This is a great post outlining many of the problems with Twitter-inspired social networks:
Twitter and its imitators have adopted a structural design that is fundamentally bad for people. This isn’t just a matter of who’s in charge; it’s a problem with the thing itself.
I’ve been saying this for quite some time. The design and features of social apps influence how we interact with it and the behavior it encourages. My book even had a chapter called UI impacts behavior.
The “Twitterlike” post is so well structured that I thought it would be interesting to compare it to Micro.blog, which leaves out some features on purpose.
| Twitterlike | Micro.blog |
|---|---|
| “Tight Character Limits” | No limit. Defaults to short posts but can grow to any size. |
| “Anti-Link Culture” | Links encouraged. Markdown for inline-links within text. |
| “No Edit Button” | Blog posts can always be edited. Replies can be edited within 24 hours. |
| “Share Additions = Bad Shares” | No built-in reposts. Can embed posts or use Markdown block quotes. |
| “Trending Feeds” | No trends. |
| “Decontextualized Encounters” | Can still be a problem in Discover, which is why we hand curate it and avoid divisive topics. |
| “No Host Veto” | Partial support. Can hide replies on your own blog, but not in timeline yet. |
| “Inline Tags” | No special support for hashtags. |
The main argument against “Twitterlike” aligns very well with Micro.blog’s philosophy. There’s still more work to do.
