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How To Fix Twitter

Posted by Soulskill on from the 140-characters-is-punchline-length dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Dustin Curtis succinctly breaks down Twitter's biggest problems, and how they can be fixed. Some of the problems are technological — they way they've decided to handle multimedia objects is arbitrary and annoying, and their inclusion of third-party modules is inconsistent and behind the times. Other problems are more central to what Twitter is about: "[F]or normal users, Twitter feels too much like a one-way broadcast system. ... Twitter responses are difficult to read on the website–with that weird accordion expansion UI that only shows 5 responses and makes it impossible to follow a coherent conversation."

The biggest problem is in Twitter's utility for browsing real-time information, which should be its strength: "When I open Twitter during a major debate in the U.S., or when a bomb has exploded in Bangkok, there should be a huge f@$%&#g banner at the top that says 'follow this breaking event.' It shouldn't just search for a hashtag–it should use intelligent algorithms to show me all of the relevant content about that event.

97 comments

  1. Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Twitter feels too much like a one-way broadcast system"

    Well duh, that's the point. Celebrities get to spew their thoughts out, and everyone lsitens, and they don't have to listen to responses unless they actively want to.

    "'follow this breaking event"

    On Twitter? So I can hear what Jow Blow and his friends have to say about something that doens't involve celebrities? "Nuke everyone", eh, Joe Blow? What wonderful insight!

    1. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What defines a "breaking event" the OP was looking for? I'd rather get the most from twitter from people close by about a local robber that was captured instead of a standoff in a high school 3 thousand miles away. Save the shock and awe for the major network "news" stations. I don't need or want to see 1000 comments from people physically no where near a major event that have nothing insightful to add. Can CatLover2 in Columbus really had any insight to a standoff in Phoenix?

    2. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities

      Works great for keeping up on news headlines as well. It's like a modernized RSS reader.

    3. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Andreas+Mayer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Works great for keeping up on news headlines as well. It's like a modernized RSS reader.

      You can sort of use it like RSS.

      What I don't understand is the 'modernized' bit ...

    4. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, if all you think people use Twitter for is tracking celebrities then you're either willfully stupid or simply ignorant.

      I use Twitter a lot to follow announcements and opinions of people I find interesting, including writers, climate scientists, energy experts, and sport commentators (but almost never athletes).

      And the criticisms in TFA are accurate. Twitter can be incredibly annoying at times, especially when there's some very big event that you're trying to follow after it's already started.

    5. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      " follow announcements and opinions of people I find interesting"

      Everyone's definition of celebrity is different. They are YOUR celebrities.

      What the TFA is whining about is that he/she is not as important as the celebrities, and can't easily engage them in conversation. That's not the point of Twitter, it's a one-way street, and the more popular that person is, the less likely you'll hear back.

    6. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by kheldan · · Score: 1

      This is related to what I was going to inquire about.
      I do not use 'social media', not since Livejournal, and not since the short stay I had on Facebook (the former became irrelevant, and the latter pissed me off one too many times with it's invasion of my privacy), and I certainly have never used Twitter. I've wondered what percentage of the content there is actual communication, and how much of it is just 'hey, hey look at me, look at me, pay attention to meeeeeeee!' sort of stuff. I think the AC I'm responding to has more or less answered that question for me: sounds like the vast majority of the 'content' (if you can call it that) on Twitter is just attention-whoring of one flavor or another. How disappointingly useless. Based on that I'd have to say the way to 'fix' Twitters 'problems' is to nuke it from orbit, returning the wasted Internet bandwidth to be used for something actually useful.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    7. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by bitingduck · · Score: 1

      It's also useful for making short notice announcements that have to get distributed to a lot of people whose contact info you don't have directly.

      I used to run the website for a local sports venue that was part of a large complex. People would come long distances to use the venue, but the complex owners didn't provide any support for the venue manager (which is why I ran the web site). There was often news to get out that was short notice (use the south gate to enter because of another event, things cancelled tonight due to water leak, etc) and I couldn't get things like that up on a few minutes notice all the time. We put a twitter box with his feed on the front page and a) everybody could check the website for updates before they made the trek, and b) people who subscribed by their phone got direct tweets. It worked very well.

