The anti-Twitter-feed forces are mobilizing.

[penk]

I'm seeing folks getting more and more annoyed about twitter feeds into Livejournal, to the point where people are defriending people who are doing it, and it's puzzling me.

I've heard various arguments for this behavior, but I want to hear folks' actual thoughts on it.

Here's where I stand.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service. It allows very quick comments about things that are going on in my life, and allows me to see what others are doing. I feed my tweets into LJ because I thought others might like to hear what I'm up to.

For instance, if I'm sitting and enjoying a break from skiing, I post a tweet about it while sitting in the lodge. That evening, folks see that I was out skiing today, and they have a little more visibility into what I'm doing with my days.

I am not blind to the fact that some twitter feeds can be annoying and lack context, in particular when there are conversations going on that LJ people are only hearing one side of - I personally try to limit how much I do this.

But I'm curious what is really driving this anti-twitter-feed sentiment, so, natch, here's a poll!

[Poll #1337757]

Comments

[cutieperson]

mind you, my answer are not personal towards you. i feel that way about all feeds.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

What you just said.

[penk.livejournal.com]

Noted, thanks :) I'm really curious about the whole spectrum of the thing. Thanks for your input.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

On the flip side, my answers are personal towards you: you are very good about your Twitter-use (or Twitter-forwarding; I only see what gets forwarded), so you I like and tolerate.

Other people, including some dear close friends, put the twitter in Twitter and provide nothing but noise.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have to agree with this. With you, I'll put "Some noise I really don't pay attention to"; most other Twitter feeds to LJ are irritating or piss me off.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

Ditto

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Thirded. I read LJ to see what interesting ideas people are thinking about, or good ideas to share, or decent-sized updates to their lives. I don't want Headline News, I want BBC World News. Twitter isn't large enough to support this, so from my perspective twitter feeds clutter up my FL page.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

Actually for the second part, I would have wanted an option that said "Put it on an opt-in filter and I won't opt in".

I also might choose "kill the entire feed", except that it's annoying not pissing me off. And of course I am free not to read. I don't get pissed at what other people do in their LJs, I just choose not to read if they aren't interesting to me.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

As I've said elsewhere, it's far more annoying when I want to go read a post they made two weeks ago, and there are 14 Twitter posts in between. Regardless of how often someone posts to their lj, there are times when there are several twitter posts in a row and it just looks...odd.

I think if people actually want to read your twitter posts in lj, they'll set up an RSS feed to do so.

[catya.livejournal.com]

the opt in filter would be a perfect answer. I don't think that it's an option technically though?

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that Twitter has a mechanism to automatically post your tweets to a filter so that it can be easily filtered.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

As in, LJ doesn't support automatic opt in filters? That's true, you have to manually set up your filters to include whoever you want on them.

[catya.livejournal.com]

I thought twitter didn't let you feed to a filter, but Jude just said otherwise...

[blk]

The main problem I have with Twitter is that it allows very quick comments about things that are going on in your life RIGHT NOW. It contains nothing of conversation, thought, or comment value unless I am watching it in that moment, which a collected LJ feed that I don't always even read in the same day, allows for none of.

Basically, it's just like you took all your normal texts to me, delayed them by some time period up to 24 hours, and made them generic and totally impersonal.

[ghislaine.livejournal.com]

Yes, that. I'm much less interested in what you are doing at any given moment, than what your thoughts/feelings/experience of that event are. Which is why I prefer Livejournal over Facebook or Twitter.

I tend to lightly skim (all, not just your) twitter postings since I mostly find them... unengaging and more toward the "clutter" end of the spectrum.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I'd disagree, a little. I've found - and made - some twitter posts that have non-immediate impact.

See my Sunday-of-Arisia post, with tv show suggestions... I twitted that 1st and then cross-posted the exact content later... I've seen same from other people.

Mostly, sure, you're right, but not always.

[jasra]

Since I read 'em on Twitter, I don't really see a need for them in LJ. Also, most of my LJ reading is via www.livejournal.com/inbox and it doesn't respect cut feeds, so I see the entire post no matter what it is (and that annoys me).

