[HN Gopher] Show HN: Write-Only Interface for Twitter
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Show HN: Write-Only Interface for Twitter
Author : linuz90
Score : 188 points
Date : 2020-12-09 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (typefully.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (typefully.app)
| mhd wrote:
| I have to admit that I'm not too excited about the default "ad
| copy". Are "business influencers" the target demographic?
| ktpsns wrote:
| Typefully cuts a long text into several tweets. Apps like
| https://threadreaderapp.com/ or https://the.rip/ unroll these
| stories again.
|
| What's wrong with this network where sharing content requires to
| use such tools both for authors and readers? ;-)
| frankdilo wrote:
| That nobody reads what you write.
|
| Jokes asides I am a big fan of blogging[1], but it's not the
| best medium for reach.
|
| [1]: https://francescodilorenzo.com
| rq1 wrote:
| It forces you somehow de be concise. :)
| benatkin wrote:
| It's neat being able to link to an individual tweet in a
| tweetstorm, and to be able to favorite and retweet individual
| ones and have the counts vary, indicating which tweets are the
| most interesting.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I think this tool is not very useful, because writing tweets in
| the character limited box is what forces you to get to the
| essence of the idea that you are trying to communicate. Your
| tweet thread will be very unreadable if you use this tool.
|
| Consuming using "unrolling" is fine, because it only gets rid
| of the interface that some people don't like.
| Jatidude wrote:
| > Your tweet thread will be very unreadable if you use this
| tool.
|
| Isn't that only the case if you don't work with their built
| in tool on the right to see what the thread will look like? I
| personally have no problem reading through a thread in this
| way, especially when the thread is crafted with the
| individual tweets in mind.
| md224 wrote:
| The thing you're missing is that each of the tweets in a thread
| has its own set of replies & quote tweets, some of which may
| themselves be threads. [1] This is why I like to think of
| Twitter as a fractal annotation platform: it allows people to
| write commentary on specific portions of other people's
| commentary. Twitter's innovation is that it forces the writer
| to divide their text into annotatable segments before
| publishing it.
|
| I think it's great that we're coming up with better tools to
| facilitate the process of writing modular text. Hopefully these
| tools will make it clearer to writers what Twitter threads are
| for and reduce the prevalence of behaviors like splitting
| sentences across tweets.
|
| [1] Unfortunately Twitter's thread-composing UI isn't available
| when writing a reply to someone else's tweet. It would be nice
| if they fixed this. (Perhaps the reasoning is that a multi-
| tweet reply would work better as a quote tweet. I still think
| it would be nice to have the thread UI available for every
| tweet, regardless of the context.)
| szhu wrote:
| What's wrong with the web where sharing content requires the
| use of tools for both authors (a text editor) and readers (a
| web browser)?
|
| We're so used to social networks being all-in-one, but that
| doesn't mean it's the only way. A network that doesn't come
| with all of its own tools isn't necessarily worse -- it might
| even be healthier that people can solve their own use cases
| with their own apps.
| dyates wrote:
| Twitter is awful for longform, but it's where the eyeballs are.
|
| https://blog.ayjay.org/thread/
| bitwize wrote:
| Think on it. We've created a wonderful packet-switched network,
| on top of which we:
|
| * first built an app that made its users break a message into
| packets by hand;
|
| * then built apps on top of that app that do the packet
| disassembly/reassembly for the first app automatically.
|
| There is theoretically no end to the heights this tower of
| madness can reach! A driven young Hackernews could
| theoretically be occupied for decades adding to it, all to
| chase that VC money or Show HN whuffie!
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Hmm, I'm not sure if encouraging people to shout without
| listening is a good thing. It seems to me like it would just
| exacerbate the problems with social media.
| kopakabana wrote:
| If everyone used it, no one would read it, so I'm all for it,
| in that context.
| cruano wrote:
| I would find it good for partial use, like tweet on that all
| day and limit your browsing to once per day or something like
| that
| thelastwave wrote:
| I admit I'm a bit confused by this statement. To me it reads
| as saying a platform everyone posted to but no one ever read
| would be a good thing, basically twitter as cat > dev/null.
| linuz90 wrote:
| Fair point, which I didn't think about a lot to be honest. On
| the other hand, this enables people to write more mindfully,
| without all the noise around them, and also think twice before
| "shouting", so I'd be very curious to see what kind of output
| this will produce.
| swyx wrote:
| it also feels a little disrespectful of people who follow
| you. if I reply to you I know you won't read it. so if
| someone bragged about using your app it'd be a prompt for me
| to unfollow them.
