Tag: twitter

Give up and use the first-party Twitter App

I did, or at least am trying to. You have to get over some weird bugs (like seemingly random per-user notifications), but afterwards you may come to like it.

I’ve been a Twitterrific user for years on Mac and iOS, but the writing is on the wall. All the newest features like multiple photos, cards, photo tagging, archive search, and per-user notifications are all only on Twitter’s apps.

You know exactly what’s going on: they want to shut down all traditional apps that aren’t their own. Rather than reeling them in they’re going to restrict new features on their own apps until everybody switches.

And frankly, I feel like using Twitter’s own apps reveals the true Twitter, whatever that is. It’s like surfing the web without ad-blocker. It’s the true web, even if it is ad-ridden (although, I haven’t found the ads to be that bad).

There are only a couple of features I miss from Twitterrific: dark/night mode and timeline syncing between devices. Third party apps don’t give you animated gifs (which are actually video files on twitter’s servers), they don’t give you activities…they can’t. There’s no public API for it. But once new features outweigh what you like in your current client, you may never open a third-party client again.

Further reading: Twitter California Knife

The Real Beauty of Twitter’s New Profile Page

SplatF makes me see it as more than ripping off Facebook:

Twitter’s new profile page — more photos, featuring your best tweets, etc. — isn’t really about copying Facebook or making a simple service more cumbersome. Rather, it seems to be about establishing your Twitter page as your main profile page on the entire Internet. And that I’m excited about.

Twitterrific goes back to Freemium

Why are we returning to the freemium model now? Simply put, we’re hoping that by making the app free to download and use, we’ll get Twitterrific into the hands of thousands more people and those additional users will help support development via the increased ad revenue far into the future.

I thought ads in Twitter clients weren’t allowed anymore.

How Men and Women Use Social Media Differently

“Women on Facebook participate in 62% of the sharing and have 8% more friends than men. Despite this, 8 in 10 women say their Facebook friends annoy them.”

What’s that saying? Something like “Men socialize by insulting each other but they really don’t mean it. Women socialize by complimenting each other, they don’t mean it either.”

Twitter Testing New Profile Pages

The way I’ve been using Twitter has been a lot like an IRC channel I leave on in the background. I guess that isn’t working out so well for them. This iteration of the profile page puts more emphasis on visuals.

I suspect that people like me who use apps like Twitterrific are holding back Twitter from what they want to be, which I guess is to be more like Facebook.

Which is odd, because I wish Facebook was more like Twitter.

Snark Per Minute

Years ago we were Time’s person of the year. Now we’re like audience members of a late night show that try to be funny and fail.

Valley of The Blahs:

It feels as if we’re all trying to be a cheeky guest on a late-night show, a reality show contestant or a toddler with a tiara on Twitter — delivering the performance of a lifetime, via a hot, rapid-fire string of commentary, GIFs or responses that help us stand out from the crowd. We’re sold on the idea that if we’re good enough, it could be our ticket to success, landing us a fleeting spot in a round-up on BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post, or at best, a writing gig. But more often than not, it translates to standing on a collective soapbox, elbowing each other for room, in the hopes of being credited with delivering the cleverest one-liner or reaction. Much of that ensues in hilarity. Perhaps an equal amount ensues in exhaustion.

Just follow people you actually like. I’ve set aside the snark to a list for when I need to get my fill. Oddly, I don’t go to that list as much as I thought I would.

Related:

Not all of that is snark…that probably happened in between the gaps.

Rob Delaney Visited Twitter

Rob Delaney talks about twitter on this episode of Comedy Bang Bang.

I haven’t listened to the entire episode, but check out the early part with Rob Delaney. At about 9 minutes in he talks about being invited to Twitter HQ and being asked a bunch of questions about how he uses it.

RD: They wanted to know what I liked about it, what I didn’t like about it, what I felt I got out of it, if I had any suggestions and ideas…

SA: Did they take any of your suggestions?

RD: None at all. They rejected them soundly. I think what I said was like “every new thing you do is totally unnecessary and silly and all I want to do is write jokes and hit BLURP and have people read them. But they were like, “yeah, we’d like to make money.” And I said “Yeah, do what you gotta do.”

He also endorses Tweetbot.

“Twitter IPO: Why the Rest of America Doesn’t Care”

But it’s not just that Twitter is small and unprofitable. The truth is that few people here in the States actually use the thing. The social network remains a niche product, beloved by journalists, celebrities, and a hard core of miscellaneous obsessive users — but few others.

Unlike Facebook, it’s not a ubiquitous online utility, and you’re not going to find grandma on there.

That’s part of why I actually prefer Twitter. But the problem is that almost nobody I know in real life is on it, or they started accounts and abandoned them.