[geekchick]

I don't have strong feelings one way or t'other, honestly. I don't read them here, but that's largely because I've already seen 'em on Twitter; I scroll past and/or don't click on the cut tags for most LoudTwitter posts. My general approach to this sort of thing is "if I don't like it, then I should filter it out".

[randysmith]

Your second option to your second question implies that there's some way for me to read your blog without the twitter feeds? How could I do that? I lack the clue.

(Note: I'm actually happier with your twitter feeds than I am with most. But my life satisfaction would not be noticeably affected if they dissapeared, and there are other twitter feeds that are negative side of neutral (but not enough for me to get even annoyed about it). But I'm curious about the technology :-}.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

There are apps that allow you to block all posts with the word "twitter" in them. I know a number of people that use them. They don't even know this post exists. Some of them are even on twitter and hate the cross-pollenation *that* much.

us twits

[cthulhia]

so, since I have twitter, I can arguably read it there.

however, twitter doesn't seem to allow the kind of filtering I can have on LJ. So, I will likely lose the tweets of my LJ friends amid all the chatter of the non-LJ twitterers.

so, 2 months ago, when I would check my twitter page and see little updates, but a number of folks on LJ who haven't added me on twitter would have a daily tweet post, it bothered me, but, now... well, LJ is more easily searchable than twitter, so, if there's a link I want to find again, I like having the option of searching here as well as there.

[wotw]

The word "twitter" (or "tweet"), as I have seen it used,
does not mean "one-line post". It means "one-line post
consisting of apparently random words strung together
in a way that might or might not be meaningful to the
poster and/or a few cognoscenti but is deliberately
intended to be incomprehensible to anyone else."

So if you post "I am taking a break from skiing", I do not
consider that a twitter. By contrast, here are some actual
twitters off my recent friends list:

"Flying M, anywhere on BSU campus, and Carl's Jr"

"Pratchett?"

"Agreed! Fabulous movie on community organizing!"

Etc.

Now: If you post something that is NOT a twitter, but
choose to label it a twitter, then my initial gut reaction
is: "This person is planning to annoy me." Even if the
post turns out to be innocuous (like "I am taking a break
from skiing"---which I don't see why you'd post, but at
least makes sense)---then that gut reaction is alleviated.
But I'd rather not have it in the first place.

So my advice, insofar as you care about the reactions of
me or people like me (which of course you need not do), is
this:

1) Don't post Twitters.

2) Don't post non-Twitters labeled as Twitters.

I will certainly defriend anyone who violates 1), as well
as most people who violate 2).

[penk.livejournal.com]

Going to the specific, do you consider my posts of the 2 categories? I've tried to be careful to make my tweets specifically non-twitter-noisy (except during arisia, where twitter was being used extensively for community chitchat).

To me twitter is a tool, and it may be used in many different ways. I use it in a way that I perceive as "This is a one line blog post." Others naturally have different approaches.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

I see yours as one line blog posts.

Thing is, I have no interest in reading one line blog posts, nor cluttering up my LJ friends page with them.

At least, as you note, one line blog posts are better than other even more annoying uses of twitter.

But...why would you want to post one line blog posts? And why would I want to read them?

What they said..

[sarahshevett.livejournal.com]

I gotta agree with all of this.

[wotw]

Agreed with all of what dbang said.

I haven't noticed yours being surreal.

On the other hand, the word "twitter" instantly puts me
in "I think something annoying is about to happen" mode,
so I've probably skipped reading most of yours.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

You're using language in a non-standard (Humpty Dumpty, "means what I say it means") way. www.twitter.com is a website/service, and a 'tweet' is their term (and subsequently everyone's) for "a single post to twitter", which is, by design limited to about 140 characters. (The length of an SMS message.)

Some tweets are comprehensible. Some aren't.

Generalizing like you have, and creating your own definitions of existing terms, will create misunderstanding and tsuris.

If you were to say "Most tweets I see are incomprehensible", I couldn't argue.

