Twitter C/D

what's the point when you have FB status updates?

I'm an addict.

The status updates on facebook are one of my favourite aspects of FB, so I liked the idea of twitter when I first heard about it a week or so ago. I've signed up, but it hasn't stuck with me as yet, I think because none of my friends are using it.

It's reduced all my literary ambitions down to daily one-liners: twitter.com/fireland

So much hate for Twitter. So much.

Twitter is for productivity douche-bags and aspirational web developers.

I used to use Twitter quite a lot, but Facebook status updates reach a lot more of my friends, and I can do them from my phone as easily as a Twitter so I've kind of abandoned it.

I think Twitter is good for publishing interesting links and news and things, and for asking advice from the microblogosphere, but for the latter you'd need a whole load of like-minded followers and it's hard to get there.

I think I will have to use it for a while before I decide if I love it or hate it.

There was this thread, by the way:

twittervision

we've def. had a twitter thread before because i remember checking out the twitter homepage to see what the fuss was about, and i just happened to see alba make an update. then i told him about it here.

dats it

TWITTER: I don't get it

CIO/KIU: using ilx like twitter

I just spent another fifteen minutes going down the rabbit hole with this shit clicking on follower avatars
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2008/20080423.jpg
the text of the last panel could possibly be sold as a t-shirt

the weather alert stuff and airport delay announcement feeds seem vaguely useful but it remains the absolute dumbest shit I've ever seen since friendster

I mean what use is something that's supposed to provide low-bandwidth status updates on EVERY STUPID PIDDLING THING EVER IN THE WORLD if it also happens to be breaking constantly

identi.ca is ugly and has a terrible name, as with squoink and jaiku and whatever else, which just goes to show you what actually matters

http://www.soup.io/

IT'S THE NEW TEEVEE

let me make sure to get back here and write you guys some more about how I feel about the web's direction in a little bit

yeah I still think it is all weird and gross

"the microblogosphere"

http://www.the-trukstop.com/miscellaneous/socialmediacrity/warbbler.png

I use Twitter to keep up with a very small handful of friends (FreakyTrigger mob mostly) so mine is mostly a collection of stupid injokes that come to my mobile. I like that a lot, saves me having to text loads of people at once, but it freaks me out when I see random strangers following me. I have to purge my followers list about once a week.

I used to use Twitter quite a lot, but Facebook status updates reach a lot more of my friends, and I can do them from my phone as easily as a Twitter so I've kind of abandoned it

this is a shame, because your minute-by-minute update from "control" was fucking genius. for the few minutes it lasted.

you'd need a whole load of like-minded followers and it's hard to get there.
This is the key, really. Twitter got some ferocious use at wwdc, and was v. good for finding out what was giong on where, and what sessions to leave, etc, but it doesn't work so well if you've just trucked up in some random place.

There's a twitter client for iPhone that might help with that though -- it shows you all the updates from folks in your location.

this is a shame, because your minute-by-minute update from "control" was fucking genius. for the few minutes it lasted.

People were complaining!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1640#more-1640

as usual

the end of twitter in the UK? er: yes, as far as i can see. i don't want to have to *look* for tweets. i want them to come to me:

Hi,

I'm sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.

I'll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.

Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.

Before I go into more detail, here's a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you've
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

Why are we making these changes?

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send
updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to
ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because we've
been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to
the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in
popularity, so too would the price.

Our challenge during this window of time was to establish
relationships with mobile operators around the world such that
our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.
We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States.
We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without
passing along operator fees in these countries.

We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more
mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we've arrived
at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs
and take a different approach. Since you probably don't live in
Canada, India, or the US, we recommend receiving your Twitter
updates via one of the following methods.

m.twitter.com works on browser-enabled phones
m.slandr.net works on browser-enabled phones
TwitterMail.com works on email-enabled phones
Cellity [http://bit.ly/12bw4R] works on java-enabled phones
TwitterBerry [http://bit.ly/MFAfJ] works on BlackBerry phones
Twitterific [http://bit.ly/1WxjwQ] works on iPhones

Twitter SMS by The Numbers

It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid
placing undue burden on our company and our service. Even with a
limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter
about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada,
India, or the US. It makes more sense for us to establish fair
billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass
these high fees on to our users.

