OK, I don’t get it. How do you carry on a discussion on Twitter?

There are no comment threads added to tweets, nor a way to see both sides of a group discussion on the same page.

Just this evening a prominent tech industry person tweeted that a colleague of his was going to take questions on Twitter. All you had was his Twitter name.

To ask a question of them, I @reply to that Twitter name. Then I have to click on that users twitter page, to wait for any reply to my question. I hit refresh every 30 seconds and watch other answers go by. Not only will I not see other people’s questions to the answers I see, I have to continue hitting refresh to check for an answer to my question. Also my Twitter status is full of questions to someone my followers don’t even know.

I only see one side of a conversation and my followers only see the other side of my conversation. Using Twitter for discussion is just stupid. There are way better tools to have a public discussion with. Twitter has a very limited purpose. And this isn’t it.

It is sure sad that many people are abandoning long form blog posting and other tools very well suited for discussions, in favor of Twitter, the worst tool on the net for two way conversations. As designed, Twitter is for broadcasting. One way, spam included.

Now FriendFeed does solve all these faults and more. But Twitter has all the marketing press and FriendFeed has been sucked into Facebook. Sigh!