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There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google

There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google guy to run Twitter, too. What does that solve? Google has already tried and "failed" in the social area, Page buying it doesn't strike me as some kind of panacea. What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the new media censors things they or various friends of theirs don't agree with, and that doesn't sound like a path to a healthy society to me. The media's problem isn't about being "Old", it's about trust, and expecting people who have built the modern landscape to take a different path seems naive. There's no evidence that modern social or political discourse is made better by Twitter. Some people seem convinced that Twitter shouldn't just die as is natural. Why? Twitter strikes me as a platform where the existing media and celebrities pat themselves on the back. Of course media would think it such an important tool, but the average person doesn't get value from it unless we really like to hear Donald Trump's unfiltered thoughts at 3 AM. Personally, don't find that especially compelling. Edit: The country’s pre-eminent newspapers, including this one, have long been controlled by families who have understood that the press is not just an ordinary industry, but a civic calling. Twitter is not yet treated as hallowed, but it has the makings of an institution that could be. I find this in particular hilariously out of touch. At least we're now admitting that families control the country, but let's not act like what the press has been doing for some time now is is anything like a civic calling. This election wouldn't be a complete disaster if the media had been doing its job instead of entertaining or pandering. If that's the standard that the media is holding itself to, then Twitter doesn't have a high bar to clear.

