Twitter for Dummies (i.e. me) - by Thirith
Thirith on 21/8/2015 at 10:43
Is there anyone here who can explain Twitter to me? Or, more specifically, tell me how to get more out of it? I used it for a while during my last job, but I never really got how or why it's supposedly better than Facebook (better at what?). Recently I found that I needed support from a company that only did so fast, reliably and asynchronously via Twitter, so I created an account. I still find that I don't really *get* Twitter, though. I prefer formats where you can say more than 140 characters.
However, I'm sure there are others who didn't get into Twitter at first but by now appreciate what it can do. So, any suggestions and tips would be much appreciated.
demagogue on 21/8/2015 at 11:11
It's easier to fake being a celebrity and get a lot of dumb schmuck followers. That's the only selling-point I could ever tell.
ZylonBane on 21/8/2015 at 15:21
Quote Posted by Thirith
Recently I found that I needed support from a company that only did so fast, reliably and asynchronously via Twitter, so I created an account.
WTF, Twitter is for one-to-many short message broadcasts. How in the humpty hell were they using it as a support channel?
Thirith on 21/8/2015 at 16:02
In practice this is what they did: you Tweet something to their account, they tell you to send them a DM, they reply. Which went okay enough, but it was a frustrating reminder that they used to offer support via e-mail, which did this so much better and more directly. (They also have telephone support, but that's not particularly useful if you're at work during their business hours so you can't try the solutions they suggest on the phone.)
Queue on 21/8/2015 at 17:19
Quote Posted by Thirith
... it's supposedly better than Facebook (better at what?).
Wasting time?
Tony_Tarantula on 21/8/2015 at 17:50
Quote Posted by demagogue
It's easier to fake being a celebrity and get a lot of dumb schmuck followers. That's the only selling-point I could ever tell.
It's pretty important for marketing/PR types. Once you get a huge number of followers on a Twitter account(of which a large percentage are guaranteed to be fake for any name-brand company) then you can use them as a sort of bully pulpit who will re-tweet hashtags you use and quickly cause something to go "viral". It's unknown if it translates to improved sales(I doubt it) but corporate types seem to love it.
Where it gets interesting is in PR types. They also use Twitter as an offensive weapon where thousands of twitter-bot accounts can be set in attack mode. I know I've mentioned before but it's semi-frequent that the initial wave of a Twitter attack will be from tens of thousands of users that trace back to less than a dozen IP's....not that important for optics though. Once the attack has gotten enough users involved to be "trending" it will be picked up on by the community at large and can become self sustaining.
faetal on 21/8/2015 at 23:40
I really like Twitter. I don't see it as a social network, more a replacement for RSS where I can follow people I find amusing or interesting.
Thirith on 22/8/2015 at 10:30
So for you it's about hearing from others rather than interacting with them?
faetal on 22/8/2015 at 13:41
Yeah, I tend to just use it as a source for laughs, news, interesting links and misc. I very rarely tweet anything other than to retweet things which I liked.
I don't know if I'm the best example of a twitter user, although my guess is that it's probably a small percent of people actually tweeting to a much larger audience of people like me who don't have something pithy to say every 5 seconds and are just watching.
henke on 22/8/2015 at 14:30
Yeah, I'm in the same boat as faety.
I got into the Twitter thing a while ago but I haven't really warmed to it the same way as to FB. I mostly just follow a bunch of funny/interesting people, then occasionally open the Twitter tab a scroll through their tweets and have a chuckle. Though it's also pretty handy if you wanna read what people are saying about some random thing/event.
I'm @Henrik_Hermans btw. I'm using it mainly to post about games I'm developing, and as a channel for people to contact me about that stuff. (though it's been pretty uneventful so far)
