

How Twitter Makes Things Faster: A Timeline - prakash
http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2009/02/how-twitter-makes-things-faster-a-timeline.html

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simonb
This projection seems faulty (or at the very least it needs more analysis) to
me. All the previous [machine] generations yield an increase in bandwidth,
something that is not obviously the case for progression from blogging to
tweeting. Especially if we consider signal-to-noise ration not brute
information.

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bobbyi
That didn't explain "how".

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TomOfTTB
Honestly, I might just be cranky here. First day back at work and all. But
this article making the front page seems like a sign that HN's quality
controls are failing.

As you point out there is no "how" explained. In fact, there's no real insight
here at all. Even the logical conclusions are kind of stupid. Blogging
replaced E-Mail? OK.

I can only hope this is just a result of lower traffic due to the Holiday in
the U.S.

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CalmQuiet
Fifty words on how we've moved from fax to email to social media to twitter.

None of those words mentioning how this abundant "freeness" of vapid
information has accelerated intrusion and overload -- way more than it has
accelerated sheer speed. IMHO.

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jacquesm
besides that it will be a long time in coming before twitter text will be
considered legal, which is the case with fax and email.

Twitter, for all its success is still a niche, not a mass communications
medium like email. And I wonder how they expect to get out of that medium.

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sharjeel
Even with not being able to explain "how" and to appreciate the importance of
fax and other mediums even today, the author also failed to mention the
fastest mode of communication: IM.

And the reason why Twitter won't replace email is the same reason why IM can't
replace email: Email is a standard with no central ownership. On the otherwise
Twitter is a "closed" platform with open API. If you want to twitter, you have
to use Twitter (R).

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hapless
Fax machines are still in use for the most important messages.

E-mail is still in use for important notifications.

Blogs are still in use for minor items.

Twitter is in use for... inconsequential items?

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ivankirigin
I routinely get contact for business on twitter. That might be because Tipjoy
does a lot of business on twitter. <http://tipjoy.com/twitter>

But the process is awesome: @reply saying hi, follow to get a DM, get a DM
with a phone number to call. It takes a few seconds if you're using something
like TweetDeck.

This is to get a hold of others. I just give out my phone number of email in
public, and skip the step to DM.

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chime
Why not just use IM then? Make up a screenname and mention it on your site.
You get a lot more features like blocking, local history/logging etc. Most IMs
now support offline messaging too.

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ivankirigin
People see the conversation, and that is valuable. Public customer support is
how Twitter is going to make money (in part). IM clients are extremely
distracting. Real-time but asynchronous messaging is not the same as
synchronous messaging.

You can block people on twitter, and log messages. Better than that, you can
access the conversations via an API.

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jgrahamc
I took the liberty of flagging this for being vapid.

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axod
Conveniently forgetting IM,IRC,etc eh?

