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alttab
Because someone hasn't done it better yet. People dumped MySpace for Facebook because Facebook was there. People are going to dump Twitter because ..... ????
rbranson
... and it's not likely at this point that anyone else WILL do it better.
angryasian
I disagree, I think Friendfeed, and now Facebook is doing it better.
alttab
I would tend to agree with you. With public status updates (basically twitter), a good JSON api, and a more integrated experience I'd say Facebook is probably the best bet.

Now, I'm also a privacy-fanatic and I think what Facebook has done with our data is slightly evil. This is, of course, only because I was the first "class" as it were in 2004 that lived with Facebook through all 4 years of undergrad. Needless to say, there's a lot of stuff on there that I no longer identify with.

I've since started using Facebook as an "identity platform" for which I can shape my public perception, keeping my private life offline completely.

Of course, this is what Zuckerberg wanted with living responsible adult lives with transparency, but what it really comes down to is it will dilute the platform because what is "public" will be your front-facing perception.

All that said, Twitter is still doing a good job with a low-overhead buy-in. Signing up for Facebook is signing up for way more than most want to.

josefresco
So which is it? Was Facebook 'just there' or was it better? If MySpace was akin to a teenagers bedroom, Facebook was their college dorm room (cooler, less cluttered, more grown up). Facebook seems to be doing what they can to stop people from evolving into their own house/apartment (which in my mind is a self-hosted or self-controlled application).

The fact that FB is growing with the old folks means something has gone right for them where it didn't for MySpace.

kishorenc
The average user doesn't care. The success or failure of twitter will be determined by what the average person feels about it. As the appstore shows, even if you piss the developers off, new developers are not going to stop with the platform just like that.
josefresco
Not too many average users on Twitter from my experience. I've maxed out the local people that I follow and it's mostly automated news feeds (managed by tech folks) and other tech people in my field and related who are Tweeting.

Sure we can all pull out a story here or there of someone 'average' discovering and using Twitter, but I'm afraid my experience on the whole doesn't indicate that your Mom or mine will be using Twitter anytime soon.

Facebook? Now that's a whole different story.

[dead] mrfish
I think that when a site's user-base of teen girls and Celebes's exceeds 50% the idea of an "Average User" moves significantly away from what we know as the average Hacker user / geek persona. 2008 called and they want there perception of an "average twitter user" back!
dagw
I know about as many people who are on Twitter as I know people who aren't on Facebook, in other words very few indeed.
xs
Can someone say a little more about how twitter f's over the developer community? I was under the impression that facebook rejoices the developer community, with their love for open source.
angryasian
i detect sarcasm here.. out of 4 points only one focuses on developer community. I only bring it up as a point to support the argument.
angryasian
Facebook has only released Cassandra, Hip Hop (PHP), and Thrift to the open source community. Not like these are that important.
aarongough
Am I missing some sarcasm here? All of those are pretty serious pieces of engineering that we should be thankful to them for releasing freely...
jackowayed
Twitter banned third-party ad networks after people had put a lot of work (and $5M of funding, in Ad.ly's case) into third-party ad networks.

And Facebook tried to screw over Zynga when they saw how much money they could be making if they forced Zynga to give them a cut by using Facebook's currency. Besides for that, they've been very good to developers. But that's a pretty egregious offense.

[dead] mrfish
Same reason why we are still using Microsoft products. We're to f'n lazy to build it ourselves. And I don't mean develop it because obviously any developer worth their salt could replicate the code for twitter in your favorite language. I mean BUILD it. Community, Scaling, Developer base, etc...

Also in a nice piece of irony, I went to make a comment by signing into my twitter account (which really just gives posterous.com access to my account BOOO!) and I got the fail whale. Henceforth sealing the deal for this guys douche baggery!

jimfl
If you think that Twitter f's developers, then the question is why you are still _developing_ against twitter.

If you think Twitter is ffing the _users_, then the question would be more appropriately why you are still using it.

Twitters recent spate of outages is probably something they will get on top of.

ugh
Completely off topic language remark: I don’t think you should self-censor. Write ‘fuck’ if you think it’s appropriate, don’t write ‘fuck’ if you don’t think it’s appropriate. Everything else seems childish and unnecessary to me.

I don’t think that “Why the F …” is less offensive than “Why the Fuck …”, I rather think the author takes me for a fool.

You should, like Heinrich Heine, subvert censorship, not make it part of your writing (even if you don’t have to):

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  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——    Idiots    ——  ——
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angryasian
well i could be saying frick or frack leaving it up to your interpretation. Just didn't know if hn has some sort of guide for inappropriate language.
jessriedel
I see "F" not as censorship but as just a less intense version of "fuck", a la "fudge", "heck", "darn", "frickin'".
ugh
Ok, I haven’t seen it used in that way before, but that might just be me. I’m really most annoyed by something like ‘F*ck’ or similar abuses.
fizx
It wasn't just that. The entire article was an immature run-on sentence.