| frankdilo wrote:
| The angle here is not about shutting other people out. It's
| about carving out the time to think and write, and letting
| other peoples in at your leisure, maybe once or twice per
| day.
| theelous3 wrote:
| It's not permanent. They could easily check for replies a
| few minutes later.
| rinor wrote:
| I'm working on something in the social networking space,
| and I'm curious about your views and where you are coming
| from.
|
| If you don't mind me asking: What type of people do you
| follow - people you met irl or online, or friend of
| friends, or famous people? And how do you want to interact
| with them?
| leephillips wrote:
| My own approach to make Twitter useful for me is to
| separate the concepts of following and reading. The key
| is to never look at your timeline:
|
| https://lee-phillips.org/howtotwitter/
| [deleted]
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I don't think this fairly captures the use case.
|
| I have a bunch of drafts up as unsaved tabs in a VS Code
| window. Having a UI that encourages me to put my drafts in a
| dedicated spot and is oriented towards creating threads seems
| really nice.
| dangoor wrote:
| Two thoughts on this:
|
| 1. There are definitely times when I just want to post
| something I found interesting to Twitter and not, at that time,
| get sucked into other tweets
|
| 2. It also depends on what you think Twitter _is_. Wikipedia
| describes Twitter as a "microblogging platform" and "social
| network". I think this app looks good for the microblogging
| aspect of Twitter.
| kalium-xyz wrote:
| Finally a use for write only memory.
| bambax wrote:
| Great idea!! It seems you can't paste an image inside the text
| though, which you can do on the regular Twitter webpage?
| d_theorist wrote:
| I would like to have this for email.
|
| I try to stay out of email except for defined time slots so that
| I don't get distracted. But sometimes I would like to _send_ an
| email outside those times.
|
| Most clients require you to see your inbox if you want to send a
| message.
| jhunter1016 wrote:
| Despite what many comments here might suggest, Twitter is a
| microblogging site. You do not have to consume other tweets in
| order to contribute your own tweets to Twitter. That's why you
| can follow 0 people and still tweet.
|
| That's why I love this idea. Imagine writing a blog but everyone
| suggesting to you that you have to consume other people's blogs
| in order to contribute your own. Twitter can be toxic. But it can
| be great. If you are not in a mental space to consume the doom
| scroll, this is a good way to post your thoughts while protecting
| your mental health.
|
| I've been tweeting from the command line for a few weeks now but
| will probably switch to this.
| linuz90 wrote:
| Wow I couldn't have said it better. This is exactly what we're
| trying to achieve with Typefully, thanks for expressing it so
| nicely.
| e1g wrote:
| Unfortunately the author cannot read your thanks, see
| upvotes, engage in a conversation, or learn from others'
| input. They use a write-only client to access this community.
| etxm wrote:
| When we were texting our tweets to Twitter a decade ago
| they didn't respond with 200 random retweets.
| Shared404 wrote:
| That would be funny, but there is a difference between
| Twitter and HN.
|
| In this case, the author wants to use twitter as a
| microblog -- the use case it was designed for. If they
| don't want to read other input on their twitter, why would
| they?
|
| Meanwhile HN is explicitly designed as a community with a
| focus on curiosity, exploration, and discussion... none of
| which your comment provides.
| e1g wrote:
| Twitter has features to Share, Like, Subscribe, Explore
| via Hashtags. Twitter does not have a feature to "Edit".
| I'm unclear how we can look at these core strategic
| choices and decide it's designed not as a community, but
| as a blogging engine.
| Shared404 wrote:
| The point is not that twitter cannot be used as a
| community, but that it has been a microblogging platform
| as long as it has existed. In addition, each of the
| features you listed can be quite useful for discovery in
| a blogging type situation.
|
| For external sources:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging
|
| > However, by 2006 and 2007, the term microblog was used
| more widely for services provided by established sites
| like Tumblr and Twitter.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/Twitter
|
| > Twitter, online microblogging service for distributing
| short messages among groups of recipients via personal
| computer or mobile telephone.
|
| Regardless, another client that treats the microblogging
| side of twitter as it's sole focus is not unreasonable.
| Much like reddit.com being better suited to memes and
| images and old.reddit.com is better suited to discussion,
| different clients can have different focuses, which is a
| Good Thing.
| e1g wrote:
| Twitter, true to its name, is a bunch of little birdies
| chirping all around one big tree. Mostly noise, worth it
| for the occasional song. Like most chit-chatter at most
| parties. I could show up to a party, get on a soapbox, do
| my monologue, then leave. But I won't make any friends or
| impact that way, even if these parties is where the
| audience is.