    8. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

      If Twitter had an option to use current phone GPS location (which should be easy to enable and disable) making tweets, it could identify accounts which were known to be physically near a breaking story, and autogenerate a hashtag like #PhoenixStandoffWeAreThere, with tweets only from those accounts. This would make it the 'world police channel' we have all wanted.

    9. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's modern because it sort of works and is pushed on you by a hugely over-valued company.

    10. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Having looked at way too much data from Twitter that was part of an academic study, I can say that your dichotomy is wrong. It is actual communication just like you'd find on telephone transcripts, SMS logs, or all the paper notes passed between kids in class 30 years ago.
      This actual communication largely consists mainly of "look at me!".

      That's the majority of social interaction carried by any broadly adopted medium... the equivalent of hens clucking in the farm yard, or apes picking bugs out of each others fur. Whether you like it or not mostly has to do with whether you like to groom with common folk or you only like to pick really obscure bugs out of really unusual fur.

    11. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's be honest, folks. If "slashdot user approved" were a thing, it'd be a list of dead technology that nobody ever cared about.

      Twitter is its own animal. It's not what *we'd* build. That doesn't mean it's broken... as evidenced by the trillion people using it all day, every day.

    12. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by LMariachi · · Score: 1

      So don’t follow celebrities or idiots! Problem solved.

      I follow people I know personally and want to somewhat stay in touch with (I’m somewhat isolated,) some organizations I’m involved with or interested in, and a smattering of humor accounts. None of the shit that people are complaining about affects me -- I don’t even see it.

      Twitter isn't meant for lengthy conversations or breaking news. As long as you don’t try to use the tool for the wrong jobs it works just fine.

    13. Re:Sigh...Twitter is about following celebrities by Bodero · · Score: 1

      Twitter does geotag tweets (easily enabled or disabled). You can search by where the tweet was posted, for a hashtag, for a phrase, or for nothing at all (all tweets near a location).

      https://twitter.com/search-adv...

  2. fix it for who? by tqft · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Make a twitter for newbies and a news feed if you want, I like my hand curated news sources as they are.

    It isn't broken for me.

    A bigger fix would be to make twitter a proper platform like it was, not a semi closed app

    --
    The Singularity is closer than you think
    Quant
    1. Re: fix it for who? by pauljlucas · · Score: 4, Interesting

      An even better fix would be to decouple Twitter the protocol from Twitter the company. Just like nobody owns e-mail, nobody should own Twitter the protocol. (I realize that it's not in Twitter-the-company's interest to do this.)

      --
      If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
    2. Re: fix it for who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hear hear. Sadly, those days are long gone, and every new player in the comms space (I'm looking at you, Stewart Butterfield) is trying to trap you in their walled garden with stupid gifs, built-in (and copyright violating) emojis, and message search. Messaging should be federated, as messaging is about the accessibility of the users first and foremost. We didn't allow this to happen with telephone numbers. We've let this happen with everything else.

    3. Re: fix it for who? by SQLGuru · · Score: 1

      I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it as a potential "protocol". The Twitter API is fairly easy and a lot of libraries exist in a lot of languages. Imaging using Twitter DMs to have your IoT devices communicate directly with each other regardless of where they are (work, car, home, etc.). The 140 character limit shouldn't even be that limiting if you are just sending control commands.

    4. Re: fix it for who? by Arthur+Fontaine · · Score: 1

      Exactly but it's not just Twitter.... All of these social platforms should be open protocols, not for-profit corporations, since they'll always be throttled from their true potential by the need to monetize.

      A completely opposite approach is here.