Twitter will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in
Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships
that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way
service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is
sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies
around the world continue. In the meantime, more local numbers
for updating via SMS are on the way. We'll keep you posted.

Thank you for your attention,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/biz

I never understood why anyone would want tweets pushed to them. I get excited when I receive a text. I don't want to find it's some spazz like me telling the world they've found an odd-coloured bogey up their nose.

it would be nice, when the iphone's push service is switched on, if twitter would push messages down to twitterific - this would solve the 'excited when I receive a text only to find it's about a bogey' problem

If my phone had let me assign unique message alert tones to numbers like it does with ringtones and voice calls then the problem might have gone away.

Maybe the fundamental problem is that I'm not interested enough in other people.

most of twitter is exquisitely described in metaphor by that news story about the inflatable turd named "Complex Shit" blowing away and breaking actual stuff that matters

of course being me I would say the same for pretty much everything "web 2.0"

actually, i'd follow a tombot twitter feed. furious cynicism at unexpected moments could be fun.

i guess twitterific might step up to the plate here, but then again: it can't run in the background on the iPhone, can it?

(this, incidentally, is my first ILX post from my shiny new iMac.)

creepy

13.28
cozeny Wondering out loud what we'd need to start a UK group SMS system and take Twitter's market: Ruby developers, time, money, and Red Bull... ? 9 minutes ago from web

13.37
Hi, cozeny.

tweetsms (tweetsms) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out tweetsms's profile here:

http://twitter.com/tweetsms

You may follow tweetsms as well by clicking on the "follow" button.

Best,
Twitter

tweetsms
http://www.tweetSMS.com will be available worldwide across almost all carriers. We also plan to deploy an ad-based service for free updates.
38 minutes ago from web

@PurpleKitchen check out www.tweetsms.com about 2 hours ago from web in reply to PurpleKitchen

just uploaded http://www.tweetsms.com to help all of those international SMS users! about 2 hours ago from web

Used it cause I was excited (are you still an early adopter a full year after the SXSW explosion of use?), then didn't for a few months cause I didn't really see the point, now I'm usin it again cause I've had some new local friends start following me.

Good for questions, link-sharing, Microemo bursts, etc.

I have a friend who uses this to read his friends' feeds, so I basically only see it from the angle of a person who is constantly checking his phone while I'm trying to have a conversation with him. The first time I heard of Twitter was from him when I finally got exasperated with his constantly checking his phone.

Maybe I'm the one with the problem, but I can't really think of anyone in the world interesting enough for me to want updates on their activities throughout the day. I'd say the only people I could imagine wanting to twitter could be: Drug smuggler, violent prison inmate, Slash-in-his-heyday type rock star, and a dog (if they somehow managed to translate its thoughts into English text).

don't use it, don't know anyone who does, but i check this one all the time: http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

i very very rarely check it on my phone. does mobile use seem to be the prominent use?

SMS functionality seems to be its USP now that Facebook status updates have taken the mainstream microblogging space.

As I said above, people using it for pushed news bulletins and question-broadcasting rather than personal what-i'm-doing stuff is another application.

(I think you can now do Facebook by SMS in America, actually, but not here)

SMS is a fucking trilobite technology

I followed @johncleese back when his followers were in the double digits.

Seriously someone FedEx me a fucking medal already.

how the fuck are they planning to make money? Also, they could easily have charged for this in Europe, and at least started making some actual income for a change.

so: brightkite, then. anyone played about with it much? i'm not sure i can particularly be arsed, TBH.

Twinkle is useful to see if there's trouble on my tram line or the local cafe is on fire.

ON IPHONE

Brightkite seems particularly marvelous, actually. Like Twitter with upgrades.

Concerning

If you ever look at the For You tab that’s on you.

The On You tab.

Lots of good twitter content

President Yoon, a man of many talents. pic.twitter.com/HZoBJxQum9

— President Biden (@POTUS) April 27, 2023

If you ever look at the For You tab that’s on you.

haven't looked at the site for a couple of weeks, never looked at for you even back when I was cooking my brain. but it seemed unfair to say "no one is posting about Korea" without taking a look.

I went cold turkey once people started moving to Bluesky in large numbers. I still find myself reaching for Twitter like some phantom limb, but for the most part I don't miss it, Bluesky has become a decent replacement.

