Alright, so twitter is terrible because its 'broadcast' instead of 'communities', and you don't like 'broadcast' but you like 'communities', so twitter should go away.
a) "I hope Twitter genuinely ceases to be."
b) "I want a product that enables me to build and participate
in communities[...]."
Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participating in it, it should cease to be?
I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.
I don't want to speak for the author, but an argument could be made that a product that:
1) Is massively popular; and
2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation
... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations, because that's where all the other people are. The existence of A sucks away oxygen that B needs to grow.
>Having a product that enables b) doesn't mean a) must happen. Why come to that conclusion. Because you don't like participating in it, it should cease to be? I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.
No, it's simply that you ignore the fact that he didn't state his opinion as a conclusion in the form: (b) -> (a), nor he claimed (b)->(a) is some kind of deduction by itself.
He just stated (a) and (b), which are independent thoughts. The link, if any, is his belief that social networks who don't work with communities are inherently bad (thus (a)).
Why they are bad? That's what he provides his arguments about in the whole f... article.
Twitter doesn't need to go away. I feel I'm not missing out on much by not using Twitter. Facebook is sort of forced upon me because I'd miss on a bunch of social activities if I didn't use it.
With Twitter it exists and sometimes I use it. My life is not negatively impacted by avoiding it.
Wait, is this satire? His Twitter account is linked in the header, and it just posted about this article. He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled. What is this?
He certainly does not want to encourage conversation.
>Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities;
It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments.
It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ?
I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.
> He claims to want to encourage conversations, but comments are disabled.
That bothered me as well, especially his flippant attitude about it ("Comments are never going to happen. Stop trying to make comments happen"). I get the joke, it's from that Lindsay Lohan movie. But the cognitive dissonance that it creates is annoying.
He's basically saying "I want Twitter to die because they don't allow proper conversations to take place. Oh and by the way, don't bother commenting on my post because I don't believe in blog post conversations."
The article is all about how he doesn't want to communicate with people unless they are in his specifically selected group of people he thinks is OK. So allowing blog comments would probably let anyone communicate, which is what he dislikes about Twitter. So I see the blog comments being disabled as more in line with his philosophy, at least.
His blog comments were probably just like Twitter conversations: impossible to follow and appearing in an inconsistent order. Thus they had to go away. Also the jokes. Stop broadcasting jokes!
And his Twitter feed is nothing but promotional one-way blasts (not to mention his tweet-followers-following numbers are consistent with shady accounts).
It says send him an email. Maybe you think he's imposing undue restrictions on the conversation, but I don't think it's fair to say someone doesn't want a conversation because they would prefer to have it in one medium over the other. Plus comments need to be moderated, etc.
Are you actually engaging with his comments regarding Twitter or just whipping out a lame tu quoque?
> His Twitter account is linked in the header, and it just posted about this article.
Some people link their social media presences together so that posts made in one place get replicated on various socia media things, for the benefit of people who follow them on those social media things. That doesn't mean they have to enjoy that particular social media whatsit's experience, or can't criticize it.
The only thing that you can tell from comments being disabled is that he doesn't want to have this specific conversation on the specific venue that is comments to his blog post. Trying to extrapolate that into some stance of I HATE HAVING CONVERSATIONS is stupid.
I value communities too, but the open broadcast nature of Twitter is what I like about it: I can put a message out into the either ("sector-level FDE encryption is bad!" or "ChiSec is next Wednesday") and it quickly percolates to people who (a) I'm glad saw it and (b) I would not have known to send it to. Lots of good things have come from that dynamic.
Twitter is full of abuse and harassment. Other communities are, too. One solution to that problem is policing, which is what HN does. Another is (for lack of a better term) cliquishness, which is what closed communities do. I see a lot of value in both of those approaches too, but every community management strategy has tradeoffs, and serendipity is an awfully powerful force to trade for orderliness.
