17 ms·

Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company

426 points by bootload 10y ago

benmarks 10y ago
Tweet from the CTO: https://twitter.com/adam_messinger/status/811326653339025408 https://twitter.com/adam_messinger/status/811326653339025408
chollida1 10y ago
I think its valid to ask if Jack Dorsey is the next executive to leave. The moment Anthony Noto went to Twitter, all wall street could talk about was that he was brought in to sell the company. Who ever the next CTO is, they're going to have some tough decisions to make. Twitter already has to pay out an extreme amount of compensation in stock options just to get and retain talent. I don't want this to seem inflammatory to people as twitter obviously has some serious engineering talent, but does anyone consider them to be a big name in tech anymore? They seem to be in the range of say PayPal in that they have a decent reputation but they aren't really a name that gets you any resume recognition anymore. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/business/dealbook/twitters-steep-premium-the-cost-of-employee-stock-grants.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/business/dealbook/twitters... > By way of comparison, the company reported $2.2 billion in revenue for 2015 — meaning that it paid out 31 cents in stock-based compensation for every dollar of sales it collected. You're going to be fighting several battles that aren't really engineering related, - how to finally fix harassment that seems to be much more pronounced on your platform than pretty much any other mainstream social media site. - how to get alot more advertising dollars on your site to an audience that short of reddit, seems to dislike advertising more than most social media sites. And on top of all of this, you're probably going to have to shrink your engineering head count to make yourself look more appetizing to potential acquirers. Yikes......
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
  The moment Dick left was when I felt a disturbance in the twitterverse (but I also have a disdain for Dorsey). It kind of felt weird to me that Twitter went from this platform of literally starting revolutions to managing expectations of its users in the name "fighting harassment". I now use it simply to tweet out my latest recipes...
  - SapphireSun 10y ago
    Since the US election, Twitter has been headline newsworthy nearly every day. Whether you think that's a bad thing or not, it's still a potent force in the world, surprisingly to me.
    - basch 10y ago
      twitter itself is newsworthy, or are you saying what people write on it. do you consider the email protocol or telephone newsworthy daily?
      - slouch 10y ago
        My local ISP doesn't implement Twitter
    - stonecodegump 10y ago
      I signed up specifically so I could follow Trumps tweets post election. It seems this is where government policy is going to be formed for a while.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > They seem to be in the range of say PayPal in that they have a decent reputation but they aren't really a name that gets you any resume recognition anymore. PayPal doesn't get you "name recognition" anymore? In fact I would expect Twitter would garner more because of their larger open source initiatives but I still hear lots of chatter about PayPal and the people who have worked there. Maybe I'm just in a weird bubble but I still consider PayPal one of the big tech names.
  - deleted 10y ago
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- grandalf 10y ago
  > a big name in tech anymore Donald Trump is making headlines using Twitter every day. I think that once users/victims become immune to Facebook's dark patterns, Twitter will look pretty good. The only thing it can do to screw that up is continue censoring content and allowing botnets.
  - narrator 10y ago
    What's just bizarre is that they were seriously considering censoring Donald Trump's account at one point and even announced it. From a purely business standpoint, that was a dumb idea even to propose. It makes you wonder about the rationality of management and if they view the company as some sort of hipster San Francisco hobby paid for by VCs and not as a profit making enterprise.
    - SapphireSun 10y ago
      It's amazing from a business perspective, but at a certain point ethical questions arise. Should Twitter give a world shakingly powerful lier an unfiltered platform to the public? If he had to go through the press, everything he said would be filtered by editors and fact checkers. Incredible business opportunity, but frankly, the fate of the world is in part being determined by Twitter's granting him a platform. I can understand their vacillation around this issue.
      - sumedh 10y ago
        > Should Twitter give a world shakingly powerful lier an unfiltered platform to the public? All Politicians lie. Twitter is not in the business of being a fact checker.
        foldr 10y ago
        Not all politicians retweet white supremacists, though.
        10y ago
- slg 10y ago
  Was Twitter ever really about tech excellence? My perspective as an outsider who doesn't live or work in Silicon Valley, it always seemed more of a communications and media company founded on a tech backbone. Beyond their early scaling problems, which they spent a long, long time fighting, what really exciting tech has emerged from Twitter? Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook all have much more impressive technology to show for themselves over the last several years.
  - nightski 10y ago
    "Tech excellence" sounds like such a useless buzzword. There is no such thing, just incrementally better.
