It’s a news ticker limited to one-word items, lacking any context, broadcasting mostly topics that I don’t understand, recognize, or care about. It’s nonsensical. At worst, it can offend. At best, it will confuse.
That actually sums up Twitter as a whole. Try as I might, I've never been able to shift my perception of Twitter beyond that and into something that could ever be useful to me in any way.
Look at the bottom 80% of those screenshots to see what the "real" twitter gives you. I can only assume that the author has subscribed to that content, and it's every bit as useless, to pretty much anybody.
For me the only appeal is connecting in line with my work and interests rather than my circle of friends and friends of friends on Facebook. If the kind of people I follow (use that losely I guess because I only look at it occasionally miss a heap of Tweets) moved to a platform which allowed longer form conversation and better image/video/link support I would have no problem moving on.
As it stands the threaded, no character limit format on hacker news is far better for getting insights on topics I care about than Twitter.
That actually sums up Twitter as a whole. Try as I might, I've never been able to shift my perception of Twitter beyond that and into something that could ever be useful to me in any way.
Look at the bottom 80% of those screenshots to see what the "real" twitter gives you. I can only assume that the author has subscribed to that content, and it's every bit as useless, to pretty much anybody.