It's kind of ridiculous and solipsistic to declare that something that exists for a purpose you don't care about shouldn't exist at all. I prefer Twitter to other social networks and haven't had any problems with it. (Though Twitter should improve the situation for people who do get harassed. You can't eliminate all anonymity on the internet.)
I'm also not interested in the shallow/faux "communities" that are more easily facilitated by Facebook but I have no problem with allowing it to exist and I can't imagine censoring it as a whole due to the parts I don't like. Or even writing up a blog post about doing so.
Disagree. Twitter is immensely valuable for me to quickly communicate with people in my "community" (the Javascript tech world), as well as keep up on news in areas I'm interested in: the Javascript tech world & a few others.
He also clearly doesn't understand how to use lists to create his own communities. I have lists for devs, friends, funnies, etc. With a little effort you can have these communities on tap in columns. Hey, if you're lazy, you can even subscribe to other's lists and put them in a column too.
Twitter is not hard for conversation, so long as you can put together concise thoughts. I'll agree it does become a pain when you need to explain a lot, but that's why we have links and a multitude of platforms to record our thoughts.
This line stood out for me, "Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities; unless they do something so bad as to actually get banned from Twitter"
I've heard this several times from people with large followers, basically that they can't escape the bad actors without taking their account private. I don't think this is a Twitter issue so much as it is a everyone-on-the-network-has-the-same-volume issue. In the 'real' world, the relative population sizes of trolls vs non-trolls means that trolls get drowned out by the noise. But on the Internet everyone gets the same level of 'voice' and a minority can drown out the majority, especially if they are willing to be antisocial about it.
It is a hard problem. A naturally troll resistant but otherwise frictionless sharing platform. Maybe a voting button on every tweet, that is 'troll factor' (so +1 if they are a troll, -1 if they aren't) then use some data analytics to marginalize trolls. Seems like fertile ground for some fresh thinking.
The catch is that once you introduce marginalization mechanisms, abuse is inevitable. What people often want is some kind of abuse-proof marginalize-only-the-people-I-don't-like button.
Slightly side topic - does anyone else feel like they "need" to use Twitter because it's a good distribution platform (the "human RSS"), but generally don't particularly enjoy it?
I personally find myself thinking "oh maybe I should post that stupid comment that's in my head on Twitter...last time I did it I got X followers, so I should probably continue to do it"
yup. I'm worse than the author here, I've never understood twitter. It's bad for writing because of the limitation, it's bad to keep track of something because of all the noise, it's bad for discussions, it's bad for communities, etc...
The only good things that I can come up with are: broadcasting, stalking someone, press 2.0.
And yes I do use it, I have a twitter account with 600+ followers (I don't even know if they're called followers) and I just use it to promote and promote, and I dislike it so much that I miss on a lot of promotion by ignoring it most of the time.
I don't necessarily agree that Twitter users can't build communities. A friend of mine writes for a sports blog specific to an NFL team. His twitter account (and @replies) show that he is a part of a very strong community around the team. The tweets from these super-fans aren't just missives shouted into space, these people use Twitter almost solely as a response tool to each other. Their tweets look very much like something you'd see on IRC or a message board.
I guess another way of phrasing the original article's claim is that although communities do form, they have no straightforward way to exclude strangers, interlopers, and even griefers: and except for incessant use of hashtags (which could eat up valuable space), there's no simple way for a person who is part of multiple communities to direct comments to only one community.
That's a recipe for both serendipity and uncomfortable moments (or worse) if someone has strong opinions on, say, computer science, religion, and animal rights. People who chose to follow them over one thing will constantly see their opinions on other things. That might be great under some circumstances because it will promote more interesting and broader discussions or lead people to learn about ideas that they wouldn't have naturally come across in their own filter bubble. But it might produce some serious disruption in the conversation too, especially if that person's views are offensive or upsetting to some readers.