      --
      My other /. user ID is 5 digits.
    5. Re: fix it for who? by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      funny thing it probably would be in their interests to move it to something more akin to IRC with others hosting the servers for them.

      twitter as they are can't seem to "scale up" to profits. they're making a loss on everyone and making it up in volume isn't working out.

      further bonuses: censorship becoming not their problem.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    6. Re: fix it for who? by hoggoth · · Score: 1

      There is another protocol that may work as well as Twitter DMs for your IoT devices, and it doesn't have the 140 character limit. It's called "TCP" and works pretty well.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  3. Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought Twitter's biggest problem was vitriol.

    CAPTCHA: alarmed

    1. Re:Really? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      Et un peu de vitriole!

  4. Ive gotten used to it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I've been using it for about 10 months and I'm "used" to twitter now, but I've often wondered why they don't have collapsible threads (slashdot style) as following a conversation with multiple participants is a real PITA

    1. Re:Ive gotten used to it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, twitter should take a slashdot beta site implementation.

  5. Sink it into the ground by ickleberry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It would be great to see it gone. Who knows, journalists might resort to doing actual investigation once again instead of simply regurgitating what shows up on their twitter machine

    1. Re:Sink it into the ground by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It would be great to see it gone. Who knows, journalists might resort to doing actual investigation once again instead of simply regurgitating what shows up on their twitter machine

      You have to admit, it's a very efficient way for people to ruin their lives.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:Sink it into the ground by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      #ruinedlivesmatter

    3. Re:Sink it into the ground by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You have to admit, it's a very efficient way for SJWs to ruin other people's lives.

      Fixed that for you. Most of the Twitter "incidents" I'm aware of where lives were ruined involve SJWs latching onto a single out-of-context tweet and then starting a campaign to ruin the tweeter's life over that. For example, "donglegate," which ruined the careers of everyone involved.

    4. Re:Sink it into the ground by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      George Clooney has said almost exactly this.

    5. Re:Sink it into the ground by rmdingler · · Score: 1
      Twitter, Facebook, et al are incredible marvels for people who want to keep in touch with celebrities or a large group of acquaintances, friends and family with minimal effort.

      This contributes to declining Enquirer readership and submarining postal revenue, but those are seemingly consequences most of us can live with.

      On the not so fortuitous side of the scales, it seems too easy for an excitable electronic mob to win the day (and the 24 hr news sweeps) . The level of individual sacrifice required for participation is smallish: a smart phone, a tablespoon of outrage and a five minute bathroom break.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    6. Re:Sink it into the ground by swb · · Score: 1

      The relentless herd mentality and how it bounces from one hyped-up outrage to another in absolute defiance of any measure of rationality or common sense is a real turn off.

      I suppose I should just accept the fact that "the mob" and it's virulent, almost palpable ignorance hasn't really changed since the Roman era, but it is depressing and really pushes my misanthropy button.

    7. Re:Sink it into the ground by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Informative

      A couple of years ago, I was involved in the recruitment of somebody for a high-profile and politically sensitive job. Twitter was the number-one means by which candidates managed to exclude themselves. Bear in mind we're talking here about late-career professionals with, at the least, six-figure salaries, not about teenagers.

      The nature of the job meant that anybody who had demonstrated poor judgement in public communications could be considered for it (the press would have torn them to shreds). Surprise, surprise, almost everybody who had used twitter had demonstrated (very) poor judgement at some point, usually on multiple occasions and sometimes over a span of several years.

      The rapid-fire nature of twitter and the tight character limit encourage flamebait, knee-jerk responses and escalating incivility. It is the ultimate career-limitation tool and nobody who aspires to be regarded as "serious" should have a personal twitter account.

      A friend's wife works as a recruitment consultant and tells similar stories; countless people whose angry twitter exchanges, viewable by the general public and posted with their real name, have created such an impression of poor judgement that employers don't want to touch them.

    8. Re:Sink it into the ground by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Twitter, Facebook, et al are incredible marvels for people who want to keep in touch with celebrities or a large group of acquaintances, friends and family with minimal effort.

      This contributes to declining Enquirer readership and submarining postal revenue, but those are seemingly consequences most of us can live with.

