Twitter has changed and here's why people are leaving

by
in internet on (#2S0R)
Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program of Baylor University and the author, most recently, of The "Book of Common Prayer": A Biography and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. And
he's written a good essay on why Twitter isn't fun anymore.
As long as I've been on Twitter (I started in March 2007) people have been complaining about Twitter. But recently things have changed. The complaints have increased in frequency and intensity, and now are coming more often from especially thoughtful and constructive users of the platform. There is an air of defeat about these complaints now, an almost palpable giving-up. For many of the really smart people on Twitter, it's over. Not in the sense that they'll quit using it altogether; but some of what was best about Twitter - primarily the experience of discovery - is now pretty clearly a thing of the past.
This is a bit more than your usual rant about Twitter and whether or not it's jumped the shark. It's a conversation about a communications platform whose usefulness has changed as it has gotten more popular.

If you like this article, why not retweet it?

Re: In a similar vein... (Score: 1)

by harmless@pipedot.org on 2014-09-04 09:02 (#2S1M)

Most times I don't have much to say about a certain topic, because there's no controversy between me and my opinion,
Only when we disagree is a discussion interesting. But when the initial comment is borderline rude, I can't imagine any useful discussion taking place. And I have better methods to waste time than to engage in a shouting match with strangers online.
If everyone refrains from commenting on an article just because there's a bad comment already, then the bad comments will take over.
I agree. But I'm not sure that's my problem.
and let moderators care about the bad apple.
Unfortunately, some inflammatory comments get actually modded up. That says to me: "If you disagree, go somewhere else." Which I do.
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