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
5/ Every time you see a tweet that is thoughtless, unnecessarily polarising or aggressive, petty or dumb, just unfollow that person. It's amazing how quickly your timeline starts to fill with better content. Your whole Twitter experience completely changes
— Yoni Balkind (Uber rating 4.65) (@yonibee) April 3, 2019
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 Allred (@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 Allred (@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!)
— daiyi! ✨ (chris) (@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!