to follow on from hunter - indeed, agreed. otherwise it could easily become a victim of its own success - for this very reason myspace (to me) always seemed destined to be a relative failure (sic) by sheer virtue of the levels of inane noise therein - by contrast, some people complain that facebook groups (for example) are too quiet - but, less is (often) more ...
what would be nice as a future feature as the twitter service expands in popularity is some kind of filtering/weighting in line with one's temporal experience and preferences - am sure all these features will come with time, but in the meantime i am being very conservative with exactly who i invite to follow me and whom i wish to follow.
fredwilson
· 2 years ago
carl, you've got it right on both points.
digiSal
· 2 years ago
Cool. My only gripe is that it doesnt display what contact in gmail is linked to that Twitter profile. It just so happened that I was able to recognize the twitter names on a few but on the others i had no idea who they were and the updates were Protected.
and P.S. I want disqus for my blogger blog bad! lol no workie.
bijan sabet
· 2 years ago
twitter rocks.
i love the feature they added awhile back where you can add someone to your twitter social network but you have control over notification.
Molly
· 2 years ago
I just used this last night and I had no clue twitter didn't have this from the beginning. One of those things that naturally feels like it would have been there all along. Great stuff.
hunter
· 2 years ago
I too like these features but here's my slightly contrarian view: until Twitter also adds more tools for me to manage the way i want to follow people (for example, the ability to create groups and a separate feed), there's actually a noise level which starts to appear with one's ability to connect with too many people.
What i mean to suggest is that some folks are likely to ruin their twitter experience by over-following. Twitter works for me today because of the high signal:noise ratio. Unbridled discovery and "add to follow list" action on my part will lower that quality. Of course, this is all in my control - i don't have to subscribe to those 17 people the "search my gmail address book" just discovered. But if you were to ask me what feature should come next after enhancing address book, it would be to think about the different tools which are needed for consumption when the average # of follows per user jumps from, say, 10 to 100. Because it does change.
fredwilson
· 2 years ago
totally agree Hunter. i've been thinking a lot about that and so has the twitter team.
Ken Berger
· 2 years ago
yep - following my contacts has proven incredibly useful and habit-forming.
And that is why I do it all day long-- via the Facebook minifeed. While Twitter really gave the concept massive awareness earlier this year, I haven't seen a reason to use this functionality there. FB seems to have come and stolen that thunder. Maybe a 2nd try will bring something new to light.
There is however plenty of oppty that Twitter seems poised to capitalize on, especially re mobile.
fredwilson
· 2 years ago
ken,
my experience has been that there are many of my friends i can't follow on FB. a good number of them are on twitter.
my girls have no use for Twitter because they can follow all of their friends on FB.
Fred
John Ratcliffe-Lee
· 2 years ago
Maybe things are buggy b/c this just got linked on TC and the other half of the world is finally using the search/import feature, but the Gmail import doesn't seem to work if you have a Google Apps-run address (as I do).
edward
· 2 years ago
The Internet as a Platform Will Continuously Evolve
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA franchise, and Chairman of HDNet, the richest blogger in the world claims The Internet is Dean and Boring days ago in his blog. Why? Here is his reason: Every new technological, mechanical or intellectual breakthrough has its day, days, months and years. But they don’t rule forever. That’s the reality… Just like wheels, printing presses, cars, TV, radio, electricity, water…Its very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing…
Well, Mark Cuban draws a wrong conclusion though his observations are right. Why?
1. The slow adoption of high-speed broadband during past 5 years in the US is not a problem of the Internet, or the proof of the Internet innovation stalls, it is a matter of domestic policy issues
2. From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, the Internet has demonstrated its continuous evolution as a great platform in endorsing lot of application-level innovations, such as Wiki, Blog, Social Networking, Podcast, just to name a few
3. The continuously evolving of the Internet is good instead of bad, actually the innovation of the Internet itself is not fast enough, and that is why we call for Internet 2.0 to serve upcoming Web 3.0 better
Let me see - you are happy that twitter adds a new way to add new friends as well as give out your gmail password which gives access to all kind of information under your name and call that the most useful feature?
I am sorry, but Twitter may be good for getting new users, but how about maintaining the ones you already have? Groups like in Pownce are a godsend for bilingual people like me and I really could do with some groups for reading as well, so I do not need to maintain two twitter instances.
My friends _are_ already on twitter. If any advancement was coming, I would rather have done something about those complaints ...
Jon Davis
· 2 years ago
Nice work Twitter.
markslater
· 2 years ago
How are you deciding between what is faddish, and what has enduring or lasting appeal? Twitter has me undecided.
With the older tools it was all about call to action and measuring behavioral shifts. These days we have tools that act behind the scenes and in unison - almost like we no longer have to pull up to the bank of the river to do something - as these tools are beginning to run with our flow.