|
| Even the "Stoic & Enlightened" accounts like Naval
| regularly engage with the birdies around them.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Mostly noise. Like most chit-chatter at most parties. I
| could show up to the party, get on a soapbox, do my
| monologue, then leave. But I won't make any friends or
| impact that way, even if these parties is where the
| audience is.
|
| Good point. However, making friends/impact is not what
| everyone wants from twitter.
|
| Some people just want a place to put their thoughts out,
| and don't really care what anyone else is doing.
|
| Edit: I'd like to apologize for being overly aggressive
| in my first comment. That was uncalled for. This chain
| clearly has started a discussion, for which I thank you.
| e1g wrote:
| > Some people just want a place to put their thoughts
| out, and don't really care what anyone else is doing.
|
| Not being snarky: this is what personal journals are for.
|
| It's difficult for me to reconcile "I want to put my
| thoughts out, but for as many people as possible to see
| them, and without caring about impact". At best, it feels
| like void navel-gazing, and at worst it might be a source
| of so much thoughtless/marginalizing content on Twitter:
| because the author did not care what their words will do
| to the reader. The feedback loop is essential not only
| for enriching the overall community, but for enriching
| our own understanding.
| jhunter1016 wrote:
| Hacker News would actually be the opposite if I was going
| to go single-sided with it. I don't normally participate in
| the conversations but I love reading them.
|
| This conversation though just happened to touch on
| something I've been experimenting with so I was compelled
| to comment.
|
| That said, give me the read only client for HN (I know this
| exist already) :)
| [deleted]
| gdecaso wrote:
| This is very nice indeed. I would totally use it for my twitter
| threads but I usually add images and other media to my tweets.
| Would you consider adding that feature?
| frankdilo wrote:
| Totally. It's the first feature we'll work on adding.
| gdecaso wrote:
| Awesome. Once it has that (including GIF search ;)) you'll
| have one more happy paying customer
| dash2 wrote:
| This is a great idea, I've been looking for it for years!
| n001sl4 wrote:
| FYI, Asking for upvotes or comments is against the rules.
|
| https://twitter.com/linuz90/status/1336661768807047168
| linuz90 wrote:
| Hi, I wasn't asking upvotes in the post, but I've deleted
| anyway for goodwill. Thanks for pointing it out!
| moeamaya wrote:
| This is fantastic. I had been wanting to make this exact tool for
| a while and so happy your team both built it and executed
| brilliantly. In particular, the mobile UI has a level of craft
| that I know took a while to get right! Well done.
| amwelles wrote:
| Reminds me of the good old days of Birdhouse[1].
|
| 1. https://sandwich.co/work/a-notepad-for-twitter/
| tantalor wrote:
| Use a blog instead.
| frankdilo wrote:
| We do that too. This was initially born as an easy way to
| cross-post from our markdown blogs to Twitter.
| tomgs wrote:
| This is, by far, one of the best product marketing work I have
| seen in a while.
|
| A write-only interface for Twitter.... you, dear sir or madam,
| have my clicks. All of my clicks.
| paulgb wrote:
| Cool! But also, thank you for allowing us to try it without
| logging in. This should be table stakes, but so many Show HN
| posts don't do this and I click right back out of them.
| linuz90 wrote:
| Thanks! Yes we realized that not everyone is ready to give
| access to their Twitter account, and it's only fair we let it
| try it. We ourselves would love to see this in more products.
| nakovet wrote:
| I was going to try it out, but the OAuth scopes include way more
| than just posting in my timeline, is that something you are
| considering changing, reducing scopes?
| asyrafql wrote:
| awsome, thanks for developing it
| Schiphol wrote:
| This looks very nice. Me, I would rather need a read-only twitter
| client. I'd like to be informed about Dionne Warwick and the
| occasional new cogsci paper without periodically making a fool of
| myself.
| linuz90 wrote:
| We make a product[1] that might fix this for you. It's a tool
| to create digests from Twitter and other sources. You get the
| best content via email every day, and it's read-only.
|
| [1]: https://mailbrew.com/
| mhd wrote:
| I'd like a general "follow people" app, where I get an easily
| navigable interface (i.e. not just a dump) of posts on twitter,
| facebook, hacker news...
| searchableguy wrote:
| That's doable with a RSS feed service. Some providers which
| support reading twitter, youtube and other popular feeds
| without any setup.
|
| https://www.inoreader.com/
|
| https://feedbin.com/
|
| https://feedly.com
|
| If there are sources that they don't support, you can host
| your own rsshub instance or use the default.
|
| https://rsshub.app/
|
| Happy to help you get this set up.
