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There was a joke going around recently: Twitter finally allows more than 140 characters in direct messages! Meanwhile, Facebook releases AI powered personal as

by 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

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.