6 ms·

This would be fantastic. Twitter's utility is in its open (inherently less profitable) nature. As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.

by kharms 10y ago

paulcole 10y ago
>As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled. Does that actually mean it's valuable? Just because something's one of a kind doesn't mean it's worth that much.
- DigitalJack 10y ago
  The phrase "x is unparalleled" implies uniqueness by virtue of the value it provides. GP is basically saying twitter has accumulated a vast wealth of social data that is immensely valuable to the research community.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Sounds like the academic community should be charged for access to the data, if there is so much value in there.
    - bbctol 10y ago
      For full access to the twitter archive, they are, though a lot of data can be gleaned from what's publicly posted.
      - oldmanjay 10y ago
        In retrospect I should have assumed that to be the case
    - Tempest1981 10y ago
      The media is clearly benefiting, with many stories backed by a Donald Trump tweet. But if the tweets weren't free to begin with, they might not be as newsworthy.
      - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
        > the media is clearly benefiting Journalists certainly are. Getting quotes was hard work. Now it consists of trawling Twitter. Not sure if this has been a boon or bane for journalism, however.
        Godel_unicode 10y ago
        > Journalists certainly are In the short term, anyway. The substitution of Twitter-trawling for actual journalism and research is doing immense damage in the long run.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    I think you (and many others) have this relationship by the wrong end. Things which are valuable are frequently rare/unique, whereas there are many unique/rare things with no value whatsoever. As others in this thread have implied, the lack of ability to monetize is strongly correlated with a lack of real value.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  that is my concern as well, if it truly was so widespread and useful I doubt they could turn a profit, however its real market is apparently much smaller than people suspect. twitter simply cannot reach people who don't go looking for it, it would need to basically just randomly show up on your instant messenger unbidden, it has no universal connector like radio and tv which are everywhere. then the last issue is there are too many voices on twitter so only those connected get out and assume importance. importance to only users of the medium
  - consto 10y ago
    > twitter simply cannot reach people who don't go looking for it I'm not so sure. Hashtags are everwhere both physical and digital, companies want to to start tweeting about their event/product/etc. As for a direct connection, how often have you see a tweet embedded in a news article, or displayed on live TV?
    - gaius 10y ago
      Hashtags are everywhere, but it doesn't follow that Twitter is - see FB, Insta, even LinkedIn.
- megablast 10y ago
  It means it is easy to access. That is all.
mtgx 10y ago
As a non-profit it could also become a decentralized platform, and it could more easily fight-off censorship requests.
cerrelio 10y ago
Maybe they can pair up with Elsevier to charge outrageous subscription fees for access to the data to help it become profitable.
bunderbunder 10y ago
It's unparalleled in that there is very little that's even similar out there. I'm less convinced of its actual value. The Twitter-based papers I've read seem to all have two things in common: First, they all use Twitter data. Second, they all seem to desperately want to present observations about how people interact on Twitter as being universal, even though nobody seems to be able to come up with a theoretical or empirical reason why that should be the case that's more compelling than, "We we have to pretend it is in order to get published."
- lovamova 10y ago
  Similar like in Sublevel?
- tootie 10y ago
  There's thousands of sites serving the same or similar purpose. Twitter is only unique because it has a lot of users.
  - bunderbunder 10y ago
    It's not really about whether or not the site works similarly to Twitter. It's about the neat stuff people can build with something like Twitter data. I don't think you could do something like http://blog.idl.ssrc.msstate.edu/?p=42 http://blog.idl.ssrc.msstate.edu/?p=42 with Plurk data and get anywhere near the same kind of attention for it. For that kind of thing, having lots of users is the key feature of interest.
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      Is attention the goal? I've been struck by the number of articles and research projects that are some version of "we got lots of tweets and graphed them" and have totally failed to go the "so what" step. Why should we care about this project? If you want to use this to find power outages using Twitter, why not just do that directly with e.g. grep (also, more importantly, are these outages about which the utility company doesn't already know?). Having big data (related: 12 Million lines of text isn't big) isn't cool in and of itself. Doing things which help with that data would be cool.
embiggen 10y ago
Depending on the kind of non-profit Twitter tries to become, they may need to somehow disentangle Twitter from all of the political favoritism and censorship controls currently built into the system. Seems like a pretty huge change and it's definitely tough to envision!
MustardTiger 10y ago
Twitter has no open nature. Twitter exists to control information, that's why they don't care about making money. Twitter is very actively and heavily involved in censorship and manipulation.
misnamed 10y ago
Bonus: non-profits can still make tons of money for their founders and operators. People think it means 'no profit' but that is totally off base.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Operators, yes – they can get typical compensation. But a non-profit founder doesn't get anything.