(Does it help if I note that "@word" is a tweet directed at a user named 'word' and will be shown to user 'word' on their twitter home page, and '#word' is a tweet designed to be parsed by an automated process looking for 'word' - there was a parser running looking for '#arisia' which gathered all tweets mentioning things about the con, for example, or there's www.twisney.com, which looks for '#twisney' - and various keywords beyond that, related to DisneyWorld and places therein (and maybe land, too?) and gathers them on one site.)

I still don't understand why you'd defriend, rather than remove from Default View.

(Note: I have a twitter account. I barely use it, don't have it auto-post to LJ, and skip most people's twitter posts... but I totally feel like you're overreacting.)

[fraterrisus]

it's a question of context and usage, to me.

LJ is a blogging/journaling tool. twitter isn't about blogging, it's about real-time status updates. because the two tools have different usage patterns, it doesn't make sense to me to crosspost between them.

Facebook status updates are more real-time things. i see a lot more similarity there, so Twitter crossposting makes sense to me. (i still get cranky at '@recipient' or '#channel' crossposts, because if i'm reading on Facebook, i don't have the context.)

think of it this way. would you crosspost FB status updates to twitter? sure. would you crosspost LJ posts to twitter? no way. the reverse holds pretty strongly, at least to me.

[penk.livejournal.com]

The #channel crossposts are odd when people refer to them as, well, channels. To me they're tags, and are useful when used as such. For instance when i was posting Arisia related stuff, I always used the hashtag (as it's colloquially known) in context. "I'm at #arisia chillin with mah bros."

those that are twitter die-hards drop this, and I find their posts unintelligible.

sorry sorry lj

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

It is insane that lj doesn't let people have incoming-filters like out-going filters.

That is, I should be able to subscribe to some user's posts such that I only get the posting that do/do-not have certain tags.

It wouldn't solve the social part of this problem, but it would at least let people solve the problem themselves.

Re: sorry sorry lj

[penk.livejournal.com]

Part of this can be solved by reading LJ via RSS feed, no? And there's a way to do that even for locked posts. My gripe of that approach is it's difficult to comment on things, and you have to subscribe to comment threads to see commentary. Bleah!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I have found very, very few Twitter feeds that don't grate on my nerves terribly. If I read Twitter directly I might feel differently about the individual updates (tweets or whatever). But I think that aggregating a bunch of microblogging updates into a single message isn't the same thing as writing a blog post. I still feel like it's the wrong context for reading Twitter updates.

Sort of like, I dunno, bringing a pizza to a formal dinner. Nothing wrong with fast food per se. But even people who like pizza might be put off by feeling like it's the wrong time and the wrong place for it.

I agree with sandhawke -- it's mystifying that LJ doesn't provide something like a killfile for incoming feeds. I would happily read your journal and just mask out the twitter updates by default. IMHO that would be the right solution. I do have the greasemonkey killfile extension, so I may see if I can hack it in myself.

[tb]

Another note in support of opt-in filters for Twitter posts, which is my current favorite "solution;" I too wish lj supported filters for reading individual people's content on friends pages.

Some Twitter stuff makes good lj reading, but most just isn't. Yours are on the okay end of the spectrum, but the format puts me off. I prefer one-line blog posts to be one-line blog posts, not a string of same. Twitter lumps don't invite commentary, whereas a one-line post saying "Yay, hot chocolate!" can lead to surprising amounts of discussion, or at least a smile on my part. That's why I post bits about oddball things I come across; I figure someone else might be amused, and they're easy enough to skip.

Still, I figure what people post is their call, and whether or not I read is my call.

poll comment

[cos]

I'd vote for "kill the entire feed" but not "it's pissing me off", because it's not. It's just a minor annoyance I always skip. I'd be a bit happier if nobody fed twitter onto LJ, or if LJ provided a way for me to decline seeing them, but "pissing me off" is much too strong.

twitter != LJ

[cos]

Twitter seems to have value for what it does, but it's very different from LJ. Take twitter out of its native context, and put it into LJ, and IMO it loses all value. I can think of a few reasons for this:

1. twitters tend to be "in the moment", but LJ's active timespan is more on the order of hours/days, so the temporal context feels very different.

