10 ms·

Why Twitter has run into trouble

60 points by wyclif 11y ago

stirlo 11y ago
Fourth reason: Twitters product, while useful to news junkies and journalists who report on it, is actually inferior to the average person who simply wants to interact with their friends, aka Facebook.
- BonsaiDen 11y ago
  Most of my friends actually use it as a async, direct and realtime communications channel, pretty much like Whatsapp, just with more "social integration" (read: the whole internet). They don't use Facebook because its algorithmic "timeline" isn't realtime in any sense of the word and they consider themselves more than capable enough to decide on their own what's worth their time or not, they don't want to be fed things / advertisments somebody else wants them to see. They'll probably all switch to the next best thing available once Twitter's rumoured algorithmic timeline is to be introduced. Personally, I left the whole Twittersphere way back when the alienated their third party devs, for me that was more than enough indication of the way they were heading. Nowadays they have nobody left who could actually come up with the Next Big Thing (tm) for Twitter, because all of their engineers are mostlikely busy trying to figure out how to commercialize the platform in the shortest amount of time in order to satisfy their shareholders.
  - varjag 11y ago
    > ..they don't want to be fed things / advertisments somebody else wants them to see. Good that they use AdBlock then, cause Twitter puts ads in your feed.
    - interpol_p 11y ago
      Not in most third party clients (e.g., Tweetbot for OS X). I've hardly used the web site for Twitter and don't really like it. I can't imagine the service without a good native client.
    - BonsaiDen 11y ago
      Yes, they use AdBlock, but there's still a difference here, right now they're seeing the tweets of their peers in-order, with ads intermixed - which makes the ads trivial to filter out (bad for twitter, good for my friends). In the future they might see whatever Twitter thinks is important to them, which might still be ads, but in the form of other peoples / companies tweets which just "happen" to end up in their "timelines". Now, of course they can start blocking just about every company/user they don't care / like on twitter, but the effort might not be worth the gains at some point. And who knows, maybe you won't event be able to block some things from their algorithmic timeline, because that might defeat their monetization goals. And yes, I realize that I might be reading a lot into Twitter's actions at the moment, but given how they treated their platform in the past year(s), all I'm seeing is that they want monetize it at all costs.
- facepalm 11y ago
  Who says that has to be the use case of Twitter? HN is not very useful for interacting with friends, but it seems to do fine.
- hughw 11y ago
  Twitter is not a great way to interact with your real friends. It's best at connecting perfect strangers with shared interests. You cultivate and refine your followees until, any time you look at your feed, it's bound to be filled with pithy and relevant observations, some of which may inspire you to tweet your own bons mots.
- fernandotakai 11y ago
  that's interesting -- most of my friends right now are people i met through twitter ~7 years ago. i even met my wife through it! i quite like twitter more than facebook because it's simple to use, it has really good desktop (even linux has corebird, which is quite good) and mobile clients and the asymmetric part of friendships.
- adevine 11y ago
  Exactly! When I see all the hand wringing around twitter, I'm surprised how rarely it's mentioned that the natural market size for twitter is just much smaller than Facebook's. My theory is that there is basically a personality divide, probably along the introvert/extravert divide, among those who like twitter, and those who don't. Thus, those who like and use twitter frequently blame all its problems on technical details, because they can't grasp that those who don't FUNDAMENTALLY have an aversion to the push model of 140 char limited thoughts. I look at twitter and think "Random short distractions are things I'm actively trying to remove from my life."
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Yes, because Twitter is not meant to be a friends only space. Its tapping into the neo-cortex of the hivemind, in real-time. Seriously I get so tired of people who don't use Twitter and can't understand why anyone else would: the product isn't meant for you.
a2tech 11y ago
Because there's no business in Twitter. There's no path to being in the black and there never has been.
- jusben1369 11y ago
  Why would you believe that? They have great revenue. They're just not adding enough new users.
  - codingdave 11y ago
    And if they cannot add more users, they need to streamline their operations to fit their costs into their revenues. If they choose not do so, or do not have the capability to do so, then they fail.
    - jusben1369 11y ago
      No argument there.
  - interpol_p 11y ago
    Why do they need All The Users In The World? Why can't more services be content with having a significant and active user base that is not the entire population of Earth.
    - jusben1369 11y ago
      I think because the network effect is a fundamental foundation of social networks. Think of all the SN's that have come and gone. It appears you can't really remain static with a non/slow growing user base. Eventually, something else comes along that has a broader range of people making the content better; you stop opening the older, more static app.
      - interpol_p 11y ago
        There are lots of dedicated, niche forums all over the Internet that have remained relatively stable for a decade or more. Those are social networks, and they work fine while accepting the users they have.
taytus 11y ago
>" Its market capitalisation is around a third of what it was a year ago, at $9.5 billion." 9.5 Billion, for Twitter...let that sink in.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
threeseed 11y ago
I am actually surprised Twitter never released a business version similar to Yammer/Facebook for Business. There would be a lot of benefit in lightweight communication between teams and especially when integrated with internal services e.g. customer complaint received.
- jmknoll 11y ago
