Stop Writing Twitter Threads

As someone that regularly writes long-form content on a blog, I have to say: this post completely misses the point.<p>People write Twitter threads because Twitter gives them distribution for what they want to say.<p>Sure, it may not be the perfect soapbox for what you want to say. But if you write something insightful, a zillion people may see it as opposed to your mom and best friend who read it on your blog.

No.<p>I don’t find Twitter threads hard to follow. You click on them, you get a sequence of 280-character tweets, with the little reply&#x2F;retweet&#x2F;like&#x2F;share buttons between each block of text. This is not at all onerous to follow.<p>Compare to your typical recipe blog or Fandom (.com) site. Is that any better? I’d say the recipe blogs are and sites like Fandom are far worse, because the page is constantly trying to hijack the browser to show ads. Recipe sites are barely usable these days.<p>The 280-character limit also has benefits. Writers know that tweets will be viewed in isolation, so they try to make each tweet as coherent as possible, individually. This style of writing is bland and simplistic but also clear. You can’t say it in 280 characters, you rewrite it.<p>I wrote this comment as if it were a Twitter thread. Each paragraph fits in 280 characters—and one fits exactly! This dry style may remind you of the papers you had to read or write in college, but I appreciate the clarity.<p>Twitter encourages clarity and brevity, and I like it.

This won&#x27;t convince anyone. The truth is that Twitter thread get a ton of engagement that articles don&#x27;t — even if you post them on Twitter. Leaving the platform, particularly on mobile, is additional friction that readers might not be willing to take on.

He&#x27;s not wrong, but he&#x27;s also overlooking that it&#x27;s darn easy to open Twitter and start typing, and get instant conversation started, IE: it&#x27;s a path of least resistance. Set up your own site? Sure, I wish more people would, but it takes some degree of knowledge to do that, and then your mom and your dog are the only people who will find your site unless you work really hard at self-promotion. Facebook would have been a good place for this in the past, but is a cesspool these days. There might be specialized forums and interest groups out there - but it can be hard to pin your content for general use, IE: it gets lost in some thread, whereas at least Twitter is tied to you.<p>Yes, there are various sites promoting themselves as places for long-form writing, but they have their own issues with copyright, walled gardens, etc. This is a space that needs entrepreneurial focus.

I tweet regularly, and I also have a personal blog.<p>Tweeting a link to a blog post, no matter how interesting, generates a fraction of the engagements of direct-to-twitter content.<p>I write blog posts rarely, and the frequency of my blog posts dropped off dramatically once my twitter following grew.<p>Part of this is self-imposed rules. I hold my blog to a high standard - it is for completed and whole ideas&#x2F;thoughts&#x2F;projects only. On the other hand, Twitter is where I can dump my random ideas and work-in-progress.<p>I would love to say that all my projects are done purely for my own enjoyment, but that&#x27;s not true. I do things because I want other people to look at it, to think about it, and to talk about it. Twitter is <i>generally</i> the best way to make that happen.<p>In an ideal world I would blog more, and I try to - but tweeting is easier and more readily dopamine-inducing.

Anyone can write whatever they want on whatever medium they find works best <i>for them</i>.<p>Why should I have an opinion on what medium someone else chooses to express themselves? It&#x27;s on the same level as being snobby about music style.<p>And for what it&#x27;s worth, I dislike Twitter. I also dislike hip-hop, and Marvel movies, and a lot of other things. But if that&#x27;s how people want to express themselves then more power to them. No one is forcing any of that on me.

I genuinely don&#x27;t understand why a small number of people think Twitter threads are so difficult to read. They&#x27;re not.<p>Threads can also create new conversations — just like the comments here on Hacker News — but what&#x27;s better is that each Tweet (like a paragraph) can have comments and discussions corresponding to that Tweet. There&#x27;s a finer level of detail in the overall conversation.<p>It&#x27;s just fine and posts like this read like oldheads struggling to adapt.

I think the article misses the two bigger reasons to avoid writing Important content on Twitter:<p>- Twitter <i>forces</i> people to log in to read it. The... dozens?... of us who have a burner account but don&#x27;t use Twitter regularly and have no interest in doing so probably can&#x27;t be bothered to log in to read what you&#x27;re writing.<p>- Twitter could delete your posts for any reason, or no reason, at any time(*). Given the ongoing Twitter-Musk struggle and Twitter&#x27;s generally dubious financial outlook, this is not idle alarmist speculation.<p>(*): The content on your blog could also disappear at any time, however, unlike your Twitter thread (1) the material will be archived by the Internet Archive and (2) <i>you</i> have full control over your data and if&#x2F;when to stop hosting it.

