[mikewarot]

Twitter seemed absolutely idiotic at launch. A "Twit" was an idiot who chattered incessantly on a BBS... why would you want a network full of them?

When they were first produced, transistors were only marginally more useful than tubes. They were finicky to produce, mechanically fragile, and tended to age rapidly.

Gasoline was thought too explosive for any use, and dumped into the nearest stream to get rid of it.

[silisili]

This was mine. My brother was an early adopter, and I asked him why he was always on it. When he described the use case, specifically that a person could announce where they're going, and all their friends could join them, I thought it was silly.

Why not just send a group text, I asked. He said I just didn't get it, and that was probably true.

Now that it seems to be mainly political arguments, I can safely say I still don't get it...

[ChainOfFools]

In hindsight the key difference is that a group text only goes to that specific group of people that you have already established relationships with and have some idea who they all are, whereas with Twitter it was there the beginning of the cultural shift, due to reality shows and other factors, of publicizing one's private life.

and it turned out that at least in the beginning when the internet wasn't quite as full of garbage as it is now, that broadcasting yourself to a bunch of people you do know plus a much larger circle of people they know but whom you do not know, ended up bringing a net positive return of new contacts to you. This was and still is incredibly helpful especially for young people just starting out in life who need to build up networks (of all ... kinds) very quickly.

The limited space available in a tweet ensured that everyone was capped at the same minimal level of effort, so there was little or no expectation that you had to put a lot of work or thought or polish into what you were saying - rawness and immediacy were prioritized over polish. Quantity finally had a slight edge over quality, because everything was tinged with the quality of "novelty" at the time.

[bruceb]

Twitter did two things. Removal of media gate keepers. No longer did politicians, athletes, actors, other notables have their msg filtered by media outlets. Before you had to rely on whatever edited quote a newspaper deemed worthy of providing to you. Major shift in control.

The other was the rise of the quick rebuttal. No longer have to have things fact checked.

[mejutoco]

Original Twitter, updating from SMS was referred to as the "realtime web".

The fact that someone could share some news immediately from sms (hence the length limitation) before smartphones were common place was a genuine novelty.