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all to maintain Etsy, Etsy is a strange thing. Founded by a literally borderline insane person, taken away from him, given back to him, taken away from him, r

by seiji 11y ago

all to maintain Etsy, Etsy is a strange thing. Founded by a literally borderline insane person, taken away from him, given back to him, taken away from him, run as a complete engineering organization for what would seem almost like a trivial website. They routinely release world-class tools, but why is a silly yarn-based-economy website incentivized to even create such things? It's like the Twitter problem: twitter has so many developers, but nothing seems to change. What are all the engineers doing and why isn't there anything to show for it? Part of easy being a tech powerhouse is: they are also a cultural landing hub for people who just want to live and play in Brooklyn. They end up with a lot of talented "well, I live here and I want a job, where do I work" people shuffling through who can do good work but don't want to live far from their apartments. There aren't many tech companies nearby to compete against, so they have a weird concentration of talented people for being an oddly non-tech company.

jacques_chester 11y ago
From what I can tell, peering in from the outside, a lot of what Twitter's engineers do is maintaining the illusion of constancy. Which is actually pretty impressive, if you consider the number of axes they've grown on and by how much. It used to be that the failwhale was an industry punchline. Now when something is flakey we turn to Twitter to see what the status is.
- seiji 11y ago
  There was a joke going around recently: Twitter finally allows more than 140 characters in direct messages! Meanwhile, Facebook releases AI powered personal assistant and 12 new open source projects powering their entire company. Is Twitter doomed because they are public? Their stock is in the toilet, so they are afraid to change anything in case the changes make things worse. So, things are bad, nobody can change anything, and nothing will get better on its own? And since their stock is in the toilet, what motivates employees who want to be like all the other cool kids and cash out for millions? Does everybody abandon ship? Considering Twitter's entire gimmick is being a short message broadcast service, how much can they innovate without changing the core of what they are?
  - dasil003 11y ago
    I definitely think Twitter is doomed because they are public. Actually the seeds of their downfall came earlier when they decided they needed to monetize and kill anyone else that was earning money by leveraging Twitter. But being public and having to listen to Wall Street where they are judged by Facebook's chosen KPI is the thing that will prevent Twitter from realizing its potential. The thing about Twitter is that to this day, no one really understands what it is. It is stable only because the investors have been beating this drum for Twitter to explain and define itself. But whether you talk to founders, employees, or daily users, no one really can pin it down. However it's obvious that it has some unique properties in terms of how it lets celebrities get close to their fans, and how it allows a conversation to take place among influential people. Twitter has the power to spread ideas faster and across more varied demographics than any other tech product. But the question Wall Street keeps asking is how can Twitter grow 5x so it has the same number of users as Facebook. They don't give a shit if the average Twitter user is 100x as influential. And it goes even deeper than that, because Twitter still faces this existential question of what it can become, whereas Facebook is pretty clear what it is, and the question is only how valuable their data is. In other words, I believe Twitter has a lot more upside than Facebook, but of course it can't take a risk on any of those ideas if it's judged by Wall Street's unimaginative criteria.

by seiji 11y ago

jacques_chester 11y ago

From what I can tell, peering in from the outside, a lot of what Twitter's engineers do is maintaining the illusion of constancy. Which is actually pretty impressive, if you consider the number of axes they've grown on and by how much. It used to be that the failwhale was an industry punchline. Now when something is flakey we turn to Twitter to see what the status is.

seiji 11y ago
There was a joke going around recently: Twitter finally allows more than 140 characters in direct messages! Meanwhile, Facebook releases AI powered personal assistant and 12 new open source projects powering their entire company. Is Twitter doomed because they are public? Their stock is in the toilet, so they are afraid to change anything in case the changes make things worse. So, things are bad, nobody can change anything, and nothing will get better on its own? And since their stock is in the toilet, what motivates employees who want to be like all the other cool kids and cash out for millions? Does everybody abandon ship? Considering Twitter's entire gimmick is being a short message broadcast service, how much can they innovate without changing the core of what they are?
- dasil003 11y ago
  I definitely think Twitter is doomed because they are public. Actually the seeds of their downfall came earlier when they decided they needed to monetize and kill anyone else that was earning money by leveraging Twitter. But being public and having to listen to Wall Street where they are judged by Facebook's chosen KPI is the thing that will prevent Twitter from realizing its potential. The thing about Twitter is that to this day, no one really understands what it is. It is stable only because the investors have been beating this drum for Twitter to explain and define itself. But whether you talk to founders, employees, or daily users, no one really can pin it down. However it's obvious that it has some unique properties in terms of how it lets celebrities get close to their fans, and how it allows a conversation to take place among influential people. Twitter has the power to spread ideas faster and across more varied demographics than any other tech product. But the question Wall Street keeps asking is how can Twitter grow 5x so it has the same number of users as Facebook. They don't give a shit if the average Twitter user is 100x as influential. And it goes even deeper than that, because Twitter still faces this existential question of what it can become, whereas Facebook is pretty clear what it is, and the question is only how valuable their data is. In other words, I believe Twitter has a lot more upside than Facebook, but of course it can't take a risk on any of those ideas if it's judged by Wall Street's unimaginative criteria.