Super Volatile

Krzysztof Szafranek's link blog

Hi, I'm Krzysztof and I make websites.
When I'm not making websites, I read these.
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Dec 31, 2011 / 2:21pm

The New Twitter (R.I.P. Tweetie)

What also worries me is that these changes suggest not only a difference in opinion regarding how a Twitter client should work, but also regarding just what the point is of Twitter as a service. The Twitter service I signed up for is one where people tweet 140-character posts, you follow those people whose tweets you tend to enjoy, and that’s it. The Twitter service this new UI presents is about a whole lot more — mass-market spoonfed “trending topics” and sponsored content. It’s trying to make Twitter work for people who don’t see the appeal of what Twitter was supposed to be. It all makes sense if you think of the label under the “#” tab as reading “Dickbar” instead of “Discover”.
more on daringfireball.net

Gruber on new Twitter UI and the change in the company's direction it may represent.

Filed under: twitter  
 
Nov 20, 2011 / 1:36pm

One Per Cent: Occupy vs Tea Party: what their Twitter networks reveal

Those tweeting about the Tea Party emerge as a tight-knit "in crowd", following one another's tweets. By contrast, the network of people tweeting about Occupy consists of a looser series of clusters, in which the output of a few key people is being vigorously retweeted.
more on newscientist.com

Analysis of Twitter usage by people from both sides of American political spectrum reveals interesting patterns. The article doesn't try to conclude what does it actually say about these constituents.

Filed under: politics   statistics   twitter   usa  
 
Oct 15, 2011 / 4:02pm

Why Facebook Works for All, Twitter for Some

On Facebook, if someone wants to tag another person — say their brother at dinner — they just start writing the name and Facebook figures out the rest using an algorithm that understands names. In comparison, on Twitter, people have to understand @ symbols, hashtags and other strange intricacies of the service. These features make Twitter a great tool for many, but not for all.
more on bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Why Twitter attracts more technologically adept people than Facebook.

Filed under: facebook   twitter  
 
Sep 10, 2011 / 12:03am

Twitter Doesn't Give a Damn Who You Are

At a very basic level, Google+ and Facebook are in the identity delivery business, and Twitter is in the information delivery business. That's a powerful distinction. It reflects a fundamentally different conception of what's more valuable: information or identity. It also gets at who is more valuable, advertisers or users.
more on gizmodo.com

Slightly sugar-coated article on the difference between Twitter vs. Facebook and Google's social network (how is it called, again?).

Filed under: social media   twitter  
 
Mar 15, 2011 / 12:27am

Scripting News: What is a dickbar?

The other half is how you feel for believing that Twitter would do something classy and interesting with advertising, as we were promised when, the newly minted COO of Twitter, the same Dick Costolo told us we would love their advertising. Yeah uhuh. Us East Coast guys have a bridge we'd like to sell you. It connects Manhattan with the great borough of Brooklyn. Real cheap.
more on dickbar.org

An explanation of the last week's news. No, I'm not keeping up with news.

Filed under: twitter  
 
Jan 22, 2011 / 8:55pm

Twitter Gets Sued For Letting Famous People Interact Online

Now, some company called VS Technologies is suing Twitter, alleging that it infringes on a patent of theirs, entitled “Method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people”. For real? For real.
more on techcrunch.com

It's weird that nobody has patented “famous people” so far.

Filed under: patents   twitter  
 
Dec 13, 2010 / 1:01am

Why Teens Don't And Won't Tweet

Teens' lives are entirely built around their actual friends. Quite simply, why would teenagers bother using Twitter when Facebook exists, and offers so much more? Teens want a platform that allows easy, fully-functional communication to an exclusive social circle. That is, solely to their friends and peers. Twitter is a platform built for inclusive broadcast (to everyone), and to teenagers it offers no obvious value.
more on readwriteweb.com

16 year old writes why teenagers don't tweet. He does it himself, though his demonstrated attitude towards work and self-promotion is clearly not teenage.

Filed under: social media   twitter  
 
Nov 28, 2010 / 3:40pm

The unbearable lameness of web 2.0

The proper label for a 'friend' or 'like' button in Facebook should be 'Subscribe', because that it what it does, simply put. It adds another feed to your timeline. But 'subscribe' is an unidirectional concept, 'I will import your status updates into my timeline', and is closer to 'follow' in Twitter.
more on blog.koehntopp.de

On some fundamental flaws of social networks.

Filed under: facebook   social media   twitter  
 
Nov 5, 2010 / 1:27pm

Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him.
more on technologyreview.com

Finally an efficient way to handle pointless discussion. I'd love to see a real-world version of it.

Filed under: science   twitter  
 
Sep 20, 2010 / 11:14pm

The Very Last Thing I'll Write About Twitter

Some time ago, I circulated a document internally with a straightforward thesis: Twitter needs to decentralize or it will die. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even in a decade, but it was (and, I think, remains) my belief that all communications media will inevitably be decentralized, and that all businesses who build walled gardens will eventually see them torn down.
more on al3x.net

Former Twitter developer, Alex Payne, on Twitter's future.

Filed under: twitter