7 ms·

The End of Twitter?

53 points by uptown 11y ago

ianstormtaylor 11y ago
> The End of Twitter Pretty black and white. And then the next sentence after clicking through is... > Twitter might rebound in the wake of Jack Dorsey’s reappointment as C.E.O., but the service is still in trouble. And the article ends with... > That doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. There are hundreds of millions of dedicated users (I count myself among them) who still see tremendous utility in the service. ... The company just needs to find the right way to show the power of those connections to a bigger audience, and the value of that audience to advertisers and partners. Not a simple task, but for Twitter an unavoidable one. Pretty egregiously click-bait. I propose changing the title to something that better captures the article—like "The Current Problems at Twitter". Other than that, not really much here other than speculation, and the already-known worry about lack of growth. Curious to see how Twitter does, I think there's still chance as long as they quick focusing on revenue above all else, and focus on the experience first. Unfortunately that's not easy to do as a public company.
- tertius 11y ago
  The only way to make money is to get people to visit your website. To get them you need to lure them. To get more of them you need to lie. Should we rather ask, is the article worth reading regardless of its title?
- DyslexicAtheist 11y ago
  thanks you saved me the trouble of reading a whole pointless article.
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again.
m52go 11y ago
Twitter is such an unlikely success. It's a product that few understand, and even when you do, it's hard to explain it. The functionality is dead-simple. But, at scale, its effect is magical. I think closing down the service to developers was its pivotal mistake. The possibilities were endless, and could have solidified Twitter as the "utility" Topolosky speaks of...but they got greedy.
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  I wonder how much was actual Twitter leadership getting greedy vs investors demanding a clear plan for monetization and control.
  - m52go 11y ago
    That's where stronger leadership would have helped, I think. If a CEO insisted on a longer-term vision, he or she could have fended off investors. Examples: Amazon, Facebook.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  >> But, at scale, its effect is magical. Yes, much like handing out megaphones at a music festival. I see very little value in the incoherent rambling that is twitter, but of course I'm not a market researcher or intelligence analyst.
  - m52go 11y ago
    Sounds to me like...you're using it wrong! But really. Personally, I actually do find it to be magical. It's taken 5+ years of trying, retrying, adjusting, and readjusting to get it right, but my Twitter feed is superb.
    - sandworm101 11y ago
      Like facebook, there is no using it correctly or not. Once you are in you are socially obligated to follow everyone you know with a feed. Call me old, but I still use bookmarks. Every morning I check my news from my favorite outlets and blogs using old html. The things worth my time don't fit with twitter's approach to information.
lukasb 11y ago
Twitter users are some of the most engaged - compulsive, even - users out there. Is charging money to have an account really out of the question?
- m52go 11y ago
  Yeah that's something I don't understand about companies in the social space (in general). I'd pay for Twitter. But they won't take my money. As I mentioned in another comment, however, I think there's more money and a better sell to developers. Open up the API & charge for high-volume access to it. I really don't understand what they're doing. Cash, users, attention, etc. are all there but they're not doing anything with any of it.
- ksherlock 11y ago
  yes, it is out of the question. -- Source: app.net
orsenthil 11y ago
The title is provocative "click bait". Just don't fall for it. Read the content via discussions here.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tyre 11y ago
One of the more poorly written pieces I've read in the New Yorker. The author is all over the place: predicting doom, saying he doesn't see the point of Twitter, proclaiming himself a dedicated user. Also, this line of ego-drivel: > This is especially notable to all of us in the world of media, the people who fill these services with highly valuable and hotly traded “content,” such as the piece you’re currently reading. One we should put to rest: the "Facebook can just build this" argument. Facebook built Paper to take over news. It failed. Facebook built Slingshot to copy SnapChat. It failed. Technology companies are not just successful because of their technology. _Especially_ in social media.
- mandeepj 11y ago
  besides facebook website and its mobile app, everything that FB created has failed - facebook mobile os, chat heads etc.
  - sirkneeland 11y ago
    Are there any data released on use of chat heads (in Android, the only OS where they can exist)? Personally I love chatheads, they're why I've driven so much of my messaging into FB Messenger. But I would certainly be curious as to how many users disable them.
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    Messenger is heavily used. You might be including that in your assessment of the central service, but it is a standalone app now.
  - JBReefer 11y ago
    I'm in that horrible demographic (white uppermiddle class New Yorker who lives in a cool neighborhood) that's probably the most valuable in the US, and literally _all_ of my friends use Facebook Messenger as their primary means of communication. Name another service that: 1. Doesn't require me to ask you for your screenname 2. Syncs seamlessly between all of my devices 3. Works well with video/pictures/video phone calls 4. Isn't swamped with spam There isn't one. Don't let selection bias blur your view.
colmvp 11y ago
