8 ms·

>What they should have done is ramp that shit up and figure out how to monetize the query traffic or figure out a way to decentralize their infrastructure to al

>What they should have done is ramp that shit up and figure out how to monetize the query traffic or figure out a way to decentralize their infrastructure to allow everyone to run Twitter together So, I'm genuienly curious. How do they make money by "ramping that shit up"? I've seen a lot of companies that have 'get users' as their M.O., but I have no insight into the "profit!!!" phase. Opening their user base seems contary to "profit!!!", from a laymans perspective. It seems to me like API/User info availability is their leverage w.r.t. profitability, much as it pains me as a potential developer who would like that information for free. How does decentralization make them (and their investors) money? I can't see a way to do both given the incentives.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
j42 11y ago
While not stated eloquently, I do think there's some truth in that. 1. Open API's, good documentation and community engagement goes a long way in establishing developer trust. I don't believe developer trust is correlated significantly with revenue (directly), but it's absolutely correlated with acquisition. I'd argue that Angular or React were partially successful because of the stickiness of their communities, and that's a powerful self-perpetuating force. 2. Monetization is in the queries. Facebook and Google know this. Throwing aside all of their auxiliary services, emerging markets, hardware, et al... between 70-90% of their respective revenue is from direct advertising. If there's a way to scale or "ramp" their revenue model, this would be the portion to focus on.
- inthewoods 11y ago
  Monetization of the queries doesn't appear to be a significant revenue opportunity for either Google or Facebook - why would this be different for Twitter? Not that this can't be a revenue source, but how big is it? An alternative: I agree with everyone that they should have turned the APIs back on - they just should have made it mandatory to carry advertising as part of the feeds in order to access the feeds. They could have also layered on federated advertising for anyone consuming the API - meaning, allow those folks to show their own advertising in-stream. They simply pay Twitter a cut. Both of these may have helped them both grow the audience and advertising at the same time.
  - kordless 11y ago
    Monetization of the queries isn't a significant revenue opportunity because of scaling payment issues. Solve that, and you solve getting paid for doing something you are good at, which is throwing millions of statuses at millions of users.
    - inthewoods 11y ago
      I'm not getting why you think this data is so valuable or who you think the audience is - are you suggesting that millions of people would pay for the feed and it is just a problem of being able to pay?
      - kordless 11y ago
        The data is valuable only if someone has fair access to it. What an individual or a thousand may do with that data is an unknown and that is the real opportunity here, not the promise of a million subscribers paying you a dollar each. Twitter took that unknown, turned it off, and tried to own all the opportunity and all the answers. They did this because they IPO'd and then the need by investors to know what's going to happen took over even more than before. If there were answers to be had here, they'd already be doing it. I'm suggesting a move back to innovation, which is where they belong. The desire by some individuals to make insane amounts of money on an idea are directly responsible for a massive SUCK experience for the end users of the software because those users are then forced to use the software in a way that makes the revenue predictable. I used to love to use Twitter because of all the wide variety of apps and things I could do with it with code. Now it's just unusable and dying. I would pay to make that different, but there isn't anything they offer that's worth my time and effort, so I'll go elsewhere.
        inthewoods 11y ago
        "The data is valuable only if someone has fair access to it. What an individual or a thousand may do with that data is an unknown and that is the real opportunity here, not the promise of a million subscribers paying you a dollar each." Why is the data only valuable if someone has fair access to it? Right now, basically anyone can go license the Twitter data and have access to the full firehose. And I don't know how you know if the data is real opportunity here (vs. advertising). "The desire by some individuals to make insane amounts of money on an idea are directly responsible for a massive SUCK experience for the end users of the software because those users are then forced to use the software in a way that makes the revenue predictable. I used to love to use Twitter because of all the wide variety of apps and things I could do with it with code. Now it's just unusable and dying. I would pay to make that different, but there isn't anything they offer that's worth my time and effort, so I'll go elsewhere." Are you offering a better path for Twitter and their shareholders, or are you offering a path that feels better, but may have a much lesser outcome for those parties? If so, why would they take it? And while I agree with you that Twitter is dying, it's not unusable, it's just not usable in the way that you want to use it.