I know a Twitter user writes a lot about computer science and a lot about sex and sexuality. I find both sets of posts frequently insightful, but the latter would be off-topic in a forum devoted only to computer science, and they do sometimes produce offense.
It seems like the best case for avoiding really bad forms of conflict is when a group of people tweet almost exclusively on a single topic that outsiders don't find upsetting or offensive (or simply don't know about). But a lot of people do want to have at least some discussions that others will inevitably be offended by, and the broadcast medium can be a challenge for that if you didn't want to get into it with the strangers (or for that matter have some of them insult you, threaten you, or even dox you).
I agree. The hockey and baseball Twittersphere is awash in conversations. I've made a number of real-life friends through Twitter in these communities.
Alex Gaynor can be a bit of a troll. This time he wrote a blog post about things he (allegedly) doesn't like about Twitter, added a couple of "flammable" statements here and there to clickbait, and meanwhile he still has a Twitter account.
It's not the first time he acts like this, regardless of his technical contributions. This is why I don't follow him and will keep discounting everything he says, sorry; he goes in the same bucket as Dave Winer and Eric Raymond, people who can code but whose overall opinions I really don't care for.
Ok this may seem crazy, but check out Google+ again. It is a really nice mix of broadcast and communities (when you can find a good community). It won't replace your FB or your Twitter, but it seems to have a solution to this one niche.
It has the directed-edge-graph of Twitter and also really strong support for communities and pages. I know a lot of the developer communities on there are really strong (I work on Developer Relations at Google so I see it all the time).
Twitter is the best real time news source I've ever seen. Any discussion of it's utility that ignores that is missing how a huge percentage of its users actually interact with it.
Yes its bad for conversations. Yes it is poor at building communities. But if you want to know whats happening in <insert area of interest here> Twitter can be a fantastic resource. Especially (but not exclusively) if your area of interest involves sports, tech, or politics.
Ahh, real time news! Yes I think that is the one biggest positive feature of twitter. When I was trying to remember some positive things about Twitter to respond to this with, I failed to remember this one due to all the other not-as-positive things Twitter is used for.
I stopped using twitter mainly because of Alex and other similar figures in
the python community.
I quickly found out that twitter(or maybe the social media in general) brings
the worst in people. I was following people because of their status in the
software community and I hoped that I might get informed about tech stuff
directly "from the source".
Instead, what I got were stupid jokes, rallies against "hostile" people that
used "he" instead of "she" (oh the horror!) and other political nonsense.
I put up with the brain farts of people I used to admire only for a few months.
I then decided that twitter probably isn't for me.
I can't disagree with you, even if I really want to. I'm the same way, I want people to stop using Twitter, because I don't want to use it. I went to dotgo this month, much of the last minute communication was on Twitter, which is a really annoying platform to navigate when you don't have an account. I want to get other people of the platforms that I don't use, so I'm not forced to deal with them myself.
Being push towards technologies, behaviors and trends you don't like can be extremely frustrating. In the end me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about isn't going to change public opinion. I comfort myself in the fact that Twitter will be dead soon if they continue to lose money.
>It's fundamentally impossible to create a safe space with a public account
Right, so use something else for that.
Twitter grew because it's open. I interpret posts like this as an attempt to lobby for the creation of a caste within Twitter with the ability to censor. I've abandoned other large sites because of unreasonable censorship.
I suspect Mr Gaynor is tapping into a simmering feeling that many have that Twitter is inadequate for most communication needs (at least among technical crowds), and that there are now many, many more interesting alternatives now. He clearly cares a lot about his #Brand and being the among first person to say how uncool Twitter or FB or MySpace is becoming might very well boost his Klout score.
I agree that Twitter is inadequate for serious communications and is the last place I go to read deeply on anything, but that doesn't mean it's not immensely useful and fun to many others outside my communities. I don't usually find myself hoping that things I don't use "cease to be". I think Gaynor must just be addressing his own social circles here and speaking hyperbolically.
