5 ms·

Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?

28 points by tkfx 11y ago

Even Mashable is broken: http://i.imgur.com/utjkzuh.png

joelrunyon 11y ago
I'm mostly confused why they said "this isn't working" and decided to just shut it down rather than fix it. Seems a little bizarre for a company that would presumably benefit from having accurate counts.
mahouse 11y ago
Documented anywhere?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- tkfx 11y ago
  Announced on: https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainable-platform https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainab... And went live this weekend. Surprised it didn't make any headlines.
dkopi 11y ago
Disappointed? Sure. Annoyed? Perhaps. Outraged? Over twitter canceling a free feature I never paid them to provide? Meh.
- tkfx 11y ago
  It just came in as a total surprise for me (and I guess for Mashable too, although they did write something about it: http://mashable.com/2015/09/23/twitter-share-counts/ http://mashable.com/2015/09/23/twitter-share-counts/)
steverayson 11y ago
Twitter announced it about 7 weeks ago, here is my post on background and links to their announcements http://buzzsumo.com/blog/twitter-share-counts-in-your-browser-new-buzzsumo-chrome-extension/ http://buzzsumo.com/blog/twitter-share-counts-in-your-browse...
taytus 11y ago
Outraged? You are outraged for something that was announced almost 2 months ago? Really? Outraged?
- macu 11y ago
  I hadn't heard about it till now. I'm not affected because I didn't invest in the feature in any way, or know anyone who did. Yet I can appreciate the "outrage" from the perspective of people who invest in features that are later taken away, with apparently no regard or care for the impact to users who put their time and loyalty into the service because of what it offered. It's just a fact in user land, we accept the TOS and throw our time into the furnace.
idlewords 11y ago
Yes.
calind 11y ago
It finally went away. I'm hoping the same for all counters because from a reader's perspective they are pointless. so I have only positive feelings about this :).
- stevesearer 11y ago
  Yeah, I am torn about caring or not caring. On the one hand, it is a decent way to show readers how popular a post is and maybe feel more encouraged to share. On the other, now that I don't receive that count portion of the service, keeping the button installed means Twitter gets to still track my users. People do use the buttons though to share. Before I added a LinkedIn button I received a number of emails from people asking for one so they could more easily share links. I may just remove it though because when Facebook and LinkedIn have a good amount of shares or likes, it looks strange to have a button with no shares.
- loceng 11y ago
  People don't trust themselves as much as we should, which is why people are more likely to share something if it looks like it is "safe" to do - if others are doing it. I agree though that it would be better that if people shared something because they were compelled enough to do it on their own.
  - rustynails 11y ago
    I find value in the popularity of a comment because it gives me some insight to how a community thinks, collectively. I've observed a number of times that the most popular web sites and the most popular news sites (as ranked by web traffic) are the most controversial (eg. sexist) and least informative. Hence, trusting the average person is like trusting populist politics.. The Kardadhians rule. Aka race to the bottom, aka McDonalds journalism.
    - loceng 11y ago
      That type of thinking may not be able to pool together as easily then, and therefore that thinking may not be reenforced as much. And I agree, it is interesting to see it - and obviously Twitter would have that data, so they could make it available to researchers as well. On a daily basis I wonder how it impacts everything.
chippy 11y ago
Ask yourself what emotions you are feeling when you think about Twitter shutting down share counts. Really feel these feelings, don't let them go away, don't try to hide the outrage. Now clear your mind of the negative feeling. Take several deep breaths and clear your mind. Now think of something important in your life. Now think of something important in the lives of another person. Mediate on what a sense of perspective means.
- AznHisoka 11y ago
  I think you're being insincere here. OP obviously (I assume) is not that devastated by this change like a death in the family. But he's unhappy about it, similar to as if your client changed their spec overnight, or if their database got wiped out of data, and they had no backups. He's trying to start a conversation about this. Your comment doesn't add anything to this because HN revolves around developer/tech issues. By nature, almost ALL conversations/complaints here are 1st world problems
  - brianwawok 11y ago
    Many HN posts are about sharing cool things. Expressing outrage a commercial product changed a feature? Seems a waste of hot air and lowers the quality of this site.
  - voidz 11y ago
    The word outrage fully implies otherwise. It's a hyperbole? Then this is how others will respond. QED.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- ryanwaggoner 11y ago
  Please keep this condescending tone off of HN.
  - chippy 11y ago
    let me take several deep breaths before I reply
alexc05 11y ago
Someone outraged by something on twitter? Better call CNN, MSNBC, Buzzfeed, Salon... Honestly, no. I'm actually really frustrated by the impact twitter has had on news. How hard is it to find five stupid people on twitter? It isn't. Yet somehow we have to read articles about "people are outraged by Starbucks' red coffee cup" and "Trump weighs in on the coffee cup issue" No. I'm not outraged that twitter is changing their layout. I'm frustrated that twitter is somehow the LOIC of stupid outrage that seems entirely out of control.
LukeB_UK 11y ago
Why are you outraged? In their blog post announcing it, they state that one of the main reasons is because it's meaningless and doesn't reflect the actual engagement around that link. I'm inclined to agree, I don't care about how many people clicked a button to share it, I care more about a discussion around something.
charlesism 11y ago
What are "share counts"? I guess that's my short answer. The only feeling I have about Twitter is mild irritation at the amount of attention it gets. It's not very useful to the vast majority of its users. Twitter is extremely useful if you have some measure of celebrity, of course, which is why well-known journalists prattle on and on about it. I don't have unbridled hatred toward Twitter. It just gets tired constantly hearing the MSM blabbing hashtags, and wading through a bunch of "share" buttons (that nobody uses anyway) whenever I want to read an article. If these "share counts" are some means of letting users see how many people (didn't) retweet them, it's probably a healthy thing for Twitter. Since the average count for the average user will be either zero, or near zero, most of the time, it doesn't seem like it's good for customer retention.
- rustynails 11y ago
  I do not use social networking like Twitter, Facebook, linked in, etc. however, of all of these systems, I prefer Twitter because it's the least invasive. If I want to hear what a particular person has to say, I opt in. I find that an appealing concept. It's almost the antithesis of Facebook.
mahouse 11y ago
The only reason for them to remove this is that the tweet counts were always embarrassingly lower than the fb share counts.
brador 11y ago
One more step towards Twitters untimely irrelevancy. Shame, if they implemented features instead of removing them they could be huge. Still can in my opinion.
anon6_ 11y ago
It was always a metric easy to inflate. Just like Ashley Madison's male to female and bot to human ratio, we'll never get honest stats on this - but it's really easy to bot twitter. There is no mobile phone verification. The amount of computerized accounts on twitter is huge. From Twitter's SEC filing [1]: In a new filing, the company said that “up to approximately 8.5%” of the accounts it considers active are automatically updated “without any discernible additional user-initiated action.” Even that is quite a qualifier. You could have a discernible user-initiated action, then leave it to a bot. I won't deny that twitter is a great way to get inbound traffic, and lots of it. But your followers, shares, etc. are still hugely inflated. It's really easy to game Twitter. The signal:noise ratio on there is critical. [1]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000156459014003474/twtr-10q_20140630.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000156459014...
MicroBerto 11y ago
I'm annoyed because now I have an ugly looking button on my site and need to replace it. I liked those vertical count boxes. Twitter is going to suffer death by paper cut. https://twittercommunity.com/t/clarification-about-share-counts-for-the-new-tweet-button/52868 https://twittercommunity.com/t/clarification-about-share-cou...