      On the not so fortuitous side of the scales, it seems too easy for an excitable electronic mob to win the day (and the 24 hr news sweeps) . The level of individual sacrifice required for participation is smallish: a smart phone, a tablespoon of outrage and a five minute bathroom break.

      That's because as you note, it takes very little effort. Which automatically appeals to assholes.

      I have no need for someone I haven't seen in 40 years to be my friend. I also have a marked tendency to apply a little more nuance than can be expressed in an inane tweet. My friends I keep in direct contact with, email, or Send the kids out of the room folks....... I meet them face to face. Twitter and Facebook is like meeting your friends in the least savory place possible.

      And I have zero interest in celebrities.

      For people who like that kind of stuff, its a little messy, but it works fine. Part of their fun is seeing people self destruct.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    9. Re:Sink it into the ground by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A friend's wife works as a recruitment consultant and tells similar stories; countless people whose angry twitter exchanges, viewable by the general public and posted with their real name, have created such an impression of poor judgement that employers don't want to touch them.

      And the very first poor judgement was getting a Twitter account in the first place. For all the reasons you noted.

      This is really something that ends up killing a service. It's th tragedy of the commons.

      An example was how usenet was destroyed. As a couple examples, A couple newsgroups I paid attention to were an antenna newsgroup, and an amateur radio policy group.

      The antenna group at one time had a number of world class designers who were happy to share their knowledge with the rest of us. But the kooks moved in, people with miracle antenna and fringy physics, and ill manners to boot.

      Well, on the internet, a world renowned expert is on equal footing with someone who designs dummy load antennas based on physics only a perpetual motion advocate could love, and doesn't hesitate to go nuts if challenged.

      So the usefull people go away, and the crazy dude wins. for aweek or two.

      The policy group was taken over by some kooks from West Virginia whith sever psycho sexual problems. Now no content, and since pissing off people who were there for a valid purpose was part of the fun, the kooks end up leaving.

      Its just how those things evolve.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    10. Re:Sink it into the ground by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      The solution is

      1. half anonymity, and
      2. don't say stupid shit with an account that can be linked back to your real-life (TM) identity.

      That's why I use a different "handle" on /. Reddit, Steam, and YouTube/Google+. Precisely so I can freely speak my mind and people can't link my real identity with my programming & political views because what belongs in one place doesn't belong on the others.

      Until this bullshit witch hunt of the general masses and vigilante justice of Social IN-justice Warriors completely stop (Ha!) simply because one person dares to speak the truth, or god forbid, have a _different_ but unpopular opinion_, half anonymity is the only practical real solution.

      I precisely DON'T use Twitter nor Facebook. You can't say something stupid to come back to haunt you if you don't use the data mining services in the first place.

      When you have crap like more people "follow" retards like Kartrashian, then the News or Oprah, I'm not missing anything of substance by. Why would I follow someone else's artificial life when I have my own real life to live???

      ... Kim Kardashian, you know that she is very, very famous. Some would say that's all you need to know. At press time, she has 25 million Twitter followers, about a million less than Oprah Winfrey and nearly 5 million more than CNN Breaking News.

      Reference:

      * http://www.papermag.com/2014/1...

    11. Re:Sink it into the ground by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, hate to break it to you, but in Donglegate the tweet was from a so-called "SJW". Her life was, well, not ruined, but she lost her job (rightly, IMO), but at the cost of one of her victims losing his job too.

      So it's not exactly a case in point, is it?

      To be quite honest, most people having their tweets quoted out of context in an attempt to ruin them seem to be those accused of being SJWs anyway.

  6. Fixing an internet firehose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Getting meaningful signal from Twitter's noise is an effort in futility.

    1. Re: Fixing an internet firehose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Twubs.com developed a solution for that problem. (Disclosure: I once, a long time ago, was part of the Twubs development team.)

    2. Re: Fixing an internet firehose by GeorgeMontanez · · Score: 1

      Twubs.com developed a solution for that problem. (Disclosure: I once, a long time ago, was part of the Twubs development team.)