michaelvoz 10y ago
I share a similar opinion. Twitter is not special to me, nor do I believe it holds a special place for anyone outside of those select few who. The purpose of the media is to filter nonsense about politics (and celebrities if that's your cuppa). Twitter somehow seems to be seen as valuable by doing the opposite?
remarkEon 10y ago
In a similar sense, it seems like there's an additional fixation (I see it in a lot of places) on thinking of Twitter as a news platform. It's true for obvious reasons that Twitter can "get you closer to the action" and you can "see things happening in real time" (I guess), but I'm still skeptical that we should think about it as a news platform for the exact reasons you outlined. I've seen it pointed out here elsewhere that Twitter and sports can sort of go hand in hand. I do enjoy watching the World Series feed, or if there are solid NBA match-ups NBA Twitter can be pretty fun. I'm not really sure what that means, other than (gulp) maybe Disney could actually find some use for it with ESPN content? Trying really hard, here.
- xirdstl 10y ago
  The worst is when you read a news "story" that is basically fluff using 3 - 4 hand-picked tweets as citation to justify its thesis. As if snarky one-liner reactions to events on Twitter somehow constitute news.
mc32 10y ago
I can only agree that newspapers believing themselves as impartial is hilarious, given the agenda many of them openly push, from industrialists, to liberalists, to patriots, etc. For much of their existence their purpose was to promulgate a PoV. Maybe the NYT does suffer from hubris thinking it's been immune from the same. They very well may be better "now" but even then it's a stretch to believe they thought that it was the civic calling rather than believing it was _their kind_ of civic calling. The idea is more an ideal than reality, sadly.
- Super_Jambo 10y ago
  Well clearly one of the ideas they're very keen to push is that they're performing a civic duty not just acting as cheer leaders for their particular masters. If this idea was not believed then they'd have a far harder job peddling their bias as interesting fact.
smacktoward 10y ago
It also misses the actual reason why rich people buy newspapers, which is that they want their opinions to be the newspaper's opinion. They want to become the Voice of the Establishment, which a newspaper can let them be. In other words, they want the op-ed page, everything else is beside the point. From that perspective Twitter would be spectacularly unattractive to this crowd, as it lacks any kind of institutional editorial viewpoint. It's a newspaper without an op-ed page, which for this kind of buyer is not much of a newspaper.
kapitza 10y ago
Here's a great picture of "families who have understood that the press is a civic calling" (what is this supposed to be, the Venetian Republic?) in action: When bloomberg was having problems w the times he called Arthur [Sulzberger] and asked for coffee. He made the case that they were treating him like a billionaire dilettante instead of Third term mayor. It changed the coverage moderately but also aired the issues in the newsroom so people were more conscious of it. But Arthur is a pretty big wuss so he's not going to do a lot more than that. Hillary would have to be the one to call. He also thinks the brown and women pundits can shame the times and others on social media. So cultivating Joan Walsh, Yglesias, Allen, perry bacon, Greg Sargent, to defend her is helpful. They can be emboldened. Fwiw - I pushed [Philippe Reines] to do this a yr ago. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31954 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31954
- LordHumungous 10y ago
  Not sure what the big deal is here. Political operatives are angling for good coverage? That kind of thing has always gone on. If you think this is bad, you should read about what went on back in the old days.
  - talmand 10y ago
    The problem is whether the media responds to the angling and provides good coverage while reducing negative coverage. The operatives doing this and the news media responding positively has almost certainly been happening since the beginning of news, but that doesn't excuse the behavior.
- hackaflocka 10y ago
  Yglesias is brown?
basch 10y ago
Apple is a better fit. Google already has Youtube and Youtube Comments. Apple has AppleTV but doesnt control the metaconversation around their content they host. If Apple wants to be a part of live-reality, Periscope+iPhone puts them in a good position against Facebook. They also both have somewhat stagnant software innovation right now, so they could grow old slowly together. But more importantly, Apple could run Twitter at a loss as a data platform around their product.
- newjersey 10y ago
  > But more importantly, Apple could run Twitter at a loss as a data platform around their product. This is something I don't understand. Pardon me if this sounds pie in the sky but how much does it cost to RUN Twitter without any expectations of profit? It seems like the people here in the conversation have knowledge that I lack about Twitter's expenses. It probably is public information but I can't find anything satisfying from a cursory Google search. Anyone want to help me out? If Twitter were to tighten it's belt today, how would it's operating expenses look like? I remember talking to Justin TV (precursors to twitch) folks and they said operating a live streaming site wasn't expensive and that one ad every couple of hours was enough to keep the lights on. I imagine running Twitter should be cheaper except for maybe dealing with SMS providers but Twitter is big enough that it could ask for special treatment from telecom providers to get a favorable rate if not to not have to pay anything entirely. I understand that I'm asking two different questions here. One is how much it costs to operate Twitter at a profit versus what it costs to run Twitter at all (and I'm thinking like a highly upscaled https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social than anything Twitter is today, none of this augmented reality play). I do understand that to make a profit, Twitter must be spending heavily to pour over analytics day and night to find s breakthrough but if you remove the need to make a profit, things should be less hectic, right?
  - basch 10y ago
    exactly. twitter SHOULD be a fairly cheap company to run if it focused on its main platform and not its profit platform. plus, if Apple bought twitter, twitter could go back to what it was, before it closed access to its apis/firehose. Twitter was the developers, developers, developers haven, that Apple/TheAppstore should LOVE to have. Everyone and their mom wanted to write an app ontop of the twitter datastream. In my crazy delusional mind, Apple should buy Twitter, strip it of everything that is not communication (such as growth strategy, marketing, sales, ads) and merge it into the AppStore as a api/service provided by Apple. Similar to Microsoft's Azure/Cognitive AI type stuff. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... Obviously they would need to keep the API open to Android apps as well, but I think it would be a good first shot at Google/Facebooks/Microsofts recognition that you have to cater to other platforms, and it would be a way to ensure iOS apps continue to be first class citizens compared to Android. Twitter would be available to Android devs, but it would always be more tightly integrated to iOS. At some point, if Apple wants to continue to be a software player, they might need to buy a marketing company, like say Adobe Marketing Cloud. Owning twitter would make them lucratively competitive against Salesforce/Dynamics etc. The reason I think Apple cant buy twitter is harassment. Twitters free speech values conflict with Apple's happy image.
pjc50 10y ago
I think when dealing with twitter it's a mistake to talk about the "average user". Just because there aren't clear boundaries between subcommunities doesn't mean they don't exist. And there are a lot of communities which derive real value from Twitter. Few of them could be described as news, they're more like "fandoms". Fandoms of TV shows, sports, pop stars, books, comics, games. Also what now look like "political fandoms". And just like football there's a fan hooligan problem at the edges. The "ultras" need to be corralled away from everyone else they're throwing abuse at. Various people have pointed out that, on Vine, it was young black kids who were doing especially well on the platform. There's a substantial "black twitter" as well, not just related to the specific issues of BLM but covering entire fields of entertainment and politics. (A paper from the dawn of Twitter on communities and social nodes; the specifics will be out of date but I think the principles still hold http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf )
bogomipz 10y ago
>"What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the new media censors things they or various friends of theirs don't agree with, and that doesn't sound like a path to a healthy society to me." Can you mention some of the censorship incidents are you referring to here? I think you made some interesting points. That NY Times quote is particularly condescending. I can't help but think theres a bit of schadenfreude from some of the old guard media regarding recent Twitter events.