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why-internet-headline-writers-hate-themselves/385248/ http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why... Or tl, dr: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Screen_Shot_2015_02_06_at_11.15.06_AM/lead_large.png?1430146783 http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Scree...
stanmancan 11y ago
Kind of off topic but: At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern? For example, google says as of March 2015 Facebook had 1.44 billion monthly active users. With an estimated 3 billion people in the world having internet access that's 50%. Can you really expect to see significant growth at that point? One other thing I've never quite understood is the concern with users vs. revenue. I get that for a start up, you want to grow and grow fast. For an established company like Twitter, as long as your user base isn't actively shrinking, wouldn't it make more sense to concern yourself with making money off those users instead of trying to gain more? What would be a better sign, 1% user growth but 15% revenue growth, or 1% revenue and 15% user?
- sandworm101 11y ago
  >> At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern? That depends on how reliant the company is on perpetual growth. Many tech companies are not profitable. If growth slows for them, and the rate of slowdown points to a bad place, they may never make a profit and so backers will flee. But others with established businesses don't need growth. They can go on steadily with a mildly increasing market value or pay slow dividends to shareholders. Unless they are over-valued and have leveraged whatever stock they have retained. Such companies may be doomed even if profitable. So there is no definitive answer.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
autoreleasepool 11y ago
At some point in my social circle, Twitter transitioned from "a live feed of what your friends are doing", to a tool people used to read the news and keep tabs on celebrities. In my experience, SnapChat's My Story feature has completley supplanted the "live social feed of your friends" aspect. IMO, SnapChat's effect on Twitter's is comparable to EverQuest's effect on text-based MMO's. One platform mercilessly dominated the other because of visual stimulation, and all the fun micro-features that go with that.
kra34 11y ago
You've never really made it big until somebody says you're over. Twitter isn't going anywhere, the very fact that they have survived terrible corporate management, high level turnover, and failed advertising initiatives proves the significant value of their content.
- xyzzy4 11y ago
  I agree. I am fairly confident that Twitter will survive as long as they don't do drastic redesigns like Myspace did. The Twitter stock price, on the other hand, will possibly plummet a lot more.
ryandetzel 11y ago
Twitter's cash puts it in a league of its own / http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a-league-of-its-own.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a-le... Also revenue has continued to grow year over year on par to be over $2B in 2015. Sure, user growth has slowed but so, the important people are there for me anyway. ;-) Also, don't forget periscope which is growing like crazy and has yet to be monetized. There is no platform like Twitter. With a lot of cash in the bank and a slow burn Twitter will be around for a very long time.
hodder 11y ago
The media will simply parrot whatever the stock price has done. The stock price was simply too high for what it was worth or maybe worth for several yrs. the media interprets this as indicating a dead company. Twitter has 300 million users and growing, 60% rev price growth to over 2B, new features like moments, periscope, and a treasure of real time news and data. Twitter is really an fantastic success and every quarter grows revenue by an amazing amount. If the stock was going up (as I suspect it will from here), the media will parrot the great turnaround... When nothing will have changed fundamentally.
SixSigma 11y ago
> When bombs went off during the Boston Marathon, in April of 2013, users sat glued to the feed, suddenly privy to something visceral and real, something happening. ... It was raw, but it was streamlined. But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism ? After nearly 50 years on this earth I've come to feel that the nowness of things is not that important. "Quick turn on the news" became "meh, I shall wait a few days and see how it pans out before spending time digesting it". I know that's a personal thing.
- DrScump 11y ago
  <But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism?> For one thing, it helped feed the Reddit witch hunt that tracked down and popularized images of... the wrong people.
Uhhrrr 11y ago
Interesting that they claim, "the growing wave of harassment and abuse users of the service were dealing with—a quagmire epitomized by the roving flocks of hateful, misogynistic, and well-organized “Gamergate” communities who flooded people’s feeds with hate speech and threats." (archive of article: https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70 https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70) Looking at the live feed (https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamergate&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamer...), I don't see anything that matches this description. Is this old media scaremongering against new media like video games and Twitter? Or just terrible reporting?
numberwan9 11y ago
Perfect! Click bait article that describes the current problems at twitter, the de facto standard vehicle for click bait articles!
DickScarington 11y ago
The beginning of the end started with cutting developers off. Twitter could've been the tent pole of a whole ecosystem letting its user community evolve the social experience organically. Instead it opted for an arrogant top-down approach that has essentially killed its relevance.
twright 11y ago
Super-side-note: look at how they're styling <a>, not just a simple `text-decoration: underline;`

