Twitter is a special platform that Substack notes and it's very competitors still have not copied
quote tweets, replies that are as first class as top-level tweets, and threads make it a rich web of thought, like the original Internet was
QC (@QiaochuYuan)
twitter did something amazing with its design: on most other platforms there are “posts” and “replies,” and replies are second-class citizens, lacking most of the affordances that posts have
on twitter everything is a tweet! (ignoring articles) when you reply or QT a tweet you are writing another tweet, which has all the affordances a full tweet has. you can attach images (including screenshots), you can QT while replying, other people can reply or RT or QT your tweet, replies and QTs show up in feeds. this makes twitter “fully recursive” in a way other platforms aren’t. someone can make a point in a top-level tweet and you can critique or build off that point in a QT which is its own top-level tweet. tweets can get replies which are so good they accumulate more RTs and QTs than the original. there’s a frictionless way discussions “grow” on twitter, budding off new discussions which bud off new discussions etc, which any platform that maintains a post / reply distinction makes harder
— https://nitter.net/QiaochuYuan/status/2053251422897291378#m