Twitter penalizes links. If you post a tweet with a link only a fraction of the people will see it compared to a twitter thread. They much prefer people stay on platform.<p>It&#x27;s not just Twitter doing this - all social networks prefer you stay within their platform. Facebook is notorious for it.<p>If you put all that work into a blog post and only 5 people see it versus typing it out as a twitter thread and 1000 see it, it makes it obvious which ones ie better - even if its a worse UI.

Does anyone outside of a small technical set care about this? I have no problem reading twitter threads — I think they&#x27;re easier to read than this site!

People write Twitter threads because they have an audience on there, and they&#x27;re used to the form factor as are their readers. Also because Twitter heavily downranks external links.

Ah, indie web. I gave up on it. Self-hosting is relegated to the dustbin of &quot;meh, who has time for that.&quot; Most people, even savvy social media folks, wouldn&#x27;t know the first thing about hosting a website (a good number of them might not even know that you can).<p>We&#x27;re forgetting the technology only marginally slower than it took to get here and enter the public consciousness.<p>The problem is that the audience is on Twitter&#x2F;FB&#x2F;Insta&#x2F;TikTok&#x2F;etc. That&#x27;s the first place people look&#x2F;search&#x2F;find things.<p>I still host my own blog, email, etc but... the reader numbers are about what you&#x27;d expect: next to zilch.

Use nitter, one frontend at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;</a>. Project at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zedeus&#x2F;nitter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zedeus&#x2F;nitter</a><p>Use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threadreaderapp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threadreaderapp.com&#x2F;</a>

All of these comments are more true than the article itself, but I find one thing missing: Twitter threads drive a certain style of writing.<p>You write punch-lines of 280 characters because of the platform&#x27;s constraints, while you&#x27;d certainly not do so in a blog.<p>Also, don&#x27;t give me the proverbial &quot;constraints drive creativity&quot;, please.

Cory Doctorow does Twitter threads in a very intentional manner, cross-posting a legible version on his blog, e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;doctorow&#x2F;status&#x2F;1584493419287973893" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;doctorow&#x2F;status&#x2F;1584493419287973893</a>

Completely agree. Whatever happened to long form writing!

While I agree that twitter is a terrible medium for long form posts, this is not a battle I&#x27;m picking. I have a dedicated nitter instance that works perfectly. I had to invest 5 minutes of admin time on it within the last... 3 years? dunno, feels long anyhow. Automatic redirect configured in all my desktop&#x2F;mobile browsers. I essentially never see twitter proper, this is the 80&#x2F;20 solution that works really well for me.<p>If&#x2F;when that stops working I&#x27;ll stop following twitter links. Done, now I can focus on some other soapbox. Semi-linear commits for example (anyone at github: pretty please?)

I think there are decent critiques of the Twitter Thread medium, but complaining about the bandwidth inefficiencies is just kind of silly. 22MB of data (uncompressed, uncached)?!<p>The good (and bad) aspect of Twitter Threads is that, adapted appropriately to the medium, individual points can be individually addressed and pulled from their original context to start new discussion, or to emphasize the most important part of the essay. I think this is probably good for sparking additional discussions, though of course it can have the down side of removing context.

I really dislike reading twitter for similar reasons as tfa. I usually skip posts here where the link from twitter because I find the experience to be user hostile and I would rather not engage.

It&#x27;s easily the best way to get views for your content. Nobody is going to go to your blog organically, they need it thrown in front of their face. That&#x27;s why modern social media is so powerful.<p>It does take some courage to post things like threads or your own videos online for the whole world to witness. It&#x27;s not for the faint of heart given the whole world now becomes your stage because the content can now be explored when various algorithms think it&#x27;s best to do so. (The whole notion of explore vs. exploit)

Twitter threads are kind of nice in a way that every segmented idea has its own comments section and you can share them.<p>It gives the reader power to more easily share the part they’re interested in sharing.

What does anyone have to say about the nature of how Twitter threads (and to a similar extent, TikTok&#x2F;Instagram short-form content) can affect literacy and comprehension skills?