That's what I like about Twitter-- it's a global cocktail party. People tweet to one another about anything regardless of whether they know each other or what their relative socioeconomic background is.
It is what it is. It's not for everyone. But the net is more interesting with it than without it.
Twitter is awesome! It's so easy to use Twitter to connect with people you usually can't connect with because you have no way of reaching them.
I use twitter a lot to find clients, support (e.g. I need someone from Google or Microsoft to help me with an issue), and much more. It's also a great way for me to gather news and updates. I follow the account of most of the tech I work with so I'm always up-to-date with their latest updates.
I agree that this is Twitter's best feature. It's very easy to find and reach out to almost any person or organization.
It's easier than looking up a phone number, because you don't need to search through piles of "contact us" pages. It's also lighter and less cumbersome than email.
I just wish it was easier to send private messages. Often I don't want my customer support communications to be massively public.
> Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages to whoever wants to read them.
I almost never engage with brands on Twitter.
I do broadcast messages — to anybody who has chosen to follow me and hasn't chosen to unfollow me, both of which are freely done without any social consequences.
On the flip side, I read that which others have broadcast, provided I follow them. And I'm free to shape exactly who's in that set of people, without worrying about circles or unfriending or which IRC channels to sit in.
The author writes about communities, and about moderating IRC channels and making decisions about who can stay and who is banned. Perhaps he prefers to shape and steer communities in a way that Twitter doesn't facilitate.
Personally, the ephemeral and asymmetric nature of the Twitter social graph is the defining feature. The 140 character limit is perhaps just a constraint which helped that feature survive.
The author also mentioned harassment on Twitter. I've never been on the receiving end of it, and I hope I've never been on the other end either. But I believe it's a real problem. I hope there's a solution, but “Twitter going away” isn't that solution.
[+] [-] AYBABTME|11 years ago|reply
I don't get how people come to conclusions like this. It feels very self absorbed to conclude a) from b). Maybe I'm just allergic to opinion pieces with hyperbolic titles.
[+] [-] smacktoward|11 years ago|reply
1) Is massively popular; and
2) Has design flaws that actively sabotage conversation
... could lead to a situation where "B would be better if A went away," due to network effects. No matter how good an alternative B you build, people will keep on suffering with A despite its limitations, because that's where all the other people are. The existence of A sucks away oxygen that B needs to grow.
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
No, it's simply that you ignore the fact that he didn't state his opinion as a conclusion in the form: (b) -> (a), nor he claimed (b)->(a) is some kind of deduction by itself.
He just stated (a) and (b), which are independent thoughts. The link, if any, is his belief that social networks who don't work with communities are inherently bad (thus (a)).
Why they are bad? That's what he provides his arguments about in the whole f... article.
[+] [-] baddox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgalt212|11 years ago|reply
I never directly communicate with people on Twitter.
[+] [-] mirsadm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pmf_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cr3ative|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tux3|11 years ago|reply
He certainly does not want to encourage conversation.
>Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities;
It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments.
It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ? I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.
[+] [-] morganvachon|11 years ago|reply
That bothered me as well, especially his flippant attitude about it ("Comments are never going to happen. Stop trying to make comments happen"). I get the joke, it's from that Lindsay Lohan movie. But the cognitive dissonance that it creates is annoying.
He's basically saying "I want Twitter to die because they don't allow proper conversations to take place. Oh and by the way, don't bother commenting on my post because I don't believe in blog post conversations."
[+] [-] lnanek2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Flavius|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Disruptive_Dave|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serve_yay|11 years ago|reply
Are you actually engaging with his comments regarding Twitter or just whipping out a lame tu quoque?
[+] [-] ben0x539|11 years ago|reply
Some people link their social media presences together so that posts made in one place get replicated on various socia media things, for the benefit of people who follow them on those social media things. That doesn't mean they have to enjoy that particular social media whatsit's experience, or can't criticize it.
