
Who’s Doing the Talking on Twitter? - jeo1234
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/twitter-global-social-media/402415/?single_page=true
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chjohasbrouck
I've long suspected that that the vast majority of activity on Twitter is
famous people, brands/marketers, and people trying to win free sub sandwiches.

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hobs
For random niche communities, twitter is great. For instance, I can tweet any
SQL Server question to #sqlhelp, and frequently see some of the best
consultants in the industry take a look and help.

IMO This mainly occurred because some people who were interested in providing
free help and working towards community building had a nice incentive to do so
(getting paid via other mediums/getting mind-share.) Nonetheless, still a
hashtag I follow.

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recursive
140 character format seems very poorly suited to technical database questions.
It's barely enough to name which version of the database you're using. I'm
surprised this is a thing.

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hobs
You would be surprised how much you can fit in when you want to, but most of
the time you would use it to advertise a post on SO, your blog, or whatever if
you couldnt fit the needed information.

Screenshots help a lot in this scenario, and the reality is that you are not
asking super in-depth questions like "How do I take this proprietary database
design and refactor it to do such and such" (generally, due to the volume
issues with twitter) but more related to ops issues, performance, or other
weirdness.

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VeejayRampay
What I've noticed about Twitter: it's a medium where a bunch of people try to
simultaneously sell the concept of Internet as this amazing network creating
never-seen-before opportunities for communication, synchronization and
learning as they're spending half their time complaining about "randos" and
how they can't catch a break.

Which is really the Twitter equivalent of the humble brag: "I'm complaining
about randos so that it's crystal clear that I am part of the enlightened
elite and not one of those nobodies".

So in the end, the very premises of Twitter and other networks (connecting
everyone, creating a network, fostering conversation) are provably false, they
end up being the digital equivalent of the WASP country-club (or medieval
Europe nobles) where a bunch of privileged people get to engage in inner-
circle conversations with each other while simultaneously offering nothing but
open scorn and contempt for the common people.

