The Twitter slot machine

The other day I saw an article on the LA Times app and shared it on Twitter:

My snarky comment was mostly in response the “alarming increase” quote in the headline. I, uh, probably spend more time thinking of snarky things to write on Twitter than I should. (And yet, I don’t post half the things I think of!) Most of the time I don’t get any feedback at all, which I interpret as my followers indulging in my bad jokes and pointless punditry.

But this time something new happened. The LA Times added my post to a moment. I’ve never understood the point of the Moments feature, but the result was pretty clear after a couple of hours:

Almost all of that giant bar came from me sharing an article:

This is the slot machine of Twitter. Most of the time you get no response or maybe a couple of likes from your friends. And every now and then you get hundreds of likes for writing two words about a link. As I explained in a talk about Stack Overflow, this sort of variable payout is the most efficient way for sites to encourage engagement. Randomness is a feature and not a bug.

There’s a certain irony to the completely unpredictable reception to my “utterly predictable” comment. It’s also the sort of thing that is self-tuning. Most Twitter users are pleased to get a tiny amount of response. A tiny minority won’t get out of bed for anything less that 100k likes. What matters is that sometimes you get more than you expected out of participation, so you keep at it. It ratchets up.

And this is why it makes sense to take a break sometimes. Are you doing this because it’s actually rewarding? Or do you keep hoping for a meaningless payout? (Or, and I’m just spitballing here, does it sometimes provide grist for an essay?)