28 points by tkfx 11y ago

Even Mashable is broken: http://i.imgur.com/utjkzuh.png

I'm mostly confused why they said "this isn't working" and decided to just shut it down rather than fix it. Seems a little bizarre for a company that would presumably benefit from having accurate counts.

mahouse 11y ago

Documented anywhere?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tkfx 11y ago
Announced on: https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainable-platform https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainab... And went live this weekend. Surprised it didn't make any headlines.

dkopi 11y ago

Disappointed? Sure. Annoyed? Perhaps. Outraged? Over twitter canceling a free feature I never paid them to provide? Meh.

tkfx 11y ago
It just came in as a total surprise for me (and I guess for Mashable too, although they did write something about it: http://mashable.com/2015/09/23/twitter-share-counts/ http://mashable.com/2015/09/23/twitter-share-counts/)

steverayson 11y ago

Twitter announced it about 7 weeks ago, here is my post on background and links to their announcements http://buzzsumo.com/blog/twitter-share-counts-in-your-browser-new-buzzsumo-chrome-extension/ http://buzzsumo.com/blog/twitter-share-counts-in-your-browse...

taytus 11y ago

Outraged? You are outraged for something that was announced almost 2 months ago? Really? Outraged?

macu 11y ago
I hadn't heard about it till now. I'm not affected because I didn't invest in the feature in any way, or know anyone who did. Yet I can appreciate the "outrage" from the perspective of people who invest in features that are later taken away, with apparently no regard or care for the impact to users who put their time and loyalty into the service because of what it offered. It's just a fact in user land, we accept the TOS and throw our time into the furnace.

idlewords 11y ago

Yes.

calind 11y ago

It finally went away. I'm hoping the same for all counters because from a reader's perspective they are pointless. so I have only positive feelings about this :).

