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droid2711
droid2711

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Why Twitter?

Hi 👋 I just started noticing that a lot developers and engineers are on Twitter, at the beginning I thought that most people here use the platform just for registration purposes but after few weeks I can see that a lot of you are actually active Twitter users.

In your opinion, should every developer and engineer use Twitter for professional purposes? why?

Top comments (7)

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I think a basic understanding of Twitter culture and half an ear towards the important conversations is useful. Basically, you shouldn't be completely in the dark about what kinds of things Twitter is used for in our space.

But besides that I find it is a time suck and a bad habit. I got really into Twitter for a while, started this whole project on Twitter. But I don't think it's conducive to good, healthy, constructive dialogue and is more of an addictive dopamine rush with some nice social connecting mixed in.

The whole dev.to project in the first place was myself coming around to how much I didn't want to be spending time on Twitter, but didn't want to miss out on the good parts of connecting with other devs.

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nektro profile image
Meghan (she/her)

For me it's because (everyone else is there) and I really do I like it the best. Let's take a tour through our other platforms:

  • Facebook: ewww
  • LinkedIn: Facebook for work
  • Discord: it's new, more of a forum software, decided to only market to gamers even though they're amazing for so much more
  • Slack: another forum like software, too hard to setup too
  • Instagram: owned by Facebook, only has pics and DMs
  • YouTube: only has videos, and bad admin at that
  • Reddit: another forum, though close contender to twitter (in this scenario)
  • Dev.to: great! Twitter's days are numbered
  • Medium: long form
  • Email: really?
  • IRC: REALLY?
  • StackOverflow: your question was closed by a moderator as it was not a question
  • GitHub: no communication except in issues
  • Facebook: honorable mention because it would be great if only it weren't owned by Facebook

Twitter is short form, has everyone, makes interacting with others seem easy and unintrusive, and has an okay admin*

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John Alcher • Edited

Well for one I like the dopamine rush when an army of bots like my tweet when I use a popular hashtag. But seriously, most devs that work on open source stuff that I like are also tweeting some interesting stuff - that's why I used twitter in the first place. Maybe it's because it is more text oriented (compared to other social media platforms) that appeals to us developers?

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droid2711 profile image
droid2711

I like the idea that tweet is text but from what I see, larger percentage of tweets are just links to external sources or images.

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JeffD

I use Twitter to replace missing RSS-feed on blog platform, get info during event and be aware of security issues (Meltdown ...).
I don't think Twitter is the best way to be informed because of fakenews, haters, 'viral' bots, and information overload.

Twitter is a good tool but I hope ActivityPub dominate the web :)

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ItsASine (Kayla)

I have one for following things, but I rarely log into it, to be honest. And I don't tie it to any of my profiles since I'm not using it for "personal branding."

It can be a cool platform to get bite-sized news that's on the bleeding edge of recent, but I'd rather write long-form posts about tech topics than write a couple words and then link to a blog post or release notes.

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Ben Sinclair

should every developer and engineer use Twitter for professional purposes?

No. It's the same answer to "should carpenters use Subway for professional purposes". They can, if they want; it's not a requirement and the two are only marginally related.