  When I was back in school, around 2007/2008, I remember reading one of those 'future-of-work' type articles where the author went on about how teams of the near future were going to keep each other updated via Twitter. Given the early direction of the product, it seemed like a foregone conclusion. "@devTeam @productTeam @PMNameHere Currently building out remaining API endpoints. Complete by standup tomorrow #productName" It feels like Slack ate what should have been Twitter's lunch. I don't understand why they didn't push harder in this direction.
  - toyg 11y ago
    Obsessed with becoming an advertising company for the masses, they stopped "productizing" their technology. Amazon doesn't stop other people from selling stuff with AWS servers, but that's basically what Twitter did when it destroyed its own developer ecosystem. The parallel with Slack is very apt. The only real strength of that platform is how easily and freely it integrates with third-party services. If Skype, Facebook or Twitter allowed that freedom and ease, Slack would have never appeared. Instead, they want to maintain an iron grip on who does what (or endorse a model where your corporate sysadmin maintains such grip, like Skype For Business does), and they lose.
- arethuza 11y ago
  I can see that's an interesting idea - but most "enterprise" products already have pretty tight email integration and with the growth in popularity of IM tools is that niche really wide enough to support a "Twitter at work"?
jusben1369 11y ago
Twitter is a poster child for why diversity is key. Not racial, but socioeconomic. Twitter is very popular with people who have reached a certain threshold of technical competence. After that though it falls away quickly. They needed to really hire non SF based techno geeks and advisors to change the product. It was pretty telling when older people on their board never used it. My Dad loves FB; he's kind of the family stalker now where no picture or comment goes unnoticed! He really wanted to use Twitter but has given up after multiple failed attempts. I think that's their problem in a nutshell. He so wanted it to work.
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  Your dad sounds like me! I can #not @understand @twitter #at #all. Every message is 90% noise. Facebook on the other hand, is full of interesting news from people I love. Technology has come a long way when I get more accurate news from my mums friends than I do from the local TV news station. Our village had floods and the local pumping station failed, Facebook friends (and shared posts) kept us all in the loop and organised sands bags, pumps and help for the elderly.
  - julian55 11y ago
    I've never got on with Twitter either. Most people I am interested in are on Facebook if they use any social media. Twitter is just boring stuff.
    - JBReefer 11y ago
      Twitter is the Two Minutes of Hate mixed with memes
  - irl_zebra 11y ago
    I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, a pretty competent programmer and data analyst, and I cannot figure out how to use Twitter. I mean, I know physically how to create an account and tweet, and I've made multiple tries of getting into it, but can't find a use for it. So much noise.
bsbechtel 11y ago
For those commenting here that they can't get into Twitter, but love Facebook, try stepping away from Facebook for a month, but leave Twitter available as an alternative. I think you will find after a month that it is much more enjoyable and useful. I think the real world analogy would be that Facebook is like going to a party where you know everyone already...it's safe and comfortable. Twitter is more like moving to a new city where you don't know a single soul. It's scary and overwhelming, but once you adapt, a whole new world opens up to you. By taking Facebook out of your daily life for a bit, you might get to experience this whole new world...if you wish to do so.
- Riod 11y ago
  Maybe. But for most people, twitter, like Facebook, competes for our free time. And for most people Facebook is a better distraction. You can't force users to see the product a certain way; it has to be intuitive.
  - bsbechtel 11y ago
    Oh I certainly agree, but a lot of people on here are saying they don't understand it, but want to/have tried. I'm just pointing out a way that might demonstrate to them the value it can offer. If it's not intuitive to them, that is Twitter's fault, but that doesn't mean value doesn't exist.
SixSigma 11y ago
> Part of that drop was caused by LinkedIn, a professional social network, which forecast lower growth. That prompted jittery investors to push down LinkedIn’s shares by more than 40% and knocked down prices for Twitter and Facebook stocks too. [citation required]
matthewmacleod 11y ago
I take a different view – Twitter is 'in trouble' because people expect it to be far more than it should be. It seems like it could be a really simple product – an asynchronous method to receive small updates, recommendations and so on from people or organisations you are interested in. And I love that! I follow a good selection of people who share things I am interested in. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's an obvious path (through advertising) to monetisation. The problem is the wider perception of failure – the "Why isn't Twitter like Facebook!?!?" issue. Instead of a solid, well-delivered, sustainable product, we are witnessing a push for 'growth' and 'development' which I quite honestly think are exactly the opposite of what Twitter needs. What is frustrating me most about Twitter recently is: - Poor technical choices (the Mac app is shit and they have repeatedly fucked over the technical community) - Fucking-up of the core timeline concept (the introduction of the 'algorithmic timeline' will be the day I leave the platform) - Arbitrarily inserting tweets from people I don't follow, nuking the whole point of it I'd be much happier if they just slashed the headcount and built a sustainable business, but I guess that's not going to happen at this point.
- toyg 11y ago
  They did slash headcount, but lower headcount does not necessarily mean better choices will be made, as the timeline shenanigans demonstrate. What they need to slash is the attitude of "owning the channel".
surfearth 11y ago
A bit off topic, but is anyone else surprised that The Economist's editors permit the use of 'newbies' rather than 'new users'? "Third, newbies find Twitter..."
gnashville 11y ago
I'd happily pay Twitter $1/mo to keep suggested tweets out of my TL.