stevesearer 11y ago
Yeah, I am torn about caring or not caring. On the one hand, it is a decent way to show readers how popular a post is and maybe feel more encouraged to share. On the other, now that I don't receive that count portion of the service, keeping the button installed means Twitter gets to still track my users. People do use the buttons though to share. Before I added a LinkedIn button I received a number of emails from people asking for one so they could more easily share links. I may just remove it though because when Facebook and LinkedIn have a good amount of shares or likes, it looks strange to have a button with no shares.
loceng 11y ago
People don't trust themselves as much as we should, which is why people are more likely to share something if it looks like it is "safe" to do - if others are doing it. I agree though that it would be better that if people shared something because they were compelled enough to do it on their own.
- rustynails 11y ago
  I find value in the popularity of a comment because it gives me some insight to how a community thinks, collectively. I've observed a number of times that the most popular web sites and the most popular news sites (as ranked by web traffic) are the most controversial (eg. sexist) and least informative. Hence, trusting the average person is like trusting populist politics.. The Kardadhians rule. Aka race to the bottom, aka McDonalds journalism.
  - loceng 11y ago
    That type of thinking may not be able to pool together as easily then, and therefore that thinking may not be reenforced as much. And I agree, it is interesting to see it - and obviously Twitter would have that data, so they could make it available to researchers as well. On a daily basis I wonder how it impacts everything.

chippy 11y ago

Ask yourself what emotions you are feeling when you think about Twitter shutting down share counts. Really feel these feelings, don't let them go away, don't try to hide the outrage. Now clear your mind of the negative feeling. Take several deep breaths and clear your mind. Now think of something important in your life. Now think of something important in the lives of another person. Mediate on what a sense of perspective means.

AznHisoka 11y ago
I think you're being insincere here. OP obviously (I assume) is not that devastated by this change like a death in the family. But he's unhappy about it, similar to as if your client changed their spec overnight, or if their database got wiped out of data, and they had no backups. He's trying to start a conversation about this. Your comment doesn't add anything to this because HN revolves around developer/tech issues. By nature, almost ALL conversations/complaints here are 1st world problems
- brianwawok 11y ago
  Many HN posts are about sharing cool things. Expressing outrage a commercial product changed a feature? Seems a waste of hot air and lowers the quality of this site.
- voidz 11y ago
  The word outrage fully implies otherwise. It's a hyperbole? Then this is how others will respond. QED.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ryanwaggoner 11y ago
Please keep this condescending tone off of HN.
- chippy 11y ago
  let me take several deep breaths before I reply

alexc05 11y ago

Someone outraged by something on twitter? Better call CNN, MSNBC, Buzzfeed, Salon... Honestly, no. I'm actually really frustrated by the impact twitter has had on news. How hard is it to find five stupid people on twitter? It isn't. Yet somehow we have to read articles about "people are outraged by Starbucks' red coffee cup" and "Trump weighs in on the coffee cup issue" No. I'm not outraged that twitter is changing their layout. I'm frustrated that twitter is somehow the LOIC of stupid outrage that seems entirely out of control.

LukeB_UK 11y ago

Why are you outraged? In their blog post announcing it, they state that one of the main reasons is because it's meaningless and doesn't reflect the actual engagement around that link. I'm inclined to agree, I don't care about how many people clicked a button to share it, I care more about a discussion around something.

charlesism 11y ago

What are "share counts"? I guess that's my short answer. The only feeling I have about Twitter is mild irritation at the amount of attention it gets. It's not very useful to the vast majority of its users. Twitter is extremely useful if you have some measure of celebrity, of course, which is why well-known journalists prattle on and on about it. I don't have unbridled hatred toward Twitter. It just gets tired constantly hearing the MSM blabbing hashtags, and wading through a bunch of "share" buttons (that nobody uses anyway) whenever I want to read an article. If these "share counts" are some means of letting users see how many people (didn't) retweet them, it's probably a healthy thing for Twitter. Since the average count for the average user will be either zero, or near zero, most of the time, it doesn't seem like it's good for customer retention.

rustynails 11y ago
I do not use social networking like Twitter, Facebook, linked in, etc. however, of all of these systems, I prefer Twitter because it's the least invasive. If I want to hear what a particular person has to say, I opt in. I find that an appealing concept. It's almost the antithesis of Facebook.

mahouse 11y ago

The only reason for them to remove this is that the tweet counts were always embarrassingly lower than the fb share counts.

brador 11y ago

One more step towards Twitters untimely irrelevancy. Shame, if they implemented features instead of removing them they could be huge. Still can in my opinion.

anon6_ 11y ago

It was always a metric easy to inflate. Just like Ashley Madison's male to female and bot to human ratio, we'll never get honest stats on this - but it's really easy to bot twitter. There is no mobile phone verification. The amount of computerized accounts on twitter is huge. From Twitter's SEC filing [1]: In a new filing, the company said that “up to approximately 8.5%” of the accounts it considers active are automatically updated “without any discernible additional user-initiated action.” Even that is quite a qualifier. You could have a discernible user-initiated action, then leave it to a bot. I won't deny that twitter is a great way to get inbound traffic, and lots of it. But your followers, shares, etc. are still hugely inflated. It's really easy to game Twitter. The signal:noise ratio on there is critical. [1]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000156459014003474/twtr-10q_20140630.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000156459014...

MicroBerto 11y ago

I'm annoyed because now I have an ugly looking button on my site and need to replace it. I liked those vertical count boxes. Twitter is going to suffer death by paper cut. https://twittercommunity.com/t/clarification-about-share-counts-for-the-new-tweet-button/52868 https://twittercommunity.com/t/clarification-about-share-cou...