Twitter and facebook serve completely different purposes for me. Facebook is where I mostly interact with people I actually know in real life. I use twitter like you do, to follow interesting things. Then linkedin is people I have worked with. Each network serves a different purpose. I'd never pay for any of them though. I guess I should say I'd rather pay with my privacy.
So... an IRC channel? Feels like joining a Star Wars room wouldn't differ from `irc.Twitter #StarWars` other than platform. The creator of an IRC channel is the Op and can promote others to be Hops (moderators). IRC channels are generally based on what can be seen as the equivalent of a hashtag...
You'd have to find a way to sell this as something different than IRC, because I doubt the idea of "IRC on Twitter" has never crossed Twitter's mind. What differentiates it other than being hosted on Twitter?
Rooms is an interesting direction. Twitter is part RSS reader, part chat room. It would be nice to follow hashtags on a topic, but then spammers would flood the hashtags with ads.
That's definitely something to figure out. I have a few thoughts about it, I just didn't wanted to keep the post short(er). But yeah that's a great point.
Perhaps I've just missed it, but my problem with twitter is this: Is there a way to send messages to just these 10 people, and not all 100 followers? That's what I need from a social network. I need a public (everyone can see) channel, and I need channels (that I control) that are visible to specific individuals and groups.
My soccer team (in general, some overlap obviously) doesn't need to know about my ballroom dance plans or my BJJ tournament or my date this Saturday. And none of them need to know about my family reunion plans (zero overlap), though I may post some photos to the public channel.
If the adoption in my friend groups had been higher, G+ seemed perfect for this to me. FB with effort, making groups that I invite people to. But I want it to be transparent. I want you to see me, not me(soccer) and me(ballroom). If you happen to be in both, it's the same, not separate spaces.
Google+ does all this and more. How I wish Google hadn't tied the name to the youtube cleanup / real name policy.
My opinion is that real names policies mostly should die. Basically the idea that real names will cause people to behave is a fallacy for a number of reasons:
1. Trolls use fake accounts
2. Some people seems to honestly believe that "just nuke Iran/Syria/Israel/Gaza" is a smart comment
3. or they don't care about the consequences of posting dumb stuff.
The only people you stop with real names policies are those with dissenting opinions, who don't make fake accounts and who feel they have something to lose.
That seem like natural boundaries to me. That's what the platforms target. I wouldn't want the random people that follow me on twitter knowing the kind of things I post on Facebook.
It doesn't seem weird to me in the least, it's the nature of those two products that points in those directions. Sure Facebook wants you to make everything public, and sure Twitter offers private profiles and some private features like DMs, but in general they naturally gravitate towards the type of usage the GP describes.
I've used Twitter to meet like minded people, however, I think the main distinction is that I don't use Twitter (in general) for interactions with people I met outside of the Twitterverse
