Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

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Its a pity you're getting downvoted for insight. One problem twitter has is lack of innovation. Then again they have users who are self selected to be used to it, or are even happy with that.

Kind of the AOL of the modern era, if you think of AOL culturally in the 90s, twitter is in the same spot today.

There is also a lack of purpose, lack of elevator pitch. By that I mean I don't know what twitter is for. Originally, right after I found out about it WRT SXSW, its the AOL-ified IRC on top of SMS text messages. Then it morphed into brand spam delivery for AOL users who can't figure out RSS from either the spammer or recipient side, be sure to follow our corporate PR dept because... well just because. Now its apparently going to be the AOL of photo sharing for those too confused by the complexities of facebook photo sharing and snapchat. But what is it, assuming my joke about them being the AOL of 2015 isn't just a joke (or ... is it?)

I hear you and you're certainly not alone in your disdain for the platform, but it just doesn't square with my experience using it.

In particular I think it is a great tool for startups, as:

- We recruited most of our alpha/beta users over Twitter

- Our testimonials page is full of Tweets like this:

https://twitter.com/jhooks/status/558736048134438913

- We're still monitoring for support and issues people have and jumping in to help (which people seem to really like).

You are correct, and thank you for the support of the comment above. WRT Twitter=RSS, I cannot lament enough the fact that RSS has been treated like an abandoned child, only because there is Twitter. WRT AOL, well, there's also Facebook, which is a de facto Internet today (rightly or wrongly, that's a sad debate).

The old twitter, which offered RSS of users' Twitter timelines and searches made a lot of sense, it was a real shame to see it go.

Combining tweets about [subject of choice] inline with your favourite subreddits and websites, all filterable and searchable (with the right client) was a brilliant innovation.

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