  7. Kill 99.4% of its users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hope the rest take the hint.

    1. Re:Kill 99.4% of its users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, so you just want to stop the bots.

  8. The bigger fix for twitter would be in the tos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The more productive change to twitter would be to change their terms of service to allow free scraping of data without restriction or shaping, and to allow third party clients to present the data in any form they choose rather than a twitter-like experience as mandated by the terms of service.

  9. Whiney whiney whine by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I open Twitter during a major debate in the U.S., or when a bomb has exploded in Bangkok, there should be a huge f@$%&#g banner at the top that says 'follow this breaking event.'

    Why should there be a banner? If you go to Twitter to get your breaking news, you're a maroon.

    I thought one of the whole points of Twitter is that it's 99% driven by user content, not by the company deciding what to promote, and that seems to work just, umm... "fine." If you like that sort of thing.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re: Whiney whiney whine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Pretty much every company now breaks their new on twitter, then publishes an actual story -- often just a bunch of commentary about embedded tweet -- on their web site.

    2. Re: Whiney whiney whine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's kind of hard to tweet a link to a news story on a website that doesn't exist.

    3. Re:Whiney whiney whine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When I open Twitter during a major debate in the U.S., or when a bomb has exploded in Bangkok, there should be a huge f@$%&#g banner at the top that says 'follow this breaking event.'

      Why should there be a banner? If you go to Twitter to get your breaking news, you're a maroon.

      I thought one of the whole points of Twitter is that it's 99% driven by user content, not by the company deciding what to promote, and that seems to work just, umm... "fine." If you like that sort of thing.

      I think the point they're making is that Twitter has the ability to be a useful news service as they are essentially a real time, crowd sourced information site. You can't get news any faster than you can from the individuals right there at the scene. To use it as it stands as a news source yes you'd be a maroon. But with a better ability to filter out useless stuff and identify relevant stuff for what people would want, then the relevance of Twitter becomes far greater.

    4. Re:Whiney whiney whine by Kevin+Fishburne · · Score: 1

      Why should there be a banner? If you go to Twitter to get your breaking news, you're a maroon.

      Because when the goon squad is making its way through your village you should really wait for the AP release before evacuating your family. Twitter is useful for on the ground, at the moment, eye-witness accounts of shit happening. The first news of the assassination of Osama bin Laden broke on Twitter from people hearing the helicopters outside their homes.

      For everyone else talking shit about Twitter or calling for it to be nuked from orbit, please take your head out of your ass for a moment and realize it's just a tool, and it's up to you how you use it. You can follow some idiot in Hollywood and complain about how idiotic it is, or you can follow @NASA, @NASA_Skylab, @NASA_SLS, @elonmusk, @SpaceX, @ComsumerReports, @TEDTalks, @mental_floss, @History_Pics, @techreview (MIT), etc.

      Twitter is fucking awesome. All it really needs is a "Switch Account" button to easily switch between "personal" and "professional" accounts and some minor usability tweaks.

      --
      Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
    5. Re:Whiney whiney whine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Skylab has an active Twitter account? I didn't realize they had Internet access in the Australian hinterlands.

    6. Re:Whiney whiney whine by peon_a-z,A-Z,0-9$_+! · · Score: 1

      Why should there be a banner? If you go to Twitter to get your breaking news, you're a maroon.

      Maybe it's just a case of ageism. After thinking he meant stupid people from context clues, I literally had to google "maroon urban dictionary" to verify it (old people call "stupid people" maroons since they learned that on Bugs Bunny cartoons?). After older people ask me how I found "_____" and I tell them Twitter, it's markedly harder to teach older people how to use Twitter in a useful manner for themselves. We usually revert to me just continuing to feed them information I find myself.

      Twitter is useful for on the ground, at the moment, eye-witness accounts of shit happening.

      I wholeheartedly agree. I also travel a lot to countries the MSM does not care to talk about, or where events there have gone past the "two-week MSM reporting period" (since that's how long money-making attention lasts), and so Twitter is mainly the only place I go to get "real" news that is unfettered and unabridged.