  - blackaspen 10y ago
    Twitter's Github: https://github.com/twitter https://github.com/twitter Apache Aurora, Bootstrap, Storm, Heron, Pants, ThriftMux, DistributedLog, Apache Cotton, Iago, just to name a few.
    - slg 10y ago
      Can't most of those projects be boiled down to dealing with scaling? Twitter has seemed to have been mostly focused inwards, trying to get themselves more efficient at being Twitter. The other companies I mentioned seem more ambitious in expanding their tech outwards.
      - minimaxir 10y ago
        That's a No True Scotsman perspective. Scaling isn't easy.
        slg 10y ago
        I'm not saying it is easy or disparaging the work of the engineers there. I am saying it seems like they have a different approach to how tech fits in with the goals of the company. To oversimplify, Twitter is focused on efficiency while others are focused on growth. Maybe the actual goals are different, but that is the impression I get looking at their output.
- user5994461 10y ago
  > Twitter already has to pay out an extreme amount of compensation in stock options just to get and retain talent. Lay off then no need to pay it. There are 4000 employees, which is about one order of magnitude too much.
  - popcorncolonel 10y ago
    You suggest they lay off 90% of their employees?
    - throwanem 10y ago
      No, just a hair over three quarters. Anyone can see that's perfectly reasonable. (...he said, not realizing it was on the close order of what someone else here is advocating. Whence comes the idea that Twitter is overpopulated? Do we hear it from current or ex-Twitter-ers?)
      - mikekchar 10y ago
        Not going to argue with you. 4000 employees is going to lead to a lot of inertia when doing development (even if only 10% of them were devs). However, the culture and process changes you need to institute in order to make such a change work is not trivial. Probably necessary for the future growth of the company, but could quite easily end up killing it in the process.
        throwanem 10y ago
        Not asking you to argue with me. I'd just be interested to see some substantiation for the claim that Twitter is overstaffed. It seems like that claim turns up a lot, and I'm sort of surprised that no one seems to have taken the time to explain why he thinks so.
        user5994461 10y ago
        The claims come from current and ex employees. Basically, in the least offense terms, doing nothing all day and got nothing to do.
- deleted 10y ago
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- makomk 10y ago
  Twitter's problem isn't just that they have to fix harassment, it's that they have to do it without touching social justice activism that sure looks similar to it from the outside, right down to the doxing, threats, and smears. Oh, and they'll get no sympathy for getting this wrong as the difference is apparently obvious... except that everyone defines it differently (usually based on who their friends are) and simply assumes the world shares their definition. Good luck.
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    Isn't the platform just the best medium for harassing and trolling? What else can you do with 140 chars? Have you ever heard about good tweets? It's always negativity.
    - makomk 10y ago
      Twitter's popular with journalists for some reason, most likely because it's an easy way to find potential stories and promote their work. This is probably part of the problem - it means that when ordinary users are nasty to them or their friends it's personal, and the same when they or their friends get their accounts suspended.
      - redthrowaway 10y ago
        And twitter being popular with journalists makes it a fantastic platform for news junkies like myself. But that's mostly a one-way street.
      - angry-hacker 10y ago
        Because only celebrities and journalists benefit from Twitter. It's boring for regular joe's, unless you like to only consume. Or troll :)
    - inimino 10y ago
      Since the election I've been spending time on HN and to a lesser extent Twitter. Every time I visit Twitter I find myself instinctively reaching for the downvote button, but there isn't one. About the only thing you can do when someone says (or retweets) something totally idiotic on Twitter is either unfollow, or, of course, reply. In other words, there is no way to register disapproval without simultaneously calling attention to the very thing you disapprove of. One of the absolute best features of HN is the downvote button and the way it is implemented. Downvotes are stronger than upvotes, and the downvoted content gets buried. A community that lets anyone join has to work hard to maintain a high standard. Downvotes don't kick people out, but they kick bad content off. Twitter has nothing like this, so the worst content gets the most attention. You can choose who you follow but users get no negative feedback on inappropriate tweets. So the norms shift towards whatever creates engagement, which is often outrage, fear, and strongly negative emotional content, with or without any rational foundation. If Twitter wants engaging and constructive dialog, they need a way to take out the trash. Unfortunately, Twitter's problem is that their potential for social good and their potential for revenue may never align. Since they are failing at turning a profit, it is unsurprising that they seem to be giving no consideration whatsoever to social responsibility.
- gotthemwmds 10y ago
  Anecdotally speaking, in the last 2 years, I've seen 3 ex-Twitter (as their most recent position) people apply, and none of them made it passed the second phone interview, which was the first real technical one. I didn't do the interviews myself, but I watched them, and I was very unimpressed with the applicants. I can say this about most (70%) Amazon people too... (and am in Seattle, so we see a lot of them).
