Why (and How) You Should Join Twitter Right Now
created: ; modified:Note: also check out my weekly “Best of Twitter” newsletter
How to start using Twitter
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Check out the 20 people I like the most tweets from and follow the ones you like the most.
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Read Lama Al Rajih’s Twitter guide
Rules for making twitter a wholesome experience
I’m changing my Twitter habits in the hopes of fostering something better.
— Sarah Haider 👾 (@SarahTheHaider) December 20, 2018
New Rules:
1. No snark ever. No liking/rting “dunks” (no matter how valid).
2. Aim for high ratio of sharing good work to criticizing bad work.
3. When criticizing, provide solutions or alternative.
New addition: Eliminate use of (and liking/RTing) negative reaction quote tweets which contain no argument or explanation for the reaction. If it’s a bad take, quote tweet must explain why. Otherwise, it serves only to mock/create pile-ons. https://t.co/qSEaaNROpo
— Sarah Haider 👾 (@SarahTheHaider) March 14, 2019
Cool people praising twitter
Really grateful for Twitter. Seeing the tweets flow by feels like access to some great super-genius for the ages. (Quite serious.)
— Michael Nielsen (@michael_nielsen) April 11, 2016
Unlike apparently so many people, I find twitter inspiring! So many smart people and interesting things — a little pruning required now and then, but it is more a problem of limiting the amount of quality versus finding it.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) January 3, 2018
We do a lot of complaining about Twitter, but if I think about how much value products have added to my life Twitter wins by about 1000x
— Austen (@Austen) March 12, 2018
Twitter is a great playground for practicing life skills: offering constructive criticism tactfully, listening politely to opinions you don't share, empathizing with your audience, etc. So many opportunities every time you check your feed.
— Leo Polovets (@lpolovets) March 13, 2018
Product Hunt wouldn’t have started without Twitter
— Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) March 17, 2018
Twitter has made a huge positive impact on my life. Lots of people complain about it, so I wanted to write some notes about how I use it.
— Michael Nielsen (@michael_nielsen) March 20, 2018
Love to hear others' strategies too.
4️⃣ years ago, I dropped out of college & joined a 13-person startup w/$3M seed, promising to “democratize the stock market.”
— Jack Randall (@JackRandalll) June 21, 2018
In college, I remember setting my alarm at 6am for earnings & getting ripped off by ETrade, so when I read about Robinhood’s mission, I sent this DM.. pic.twitter.com/hBP8VHtfMp
All 4 of my mtgs this afternoon:
— Leo Polovets (@lpolovets) August 10, 2018
- domain expert that I met via Twitter
- fellow VC that I've been getting to know via Twitter
- aspiring VC, intro'ed to me by a Twitter friend (Aside: haven't met that friend IRL yet!)
- @patio11 (I'm a longtime fan)
This is an amazing platform.
I met nearly everyone in my life (outside of my immediate family) on an app before I met them in person. That includes my wife of five years. https://t.co/2js7CfYv3t
— Austen (@Austen) September 9, 2018
Have you gotten a job or hired a person through twitter dot com? (I'm super curious if retweeting job/resume postings is actually helping anyone!)
— Chris SM (daiyi) (@daiyitastic) September 12, 2018
Growing up or working in SF/NYC, going to Stanford etc gives an unbeatable edge.
— Sar Haribhakti (@sarthakgh) August 29, 2018
But, Twitter is a superpower for building a network & a name for yourself.
Someone like me who grew up in India & went to school in upstate NY has access to the brightest minds. https://t.co/P9aw8K4q30
My experience with twitter
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I met more people with similar to mine interests on twitter than I had in my entire life.
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I went on a 2 week trip to China with a dude whom I met on twitter
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I get most of my project ideas / exposure to research from twitter
More people praising twitter
A LinkedIn message, an email, and a tweet: a guy got a job by twitter
How Twitter made me a better scientist
Is surfing the internet dead?, Tyler Cowen: “these days you find most things by Twitter.”
On unfollowing people
There’s no good reason to unfollow someone on Twitter who you know in real life – instead of just “muting” them – unless you care a lot about your following/followers ratio. Which you shouldn’t.
The interpersonal damage of friend noticing you’ve unfollowed them isn’t worth it!