    7. Re:Whiney whiney whine by Chuffpole · · Score: 1

      > If you go to Twitter to get your breaking news, you're a maroon.

      See that, America? Now THAT is irony!

  10. The biggest problem is... by AndyKron · · Score: 4, Informative

    The biggest problem with Twitter is censorship.

    1. Re:The biggest problem is... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Can you be specific? Twitter removes very little, pretty much only stuff that is illegal under US law or that contains personal data.

      Personally I tend to think it is a good thing if Twitter takes down a post when someone doxxes me.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:The biggest problem is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Twitter removes very little

      How do you know?

    3. Re:The biggest problem is... by bitingduck · · Score: 1

      Twitter removes very little, pretty much only stuff that is illegal under US law or that contains personal data.

      Which is what makes Twitter-shaming the only way to get customer service from companies like Comcast.

    4. Re:The biggest problem is... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      People report when their content is removed.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:The biggest problem is... by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      The biggest problem with Twitter is censorship.

      LOL.

      This "censorship" must be really weird. Twitter still contains a cesspool of vicious threats, lies, illegally leaked information, etc. that rivals most other social media combined.

      If you got censored on Twitter, it's because they thought you were a terrorist or you shot some poor anchor woman and posted live videos of it. Everything short of that seems to stick around.

  11. Searching a specific TL / own tweets by Jesrad · · Score: 4, Informative

    This one's been frustrating me a lot: I apparently cannot search my own TL or my own tweets for that nugget of info / chart / URL that I need again.

    --
    Maybe we deserve this world ?
  12. how 'bout this? by turkeydance · · Score: 2

    https://twitter.com/breakingne...

  13. I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I had never used twitter before, but I a few months ago had a reason to use it. Yet I couldn't even complete the sign up process, because it required that I provide a valid phone number, but I do not own a telephone! Maybe there is some way around this, but I did not have the time nor inclination to investigate this. Instead I just did not use twitter.

    Twitter, make it easy for people to sign up to use your service! Make it like Slashdot, or even better, like Y Combinator's Hacker News site. When I signed up there, I did not even have to provide an email address! That is how easy it should be to sign up for almost all web sites that require sign ups. Only ask for more information when it's legitimately needed. Twitter does not need my phone number for any reason, including account "verification". So twitter should never ask for my phone number, and it should never prevent me for signing up just because I do not have a telephone!

    1. Re:I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      It's like Pinterest, that stupid website requires an account just to view the contents! Fuck'em, I say.

    2. Re:I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by JMJimmy · · Score: 1

      555-555-5555

    3. Re:I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google Voice is free, will give you a telephone number to use, and you can access calls and SMS via your browser. In this day and age it's hard to do anything without a telephone number, but Google Voice can provide a useful alternative.

    4. Re:I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That doesn't work, you have to actually be able to receive texts at the number to get a signup verification code. It's like Gmail, you can't make an account anymore unless you give them your mobile number and are capable of getting texts.

    5. Re:I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by SQLGuru · · Score: 1

      They are trying to set up two-factor authentication as part of the sign-up process. I'm all in favor of sites requiring TFA.....granted, I think they should have multiple options for the various factors.

    6. Re: I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      False, I just made 10 new gmail accounts and Facebook account last week to abuse a music festival's app to get extra points for free merch...

    7. Re: I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by Gizan · · Score: 1

      I've run into many websites that wouldn't take my Gvoice number as a real number.

    8. Re: I couldn't sign up without a phone number! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GV IS my real number. GV is integrated into Sprint. Although my cell phone has another local real number, my GV number is what appears in all outgoing calls and texts and my VM is handled by GV too. I've never had a problem with someone not taking my Google number as my real number, even my bank(s) and CC companies have my GV number.

  14. Two problems by jabberw0k · · Score: 4, Insightful
    1.Twitter is a walled garden, and not unlike Facebook or Instagram, don't expect them to yield control of the medium.

