[chjohasbrouck]

Maybe this has been said already, but one major problem with Twitter is that by default, the average person will publish and share content on it that's a complete waste of time and of no value to anybody.

The average unit of content shared by a user on Instagram or Snapchat is vastly more entertaining and relevant, and I think they achieve that by being more visual. Those platforms are image- and video-first, and they have all kinds of image and video filters. If we gave those tools to a monkey, it would produce something worth sharing.

The quality of their content is enforced inherently by the tools they provide you to share with.

Facebook achieves the same in a different way, by tightly integrating with your identity and social circles.

Twitter doesn't have any form of inherent quality control. Tweets are just words with little context. The people tweeting are usually strangers.

[wolfgke]

> Maybe this has been said already, but one major problem with Twitter is that by default, the average person will publish and share content on it that's a complete waste of time and of no value to anybody.

The same can be said about most social networks.

> The average unit of content shared by a user on Instagram or Snapchat is vastly more entertaining and relevant, and I think they achieve that by being more visual. Those platforms are image- and video-first, and they have all kinds of image and video filters. If we gave those tools to a monkey, it would produce something worth sharing.

I would disagree and also call this "a complete waste of time and of no value to anybody".

[majewsky]

> Twitter doesn't have any form of inherent quality control.

I've always thought of the "Unfollow" button serving that purpose.

[richmarr]

The trouble is that people are inconsistent and multi-faceted.

I might really really value a particular friend's opinion on tech, but constantly roll my eyes and sigh when he live-tweets his hot takes on Eurovision or football.

[dagw]

It would be cool if Twitter could do some sort of clever analysis on a persons tweet history and when you start following someone say: "Dave often tweets about US Politics, Baseball, Skiing and Programming. Which of these topics do you want to follow".

[jononor]

Multi-faceted is the thing Twitter and other person-based share/follow don't work well with. I ended up creating another account for music/art, separating it from my tech/business activity. But its pretty tedious to manage...

[meigwilym]

Also, when I see a number of retweets for the same account in my feed, it suggests quality. More so if the retweets are by different accounts.