53 points by uptown 11y ago

> The End of Twitter Pretty black and white. And then the next sentence after clicking through is... > Twitter might rebound in the wake of Jack Dorsey’s reappointment as C.E.O., but the service is still in trouble. And the article ends with... > That doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. There are hundreds of millions of dedicated users (I count myself among them) who still see tremendous utility in the service. ... The company just needs to find the right way to show the power of those connections to a bigger audience, and the value of that audience to advertisers and partners. Not a simple task, but for Twitter an unavoidable one. Pretty egregiously click-bait. I propose changing the title to something that better captures the article—like "The Current Problems at Twitter". Other than that, not really much here other than speculation, and the already-known worry about lack of growth. Curious to see how Twitter does, I think there's still chance as long as they quick focusing on revenue above all else, and focus on the experience first. Unfortunately that's not easy to do as a public company.

tertius 11y ago
The only way to make money is to get people to visit your website. To get them you need to lure them. To get more of them you need to lie. Should we rather ask, is the article worth reading regardless of its title?
DyslexicAtheist 11y ago
thanks you saved me the trouble of reading a whole pointless article.
lobster_johnson 11y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again.

m52go 11y ago

Twitter is such an unlikely success. It's a product that few understand, and even when you do, it's hard to explain it. The functionality is dead-simple. But, at scale, its effect is magical. I think closing down the service to developers was its pivotal mistake. The possibilities were endless, and could have solidified Twitter as the "utility" Topolosky speaks of...but they got greedy.

sirkneeland 11y ago
I wonder how much was actual Twitter leadership getting greedy vs investors demanding a clear plan for monetization and control.
- m52go 11y ago
  That's where stronger leadership would have helped, I think. If a CEO insisted on a longer-term vision, he or she could have fended off investors. Examples: Amazon, Facebook.
sandworm101 11y ago
>> But, at scale, its effect is magical. Yes, much like handing out megaphones at a music festival. I see very little value in the incoherent rambling that is twitter, but of course I'm not a market researcher or intelligence analyst.
- m52go 11y ago
  Sounds to me like...you're using it wrong! But really. Personally, I actually do find it to be magical. It's taken 5+ years of trying, retrying, adjusting, and readjusting to get it right, but my Twitter feed is superb.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    Like facebook, there is no using it correctly or not. Once you are in you are socially obligated to follow everyone you know with a feed. Call me old, but I still use bookmarks. Every morning I check my news from my favorite outlets and blogs using old html. The things worth my time don't fit with twitter's approach to information.

lukasb 11y ago

Twitter users are some of the most engaged - compulsive, even - users out there. Is charging money to have an account really out of the question?

m52go 11y ago
Yeah that's something I don't understand about companies in the social space (in general). I'd pay for Twitter. But they won't take my money. As I mentioned in another comment, however, I think there's more money and a better sell to developers. Open up the API & charge for high-volume access to it. I really don't understand what they're doing. Cash, users, attention, etc. are all there but they're not doing anything with any of it.
ksherlock 11y ago
yes, it is out of the question. -- Source: app.net

orsenthil 11y ago

The title is provocative "click bait". Just don't fall for it. Read the content via discussions here.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tyre 11y ago

One of the more poorly written pieces I've read in the New Yorker. The author is all over the place: predicting doom, saying he doesn't see the point of Twitter, proclaiming himself a dedicated user. Also, this line of ego-drivel: > This is especially notable to all of us in the world of media, the people who fill these services with highly valuable and hotly traded “content,” such as the piece you’re currently reading. One we should put to rest: the "Facebook can just build this" argument. Facebook built Paper to take over news. It failed. Facebook built Slingshot to copy SnapChat. It failed. Technology companies are not just successful because of their technology. _Especially_ in social media.

mandeepj 11y ago
besides facebook website and its mobile app, everything that FB created has failed - facebook mobile os, chat heads etc.
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  Are there any data released on use of chat heads (in Android, the only OS where they can exist)? Personally I love chatheads, they're why I've driven so much of my messaging into FB Messenger. But I would certainly be curious as to how many users disable them.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  Messenger is heavily used. You might be including that in your assessment of the central service, but it is a standalone app now.
- JBReefer 11y ago
  I'm in that horrible demographic (white uppermiddle class New Yorker who lives in a cool neighborhood) that's probably the most valuable in the US, and literally _all_ of my friends use Facebook Messenger as their primary means of communication. Name another service that: 1. Doesn't require me to ask you for your screenname 2. Syncs seamlessly between all of my devices 3. Works well with video/pictures/video phone calls 4. Isn't swamped with spam There isn't one. Don't let selection bias blur your view.