    2. #@$@ can't this @#$#$# author @+#~~& speak @#$#@# two @#$@#$ sentences #@$#@ without @#$#$ using #@$@# profanity? Good grief. Spare us the sailor talk, or don't people know how to talk without swearing anymore?

    1. Re:Two problems by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2, Funny

      Good grief. Spare us the sailor talk, or don't people know how to talk without swearing anymore?

      Fuck that shit!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:Two problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, don't need to pay any attention to that unprofessional asshole anymore. I'm also thankful I saw that post, now if he tries to dress anything up nice in the future, I'll see it for what it really is.

    3. Re:Two problems by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      Smoke you, melon farmer!

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  15. Perfect for short jokes by alex67500 · · Score: 1

    But it's kind of hard to get a constructive opinion across in 140 signs...

    1. Re:Perfect for short jokes by jabberw0k · · Score: 1

      No worries, you can now write an entire essay using nothing but emoticons! Just wait until next year: the new technology will permit only caveman-speak. Ignorance is wisdom, tovarisch!

  16. Banners by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I open Twitter during a major debate in the U.S., or when a bomb has exploded in Bangkok, there should be a huge f@$%&#g banner at the top that says 'follow this breaking event.' It shouldn't just search for a hashtag–it should use intelligent algorithms to show me all of the relevant content about that event.

    Yeah, ruin twitter by adding in the same crap that people ran away from on real news sites.

    Is he trying to improve or destroy Twitter?

    (Not a Twitter user, but I do read real news sites - and that banner is freaking annoying).

  17. If it's broken, why fix it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just go make a new startup and the people will leave for it.

  18. The biggest problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The biggest problem is the users. Twitter users think that "#", a hash, is a "hashtag".

    It's so fucking moronic that I don't even think there as been a parallel misunderstood term in the history of words.

    Shortening of words, sure, but when has a portmanteau ever superseded one of the parts?

    1. Re:The biggest problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's just general ignorance, not anything specific to twitter. Whenever I hear someone talking about the "satellite" they have in their back yard, I want to strangle the fucker too, but what can you do?

  19. Conversation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    [...] and makes it impossible to follow a coherent conversation.

    Yeah, about that. It's difficult to have a meaningful conversation 140 characters at a time, especially if the conversation includes multiple people. If I want to join a conversation by @SomeDudeInFL and @CrazyUncleJoe and @YourMommaJokes, then my 140 characters is already dropping down to 95 (42 for the names, 3 for spaces after the names). That's enough for, what, 15-20 words, maybe? Then if they want to reply, my Twitter account name takes up even more space.

    Twitter just isn't set up for meaningful conversation. It's the Sound Byte Central of the Internet. That's okay if you're willing to embrace it. I listen to talk radio during the day, and the hosts will use Twitter to send out links to the topics they're talking about, for example. For that purpose it works really well. Anything more than that and it starts to break down.

  20. The purpose of twitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The twitter cycle:

    1. Celebrity tweets out a brainfart
    2. Mockery from the peanut gallery
    3. Celebrity tweets out butthurt at mockery
    4/ More mockery from the peanut gallery
    5. Celebrity claims harassment and complains to media/twitter
    6. More mockery from the peanut gallery
    7. If celebrity hides or deletes account: wait for new celebrity and goto 1.
    8. Goto 6

  21. Like sharpening a spoon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Whoever this writer is, he is trying to make twitter something it is not and was never meant to be. Coherent conversations? Try a forum. News alerts? How about using a, let's think on the edge here, a news site?

    Twitter is for short thoughts and quips. Trying to make it more than that is like trying to express your complete life philosophy via the bumper stickers on your car.

    Don't complain that your spoon isn't sharp enough to cut that steak -- get the right tool for the job, and use a knife. Similarly, stop trying to use Twitter for anything substantial.

  22. what's there to fix? by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    Twitter is a platform for self-righteous indignation and social signaling, and it seems to be very good at that. It's manna for the media, and media personalities and journalists seem to be its primary engine..