The one feature that Twitter has that I really miss in both Bluesky and Threads is that when you open the Twitter app it brings you right back to the place in your feed where you were when you closed it. I hate going through the same posts over and over again.

Twitter has been so much fun re: shooter.

So much live coverage and breaking news on X today! 🔥

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) December 4, 2024

thanks for the warning Yacco

Thank you for all that you do, Linda

Oh god, the replies to that tweet

The killing of CEOs is great for X!

Thinking about the throughline between the woman attacked on Twitter for posting about her PhD dissertation and the government employee attacked on Twitter -- by Elon, among others -- about her job. In both cases, people (well, men) seemed angry about the niche specialization of the women's areas of expertise (a "useless degree," a "fake job"), as though that's not the case for many areas of study or work, but these could also be readily pilloried as "woke" because of words like "oppression" and "diversification." But that's all it takes to mark them as targets. It's chilling.

Feels like there is a deeper resentment that goes beyond the "woke" stuff, though -- women who are successful in fields the men attacking them don't understand.

The attitude that critical theory and the humanities in general is "useless" is not just the usual assholes, it's just one step removed from the idea that university education should all be about the job you can get out of it, which is something 90% of politicians and the media seem to espouse.

tbf we went from a college degree being aspirational to it being seemingly mandatory for a large portion of jobs, so the linkage of degree->job kind of followed

yeah, just read this yesterday, actually:

"In 1971, 37 percent of students said that a central objective of their college years was to become well-off financially. Seventy-three percent said it was to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. By 2015, those numbers had almost reversed. Eighty-two percent of students said that it was essential for them to use college to become well-off financially, while 47 percent said they wanted to develop a meaningful philosophy of life."

I'm assuming that poll was not listing those things exclusively because 73 + 37 = 110. Seems like someone's either listing the numbers wrong or going for a false dichotomy

Seems like the survey asked students to rate a series of reasons for attending college as "essential," "important," "not important," etc.

In looking this up, I did see someone point out that 50 years ago money might not have been seen as a good reason to attend college bc college graduates back then didn't earn that much more than nongraduates.

I have news about that in 2024

I'm assuming that poll was not listing those things exclusively because 73 + 37 = 110. Seems like someone's either listing the numbers wrong or going for a false dichotomy

Feels like there is a deeper resentment that goes beyond the "woke" stuff, though -- women who are successful in fields the men attacking them don't understand.

― jaymc, Thursday, 5 December 2024 14:27 (three hours ago) link

These guys know their rights under The Reply Guy Constitution:

Article II.
Commenting Duties

Section 1 – Women’s Accounts
All duties herein secured shall be primarily exercised on Twitter posts of those who need Reply Guy expertise most: women, both those We know personally and those We have never met. With respect to other men on Twitter, or for those whose gender identity falls outside the binary, We shall largely ignore them unless We find Ourselves Sexually Attracted.

Section 2 – The Comment
Our replies to all tweets shall fall into one of the following categories: unsolicited advice, explanation, contrarian comment, request for research to be done on Our behalf, improvement upon the joke, and/or sucketh upping. When We cannot think of a proper reply to the tweet in question, a .gif of minimal relevance shall suffice. Above all, no woman shall be excluded from Our familiar and chummy tone.

* * *

Article IV.
Special Cases

. . . Section 3 – Women’s Issues
Whensoever a woman on Twitter discusses sexual assault, harassment, domestic violence, reproductive rights, the wage gap, and/or sexism, We shall not interact. This shall not be out of respect for women’s perspectives, but rather, it shall stem from Our complete lack of interest.

haha something i posted on the toilet is being paraphrased in the new yorker https://t.co/3GidO9c2mf pic.twitter.com/X3GApH6nuS

— 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝔫𝔢𝔱𝔰 🧲 (@PerthshireMags) January 10, 2025

vancouver strip club Penthouse known for its marquee had their twitter account suspended for "hate speech" for sharing a photo of the marquee that said

FOREVER NEIGHBOURS
NEVER NEIGHBORS

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/the-penthouse-marquee-hate-speech-allegation-1.7428625

love that place (for the jazz bar upstairs)

Not quite Elon but pic.twitter.com/zttNmXXtsc

— Deva Hazarika (@devahaz) January 11, 2025

Lol

Please be aware that actors from both Coronation Street and Emmerdale are currently being impersonated by scammers across all social media platforms.