michaelvoz 10y ago

I share a similar opinion. Twitter is not special to me, nor do I believe it holds a special place for anyone outside of those select few who. The purpose of the media is to filter nonsense about politics (and celebrities if that's your cuppa). Twitter somehow seems to be seen as valuable by doing the opposite?

remarkEon 10y ago

In a similar sense, it seems like there's an additional fixation (I see it in a lot of places) on thinking of Twitter as a news platform. It's true for obvious reasons that Twitter can "get you closer to the action" and you can "see things happening in real time" (I guess), but I'm still skeptical that we should think about it as a news platform for the exact reasons you outlined. I've seen it pointed out here elsewhere that Twitter and sports can sort of go hand in hand. I do enjoy watching the World Series feed, or if there are solid NBA match-ups NBA Twitter can be pretty fun. I'm not really sure what that means, other than (gulp) maybe Disney could actually find some use for it with ESPN content? Trying really hard, here.

xirdstl 10y ago
The worst is when you read a news "story" that is basically fluff using 3 - 4 hand-picked tweets as citation to justify its thesis. As if snarky one-liner reactions to events on Twitter somehow constitute news.

mc32 10y ago

I can only agree that newspapers believing themselves as impartial is hilarious, given the agenda many of them openly push, from industrialists, to liberalists, to patriots, etc. For much of their existence their purpose was to promulgate a PoV. Maybe the NYT does suffer from hubris thinking it's been immune from the same. They very well may be better "now" but even then it's a stretch to believe they thought that it was the civic calling rather than believing it was _their kind_ of civic calling. The idea is more an ideal than reality, sadly.

Super_Jambo 10y ago
Well clearly one of the ideas they're very keen to push is that they're performing a civic duty not just acting as cheer leaders for their particular masters. If this idea was not believed then they'd have a far harder job peddling their bias as interesting fact.

smacktoward 10y ago

It also misses the actual reason why rich people buy newspapers, which is that they want their opinions to be the newspaper's opinion. They want to become the Voice of the Establishment, which a newspaper can let them be. In other words, they want the op-ed page, everything else is beside the point. From that perspective Twitter would be spectacularly unattractive to this crowd, as it lacks any kind of institutional editorial viewpoint. It's a newspaper without an op-ed page, which for this kind of buyer is not much of a newspaper.

kapitza 10y ago

Here's a great picture of "families who have understood that the press is a civic calling" (what is this supposed to be, the Venetian Republic?) in action: When bloomberg was having problems w the times he called Arthur [Sulzberger] and asked for coffee. He made the case that they were treating him like a billionaire dilettante instead of Third term mayor. It changed the coverage moderately but also aired the issues in the newsroom so people were more conscious of it. But Arthur is a pretty big wuss so he's not going to do a lot more than that. Hillary would have to be the one to call. He also thinks the brown and women pundits can shame the times and others on social media. So cultivating Joan Walsh, Yglesias, Allen, perry bacon, Greg Sargent, to defend her is helpful. They can be emboldened. Fwiw - I pushed [Philippe Reines] to do this a yr ago. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31954 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31954

LordHumungous 10y ago
Not sure what the big deal is here. Political operatives are angling for good coverage? That kind of thing has always gone on. If you think this is bad, you should read about what went on back in the old days.
- talmand 10y ago
  The problem is whether the media responds to the angling and provides good coverage while reducing negative coverage. The operatives doing this and the news media responding positively has almost certainly been happening since the beginning of news, but that doesn't excuse the behavior.
hackaflocka 10y ago
Yglesias is brown?