    If you want news, discussion, or any other form of useful communication, Twitter is the wrong platform to use, starting with the fact that in 140 characters, you can really have any kind of serious dialog.

  23. This is a Great Slashdot Contest by willworkforbeer · · Score: 1

    Winner with the correct answer gets to be the next bungee CEO
    http://www.businessinsider.com...

    About time we had a decent contest around here to liven things up.

    --
    Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
  24. Propietary by Andreas+Mayer · · Score: 0

    The biggest problem of Twitter is that it's proprietary. Twitter tells you what you can and cannot do with data from the Twitter stream.
    That is what broke it for me right from the beginning. I wanted to integrate it into my normal data flow, but they disallowed taking tweets and showing them in another context. And I really do not care about using yet another application to get to my news.
    So the idea of Twitter is intriguing; but that fact that you can only get it as a stand alone app/service breaks it.

  25. help society by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just Say No to twitter. Thanks.

  26. Wrong problem by BitZtream · · Score: 1

    Twitters doesn't need fixed. Its the twits that use it that need fixing. And what you're really getting wrong is trying to change it. Let the twits who use twitter continue to do so and post all their crap there so we don't have to see it everywhere else.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  27. Just like in the distant past by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    "Some of the problems are technological — they way they've decided to handle multimedia objects is arbitrary and annoying,"

    Reminds me of the email newsletters of my youth, same thing as twitter, broadcasted to all participants, you could put yourself on and off the list it contained mostly bull and the multimedia attachments sucked because it had only 7 bits and decoding them needed RTFM.
    But at least there was no character limit.

  28. How to fix it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Solution 1:
    Nuke it from orbit.

    Solution 2:
    Just follow users tweeting porn.

    Captcha: pantries
    Almost!

  29. Character limit by TheGoodNamesWereGone · · Score: 1

    140 characters is a joke, period, and why I don't use the platform. It exists mainly as a method for sharing links and not for content creation.

  30. Fix Twitter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I prefer Twitter broken!

  31. How to fix twitter: increase maximum characters by L505 · · Score: 1

    Twitter only allows you to post short terse messages. To fix twitter one has to increase (double) the size of the allowed message you can post.

    There we fixed it!

    Oops, the internet just doubled in size with twice as much useless information. Moore's law applies to hard drives too, no? Every 18 months, the amount of useless data on a hardrive doubles. The distinction between corrupted data and useful data is murky. Is twitter corrupted?

    Oh, brilliant idea: a P2P twitter. All the data is distributed across personal computers of individuals instead of stored on twitters servers.
    That would mean storing all other people's useful twitter posts in your uTorrent client, or something, and the more popular the twitter post, the more people share it. Strange.

  32. Requires dwim, crystalball 2.36. Continue? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    "When I open Twitter during a major debate in the U.S., or when a bomb has exploded in Bangkok, there should be a huge f@$%&#g banner at the top that says 'follow this breaking event.'

    You mention two things, and then use a singular "this". Which one? There's always something happening somewhere.

    As to geolocation, which someone mentioned elsewhere, nope. The thing nearest to me isn't necessarily the most interesting.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  33. OMG... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just block everything and let only the most reliable plugins working. The problem of Twitter are trhe spammers, who arbitrary follow users just to feed their databases. Those ones must be finished before the snowball get too huge for handling

  34. I'm glad it's fixed, next... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm glad Dustin Curtis knows how to Fix Twitter. Now, can somebody explain to me succintly who Dustin Curtis is and why I should be paying any attention to Dustin Curtis? (Disclaimer: I really don't care about Twitter in the slightest and think people who use it are Twits.)

  35. Eliminate Twitter by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

    Twitter suffers greatly from all the junk posts. I had a Twitter account for a few weeks and followed a few outlets, but I found that I could get than information as quick through RSS feeds and without the excessive amount of junk posts. I also have no clue what to tweet myself. I am still baffled that Twitter got that popular. Worst technological issue is the character limit per Tweet. This only allows for heavily reduced comments that have little to no informational value.