This would be fantastic. Twitter's utility is in its open (inherently less profitable) nature. As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.

by kharms 10y ago

This would be fantastic. Twitter's utility is in its open (inherently less profitable) nature. As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.

paulcole 10y ago

>As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled. Does that actually mean it's valuable? Just because something's one of a kind doesn't mean it's worth that much.

DigitalJack 10y ago
The phrase "x is unparalleled" implies uniqueness by virtue of the value it provides. GP is basically saying twitter has accumulated a vast wealth of social data that is immensely valuable to the research community.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Sounds like the academic community should be charged for access to the data, if there is so much value in there.
  - bbctol 10y ago
    For full access to the twitter archive, they are, though a lot of data can be gleaned from what's publicly posted.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      In retrospect I should have assumed that to be the case
  - Tempest1981 10y ago
    The media is clearly benefiting, with many stories backed by a Donald Trump tweet. But if the tweets weren't free to begin with, they might not be as newsworthy.
    - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
      > the media is clearly benefiting Journalists certainly are. Getting quotes was hard work. Now it consists of trawling Twitter. Not sure if this has been a boon or bane for journalism, however.
      - Godel_unicode 10y ago
        > Journalists certainly are In the short term, anyway. The substitution of Twitter-trawling for actual journalism and research is doing immense damage in the long run.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  I think you (and many others) have this relationship by the wrong end. Things which are valuable are frequently rare/unique, whereas there are many unique/rare things with no value whatsoever. As others in this thread have implied, the lack of ability to monetize is strongly correlated with a lack of real value.
Shivetya 10y ago
that is my concern as well, if it truly was so widespread and useful I doubt they could turn a profit, however its real market is apparently much smaller than people suspect. twitter simply cannot reach people who don't go looking for it, it would need to basically just randomly show up on your instant messenger unbidden, it has no universal connector like radio and tv which are everywhere. then the last issue is there are too many voices on twitter so only those connected get out and assume importance. importance to only users of the medium
- consto 10y ago
  > twitter simply cannot reach people who don't go looking for it I'm not so sure. Hashtags are everwhere both physical and digital, companies want to to start tweeting about their event/product/etc. As for a direct connection, how often have you see a tweet embedded in a news article, or displayed on live TV?
  - gaius 10y ago
    Hashtags are everywhere, but it doesn't follow that Twitter is - see FB, Insta, even LinkedIn.
megablast 10y ago
It means it is easy to access. That is all.

mtgx 10y ago

As a non-profit it could also become a decentralized platform, and it could more easily fight-off censorship requests.

cerrelio 10y ago

Maybe they can pair up with Elsevier to charge outrageous subscription fees for access to the data to help it become profitable.

bunderbunder 10y ago

It's unparalleled in that there is very little that's even similar out there. I'm less convinced of its actual value. The Twitter-based papers I've read seem to all have two things in common: First, they all use Twitter data. Second, they all seem to desperately want to present observations about how people interact on Twitter as being universal, even though nobody seems to be able to come up with a theoretical or empirical reason why that should be the case that's more compelling than, "We we have to pretend it is in order to get published."

lovamova 10y ago
Similar like in Sublevel?
tootie 10y ago
There's thousands of sites serving the same or similar purpose. Twitter is only unique because it has a lot of users.
- bunderbunder 10y ago
  It's not really about whether or not the site works similarly to Twitter. It's about the neat stuff people can build with something like Twitter data. I don't think you could do something like http://blog.idl.ssrc.msstate.edu/?p=42 http://blog.idl.ssrc.msstate.edu/?p=42 with Plurk data and get anywhere near the same kind of attention for it. For that kind of thing, having lots of users is the key feature of interest.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    Is attention the goal? I've been struck by the number of articles and research projects that are some version of "we got lots of tweets and graphed them" and have totally failed to go the "so what" step. Why should we care about this project? If you want to use this to find power outages using Twitter, why not just do that directly with e.g. grep (also, more importantly, are these outages about which the utility company doesn't already know?). Having big data (related: 12 Million lines of text isn't big) isn't cool in and of itself. Doing things which help with that data would be cool.

embiggen 10y ago

Depending on the kind of non-profit Twitter tries to become, they may need to somehow disentangle Twitter from all of the political favoritism and censorship controls currently built into the system. Seems like a pretty huge change and it's definitely tough to envision!

MustardTiger 10y ago

Twitter has no open nature. Twitter exists to control information, that's why they don't care about making money. Twitter is very actively and heavily involved in censorship and manipulation.

misnamed 10y ago

Bonus: non-profits can still make tons of money for their founders and operators. People think it means 'no profit' but that is totally off base.

matt4077 10y ago
Operators, yes – they can get typical compensation. But a non-profit founder doesn't get anything.