The only thing that you can tell from comments being disabled is that he doesn't want to have this specific conversation on the specific venue that is comments to his blog post. Trying to extrapolate that into some stance of I HATE HAVING CONVERSATIONS is stupid.
[+] [-] vacri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jshevek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempodox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|11 years ago|reply
Twitter is full of abuse and harassment. Other communities are, too. One solution to that problem is policing, which is what HN does. Another is (for lack of a better term) cliquishness, which is what closed communities do. I see a lot of value in both of those approaches too, but every community management strategy has tradeoffs, and serendipity is an awfully powerful force to trade for orderliness.
[+] [-] _asummers|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdulli|11 years ago|reply
I'm also not interested in the shallow/faux "communities" that are more easily facilitated by Facebook but I have no problem with allowing it to exist and I can't imagine censoring it as a whole due to the parts I don't like. Or even writing up a blog post about doing so.
[+] [-] kylec|11 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/Alex_Gaynor
Not to mention the big Twitter logo linking to his profile at the top of his blog.
[+] [-] wonderyak|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|11 years ago|reply
But still, yeah.
[+] [-] atjoslin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freebs|11 years ago|reply
Twitter is not hard for conversation, so long as you can put together concise thoughts. I'll agree it does become a pain when you need to explain a lot, but that's why we have links and a multitude of platforms to record our thoughts.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|11 years ago|reply
I've heard this several times from people with large followers, basically that they can't escape the bad actors without taking their account private. I don't think this is a Twitter issue so much as it is a everyone-on-the-network-has-the-same-volume issue. In the 'real' world, the relative population sizes of trolls vs non-trolls means that trolls get drowned out by the noise. But on the Internet everyone gets the same level of 'voice' and a minority can drown out the majority, especially if they are willing to be antisocial about it.
It is a hard problem. A naturally troll resistant but otherwise frictionless sharing platform. Maybe a voting button on every tweet, that is 'troll factor' (so +1 if they are a troll, -1 if they aren't) then use some data analytics to marginalize trolls. Seems like fertile ground for some fresh thinking.
[+] [-] Kalium|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbesto|11 years ago|reply
I personally find myself thinking "oh maybe I should post that stupid comment that's in my head on Twitter...last time I did it I got X followers, so I should probably continue to do it"
[+] [-] baby|11 years ago|reply
The only good things that I can come up with are: broadcasting, stalking someone, press 2.0.
And yes I do use it, I have a twitter account with 600+ followers (I don't even know if they're called followers) and I just use it to promote and promote, and I dislike it so much that I miss on a lot of promotion by ignoring it most of the time.
[+] [-] GI_Josh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schoen|11 years ago|reply
That's a recipe for both serendipity and uncomfortable moments (or worse) if someone has strong opinions on, say, computer science, religion, and animal rights. People who chose to follow them over one thing will constantly see their opinions on other things. That might be great under some circumstances because it will promote more interesting and broader discussions or lead people to learn about ideas that they wouldn't have naturally come across in their own filter bubble. But it might produce some serious disruption in the conversation too, especially if that person's views are offensive or upsetting to some readers.
I know a Twitter user writes a lot about computer science and a lot about sex and sexuality. I find both sets of posts frequently insightful, but the latter would be off-topic in a forum devoted only to computer science, and they do sometimes produce offense.
It seems like the best case for avoiding really bad forms of conflict is when a group of people tweet almost exclusively on a single topic that outsiders don't find upsetting or offensive (or simply don't know about). But a lot of people do want to have at least some discussions that others will inevitably be offended by, and the broadcast medium can be a challenge for that if you didn't want to get into it with the strangers (or for that matter have some of them insult you, threaten you, or even dox you).
[+] [-] hvs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|11 years ago|reply
It's not the first time he acts like this, regardless of his technical contributions. This is why I don't follow him and will keep discounting everything he says, sorry; he goes in the same bucket as Dave Winer and Eric Raymond, people who can code but whose overall opinions I really don't care for.
