4 ms·

Does anyone else think Amazon will come sweeping in at the last moment and make an offer? Bezos already owns WP and Twitter has a significant user base of media

by ftrflyr 10y ago

Does anyone else think Amazon will come sweeping in at the last moment and make an offer? Bezos already owns WP and Twitter has a significant user base of media outlets.

shahzeb 10y ago
Note: WP = Washington Post, not WordPress. Confused me there for a second.
- ohashi 10y ago
  Used to it being abbreviated WaPo, helps avoid the confusion
jmknoll 10y ago
It's actually not a terrible fit for Amazon. Twitter is basically where breaking news happens already, and it's not terribly difficult to imagine an integration between WaPo and Twitter. Gives them a presence in San Francisco as well, and access to Twitter considerable UX/frontend talent, which they can put to use on making AWS more intuitive to use. I guess there is the issue of WaPo being owned by Bezos directly though, not Amazon.
- gjolund 10y ago
  That talent will leave twitter.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  and access to Twitter considerable UX/frontend talent I don't want to insult anyone or anything, but is Twitter frontend that impressive really?
  - hackaflocka 10y ago
    I think it used to be impressive when they created Bootstrap. Twitter's website currently is not Responsive. The web interface looks different on every platform (mobile, tablet, desktop). And on mobile, the website is terribly slow.
    - spiderfarmer 10y ago
      Plus, it doesn't highlight a much used feature: search Right now it's hidden behind a magnifying glass. I don't find the clickbaity trends they highlight on the homepage very interesting. The content is mostly the same as the MSN homepage. Just let me search for things I find interesting. Plus, search can be monitized way better, because you know for sure what the user is looking for.
      - hackaflocka 10y ago
        Sadly, their search doesn't work very well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646580
    - detaro 10y ago
      It's slow and not all that reliable on desktop as well...
      - hackaflocka 10y ago
        It's at least usable on desktop. Try going to mobile.twitter.com on a phone... it's shockingly slow.
    - zem 10y ago
      i've often wondered if they deprioritised the mobile web frontend in order to get people to install their app (especially since they turned hostile towards third party apps). personally, it just took twitter from something i used to check frequently to something i check once or twice a day when i'm in front of a computer.
    - tarancato 10y ago
      If you have a moderality complex UI, by making it responsive you are going to ruin it. That's why most serious websites with complex UIs don't bother with responsiveness and have two different interfaces.
      - 10y ago
  - chillacy 10y ago
    Well, Bootstrap comes out of twitter, and for awhile everyone was using that, so that's pretty considerable.
    - usaphp 10y ago
      I would not call Bootstrap a UX masterpiece. It's just a bunch of primitively styled elements, no real UX there.
      - chillacy 10y ago
        I remember low-budget sites before and after bootstrap, and I gotta say that post-bootstrap is way more usable. While you can mess things up with Bootstrap, the limitations help guide you to settle on standard decisions (like their nav bars, verses whatever cute creative thing people would do on their own).
    - thom 10y ago
      So when you see a website built on bootstrap, you think "oh, that's impressive design" as opposed to "oh, they didn't have any time or money to spend on design"?
    - cbau 10y ago
      The Bootstrap guys (@fat is one of them) joined Medium.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Not best in class, but better than Amazon.com...
- EdiX 10y ago
  Is twitter UX considered good? Because my impression is that it's one of the worst UX ever made and has been that consistently for years. Just one example, trying to view an image on twitter: on the timeline images get cropped to some fixed aspect ration, if you click on them twitter will open its weird mediaviewer popup where the image is not cropped but it is resized to fit an even smaller rectangle. As far as I can tell the only way to see the image at its original resolution is to (1) click on it to open the mediaviewer pseudopopup, (2) right click on the image inside the mediaviewer pseudopopup, (3) select "copy image location", (4) select the URL bar, (5) paste the image URL. And that's just one example that you would think is easy to fix but apparently isn't, there's many more (threading is shit, clickable areas are unnecessarily huge, sometimes keyboard arrows stop scrolling, there's no distinction between "talking about someone" and "talking to someone", two different "screen name" fields with one or the other being given prominence depending on context...)
  - fnord123 10y ago
    You figured out more about how the twitter UI than I ever have. It's a hot mess and I just don't visit the site at all since I could never figure out what the heck I'm looking at.