No cast member will ever directly request money for messages, meetings or any kind of personal interaction on social media. pic.twitter.com/OQtarHyS1O

— Coronation Street (@itvcorrie) January 23, 2025

Ok Twitter’s good again

Just ethically capitulating every day fellas

My friend’s been getting those scam DMs and he WRITES Corrie.

The same process that Musk used when he bought twitter, which was roughly "I don't understand why we have (y) process in place involving (x) number of people, let's get rid of it" is now being applied to the Government and er, pensions. Amazing to see.

Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process… pic.twitter.com/dXCTgpAWLs

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 11, 2025

Color me skeptical that that is actually the case

I haven't checked all of the details, but it was broadly true as of 2014, according to a Washington Post article published then: https://archive.ph/8Q5HX

yeah that actually doesn't sound that weird

My partner briefed me on that - it's like a Cheyenne Mountain type of thing. "He makes it sound like you go down in a little bucket on a pulley - you drive in on a highway."

excuse me - a Mount Barron type of thing

I remember that article! The main points that stood out to me were that:
1. The documentation is distributed around different agencies, meaning that workers who moved between jobs are harder to track down and the sign-offs/signature process is arcane
2. Prior digitization efforts were hampered by overruns and external contractors without clear measurable milestones
3. The actual terms of how paperwork is handled are dictated not by one contract, but by a maze of legislation that modifies the terms based on roles served, agencies worked for, etc.

#3 is really the sticking point and a moving target because legislation could change at any time, while grandfathering current employees into an arbitrary set of rules that were in place during their tenure. Private companies have some of these issues but generally just sunset a program (ex: dropping a pension plan and boosting employer contributions to a 401k at the same date) and use external administrators.

In this case, the system of paperwork is probably a lot more flexible and less brittle than a one-time software solution would be, as you’d need a living system that’s constantly modified, tested, and rolled out as opposed to hiring a contractor to deliver something as a single deliverable. They should have a dedicated software engineering team, which kind of sucks.

The real solution would be to reconcile all the different pieces of legislation into a reform bill that created a clear retirement code for federal workers and at bare minimum allowed digital delivery of documents in the near term, even if the paper arrives later to be documented.

they basically are a living example of Conway’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law) at this point

that is to say, this isn’t something you can solve by just throwing computers and software at it. it’s a process, communication, and legislative issue. the reason it persists is the people are more flexible than a computer, and it’s not a technology problem

Genuine thanks for the insight!

Yup, thanks mh!

Yeah as someone who has worked in companies that constantly buy other companies for their systems/platforms/etc and then tries to shoehorn them all in and work them under one umbrella, you spend ALL your time chasing your tail getting that to work, and none on anything new. I can't begin to imagine the scale of getting this level of paperwork into the cloud.

Iknow i know...still, mad weird he is parading his kids.

🇮🇳 India's PM Modi introduced to 3 of Elon Musk's children who accompanied Elon to their meeting today.🤩 https://t.co/upWB1b6zQN pic.twitter.com/M4lzm3nt3A

— Brian Basson (@BassonBrain) February 13, 2025

Human shield

oh you know he has some crisis PR person rounding up random toddlers to "soften hos image"

“soften hoos image”

Miss him here

Miss him here

He was taking lil X everywhere before Luigi (other than a brief pause during the custody battle with Grimes) so I think the human shield comment I see everywhere is not necessarily true, it’s similar to the JD Vance couch fucking jibe.

He's certainly treating twitter like the Federal govt.

Roughly 275,000 federal workers lost their jobs this week. That's over 10% of the federal workforce.

~75,000 took the "buyout"
~200,000 probationary workers were let go (the WH has not confirmed the total, but this is how many were on probationary status)

That's a lot of lives… pic.twitter.com/oHnH2MGLFe

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) February 14, 2025

Guy can easily keep it afloat, but that's not enough.

Truly disturbing report in the WSJ: Lawyers at Twitter are threatening advertisers to spend more money on X "or else" X owner Elon Musk will leverage his close relationship with Trump to torpedo mergers. This goes beyond a conflict of interest. It's straight up extortion. pic.twitter.com/FAbxYtwo6m

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) February 20, 2025