60 points by wyclif 11y ago

Fourth reason: Twitters product, while useful to news junkies and journalists who report on it, is actually inferior to the average person who simply wants to interact with their friends, aka Facebook.

BonsaiDen 11y ago
Most of my friends actually use it as a async, direct and realtime communications channel, pretty much like Whatsapp, just with more "social integration" (read: the whole internet). They don't use Facebook because its algorithmic "timeline" isn't realtime in any sense of the word and they consider themselves more than capable enough to decide on their own what's worth their time or not, they don't want to be fed things / advertisments somebody else wants them to see. They'll probably all switch to the next best thing available once Twitter's rumoured algorithmic timeline is to be introduced. Personally, I left the whole Twittersphere way back when the alienated their third party devs, for me that was more than enough indication of the way they were heading. Nowadays they have nobody left who could actually come up with the Next Big Thing (tm) for Twitter, because all of their engineers are mostlikely busy trying to figure out how to commercialize the platform in the shortest amount of time in order to satisfy their shareholders.
- varjag 11y ago
  > ..they don't want to be fed things / advertisments somebody else wants them to see. Good that they use AdBlock then, cause Twitter puts ads in your feed.
  - interpol_p 11y ago
    Not in most third party clients (e.g., Tweetbot for OS X). I've hardly used the web site for Twitter and don't really like it. I can't imagine the service without a good native client.
  - BonsaiDen 11y ago
    Yes, they use AdBlock, but there's still a difference here, right now they're seeing the tweets of their peers in-order, with ads intermixed - which makes the ads trivial to filter out (bad for twitter, good for my friends). In the future they might see whatever Twitter thinks is important to them, which might still be ads, but in the form of other peoples / companies tweets which just "happen" to end up in their "timelines". Now, of course they can start blocking just about every company/user they don't care / like on twitter, but the effort might not be worth the gains at some point. And who knows, maybe you won't event be able to block some things from their algorithmic timeline, because that might defeat their monetization goals. And yes, I realize that I might be reading a lot into Twitter's actions at the moment, but given how they treated their platform in the past year(s), all I'm seeing is that they want monetize it at all costs.
facepalm 11y ago
Who says that has to be the use case of Twitter? HN is not very useful for interacting with friends, but it seems to do fine.
hughw 11y ago
Twitter is not a great way to interact with your real friends. It's best at connecting perfect strangers with shared interests. You cultivate and refine your followees until, any time you look at your feed, it's bound to be filled with pithy and relevant observations, some of which may inspire you to tweet your own bons mots.
fernandotakai 11y ago
that's interesting -- most of my friends right now are people i met through twitter ~7 years ago. i even met my wife through it! i quite like twitter more than facebook because it's simple to use, it has really good desktop (even linux has corebird, which is quite good) and mobile clients and the asymmetric part of friendships.
adevine 11y ago
Exactly! When I see all the hand wringing around twitter, I'm surprised how rarely it's mentioned that the natural market size for twitter is just much smaller than Facebook's. My theory is that there is basically a personality divide, probably along the introvert/extravert divide, among those who like twitter, and those who don't. Thus, those who like and use twitter frequently blame all its problems on technical details, because they can't grasp that those who don't FUNDAMENTALLY have an aversion to the push model of 140 char limited thoughts. I look at twitter and think "Random short distractions are things I'm actively trying to remove from my life."
tomjen3 11y ago
Yes, because Twitter is not meant to be a friends only space. Its tapping into the neo-cortex of the hivemind, in real-time. Seriously I get so tired of people who don't use Twitter and can't understand why anyone else would: the product isn't meant for you.