by ftrflyr 10y ago

Does anyone else think Amazon will come sweeping in at the last moment and make an offer? Bezos already owns WP and Twitter has a significant user base of media outlets.

shahzeb 10y ago

Note: WP = Washington Post, not WordPress. Confused me there for a second.

ohashi 10y ago
Used to it being abbreviated WaPo, helps avoid the confusion

jmknoll 10y ago

It's actually not a terrible fit for Amazon. Twitter is basically where breaking news happens already, and it's not terribly difficult to imagine an integration between WaPo and Twitter. Gives them a presence in San Francisco as well, and access to Twitter considerable UX/frontend talent, which they can put to use on making AWS more intuitive to use. I guess there is the issue of WaPo being owned by Bezos directly though, not Amazon.

gjolund 10y ago
That talent will leave twitter.
ktRolster 10y ago
and access to Twitter considerable UX/frontend talent I don't want to insult anyone or anything, but is Twitter frontend that impressive really?
- hackaflocka 10y ago
  I think it used to be impressive when they created Bootstrap. Twitter's website currently is not Responsive. The web interface looks different on every platform (mobile, tablet, desktop). And on mobile, the website is terribly slow.
  - spiderfarmer 10y ago
    Plus, it doesn't highlight a much used feature: search Right now it's hidden behind a magnifying glass. I don't find the clickbaity trends they highlight on the homepage very interesting. The content is mostly the same as the MSN homepage. Just let me search for things I find interesting. Plus, search can be monitized way better, because you know for sure what the user is looking for.
    - hackaflocka 10y ago
      Sadly, their search doesn't work very well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646580
  - detaro 10y ago
    It's slow and not all that reliable on desktop as well...
    - hackaflocka 10y ago
      It's at least usable on desktop. Try going to mobile.twitter.com on a phone... it's shockingly slow.
  - zem 10y ago
    i've often wondered if they deprioritised the mobile web frontend in order to get people to install their app (especially since they turned hostile towards third party apps). personally, it just took twitter from something i used to check frequently to something i check once or twice a day when i'm in front of a computer.
  - tarancato 10y ago
    If you have a moderality complex UI, by making it responsive you are going to ruin it. That's why most serious websites with complex UIs don't bother with responsiveness and have two different interfaces.
    - 10y ago
- chillacy 10y ago
  Well, Bootstrap comes out of twitter, and for awhile everyone was using that, so that's pretty considerable.
  - usaphp 10y ago
    I would not call Bootstrap a UX masterpiece. It's just a bunch of primitively styled elements, no real UX there.
    - chillacy 10y ago
      I remember low-budget sites before and after bootstrap, and I gotta say that post-bootstrap is way more usable. While you can mess things up with Bootstrap, the limitations help guide you to settle on standard decisions (like their nav bars, verses whatever cute creative thing people would do on their own).
  - thom 10y ago
    So when you see a website built on bootstrap, you think "oh, that's impressive design" as opposed to "oh, they didn't have any time or money to spend on design"?
  - cbau 10y ago
    The Bootstrap guys (@fat is one of them) joined Medium.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Not best in class, but better than Amazon.com...
EdiX 10y ago
Is twitter UX considered good? Because my impression is that it's one of the worst UX ever made and has been that consistently for years. Just one example, trying to view an image on twitter: on the timeline images get cropped to some fixed aspect ration, if you click on them twitter will open its weird mediaviewer popup where the image is not cropped but it is resized to fit an even smaller rectangle. As far as I can tell the only way to see the image at its original resolution is to (1) click on it to open the mediaviewer pseudopopup, (2) right click on the image inside the mediaviewer pseudopopup, (3) select "copy image location", (4) select the URL bar, (5) paste the image URL. And that's just one example that you would think is easy to fix but apparently isn't, there's many more (threading is shit, clickable areas are unnecessarily huge, sometimes keyboard arrows stop scrolling, there's no distinction between "talking about someone" and "talking to someone", two different "screen name" fields with one or the other being given prominence depending on context...)
- fnord123 10y ago
  You figured out more about how the twitter UI than I ever have. It's a hot mess and I just don't visit the site at all since I could never figure out what the heck I'm looking at.