2. twitters live in a context of other twitters from followers/followed accounts. Extracting one user's twitter's from that context, and putting them in between a bunch of LJ posts, makes them lose social & semantic context.

3. On LJ, we often expect subjects written for LJ, yet automatic twitter feeds all have the same subject, even across different people. The post subject feature of LJ is not only being un-used, it's actually being mis-used to misdirect.

4. A bunch of twitters from a single day presented in reverse-chronological order doesn't make as much sense (this is related to the temporal context thing, point #1, but isn't exactly the same).

5. When people post to LJ, they write with their LJ audience in mind. When people twitter, they write with their twitter audience in mind. The difference may be subtle, and the writer may or may not be consciously thinking of it, but it's there. LJ and twitter are different enough that the results tend not to be a good match.

There are probably other reasons, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head.

It seems to me that twitter and Facebook status are a somewhat better match, and gatewaying the two seems like a potentially better idea.

[coraline]

you can set up the feed to go to a filter on your journal. that way, people can opt in to seeing it. i recommend it.

[penk.livejournal.com]

I'm going to change the feed settings. Right now I'm super-annoyed that i can't get my password to work, so I have something posting into my LJ i can't control.

I'll likely just change my local password. That'll learn 'em!

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

It doesn't actually piss me off, but it is vaguely annoying and my basic feeling is that if I want to read your tweets, I can do it on Twitter (which I do!) :)

[penk.livejournal.com]

You're also one of the few people who do in fact reply and chat via twitter. A questio (I haven't noticed it yet) do you feed your twitter stuff into LJ? (I assume no)

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I don't. I told LJ that I had a Twitter account under the same username and trusted that anyone who wanted to follow me there would find me :)

[drwex]

Dude, it's your LJ, post what you like.

Mostly I skip 'em; once in a while I dig out something useful.

(You said you wanted to sample the opinion stream so there's mine. The first sentence is not intended as a directive so much as it's a philosophy statement.)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Not that anyone's going to see this at this point (LJ's extended interest status is actually quite limited. Compare to mailing lists…) but… Other than the ease of SMS, I fairly often micro-blog to LJ via email from my phone. It's via email rather than SMS, but it's never very long.

No one's ever complained. :)

[redhotlips.livejournal.com]

I personally like the 'meat'. I like LJ because of the interaction, the fully developed thoughts, the 'articles' about people's interests, lives, thoughts etc. The twitter things are annoying due to the lack of context, lack of depth, lack of interaction, lack of expression (how expressive can one be in a single line, used dozens of times in a day?)

Having said that...this is just my opinion, I firmly believe in the importance of people using their LJ as they want/need to. There are just three on my f-list who do this, and I find myself skipping over the twitters more than reading them.

[frotz.livejournal.com]

"Defriending" as a term has much more emotional baggage than it should.

A while ago, I'd have said, "sure, twitter away", but I've recently realized that I've been reading almost no livejournal, and twitter is most of the reason. So now I'm busy either getting on their no-twitter filters or punting them from my default reading list. (For someone less interested in learning the mechanics of livejournal, "not reading by default" would mean "defriending".)

You're actually about the best of the lot, and if nothing else happened I'd just keep reading you, but if you had a filter for it i'd still ask to get off of it. (But if you were to bow to my every whim, I'd first have you enable comments here on all postings, in which case you'd have gotten a long geeky comment a while ago about maintaining a small AFS cell. Which isn't actually that much of a bear, and I've been meaning to send mail instead. One of these days.)

[penk.livejournal.com]

So why not click through and comment there? Is there really any difference?

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

Collated "Tweets of the day" posts don't bug me, even if they mostly only are breakfast blogging. I suspect if people were streaming me a constant ration of incomprehensible tweets, I'd find a way not to read 'em, but so far, nobody on my Flist does that. I don't know many people who speak IM as a first language, for which I am very happy.