I simply refuse to believe more than one woman on this planet would sleep with Ted Cruz. Nice try tabloids.
No tweet links are annoying. Firstly, I don’t have the app on my phone and the format makes them unreadable on my browser -and I wouldn’t want to launch an app anyway. Secondly, it’s a lame one or two sentence report on the story. Linking to twitter makes sense if you are talking about a tweet, otherwise it’s lame and lazy.
Refuse to believe a jerk like him beats you by more than one? 
Twitter is the nexus of political conversation in 2016.
I’m sure at a certain level of submersion it feels that way. Personally, I am not willing to put up with that much noise for so little signal.
I’m seeing a great deal of political conversation this cycle, but none on Twitter. Probably because I’m not looking. Do you really think I’m missing anything?
Do you feel you’re missing much by not reading the comments section of your favorite news source? Same thing.
Yikes. I usually regret that.
I’ve got SDMB for highbrow conversation, and cable news for the rest.
Well to be fair, there’s obviously some smart knowledgeable people who are on twitter. The problem is that when you link to their little tweet, it’s basically a sentence or two then on to the comments section stuff. So when someone gives a twitter link about a story that might sound interesting I just google it instead of clicking a basically useless link.
No not really. A cut above that. Though it depends upon who you follow obviously. Elizabeth Drew, Jeet Heer, Matt Yglassias, Mark A.R. Kleiman, Richard Nixon, Nate Silver, and LOLGOP are worth reading. Also Boing Boing and Onion. A tweet can meaningfully communicate a title and a link to a blog post. Having fleeting interactions with creators you have gushed over can be diverting if a little odd.
I agree though that the medium, while better than I would expect, does have its frustrations. One fun aspect of it is adding to and paring the list of people you follow. I also like building a stream with a suitable mix of politics, policy, art and science. Another twitter-plus is pseudo-anonymity.
I had not considered the difficulty of reading a twitter link on a phone though. I’ll try to keep that in mind in the future.
“…Richard Nixon…”?
I don’t agree with all his politics, but he does have interesting things to say. He shares the account with his former press sec Ronald Ziegler.
He’s a survivor.
Can’t you link to a title and blog post directly? Look, I understand enjoying using twitter even if I have no interest, but it’s annoying when used as a “cite” here. Why give a link to a link or a short quote?
Nearly every major political journalist, columnist, and pundit participates heavily on Twitter. What you need to do is curate a list of your favorites and go to that when there are major political events happening. This is my Politics VIP list, although right now is not the best time to demonstrate its awesomeness because they are mostly talking about the NCAA tournament. But on a primary or caucus night, during or after a debate, or after any major political development, it’s chock-full of gold.
And you don’t have to zoom down into individual tweets, which is where the hoi polloi reply and it becomes more like a “comment section”. If you just scroll through it as is, you’re reading only the major players (that I chose, or whichever ones you choose for your own list), and it is nothing like a comment section. But something cool about Twitter is that you can reply to bigshot journalists and sometimes they will engage you in conversation.
If you are into politics enough to participate on this board, it’s crazy not to use Twitter. There are literally zero political journalists, or certainly none under the age of say 50, who do not use it daily.
As I tried to express upthread, I’ll take your considerations into account. Sometimes I link to a twitter conversation though. In the case of the link I provided on the previous page, yes I would have linked elsewhere had I been aware of the phone issue. No reason to cause problems for those on the road.
I am not saying using twitter is useless, i am saying it’s useless as a cite for a story/issue. And frankly, since I am not running a politcal campaign, I don’t need real time passing thoughts of every reporter or commentator. If it’s worth a damn someone will write more than a tweet about it.
“These horseless carriages make an infernal racket and I’m sure they are just a passing fad!”
“You say you’re from Western Union? Urgent ‘telegram’? Well, I never! If anyone has an important message for me, they can write it with a quill pen and send it to me via Pony Express like a normal person! Now get off my lawn, you blue-hatted vagrant!”
To be honest, I think twitter is a work in progress. I’d like to run multiple twitter streams side by side. Also, they have a real harassment problem, at least if you are a female content provider.
I do sort of wish this board could get promoted more on other social platforms. We don’t even have a standard hash tag there. #sdmb is apparently taken by the Sun Devil Marching Band of Arizona State University. Maybe I should retweet Weird Earls or something.
Boy, you sure want to slide me into that ludite slot. Just because I don’t appreciate the format doesn’t mean I want it to get off my lawn. I didn’t remotely imply it was a passing fad.
Those are all great points. And yes, this board needs to be careful not to go the way of BBSes or Usenet. But that has to start with people ditching the “get off my lawn with your newfangled social media” 'tude.