a2tech 11y ago

Because there's no business in Twitter. There's no path to being in the black and there never has been.

jusben1369 11y ago
Why would you believe that? They have great revenue. They're just not adding enough new users.
- codingdave 11y ago
  And if they cannot add more users, they need to streamline their operations to fit their costs into their revenues. If they choose not do so, or do not have the capability to do so, then they fail.
  - jusben1369 11y ago
    No argument there.
- interpol_p 11y ago
  Why do they need All The Users In The World? Why can't more services be content with having a significant and active user base that is not the entire population of Earth.
  - jusben1369 11y ago
    I think because the network effect is a fundamental foundation of social networks. Think of all the SN's that have come and gone. It appears you can't really remain static with a non/slow growing user base. Eventually, something else comes along that has a broader range of people making the content better; you stop opening the older, more static app.
    - interpol_p 11y ago
      There are lots of dedicated, niche forums all over the Internet that have remained relatively stable for a decade or more. Those are social networks, and they work fine while accepting the users they have.

taytus 11y ago

>" Its market capitalisation is around a third of what it was a year ago, at $9.5 billion." 9.5 Billion, for Twitter...let that sink in.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

threeseed 11y ago

I am actually surprised Twitter never released a business version similar to Yammer/Facebook for Business. There would be a lot of benefit in lightweight communication between teams and especially when integrated with internal services e.g. customer complaint received.

jmknoll 11y ago
When I was back in school, around 2007/2008, I remember reading one of those 'future-of-work' type articles where the author went on about how teams of the near future were going to keep each other updated via Twitter. Given the early direction of the product, it seemed like a foregone conclusion. "@devTeam @productTeam @PMNameHere Currently building out remaining API endpoints. Complete by standup tomorrow #productName" It feels like Slack ate what should have been Twitter's lunch. I don't understand why they didn't push harder in this direction.
- toyg 11y ago
  Obsessed with becoming an advertising company for the masses, they stopped "productizing" their technology. Amazon doesn't stop other people from selling stuff with AWS servers, but that's basically what Twitter did when it destroyed its own developer ecosystem. The parallel with Slack is very apt. The only real strength of that platform is how easily and freely it integrates with third-party services. If Skype, Facebook or Twitter allowed that freedom and ease, Slack would have never appeared. Instead, they want to maintain an iron grip on who does what (or endorse a model where your corporate sysadmin maintains such grip, like Skype For Business does), and they lose.
arethuza 11y ago
I can see that's an interesting idea - but most "enterprise" products already have pretty tight email integration and with the growth in popularity of IM tools is that niche really wide enough to support a "Twitter at work"?