basch 10y ago

Apple is a better fit. Google already has Youtube and Youtube Comments. Apple has AppleTV but doesnt control the metaconversation around their content they host. If Apple wants to be a part of live-reality, Periscope+iPhone puts them in a good position against Facebook. They also both have somewhat stagnant software innovation right now, so they could grow old slowly together. But more importantly, Apple could run Twitter at a loss as a data platform around their product.

newjersey 10y ago
> But more importantly, Apple could run Twitter at a loss as a data platform around their product. This is something I don't understand. Pardon me if this sounds pie in the sky but how much does it cost to RUN Twitter without any expectations of profit? It seems like the people here in the conversation have knowledge that I lack about Twitter's expenses. It probably is public information but I can't find anything satisfying from a cursory Google search. Anyone want to help me out? If Twitter were to tighten it's belt today, how would it's operating expenses look like? I remember talking to Justin TV (precursors to twitch) folks and they said operating a live streaming site wasn't expensive and that one ad every couple of hours was enough to keep the lights on. I imagine running Twitter should be cheaper except for maybe dealing with SMS providers but Twitter is big enough that it could ask for special treatment from telecom providers to get a favorable rate if not to not have to pay anything entirely. I understand that I'm asking two different questions here. One is how much it costs to operate Twitter at a profit versus what it costs to run Twitter at all (and I'm thinking like a highly upscaled https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social than anything Twitter is today, none of this augmented reality play). I do understand that to make a profit, Twitter must be spending heavily to pour over analytics day and night to find s breakthrough but if you remove the need to make a profit, things should be less hectic, right?
- basch 10y ago
  exactly. twitter SHOULD be a fairly cheap company to run if it focused on its main platform and not its profit platform. plus, if Apple bought twitter, twitter could go back to what it was, before it closed access to its apis/firehose. Twitter was the developers, developers, developers haven, that Apple/TheAppstore should LOVE to have. Everyone and their mom wanted to write an app ontop of the twitter datastream. In my crazy delusional mind, Apple should buy Twitter, strip it of everything that is not communication (such as growth strategy, marketing, sales, ads) and merge it into the AppStore as a api/service provided by Apple. Similar to Microsoft's Azure/Cognitive AI type stuff. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... Obviously they would need to keep the API open to Android apps as well, but I think it would be a good first shot at Google/Facebooks/Microsofts recognition that you have to cater to other platforms, and it would be a way to ensure iOS apps continue to be first class citizens compared to Android. Twitter would be available to Android devs, but it would always be more tightly integrated to iOS. At some point, if Apple wants to continue to be a software player, they might need to buy a marketing company, like say Adobe Marketing Cloud. Owning twitter would make them lucratively competitive against Salesforce/Dynamics etc. The reason I think Apple cant buy twitter is harassment. Twitters free speech values conflict with Apple's happy image.

pjc50 10y ago

I think when dealing with twitter it's a mistake to talk about the "average user". Just because there aren't clear boundaries between subcommunities doesn't mean they don't exist. And there are a lot of communities which derive real value from Twitter. Few of them could be described as news, they're more like "fandoms". Fandoms of TV shows, sports, pop stars, books, comics, games. Also what now look like "political fandoms". And just like football there's a fan hooligan problem at the edges. The "ultras" need to be corralled away from everyone else they're throwing abuse at. Various people have pointed out that, on Vine, it was young black kids who were doing especially well on the platform. There's a substantial "black twitter" as well, not just related to the specific issues of BLM but covering entire fields of entertainment and politics. (A paper from the dawn of Twitter on communities and social nodes; the specifics will be out of date but I think the principles still hold http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf )

bogomipz 10y ago

>"What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the new media censors things they or various friends of theirs don't agree with, and that doesn't sound like a path to a healthy society to me." Can you mention some of the censorship incidents are you referring to here? I think you made some interesting points. That NY Times quote is particularly condescending. I can't help but think theres a bit of schadenfreude from some of the old guard media regarding recent Twitter events.