When Old Tweets Bite You in the Ass - HARD

Of all the mirages and snake oil that the news industry has followed for the last 20 years, I'd rank Twitter first.

 

Friend of mine had a story of his RT recently by a guy with 5 million followers, and a guy with 3 million followers. So potentially, 7 million people could have been exposed to that story. (I'm subtracting at least a million spam bots, but probably should subtract more.)

It was a great story, and timely, about something very topical.

Story got 7,000 clicks through Twitter (but like 400,000 overall).

Think about that for a moment.

Twitter is scam, man. It sure as hell ain't benefitting news organizations. The idea that it drives traffic for anyone but the Kardashians to their latest product line of cheap goods is a joke.

 

And, you know, some dickish AME would say: "Well, that's 7,000 clicks we didn't get off our home page."

 

But #Sharknado really was fantastic in real time.

 

It generates next to no traffic. For me, a person who works from home, it's a weird little connection to the world, a pretty decent newsfeed, and a very occasional ego stroke. I like it for that, but I don't like it for a bunch of other things. I think about quitting all the time, but it's like this place: It sticks a little to the ribs.

 

I know of three people who didn't get or were "mysteriously" let go of good jobs because of dumb shit they had tweeted. At least two of them, I don't think they know that's why. They probably blame minority hiring or something. It's because they were dickheads on Twitter.

 

Seconded (thirded).

It's a pretty good arts feed and headline service. I don't worry much about the traffic it drives, but I learn a lot by exploring links and referrals I'd otherwise never see.

I leave the Twitter beefing to the pros.

 

I like it for seeing and recommending good stories. Lot of stuff I see on Twitter, I'd never see otherwise. It's hard to quit for that reason. And I like doing the reciprocal and sharing good work — no matter who does it — because doing good work is hard. I think that's what keeps me around. But sometimes I realize I've been looking at for an hour without doing anything else and I feel ill. I think that's one reason I came back here. At least here, the Nazis get banned.

 

Gave it up years ago, but I still regret every Twitter beef I've ever had. What a waste of time. A pointless generator of bad feelings.

 

Wright's said he was so much happier when he quit Twitter.