colmvp 11y ago

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why-internet-headline-writers-hate-themselves/385248/ http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why... Or tl, dr: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Screen_Shot_2015_02_06_at_11.15.06_AM/lead_large.png?1430146783 http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Scree...

stanmancan 11y ago

Kind of off topic but: At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern? For example, google says as of March 2015 Facebook had 1.44 billion monthly active users. With an estimated 3 billion people in the world having internet access that's 50%. Can you really expect to see significant growth at that point? One other thing I've never quite understood is the concern with users vs. revenue. I get that for a start up, you want to grow and grow fast. For an established company like Twitter, as long as your user base isn't actively shrinking, wouldn't it make more sense to concern yourself with making money off those users instead of trying to gain more? What would be a better sign, 1% user growth but 15% revenue growth, or 1% revenue and 15% user?

sandworm101 11y ago
>> At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern? That depends on how reliant the company is on perpetual growth. Many tech companies are not profitable. If growth slows for them, and the rate of slowdown points to a bad place, they may never make a profit and so backers will flee. But others with established businesses don't need growth. They can go on steadily with a mildly increasing market value or pay slow dividends to shareholders. Unless they are over-valued and have leveraged whatever stock they have retained. Such companies may be doomed even if profitable. So there is no definitive answer.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

autoreleasepool 11y ago

At some point in my social circle, Twitter transitioned from "a live feed of what your friends are doing", to a tool people used to read the news and keep tabs on celebrities. In my experience, SnapChat's My Story feature has completley supplanted the "live social feed of your friends" aspect. IMO, SnapChat's effect on Twitter's is comparable to EverQuest's effect on text-based MMO's. One platform mercilessly dominated the other because of visual stimulation, and all the fun micro-features that go with that.

kra34 11y ago

You've never really made it big until somebody says you're over. Twitter isn't going anywhere, the very fact that they have survived terrible corporate management, high level turnover, and failed advertising initiatives proves the significant value of their content.

xyzzy4 11y ago
I agree. I am fairly confident that Twitter will survive as long as they don't do drastic redesigns like Myspace did. The Twitter stock price, on the other hand, will possibly plummet a lot more.

ryandetzel 11y ago

Twitter's cash puts it in a league of its own / http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a-league-of-its-own.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a-le... Also revenue has continued to grow year over year on par to be over $2B in 2015. Sure, user growth has slowed but so, the important people are there for me anyway. ;-) Also, don't forget periscope which is growing like crazy and has yet to be monetized. There is no platform like Twitter. With a lot of cash in the bank and a slow burn Twitter will be around for a very long time.

hodder 11y ago

The media will simply parrot whatever the stock price has done. The stock price was simply too high for what it was worth or maybe worth for several yrs. the media interprets this as indicating a dead company. Twitter has 300 million users and growing, 60% rev price growth to over 2B, new features like moments, periscope, and a treasure of real time news and data. Twitter is really an fantastic success and every quarter grows revenue by an amazing amount. If the stock was going up (as I suspect it will from here), the media will parrot the great turnaround... When nothing will have changed fundamentally.

SixSigma 11y ago

> When bombs went off during the Boston Marathon, in April of 2013, users sat glued to the feed, suddenly privy to something visceral and real, something happening. ... It was raw, but it was streamlined. But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism ? After nearly 50 years on this earth I've come to feel that the nowness of things is not that important. "Quick turn on the news" became "meh, I shall wait a few days and see how it pans out before spending time digesting it". I know that's a personal thing.

DrScump 11y ago
<But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism?> For one thing, it helped feed the Reddit witch hunt that tracked down and popularized images of... the wrong people.

Uhhrrr 11y ago

Interesting that they claim, "the growing wave of harassment and abuse users of the service were dealing with—a quagmire epitomized by the roving flocks of hateful, misogynistic, and well-organized “Gamergate” communities who flooded people’s feeds with hate speech and threats." (archive of article: https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70 https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70) Looking at the live feed (https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamergate&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamer...), I don't see anything that matches this description. Is this old media scaremongering against new media like video games and Twitter? Or just terrible reporting?

numberwan9 11y ago

Perfect! Click bait article that describes the current problems at twitter, the de facto standard vehicle for click bait articles!

DickScarington 11y ago

The beginning of the end started with cutting developers off. Twitter could've been the tent pole of a whole ecosystem letting its user community evolve the social experience organically. Instead it opted for an arrogant top-down approach that has essentially killed its relevance.

twright 11y ago

Super-side-note: look at how they're styling <a>, not just a simple `text-decoration: underline;`