- kelseydh 11y ago
  Facebook's token user API system has now created the billion dollar juggernaut that is Tinder. That app is now irrevocably linked to Facebook. You are completely right, there is a huge strategic reason for promoting OAuth API's as a large company.
- kordless 11y ago
  Trust initially makes you decide to use something (marketing) and trust also makes decide to stay with it (loyalty). Marketing itself is mostly related to raising interest, but it frequently 'hacks' trust by using biases to establish quick and cheap trust with consumers. If a company's product is trustworthy (real trust, not biased trust) then the loyalty becomes strong with the customer. Companies who acquire other companies regularly have identified their bad habits of using too much marketing to try to get more customers and instead focus on buying loyalty through an acquisition.
crashedsnow 11y ago
I think it's supposed to work like this: assuming more users == more revenue, then opening up and promoting the use of APIs creates alternative channels to acquire new users (partner apps have their own incentive to attract users etc). Where it can hurt is when the integrating apps either don't substantially move the needle on new user acquisition, or worse they cannibalize your user base by creating reasons for your users to NOT visit your site. IMO though the API "shutdown" was shortsighted by Twitter. If people are using a competing interface instead of your own, then maybe you should fix your own rather than just shutting down the API. Of course that's easy to say as an outsider. I'm sure the truth is much more nuanced.
- kelseydh 11y ago
  Facebook's API gave birth to the billion dollar juggernaut that is Tinder. Tinder piggybacked off of Facebook OAuth logins in a useful way, and now Facebook has further cemented their permanence as it will now be very difficult for that dating app to sever themselves from Facebook OAuth.
kordless 11y ago
Note I said "or" there. Decentralizing the infrastructure would make things cheaper and might give you revenue opportunity (and growth) that you wouldn't have otherwise. For example, perhaps you get into the business of aggregating ad sales to downstream providers. As for directly monetizing the APIs, one thought that springs to mind is charging for the firehose in a federated way. You could, for example, have a query endpoint that looks like this to guarantee standard issuance of data, identity and payment: GET /api/v1/status/access { "payment_address": "13kU1qPtM3WWXrNugWfRPNM1BniMQDw9Ds", "rate_bytes_sec": 50000000, "ask_expires_at": 1444492687, "access_token": "h458Yf301", "ask_in_satoshis": 1000000, "ask_window_secs": 3600 } Make a payment to the address, then start querying at 50MB/sec for the duration of your valid token (in this example, 2 hours): GET /api/v1/status/h458Yf301 { "payment_address": "13kU1qPtM3WWXrNugWfRPNM1BniMQDw9Ds", "payment_received_address": "13kU1qPtM3WWXrNugWfRPNM1BniMQDw9Ds", "payment_received": 2000000, "access_expires_at": 1444499887, "identity_screenname": "kordless", "status_data_begins": [ ] } And yes, I'm proposing Twitter should use Bitcoin to monetize query traffic. Even better, charge people for posting lots of statuses, or following and unfollowing lots of people. Link ask price to signal/noise ratio.
- inthewoods 11y ago
  "Note I said "or" there. Decentralizing the infrastructure would make things cheaper and might give you revenue opportunity (and growth) that you wouldn't have otherwise. For example, perhaps you get into the business of aggregating ad sales to downstream providers." Well, maybe, but you can't save your way to $2b in revenue. Stock prices don't generally go up on cost savings, they go up because of future revenue AND profit expectations. Silicon Valley and Wall Street both prize growth in revenue way over profit. But you're correct that they might discover another revenue stream - but now you're betting a lot on the value of federation. "Make a payment to the address, then start querying at 50MB/sec for the duration of your valid token (in this example, 2 hours):" I think you are vastly overstating the number of people or companies that would be willing to pay for this firehose. While it may be useful to some companies, overall the data isn't likely to be enough to be a $1b opportunity. More importantly, the number of people willing to buy isn't likely to grow - so a B2B play can be a minor part of their revenue but I don't believe they'd be able to depend on it for massive growth. "And yes, I'm proposing Twitter should use Bitcoin to monetize query traffic. Even better, charge people for posting lots of statuses, or following and unfollowing lots of people. Link ask price to signal/noise ratio." Given the current cost structure of other services (Facebook/Instagram/SnapChat), I'd argue you're unlikely to get anyone to pay for it, and you're reducing both the size and any potential growth of your audience dramatically.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