Threadreaderapp does a good job of making it readable<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threadreaderapp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threadreaderapp.com&#x2F;</a>

I write on Twitter to engage with my audience, who voluntarily joined Twitter and voluntarily chose to engage with me. If you choose not to be part of my audience than you have absolutely zero standing to tell me how to write and where.

He&#x27;s correct that Twitter should do a better job with threads. Thread reader apps shouldn&#x27;t be a thing.<p>I like that Twitter threads force people to be concise and doesn&#x27;t allow for giant paragraphs.

How about a compromise?<p>Put a link to the long-form blog post at the top of the Twitter thread as an alternative. Still put the whole thread on Twitter for those who prefer it. Everyone wins!

It seems like instead of &quot;do not write Twitter threads,&quot; better advice would be to write a blog post and then a Twitter thread to summarize and promote it?

I can&#x27;t read Twitter threads either, but luckily people usually link elsewhere. Tools for reading Twitter threads also work, even if they&#x27;re hacks. WAI.

Everybody needs to stop taking Twitter too seriously.

There is no hill I’m more willing to die on than “people should write using whatever the fuck medium works best for them”.

I wanted to like parts of this essay but couldn’t find the Like button under the paragraphs I agreed with.

I like reading them. Forces small chunks of information&#x2F;opinion, fun rhetorical style.

I think the real problem is twitter.<p>Rarely do I go on twitter and if I do I have firefox plugin that will filter out all the extra click bait features, such as you should follow...<p>If it&#x27;s worth reading about then, then the author should take the time to construct an paragraph&#x2F;article.<p>Full Disclosure: I suffer from Attention Surplus Disorder.

Should be aimed at Twitter, allowing some type of article flow style tweeting

This post is going to increase the occurrences of Twitter threads.

POSSE link at bottom is broken, extra &gt; in there.<p>Ease of use &amp; distribution supersedes ownership of content and compiled legibility. Same reason people used Medium and now Substack... and in another way patreon for paywalls etc.

Uh, no? Twitter is where the eyeballs are.

I spend a whole lot of time on Twitter and I want to agree with this post but it misses the point!<p>Threads are really great for distribution. I hate that it&#x27;s true, but it&#x27;s true. You can write a huge, wonderful article and tweet the link to it and very few people are going to retweet it. You can write a thread and get hundreds of retweets. It sucks, but it&#x27;s reality.<p>This post sets up a false dichotomy though, he&#x27;s saying not to write threads because your content deserves better. Well... just do both? I mean if your content really &quot;deserves better,&quot; then it deserves the best chance of being read, and on Twitter that means a thread (currently!)<p>I personally don&#x27;t like a particular kind of thread. The thread that&#x27;s like &quot;I read a Wikipedia article and I&#x27;m gonna pretend it&#x27;s some groundbreaking thing.&quot; I try to find a middle ground with my threads.<p>The first thing I do is write the article. Write the article, flesh out the idea, give it a permanent home, put in a lot of work. Then I publish the article. Then, <i>as a part of distribution</i> I do a tweet thread about the article. I usually always put the link to the article in the very first tweet and then thread out the main concepts.<p>I have some data on the fact that Twitter won&#x27;t promote tweets with links in them as much as tweets without, but putting the link in the first tweet drives more clicks and is less annoying, so I do it that way.<p>I wish things were a bit different on Twitter, but they aren&#x27;t! I think using threads as a distribution mechanism for longer form content is a nice compromise.<p>Here are some examples of articles I&#x27;ve written that I&#x27;ve then turned into threads. There is just no way I would&#x27;ve gotten the same traction with a single tweet, no matter how good the tweet (or article!) was.<p>- 200 RTs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1582797305404542976" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1582797305404542976</a><p>- 120 RTs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1577325434248757249" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1577325434248757249</a><p>- 250 RTs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1556327342955438082" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1556327342955438082</a><p>- 100 RTs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1458117107183497219" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1458117107183497219</a><p>- 165 RTs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1483127141675978760" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1483127141675978760</a><p>- 120 RTs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1545106513227923459" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;aarondfrancis&#x2F;status&#x2F;1545106513227923459</a><p>Let&#x27;s say 2% of the people read the article, but the thread gives people something to read, understand, and share without reading the full article. It gives me a chance to reach more people, 2% of whom might read the article.