Comment by gspencley
I've tried to "get" Twitter since the early days. I've created a couple of Twitter accounts over the years to support various creative endeavours but I've never found myself getting much value out of it as a user.
I heard that it's original use-case was that back 2008 there were no good ways to do group messaging over SMS on a cell phone. That's a problem and solution that I can understand.
But as a broader social network? I don't get it.
Things that bother me to the point that they are deal breakers:
- The character limits (there is nothing worse in life than reading through a x/N self-reply to read something long ... I'd rather file a tax return)
- Showing me posts from pages I don't follow in the feed (in 99% of the cases I'm aware of that page/profile already and have chosen not to follow it because I don't like them)
- Ads in the news feed
Some have said that they like Twitter for getting news. I have way better options for that.
I know that I'm not representative of the typical person, generally speaking, but Twitter is one of those things where I really can't understand why anyone likes it and uses it, let alone why it is so popular. And it's not that I'm hating on something I don't know anything about ... I've honestly tried to use it and get value out of it, but I've never found anything of value on offer.
> but Twitter is one of those things where I really can't understand why anyone likes it and uses it, let alone why it is so popular.
I think it's a carryover of general nostalgia for how the Internet "used to be", i.e. before every site with a few million users decided to start experimenting with algorithms to max out user engagement and ad impressions, leading to the hell we see everywhere, from IG to Tiktok.
Yes, there was a time when Twitter wasn't a toxic mess. It's the last social network that was popular before smartphones took off.