jusben1369 11y ago

Twitter is a poster child for why diversity is key. Not racial, but socioeconomic. Twitter is very popular with people who have reached a certain threshold of technical competence. After that though it falls away quickly. They needed to really hire non SF based techno geeks and advisors to change the product. It was pretty telling when older people on their board never used it. My Dad loves FB; he's kind of the family stalker now where no picture or comment goes unnoticed! He really wanted to use Twitter but has given up after multiple failed attempts. I think that's their problem in a nutshell. He so wanted it to work.

monk_e_boy 11y ago
Your dad sounds like me! I can #not @understand @twitter #at #all. Every message is 90% noise. Facebook on the other hand, is full of interesting news from people I love. Technology has come a long way when I get more accurate news from my mums friends than I do from the local TV news station. Our village had floods and the local pumping station failed, Facebook friends (and shared posts) kept us all in the loop and organised sands bags, pumps and help for the elderly.
- julian55 11y ago
  I've never got on with Twitter either. Most people I am interested in are on Facebook if they use any social media. Twitter is just boring stuff.
  - JBReefer 11y ago
    Twitter is the Two Minutes of Hate mixed with memes
- irl_zebra 11y ago
  I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, a pretty competent programmer and data analyst, and I cannot figure out how to use Twitter. I mean, I know physically how to create an account and tweet, and I've made multiple tries of getting into it, but can't find a use for it. So much noise.

bsbechtel 11y ago

For those commenting here that they can't get into Twitter, but love Facebook, try stepping away from Facebook for a month, but leave Twitter available as an alternative. I think you will find after a month that it is much more enjoyable and useful. I think the real world analogy would be that Facebook is like going to a party where you know everyone already...it's safe and comfortable. Twitter is more like moving to a new city where you don't know a single soul. It's scary and overwhelming, but once you adapt, a whole new world opens up to you. By taking Facebook out of your daily life for a bit, you might get to experience this whole new world...if you wish to do so.

Riod 11y ago
Maybe. But for most people, twitter, like Facebook, competes for our free time. And for most people Facebook is a better distraction. You can't force users to see the product a certain way; it has to be intuitive.
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  Oh I certainly agree, but a lot of people on here are saying they don't understand it, but want to/have tried. I'm just pointing out a way that might demonstrate to them the value it can offer. If it's not intuitive to them, that is Twitter's fault, but that doesn't mean value doesn't exist.

SixSigma 11y ago

> Part of that drop was caused by LinkedIn, a professional social network, which forecast lower growth. That prompted jittery investors to push down LinkedIn’s shares by more than 40% and knocked down prices for Twitter and Facebook stocks too. [citation required]

matthewmacleod 11y ago

I take a different view – Twitter is 'in trouble' because people expect it to be far more than it should be. It seems like it could be a really simple product – an asynchronous method to receive small updates, recommendations and so on from people or organisations you are interested in. And I love that! I follow a good selection of people who share things I am interested in. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's an obvious path (through advertising) to monetisation. The problem is the wider perception of failure – the "Why isn't Twitter like Facebook!?!?" issue. Instead of a solid, well-delivered, sustainable product, we are witnessing a push for 'growth' and 'development' which I quite honestly think are exactly the opposite of what Twitter needs. What is frustrating me most about Twitter recently is: - Poor technical choices (the Mac app is shit and they have repeatedly fucked over the technical community) - Fucking-up of the core timeline concept (the introduction of the 'algorithmic timeline' will be the day I leave the platform) - Arbitrarily inserting tweets from people I don't follow, nuking the whole point of it I'd be much happier if they just slashed the headcount and built a sustainable business, but I guess that's not going to happen at this point.

toyg 11y ago
They did slash headcount, but lower headcount does not necessarily mean better choices will be made, as the timeline shenanigans demonstrate. What they need to slash is the attitude of "owning the channel".

surfearth 11y ago

A bit off topic, but is anyone else surprised that The Economist's editors permit the use of 'newbies' rather than 'new users'? "Third, newbies find Twitter..."

gnashville 11y ago

I'd happily pay Twitter $1/mo to keep suggested tweets out of my TL.