[+] [-] habosa|11 years ago|reply
It has the directed-edge-graph of Twitter and also really strong support for communities and pages. I know a lot of the developer communities on there are really strong (I work on Developer Relations at Google so I see it all the time).
[+] [-] ben336|11 years ago|reply
Yes its bad for conversations. Yes it is poor at building communities. But if you want to know whats happening in <insert area of interest here> Twitter can be a fantastic resource. Especially (but not exclusively) if your area of interest involves sports, tech, or politics.
[+] [-] vuldin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rantanplan|11 years ago|reply
I stopped using twitter mainly because of Alex and other similar figures in the python community.
I quickly found out that twitter(or maybe the social media in general) brings the worst in people. I was following people because of their status in the software community and I hoped that I might get informed about tech stuff directly "from the source".
Instead, what I got were stupid jokes, rallies against "hostile" people that used "he" instead of "she" (oh the horror!) and other political nonsense.
I put up with the brain farts of people I used to admire only for a few months. I then decided that twitter probably isn't for me.
[+] [-] cheshire137|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|11 years ago|reply
Being push towards technologies, behaviors and trends you don't like can be extremely frustrating. In the end me being bitter about Twitter, JavaScript, smartphones, tablets and all the other stuff I really don't care about isn't going to change public opinion. I comfort myself in the fact that Twitter will be dead soon if they continue to lose money.
[+] [-] serve_yay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcantelon|11 years ago|reply
Right, so use something else for that.
Twitter grew because it's open. I interpret posts like this as an attempt to lobby for the creation of a caste within Twitter with the ability to censor. I've abandoned other large sites because of unreasonable censorship.
EDIT: Gaynor thinks people shouldn't use HN too. Quel surprise. https://twitter.com/alex_gaynor/status/259803468838080512
[+] [-] smacktoward|11 years ago|reply
/end self-promotion
[+] [-] fuzzywalrus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanpg|11 years ago|reply
I agree that Twitter is inadequate for serious communications and is the last place I go to read deeply on anything, but that doesn't mean it's not immensely useful and fun to many others outside my communities. I don't usually find myself hoping that things I don't use "cease to be". I think Gaynor must just be addressing his own social circles here and speaking hyperbolically.
[+] [-] api|11 years ago|reply
It is what it is. It's not for everyone. But the net is more interesting with it than without it.
[+] [-] Avalaxy|11 years ago|reply
I use twitter a lot to find clients, support (e.g. I need someone from Google or Microsoft to help me with an issue), and much more. It's also a great way for me to gather news and updates. I follow the account of most of the tech I work with so I'm always up-to-date with their latest updates.
[+] [-] edraferi|11 years ago|reply
It's easier than looking up a phone number, because you don't need to search through piles of "contact us" pages. It's also lighter and less cumbersome than email.
I just wish it was easier to send private messages. Often I don't want my customer support communications to be massively public.
[+] [-] paulannesley|11 years ago|reply
> Twitter is good for two things: engaging with #Brands, and broadcasting messages to whoever wants to read them.
I almost never engage with brands on Twitter.
I do broadcast messages — to anybody who has chosen to follow me and hasn't chosen to unfollow me, both of which are freely done without any social consequences.
On the flip side, I read that which others have broadcast, provided I follow them. And I'm free to shape exactly who's in that set of people, without worrying about circles or unfriending or which IRC channels to sit in.
The author writes about communities, and about moderating IRC channels and making decisions about who can stay and who is banned. Perhaps he prefers to shape and steer communities in a way that Twitter doesn't facilitate.
Personally, the ephemeral and asymmetric nature of the Twitter social graph is the defining feature. The 140 character limit is perhaps just a constraint which helped that feature survive.
The author also mentioned harassment on Twitter. I've never been on the receiving end of it, and I hope I've never been on the other end either. But I believe it's a real problem. I hope there's a solution, but “Twitter going away” isn't that solution.