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33 Comments

Twitter 'Industry' Bullshit

  1. 15

    I know a lot of the people doing this. It's 100% a tactic meant to grow their accounts. They're spending hours every day reverse engineering what gets shared the most, and they've been at it for months.

    I wouldn't say that means they aren't providing value. They just aren't providing value to us. The people who are liking and retweeting a ton are clearly getting some sort of value, otherwise they wouldn't be engaging. But it's thin value. They get an entertainment dopamine hit when, after scrolling through dozens of mediocre tweets, they come to a meaty one that took some time to put together, even if the insights contained within are kind of generic and surface level. So they retweet.

    Feeling some envy at these massive retweet counts is understandable, but I think it's important not to compare apples to oranges. Is it your goal to spend hours on Twitter making mildly entertaining threads for the masses? Probably not.

    So ignore the people who are doing that. Of course their numbers are going to be higher. But who cares? That doesn't say anything about you or your tweets, except that you're playing a different game.

    1. 1

      Curious about your thoughts on how this thinking applies to accounts like:

  2. 12

    "Tech twitter" has become so bourgeoisie. It's full of prominent figures, or at least people well positioned, alternating between self-fellating and fellating one another. They think an audience is everything, they even refer to people without big followings as "reply guy"s, making fun of the fact that these lesser people dare reach out and try to engage on a public platform. Yet what's right there in their list of advice every time? "Get engaged on social media." So they tell you in their little viral threads to be more active but turn around and belittle those trying to be more active. Great leadership by example.

    But that's a pretty good representation of the overall quality of their advice. Their little "I'm a guy with an ego, here's a thread of everything I've learned below V" is either completely vapid in the vein of "you need to work hard, do research, communicate well, and be a team player" as if it isn't surface level advice or full of guru grandeur. Like, yeah, it's impressive you sold a company for 5mil but that doesn't mean I'm looking to you for advice on what temperature the water in my shower should be as if it's the life hack that brought your SaaS value.

    1. 1

      Do you write somewhere? Or tweet... ?
      I want to read more of this!

  3. 5

    Could not agree more. I want to see valuable threads or no threads at all. I rarely do threads because I frankly don't have great & valuable ideas that often!

    I think this is what fueling my project so much. I don't think people should be focused on incessant retweets or follows. It doesn't actually... lead to anything real. Follower count < A real community.

    1. 2

      I'm worried my eyes are going to roll into the back of my head.

      I don't think it applies just to threads, it's (certain) tweets in general.

      1. 1

        Ha!!! And good point. Engagement tweets make me sad. This is probably why I tweet less and less lately. I'd rather tweet nothing than something that isn't at least funny (to me) or valuable to someone.

    2. -1

      This comment has been voted down. Click to show.

      1. 2

        Serious question - what's ironic?

      2. 2

        Not sure what you mean. Care to explain? I’m building my app to be focused on a real community, helping others and creating quality content. That’s sort of why my tag line is not another Twitter growth app.

        1. 0

          Just that this (https://twitter.com/RandallKanna/status/1354471147929104385) seems to be exactly the sort of tweet that is generating the sort of outrage (or jealousy) being voiced here.

          Which is harmless. I'd be more agreeable if the concern was aimed at voter disinformation or the escalation of hate. Instead, Pat Walls hit a nerve with an observation and is generating the sort of traffic and attention that falls exactly into the arena he's so bothered by.

          Which is some Jedi mind trick-level stuff.

            1. 1

              Hah! It doesn't make ME mad. If fact, I happen to enjoy posts like that one. It's other contributors to this thread that are envious of your >37k followers. And my guess it's posts like that one that helped get you there.

  4. 3

    I feel the article is laden with envy... which, like posting vapid tweetstorms, is a very powerful distraction.

  5. 3
    • sigh * I feel so very old at almost 51.

    I use LinkedIn because it has helped me get jobs and stay connected to former colleagues. Facebook used to help me stay in touch with friends. I don't get the value out of them that I did in the past.

    When Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat came around my kids were nearly adults. I didn't have time to spend on new social media platforms and I suppose that on some level I'm happy about that.

    I've spent time on Quora because I feel it's less about you than it is about the person you're trying to help.

    I will say that there are a handful of people that I follow on Twitter that I like and if I see they tweeted something, I usually go look. But it's a really, really small number.

  6. 2

    Thinking about this quote from article:

    "And that hurts a bit. At some level, I want those results, too. I want the fame and the glory and the thousands of RTs."

    I think a good idea to improve your general happiness would be to take whatever part of your brain generates thoughts like that and dedicate a significant amount of time and effort to eradicating it.

  7. 1

    I agree, that there are folks with high follower counts and a bunch of low value, low engagement tweets.

    Especially the short, on sentence tweets that don't make a lot of sense. But who cares honestly.

