HACKER Q&A
📣 olivierduval

Do you know a regular Twitter user?


Hello

Twitter seem really big here in France: every tv show pushes some hashtag, a lot of big companies provide support throught twitter, and you can't here some news without an hashtag. Policitians announce everything on twitter. (Negative) social trends and riots have their roots on twitter.

This is understandable: Twitter is showing really big numbers for audience. And lots of advertising and communication companies are showing the same. However, they all profit from these numbers. So far, so good: Twitter is the ultimate media!!!

But... I own 2 twitter accounts: I published 2 pictures on the first one, created 3 years ago, and created another one last year to talk to some customer service (no publication). I follow almost nobody. In fact, I just don't like the Twitter way of communication (short, definitive and mostly basic sentences without any interest). I sometimes have a look to some tweets through links found on HN. No friend of mine is on twitter. No colleague either (i'm working in IT). My teen daughter and her friends are not on twitter (but on insta, snap, and co).

So, I'm wondering: is there anybody really using twitter, except people selling ideas (politicians) or advertising?

I guess that - for Twitter - I'm considered as an "active user", because I have 2 ghost account and sometimes read a tweet (even if it's because I'm following an outside reference and not because I found the information on twitter). But, as a matter of fact: twitter could desappear today that it wouldn't change the littlest thing in my life.

So I'm wondering: despite the huge numbers, how many users are really "active and engaged" on Twitter (meaning tweeting and reading tweets from the platform at least once a week)? How many real person are really engaged (because I guess that a lot of people have 2 or more twitter account)? I couldn't find "hard" numbers, only "advertising" (so biased)... Any idea ?

  👤 mceachen Accepted Answer ✓
I worked at Twitter for 5 years before starting PhotoStructure.

I was originally on the ads team, then went to growth and timelines.

I didn't use Twitter before working at Twitter. I didn't get it until I watched how "good at Twitter" people used it.

I heard this a bunch, and it's still true: other social networks are about your friends. Twitter is about your interests. (You can certainly follow your friends, but you can also mute them if they're kind of terrible).

You have to invest some serious time in tending to who you follow before your timeline will become relevant. It's like gardening, seriously.

Think of it like an rss feed of your favorite podcasts and bloggers; but that people publish about 50 % (or lower) good stuff, and the rest of the content is, meh.

The "who to follow" can help, but also looking at other people's follow listing (not who follows them, but who they follow), especially if it's between 150 and 1000 accounts, ish. If they blindly follow back every account that follows them, that's noise.

There will be golden, delightful accounts you find.

The NBA mom that tweets during games.

The HK people on the street, documenting what's actually happening.

Others you'll probably want to unfollow, because their tweets aren't great.

Also, be aggressive with the terms you add to your timeline filter. I suggest adding political names, to start.

Also, holy crap there's a lot of shouting and offense and rancor. Mute that too.

Good luck.

👤 moksly
I attend a yearly national digitalisation conference in Denmark, which is aimed at public sector digitisation. Basically it’s an event where all the CTOs, architects, project managers and politicians meet with the heads (and sales) of our most prominent IT-businesses to tackle our most pressing issues. The first few years the organisers attempted to use twitter as a way to handle questions to speakers questions. I’ve been to auditoriums with more than a thousand people, all top of our digitisation industry, and no one asked a single question on twitter. Eventually the event switched to a web-based questions “app”, where you could simply load a web-page, type in your name and question, or upvote other question, and suddenly hundreds of people participated in the question asking. I think that says a lot about how little twitter matters in some areas.

I say this as someone who actually knows a couple of hefty twitter users. They are all journalists though, and on the flip side of things, they can’t comprehend how I can do my job in digitisation without twitter.

Heh.

👤 DanBC
> is there anybody really using twitter, except people selling ideas (politicians) or advertising?

In the UK there is a community of healthcare providers (nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, psychologists) and patients who talk about aspects of healthcare from national policies, to law, to implementation of small change. Sometimes these are tied in to people and organisations that know about QI methodology.

I find it pretty useful in my work in suicide prevention and patient safety in English NHS settings. I get to ask questions to people across England about what they're doing, or what problems they're having.

👤 AndrewStephens
I am a sometimes twitter user but only two other people I know regularly post. I have very few actual followers myself. I follow a few people to see updates to their podcasts and blogs but have notifications turned off so I only see things when I remember to.

I see twitter handles and hashtags on websites and posters everywhere but do not know anyone that actually uses them.

👤 maxencecornet
I am from France as well, I use Twitter every day

Twitter is the only way I have to get informed and mingle with people interested in solidity/Ethereum development (eg; Defi/makerDao/Kyber protocol...)

The only people I know that use Twitter every day are working within the blockchain dev community

👤 codedrome
Strangely, I don't know! Everyone I know might be regular Twitter users but I don't think I have ever discussed it with anyone. I have never told anyone I know that I use Twitter, and vice versa. I hadn't thought about it before but it seems strange now.
👤 antoineMoPa
I know at least 5 actual twitter users in my close social circle/family. Some users don't want people to know about their twitter life and use @handles that don't match their name. Maybe there are more people using twitter around you than you think.
👤 mcgrath_sh
Sports are huge on twitter. It is how I primarily use the platform. I have met up with fans of various teams I support when seeing them play. I’d be really sad to lose twitter and the interactions I get from there.
👤 swah
I'm a consumer only user. Almost no interactions. But I check the news on twitter instead of news sites...