j42 11y ago

While not stated eloquently, I do think there's some truth in that. 1. Open API's, good documentation and community engagement goes a long way in establishing developer trust. I don't believe developer trust is correlated significantly with revenue (directly), but it's absolutely correlated with acquisition. I'd argue that Angular or React were partially successful because of the stickiness of their communities, and that's a powerful self-perpetuating force. 2. Monetization is in the queries. Facebook and Google know this. Throwing aside all of their auxiliary services, emerging markets, hardware, et al... between 70-90% of their respective revenue is from direct advertising. If there's a way to scale or "ramp" their revenue model, this would be the portion to focus on.

inthewoods 11y ago
Monetization of the queries doesn't appear to be a significant revenue opportunity for either Google or Facebook - why would this be different for Twitter? Not that this can't be a revenue source, but how big is it? An alternative: I agree with everyone that they should have turned the APIs back on - they just should have made it mandatory to carry advertising as part of the feeds in order to access the feeds. They could have also layered on federated advertising for anyone consuming the API - meaning, allow those folks to show their own advertising in-stream. They simply pay Twitter a cut. Both of these may have helped them both grow the audience and advertising at the same time.
- kordless 11y ago
  Monetization of the queries isn't a significant revenue opportunity because of scaling payment issues. Solve that, and you solve getting paid for doing something you are good at, which is throwing millions of statuses at millions of users.
  - inthewoods 11y ago
    I'm not getting why you think this data is so valuable or who you think the audience is - are you suggesting that millions of people would pay for the feed and it is just a problem of being able to pay?
    - kordless 11y ago
      The data is valuable only if someone has fair access to it. What an individual or a thousand may do with that data is an unknown and that is the real opportunity here, not the promise of a million subscribers paying you a dollar each. Twitter took that unknown, turned it off, and tried to own all the opportunity and all the answers. They did this because they IPO'd and then the need by investors to know what's going to happen took over even more than before. If there were answers to be had here, they'd already be doing it. I'm suggesting a move back to innovation, which is where they belong. The desire by some individuals to make insane amounts of money on an idea are directly responsible for a massive SUCK experience for the end users of the software because those users are then forced to use the software in a way that makes the revenue predictable. I used to love to use Twitter because of all the wide variety of apps and things I could do with it with code. Now it's just unusable and dying. I would pay to make that different, but there isn't anything they offer that's worth my time and effort, so I'll go elsewhere.
      - inthewoods 11y ago
        "The data is valuable only if someone has fair access to it. What an individual or a thousand may do with that data is an unknown and that is the real opportunity here, not the promise of a million subscribers paying you a dollar each." Why is the data only valuable if someone has fair access to it? Right now, basically anyone can go license the Twitter data and have access to the full firehose. And I don't know how you know if the data is real opportunity here (vs. advertising). "The desire by some individuals to make insane amounts of money on an idea are directly responsible for a massive SUCK experience for the end users of the software because those users are then forced to use the software in a way that makes the revenue predictable. I used to love to use Twitter because of all the wide variety of apps and things I could do with it with code. Now it's just unusable and dying. I would pay to make that different, but there isn't anything they offer that's worth my time and effort, so I'll go elsewhere." Are you offering a better path for Twitter and their shareholders, or are you offering a path that feels better, but may have a much lesser outcome for those parties? If so, why would they take it? And while I agree with you that Twitter is dying, it's not unusable, it's just not usable in the way that you want to use it.
kelseydh 11y ago
Facebook's token user API system has now created the billion dollar juggernaut that is Tinder. That app is now irrevocably linked to Facebook. You are completely right, there is a huge strategic reason for promoting OAuth API's as a large company.
kordless 11y ago
Trust initially makes you decide to use something (marketing) and trust also makes decide to stay with it (loyalty). Marketing itself is mostly related to raising interest, but it frequently 'hacks' trust by using biases to establish quick and cheap trust with consumers. If a company's product is trustworthy (real trust, not biased trust) then the loyalty becomes strong with the customer. Companies who acquire other companies regularly have identified their bad habits of using too much marketing to try to get more customers and instead focus on buying loyalty through an acquisition.