| mhd wrote:
| Thanks, I'm a pretty heavy RSS user, mostly with regular
| desktop clients. Where my usage pattern is pretty much a
| single dump for everything and just quickly scrolling
| through the 100-200 updates/day, scanning some, reading
| others, postponing some by opening them in browser tabs (I
| still habitually check "loadDivertedInBackground" in
| Firefox' config, even years after google reader ceasing to
| exist). I don't even categorize the feeds.
|
| But for a comprehensive, all sources in one app, I'd want
| even more than categorization. I'd want different reading
| modes (concatenate tweets, leave other articles alone),
| maybe an expose-like overview to quickly filter, some
| intelligent ranking etc.
|
| rsshub seems interesting though. Can it do hackernews
| user's posts?
| searchableguy wrote:
| You can try: https://hnrss.github.io/
| tegiddrone wrote:
| I want this for everything. So many times I go to text or email
| someone and then get distracted by the new messages in my inbox
| and forget what I was doing in the first place. It's especially
| bad on my phone where there might be cross-app notifications. Why
| did I pick up my phone again?
| rdiddly wrote:
| This looks well done. Although I have to laugh that it exists or
| needs to exist. It's like a fireproof suit for venturing into a
| dumpster fire!
| kossnocorp wrote:
| Congrats with the launch! Proud to see that https://chirr.app
| inspired you!
| linuz90 wrote:
| Made this before discovering Chirr. But very happy to see
| another great product in this space from a fellow maker!
| biz_booster wrote:
| 1. 99.00% people don't even think before tweeting. 2. 0.99% think
| but tweet only one tweet at a time. 3. 0.01% only think and
| create a long thread.
|
| Hence is it really required? What REAL pain are your really
| trying to solve? For how many people will use this? Are people
| already searching/paying for this?
|
| This is a cold hard and harsh truth. May save you lot of your
| valuable time in the near future.
|
| Pls DON"T build something that NOBODY wants.
| searchableguy wrote:
| They are targeting a niche who is likely more willing to pay
| for this than average internet user. I only ever see long
| twitter threads from VCs, developer advocates, CEOs, startup
| people who spend $$$ on productivity software to optimize their
| life, etc.
|
| It's fine if it is $100 from 10 customers than $5 from 1000.
| linuz90 wrote:
| We'll see about that :) We're seeing nice traction, and early
| feedback is from people that were tired to get sucked into the
| Twitter timeline and algorithm, and finally have a nice focused
| environment to tweet their ideas and move on with their day.
| swyx wrote:
| "traction" = paying customers or people being nice to you on
| launch day? don't confuse the two. that said, all the best
| for your launch :)
| SamBam wrote:
| I follow a lot of people who sometimes tweet out intelligent,
| multi-post threads.
| [deleted]
| knightbenax wrote:
| Did you pull these data from the air? I follow a lot of people
| who tweet long threads, a lot of the time
| rapnie wrote:
| This presents a nice way of dealing with Twitter, if it fits your
| use case.
|
| Some good choices too (e.g. Plausible for analytics).
|
| Only thing I wonder is, why I can only learn that you are
| Mailbrew Inc. from the PP or Terms of Services, and ...
|
| > For our Patron in-app purchase flow, we collect related
| information such as payment amounts, times and currencies to
| validate and secure payments.
|
| ... that your revenue model apparently is in-app purchases?
|
| Why not be more open about that with a nice About page where you
| present yourself and the product you offer.
|
| (Note that this same feedback holds for so many services that are
| launched, where the lack of this transparency imho is an
| oversight).
| linuz90 wrote:
| Thanks so much for the feedback!
|
| We've put a "by Mailbrew" logo in the header, and also if you
| click on the chat widget in the bottom left corner of the app,
| you'll see info about the team.
|
| As for the business model, this is a little experiment to play
| with the write-only Twitter idea and create awareness around
| Mailbrew, which is our main product and core business.
|
| Finally regarding Plausible, it's not just better because of
| how privacy-friendly it is, it's also such a great product that
| we recommend everyone to use.
| jhunter1016 wrote:
| Thank you for making this a progressive web app. I've been
| preaching the benefits of PWAs for a while now and the first
| thing I do on any new site I access from my phone is try to add
| it to the Home Screen. Well done!
| cpayne624 wrote:
| In response to
| https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1335953939473326081?s=...
| or coincidence? (Nice work)
| linuz90 wrote:
| Incredibly I missed that tweet, and also we've been working on
| this for many weeks, but love the coincidence!
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(page generated 2020-12-09 23:01 UTC)