (that&amp;#x27;s how long I&amp;#x27;ve been on it&amp;#x2F;using it), the number of twitter users has been growing (at least in terms of people I know), and their quality increasing. I realize harassment is still a huge issue, but despite that, Twitter is still a great community : )</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ogurechny</author><text>Why do we never see the phrase “TCP&amp;#x2F;IP made me smarter”?&lt;p&gt;Smart people and your active search for them made you smarter, not “Twitter”. You explained it yourself. If Twitter had some technology tuned to solve your specific task for a freshly registered user, it could take the credit, but it&amp;#x27;s neutral and indifferent.&lt;p&gt;Also, I can&amp;#x27;t see much difference between good ongoing conversation and a good conversation that happened thousand years ago. Part of the problem, as described in the article, is that Twitter “community” matured and generally switched from using it for transitory chirps to gathering and organizing knowledge for a long term somehow. And, as we all know, Twitter is horrible in that regard. Enormous planetary-scale log file without tools to parse it is a giant step backwards.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Decay of Twitter</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/conversation-smoosh-twitter-decay/412867/?single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>benten10</author><text>I &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I&amp;#x27;d rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I&amp;#x27;m interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, but make me explore the field in a much deeper level. Three of the fields that I have gotten &amp;#x27;into&amp;#x27; because of twitter are Urban &amp;#x27;renewal&amp;#x27; sort of projects (citylab, atlantic cities, etcetera), the book reviews circle, and a certain subfield of computer science I won&amp;#x27;t mention, because I&amp;#x27;d probably be the only intersection of those fields. : P&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, some people I follow tweet things I&amp;#x27;d rather not hear. So I simply mute them. Done. (This is however NOT a apology for all the awful harassment that does happen)&lt;p&gt;I cull my &amp;#x27;following&amp;#x27; list to get to 300 people once every couple of months, so it doesn&amp;#x27;t get out of hand, and it&amp;#x27;s worked perfectly for me. I can catch up with pretty much everything that appears on my timeline. I Like twitter because it doesn&amp;#x27;t &amp;#x27;curate&amp;#x27; my content for me. The day it decides to get rid of the &amp;#x27;everything&amp;#x27; timeline will be the day the &amp;#x27;decay&amp;#x27; begins.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps my viewpoint is tainted, but in the past six years (that&amp;#x27;s how long I&amp;#x27;ve been on it&amp;#x2F;using it), the number of twitter users has been growing (at least in terms of people I know), and their quality increasing. I realize harassment is still a huge issue, but despite that, Twitter is still a great community : )</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chad_strategic</author><text>--&amp;gt;&amp;gt;I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I&amp;#x27;d rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells.&lt;p&gt;Bravo, Bravo. This can&amp;#x27;t be more true. I don&amp;#x27;t follow friends on twitter, just news sites twitter accounts and other interesting people that I don&amp;#x27;t know in IRL. Friends don&amp;#x27;t follow me on twitter, so I&amp;#x27;m not trying to impress people with the latest family &amp;quot;staged&amp;quot; photo shoot.&lt;p&gt;I have always argued that Twitter is nicely organized RSS feed &amp;#x2F; generator.&lt;p&gt;Twitter, I believe is a very important in spreading news, in real time. Most of the time before main stream media. Remember the guy that inadvertently tweeted the Osama bin Laden operation?  Finally, since it&amp;#x27;s only 141 characters, there isn&amp;#x27;t a lot of spin on news via twitter, just the facts. At that point you can chose which direction to go with the spin...&lt;p&gt;However the internet can be a cesspool, but I see twitter as the filter that cleans out.&lt;p&gt;okay, I got to get back to work...</text></comment>