crashedsnow 11y ago

I think it's supposed to work like this: assuming more users == more revenue, then opening up and promoting the use of APIs creates alternative channels to acquire new users (partner apps have their own incentive to attract users etc). Where it can hurt is when the integrating apps either don't substantially move the needle on new user acquisition, or worse they cannibalize your user base by creating reasons for your users to NOT visit your site. IMO though the API "shutdown" was shortsighted by Twitter. If people are using a competing interface instead of your own, then maybe you should fix your own rather than just shutting down the API. Of course that's easy to say as an outsider. I'm sure the truth is much more nuanced.

kelseydh 11y ago
Facebook's API gave birth to the billion dollar juggernaut that is Tinder. Tinder piggybacked off of Facebook OAuth logins in a useful way, and now Facebook has further cemented their permanence as it will now be very difficult for that dating app to sever themselves from Facebook OAuth.

kordless 11y ago

Note I said "or" there. Decentralizing the infrastructure would make things cheaper and might give you revenue opportunity (and growth) that you wouldn't have otherwise. For example, perhaps you get into the business of aggregating ad sales to downstream providers. As for directly monetizing the APIs, one thought that springs to mind is charging for the firehose in a federated way. You could, for example, have a query endpoint that looks like this to guarantee standard issuance of data, identity and payment: GET /api/v1/status/access { "payment_address": "13kU1qPtM3WWXrNugWfRPNM1BniMQDw9Ds", "rate_bytes_sec": 50000000, "ask_expires_at": 1444492687, "access_token": "h458Yf301", "ask_in_satoshis": 1000000, "ask_window_secs": 3600 } Make a payment to the address, then start querying at 50MB/sec for the duration of your valid token (in this example, 2 hours): GET /api/v1/status/h458Yf301 { "payment_address": "13kU1qPtM3WWXrNugWfRPNM1BniMQDw9Ds", "payment_received_address": "13kU1qPtM3WWXrNugWfRPNM1BniMQDw9Ds", "payment_received": 2000000, "access_expires_at": 1444499887, "identity_screenname": "kordless", "status_data_begins": [ ] } And yes, I'm proposing Twitter should use Bitcoin to monetize query traffic. Even better, charge people for posting lots of statuses, or following and unfollowing lots of people. Link ask price to signal/noise ratio.

inthewoods 11y ago
"Note I said "or" there. Decentralizing the infrastructure would make things cheaper and might give you revenue opportunity (and growth) that you wouldn't have otherwise. For example, perhaps you get into the business of aggregating ad sales to downstream providers." Well, maybe, but you can't save your way to $2b in revenue. Stock prices don't generally go up on cost savings, they go up because of future revenue AND profit expectations. Silicon Valley and Wall Street both prize growth in revenue way over profit. But you're correct that they might discover another revenue stream - but now you're betting a lot on the value of federation. "Make a payment to the address, then start querying at 50MB/sec for the duration of your valid token (in this example, 2 hours):" I think you are vastly overstating the number of people or companies that would be willing to pay for this firehose. While it may be useful to some companies, overall the data isn't likely to be enough to be a $1b opportunity. More importantly, the number of people willing to buy isn't likely to grow - so a B2B play can be a minor part of their revenue but I don't believe they'd be able to depend on it for massive growth. "And yes, I'm proposing Twitter should use Bitcoin to monetize query traffic. Even better, charge people for posting lots of statuses, or following and unfollowing lots of people. Link ask price to signal/noise ratio." Given the current cost structure of other services (Facebook/Instagram/SnapChat), I'd argue you're unlikely to get anyone to pay for it, and you're reducing both the size and any potential growth of your audience dramatically.