    I've seen a rise in really helpful Twitter threads. I personally have learned so much from my feed. It pushes me to check out that person's blog or SaaS. I think that's where Twitter shines.

    Providing a lot of value in Tweets, and then acquiring people to your personal audience & community.

    Not a big fan of absolutes, painting an entire "industry" a certain way. Makes for a nice headline though.

  8. 1

    Pure growth tactics. I actually unfollowed a bunch of "prominent" people because their posts were so transparent with this tactic that it got really annoying. As with all trends, it will become overplayed and ineffective eventually, finding some sort of equilibrium.

  9. 1

    Some interesting answers here.

    This is what fascinates me, in a community where people constantly talk about product-market fit, how can you clown anyone that has found a way to create a product (their tweets) that their audience (followers) loves?

    Also, how many discussions are here about people that can't seem to gain any traction with their audience for their own products?

    What you have here with people doing Twitter threads is a group of people SHOWING YOU PUBLICLY that a certain tactic is working well for them and there are people actively saying how annoyed by it they are.

    It's like saying you're annoyed by the people that grow with paid ads.

    You're literally given a playbook for growth and for some reason you turning your nose to it.

    You don't like the twitter threads that you see because you feel they are vapid or lack true insight? Fine, then create twitter threads of your own that aren't vapid, but don't knock the technique itself.

    So many indie hackers fail to grow because they continue to ignore the obvious.

    Do you know the easiest way to be successful with any project that you create? Work on building an audience.

    And guess what?

    Twitter threads seem to be a solid way to do that.

  10. 1

    Rosie, the key point is that they're 'playing a different game.' And that is spot on. FWIW, I gladly tolerate some airy life tips in my feed to get the insightful and pithy observations that are one tweet over. The beauty of Twitter is you can cultivate and curate, and how much harm is the occasional aphorism in that scenario.

    Play your game.

    (Oooh... that feels a little too cheery and aspirational for this crowd, huh?)

    1. 2

      Of course, and each to their own.

      I shared the link because what Pat wrote is what I've heard many say behind the scenes and along the lines of how I feel.

      I think it's important for people to be aware and educated in different approaches, they can then decide what action to take based on the kind of people they are and the goals they want to achieve.

      Personally, I just can't bear it, so won't do it myself and unfollowed people who do this. As with many of these things, it becomes a vanity game that, with a focus on numbers that don't necessarily bring long term value.

      A big email list isn't valuable if it has a low open rate.

      A website with a bunch of ads and pop up email boxes may generate some money or emails subscribes, but it's not something I would do.

      A community with hundreds of thousands of members isn't valuable if people don't show up or support one another.

      I see those with this Twitter growth focus are pretty much the same thing. Superficial and playing a game that I'm not interested in.

      I run the IH Twitter too, and I care about the growth of it, but not at the expense of losing credibility, which many of these people (to me) have lost.

      There are also many other company accounts that I observe that may have more followers, but the impact of their tweets term are minimal.

      Of course, the best way to deal with this stuff is to just unfollow and/or block these people. Twitter is a bubble. We all live in our own bubbles and that's cool too.

      1. 1

        No argument. I liken it to walking through a bookstore (for those familiar) and walking past rows of titles that are of no interest. You simply ignore them, which isn't all that difficult.

        How is this 'pulp Tweet' issue any different from seeing the Enquirer or People at the grocery checkout as you grab the latest Martha Stewart magazine? This seems like much ado about nothing.

  11. 1

    I absolutely hate the tech funny guys. Can't stand them and their recycled content. Yet, they get all the RT's and likes and the useful creators are largely unnoticed.

    Smh

  12. 1

    This is good for me to hear right now!

  13. 1

    Well this is encouraging to hear! I can’t stand Twitter, I can’t wait until everyone finds a better platform to move too.

  14. 1

    totally agree. without a strategy or purpose, doing anything (including twitter) is close to meaningless.

    but, i'm not one to hate on someone doing shit for no good reason... i do that all the time.

    1. 2

      It wasn't. I remember back then being excited to see what someone in New York was doing on their lunch break. It had a greater sense of camaraderie to me. People were more willing to follow back instead of trying to cultivate their brand and build up a huge list of followers.

      There were definitely people discussing politics, but it didn't feel as in-your-face. You could jump in on discussions and people were more willing to engage.

      1. 1

        Lunch break tweets are underrated!

  15. 1

    Totally agree with the sentiment. It's one of the reasons I stopped going on twitter.

    I think the short format of a tweet makes it even more clickbaitey when you see "12 Lessons about X ... " tweetstorms with thousands of retweets and likes. So often, I found that when I expanded the tweets, there just wasn't much substance, or it took a handful of tweets to get to the point, making me wonder "why not just post this in a blog?" but then I realized if they had, nobody would be reading it.

  16. 2

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