But i am reminded of a great piece of technology that had the world abuzz several years ago called shazam. You would hear a song in a bar, and dial their shortcode. They would virtually listen to a clip of the song and text you with the artist and name. I loved it, but slowly forgot about it.
With all these social apps, we are entering a tricky world of trends and fads. how does twitter reach beyond this potential graveyard?
BUGabundo
· 2 years ago
I just tried it with my Google App for Your Domain (GAFYD) and it didnt work. So, you guys still need to improve on this.
I feel foolish. I am not into Facebook, MySpace or any of those "social" sites. I thought I'd try Twitter, after hearing all the celebrities rave about it. I thought, "what a good idea for ME to have my little blog where I can type things that are on my mind or bugging me, no holds barred". I created a screen name and profile, with ZERO identifying information and I let it rip. I had 0 followers and I liked it that way. I then get an email that a woman who works at my mother's nursing home (!) is following me on Twitter. ARGH! What I didn't know is that the email addy you use can be imported from someone's address book and they can find you on Twitter. Now what was relaxing--typing my thoughts and not having to give a damn what someone thinks---is now being read by an employee at my mom's nursing home, who I sent an email to one month when my mom was "resident of the month". I needed to provide history on my mother's life, so that's how this person got my email. I'm just sick and totally embarrassed about it all. WHY aren't you warned that someone can find you through your email? I thought my email addy was protected. NEVER, EVER again will I use that friggin service. Perhaps I should have known better, but I thought that my email was used just for administrative purposes.
All Comments
what would be nice as a future feature as the twitter service expands in popularity is some kind of filtering/weighting in line with one's temporal experience and preferences - am sure all these features will come with time, but in the meantime i am being very conservative with exactly who i invite to follow me and whom i wish to follow.
and P.S. I want disqus for my blogger blog bad! lol no workie.
i love the feature they added awhile back where you can add someone to your twitter social network but you have control over notification.
What i mean to suggest is that some folks are likely to ruin their twitter experience by over-following. Twitter works for me today because of the high signal:noise ratio. Unbridled discovery and "add to follow list" action on my part will lower that quality. Of course, this is all in my control - i don't have to subscribe to those 17 people the "search my gmail address book" just discovered. But if you were to ask me what feature should come next after enhancing address book, it would be to think about the different tools which are needed for consumption when the average # of follows per user jumps from, say, 10 to 100. Because it does change.
And that is why I do it all day long-- via the Facebook minifeed. While Twitter really gave the concept massive awareness earlier this year, I haven't seen a reason to use this functionality there. FB seems to have come and stolen that thunder. Maybe a 2nd try will bring something new to light.
There is however plenty of oppty that Twitter seems poised to capitalize on, especially re mobile.
my experience has been that there are many of my friends i can't follow on FB. a good number of them are on twitter.
my girls have no use for Twitter because they can follow all of their friends on FB.
Fred
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA franchise, and Chairman of HDNet, the richest blogger in the world claims The Internet is Dean and Boring days ago in his blog. Why? Here is his reason: Every new technological, mechanical or intellectual breakthrough has its day, days, months and years. But they don’t rule forever. That’s the reality… Just like wheels, printing presses, cars, TV, radio, electricity, water…Its very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing…
Well, Mark Cuban draws a wrong conclusion though his observations are right. Why?
1. The slow adoption of high-speed broadband during past 5 years in the US is not a problem of the Internet, or the proof of the Internet innovation stalls, it is a matter of domestic policy issues
2. From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, the Internet has demonstrated its continuous evolution as a great platform in endorsing lot of application-level innovations, such as Wiki, Blog, Social Networking, Podcast, just to name a few
3. The continuously evolving of the Internet is good instead of bad, actually the innovation of the Internet itself is not fast enough, and that is why we call for Internet 2.0 to serve upcoming Web 3.0 better
Frontier Blog - search but not REsearch
http://www.hwswworld.com/wp
I am sorry, but Twitter may be good for getting new users, but how about maintaining the ones you already have? Groups like in Pownce are a godsend for bilingual people like me and I really could do with some groups for reading as well, so I do not need to maintain two twitter instances.
My friends _are_ already on twitter. If any advancement was coming, I would rather have done something about those complaints ...
With the older tools it was all about call to action and measuring behavioral shifts. These days we have tools that act behind the scenes and in unison - almost like we no longer have to pull up to the bank of the river to do something - as these tools are beginning to run with our flow.
But i am reminded of a great piece of technology that had the world abuzz several years ago called shazam. You would hear a song in a bar, and dial their shortcode. They would virtually listen to a clip of the song and text you with the artist and name. I loved it, but slowly forgot about it.
With all these social apps, we are entering a tricky world of trends and fads. how does twitter reach beyond this potential graveyard?
So, you guys still need to improve on this.
Andrew