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"Moments" tab gives a good indication that Twitter has no idea where to go and is the sum of boring meetings with marketing consultants. Twitter had potential,

"Moments" tab gives a good indication that Twitter has no idea where to go and is the sum of boring meetings with marketing consultants. Twitter had potential, but it appears stagnate as all they've done is created a new version of an AOL instant messenger chatroom with hashtags and 128char limit. Limiting the API tokens for 3rd party developers was a really foolish move.

bhc3 11y ago
How do you mean? I think of Moments are formalizing something that Twitter does well: conversations/stories around topics of current interest. Sure, you'll engage your connections on these topics. But it's nice to see a broader view of them as well.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Checking it showed no relation to anything in my feed, friends, or posts. Additionally it brought up nonsense click bait. It looked like they just fed in the front page of yahoo.
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
Completely agree. "Moments" just has that damn indicator showing stuff is unread on it and it drives me nuts but NOTHING is EVER relevant to any of my interests or even the people I follow. I don't even understand what the point of it is; shouldn't it just be displaying things it thinks I want to look at? At least that makes the most sense to me... Oh well, I don't think Twitter is going away any time soon but I don't really understand some of the steps they've been taking...and 4,100 employees? Yikes!
- volaski 11y ago
  it's because you're not their target. Their goal with these features is not to retain existing users but to acquire ones who wouldn't have otherwise used Twitter.
  - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
    > it's because you're not their target Fair enough. That probably goes for almost everyone on HN as well I would think but obviously we're an edge case. > Their goal with these features is not to retain existing users but to acquire ones who wouldn't have otherwise used Twitter. Hmm, how would this attract new folks? Like Facebook tries to show you things you care about but this I'm not sure how it's really sold to perspective users. Since it's a social network I'm guessing much will be word of mouth but that requires support from existing users. I wonder if things like increasing the character amount and offering a better, maybe threaded conversational way of interacting with folks would bring in more people. Granted those may not be the best choices philosophically but I wonder if they've done any A/B testing where certain areas got different features like more character counts and how it turned out.
rhizome 11y ago
If they're really going toward content, I think Moments is a good idea with a questionable name. Something like Super-GoogleNews could eventually evolve, Sprinkle a little recommendation engine over and you got yourself a custom page full of wordstuff.
- Gotadime 11y ago
  I agree. Add in the proper personalization and some kind of Twitter-unique algorithm that almost serves as a voting system (perhaps based on favorites, retweets, replies, etc), and you've got yourself a Reddit replacement. Which could be nice, now that Reddit has decided to become a censored safe place and it's core users are leaving.
Eridrus 11y ago
I'm not much of a user of "Moments" myself, but I'm guessing it is primarily targeted at new users who sign up and go "what now" and don't know who to follow, etc.
joeblau 11y ago
One of the interesting parts about Moments, is that I used TweetBot and that feature is nowhere to be found. That being said, I don't even feel like I'm missing anything. It seems like ownership of the product experience is fragmented and the best implementors of the product experience aren't Twitter.
kelseydh 11y ago
The most innovative technology to have come out of chat programs is Slack's feature that let's you EDIT chats in real time, and leave reactions. This is such a crazy innovation to the structure of chat programs, that it blows my mind other real time communication platforms haven't incorporated it. Even Facebook Messenger and GChat feel inadequate now that I'm consciously aware that they don't let me edit my chat messages after sending them. It's such a no brainer innovation that nobody has ever done, likely because when you're building a chat program the idea of letting people edit chats after they send them makes the brain of any engineer hurt -- but there's an untapped value to allowing it that many products haven't realized yet.
- STRML 11y ago
  Skype has had that functionality for a very long time, well before Slack was conceived.
  - anonbanker 11y ago
    my IRC client had s/wrong phrase/correct phrase/ for quite a while before Skype was a thought in the KaZaA developer's head.

bhc3 11y ago

How do you mean? I think of Moments are formalizing something that Twitter does well: conversations/stories around topics of current interest. Sure, you'll engage your connections on these topics. But it's nice to see a broader view of them as well.

nosuchthing 11y ago
Checking it showed no relation to anything in my feed, friends, or posts. Additionally it brought up nonsense click bait. It looked like they just fed in the front page of yahoo.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

Completely agree. "Moments" just has that damn indicator showing stuff is unread on it and it drives me nuts but NOTHING is EVER relevant to any of my interests or even the people I follow. I don't even understand what the point of it is; shouldn't it just be displaying things it thinks I want to look at? At least that makes the most sense to me... Oh well, I don't think Twitter is going away any time soon but I don't really understand some of the steps they've been taking...and 4,100 employees? Yikes!

volaski 11y ago
it's because you're not their target. Their goal with these features is not to retain existing users but to acquire ones who wouldn't have otherwise used Twitter.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  > it's because you're not their target Fair enough. That probably goes for almost everyone on HN as well I would think but obviously we're an edge case. > Their goal with these features is not to retain existing users but to acquire ones who wouldn't have otherwise used Twitter. Hmm, how would this attract new folks? Like Facebook tries to show you things you care about but this I'm not sure how it's really sold to perspective users. Since it's a social network I'm guessing much will be word of mouth but that requires support from existing users. I wonder if things like increasing the character amount and offering a better, maybe threaded conversational way of interacting with folks would bring in more people. Granted those may not be the best choices philosophically but I wonder if they've done any A/B testing where certain areas got different features like more character counts and how it turned out.

rhizome 11y ago

If they're really going toward content, I think Moments is a good idea with a questionable name. Something like Super-GoogleNews could eventually evolve, Sprinkle a little recommendation engine over and you got yourself a custom page full of wordstuff.

Gotadime 11y ago
I agree. Add in the proper personalization and some kind of Twitter-unique algorithm that almost serves as a voting system (perhaps based on favorites, retweets, replies, etc), and you've got yourself a Reddit replacement. Which could be nice, now that Reddit has decided to become a censored safe place and it's core users are leaving.

Eridrus 11y ago

I'm not much of a user of "Moments" myself, but I'm guessing it is primarily targeted at new users who sign up and go "what now" and don't know who to follow, etc.

joeblau 11y ago

One of the interesting parts about Moments, is that I used TweetBot and that feature is nowhere to be found. That being said, I don't even feel like I'm missing anything. It seems like ownership of the product experience is fragmented and the best implementors of the product experience aren't Twitter.

kelseydh 11y ago

The most innovative technology to have come out of chat programs is Slack's feature that let's you EDIT chats in real time, and leave reactions. This is such a crazy innovation to the structure of chat programs, that it blows my mind other real time communication platforms haven't incorporated it. Even Facebook Messenger and GChat feel inadequate now that I'm consciously aware that they don't let me edit my chat messages after sending them. It's such a no brainer innovation that nobody has ever done, likely because when you're building a chat program the idea of letting people edit chats after they send them makes the brain of any engineer hurt -- but there's an untapped value to allowing it that many products haven't realized yet.

STRML 11y ago
Skype has had that functionality for a very long time, well before Slack was conceived.
- anonbanker 11y ago
  my IRC client had s/wrong phrase/correct phrase/ for quite a while before Skype was a thought in the KaZaA developer's head.