- pritianka 10y ago
  I think the product is solid, for a specific purpose, for a specific audience. However, they've failed to figure out the broad appeal that can lead to advertising dollars. I think their usage demographic is too narrow for a public company level of earnings. To me this is a product leadership issue. I agree that perhaps Jack Dorsey would be the next to leave. The biggest fear I, as a Twitter fan, would have is a private equity fire sale.
rb808 10y ago
It feels like Twitter the company should be imploding, but it must be a secure business if its the next president's primary communication channel.
- deleted 10y ago
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- MichaelApproved 10y ago
  Trump uses Twitter but he didn't invite them to the tech summit reportedly for not creating a special trending tag for him. Trump enjoys being treated like royalty. I doubt he has loyalty to Twitter and would jump ship to another company that puts him on a pedestal. He would enjoy seeing the millions of customers who follow him.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > another company What other company offers a similar broadcast style approach for text content and doesn't require real name registration?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - symlinkk 10y ago
      gab.ai
    - fooey 10y ago
      r/The_Donald or /pol? Really though, Trump would fit right in on 4chan.
      - lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
        Nah, 4chan is the opposite of the kind of forum he craves. Everyone is a nameless faceless anon, so unless Trump starts leaking things about himself, he's just another boring racist troll in a crowd of boring racist trolls (just maybe 5x the average age).
aresant 10y ago
Bigger to me is the VP of Product - Josh McFarland - just bailed out 30 minutes ago too: https://twitter.com/crazyfoo/status/811331557608652800 https://twitter.com/crazyfoo/status/811331557608652800 AKA outside of Dorsey, who is a split / shared CEO, who is in charge of Twitter?
- johns 10y ago
  I hope using a tweetstorm to announce his departure was a subtle shot at the company's inability to ship a product the way people want to use it.
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    I know I might sound like a vim user, but tweetstorms are honestly one of my favourite parts of twitter. Maybe there could be a better UI for authoring and displaying them, but there's something I really enjoy about reading a story 140 characters at a time.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - dopamean 10y ago
      Judging by the amount of noise I've heard recently on this topic you may be the only person who like that.
      - sandworm101 10y ago
        It's cute. It's part of the medium. Books must have pages. Tweetstorms must have 140char tweets.
        trhway 10y ago
        >Tweetstorms must have 140char tweets. seems to be matching the pacing of a graphic novel.
josh_carterPDX 10y ago
Twitter is a business model that will be studied for years IMHO. No clear path to revenue, viral adoption, and very little product development away from its core competencies. I use Twitter often, but it has always seemed like a platform most useful if you have something to promote. One big flaw has been trying to find value to ordinary users who want to do something beyond typing into an echo chamber. If Twitter goes away it would be interested to figure out what would take its place.
- criddell 10y ago
  > No clear path to revenue I don't know about that. They have $2.2 billion in revenue last year. Get the employee count down to 300 people and you have a great business.
  - josh_carterPDX 10y ago
    No you're right. However, aside from having ad revenue I don't see anything they can do to accelerate their revenue growth. But yeah, cut spending, get employee count way down, and they could break even sooner than later.
    - basch 10y ago
      bull. twitters growth stalled because its way to hard to join and sort through. look how long you can be part of reddit before you make an account. you can even bookmark http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience and have a custom mix without having an account. their logged out front page is a pile of shit. imgur.com is better at what twitter is trying to be, twitter should chase digg/medium not lowest common denominator memegrabs.
      - criddell 10y ago
        > twitters growth stalled I think maybe Twitter's growth stalled because it's mostly done growing. Do they need more users? They can already generate billions of dollars every year and maybe that's enough.
argonaut 10y ago
I don't think this is as big a deal as the Twitter departures earlier this year. Several years ago Adam Messinger was already more or less sidelined from the engineering organization when Chris Fry was made VP of Engineering (CTO does not imply the VP of Engineering reports to the CTO). Later Chris Fry would be replaced by Alex Roetter (thanks commenter below). After Roetter left, Messinger was put back in charge of the engineering organization. But given he had been removed from it (and passed over) in the past, it's not surprising he would leave, voluntarily or involuntarily.
- streblo 10y ago
  He wasn't even the head of the engineering organization before Roetter. He (Messinger) was sidelined by Chris Fry before Roetter ever took over.
  - argonaut 10y ago
    Yeah that sounds about right.
    - sulam 10y ago
      After Mike Abbott left he was responsible for user-facing engineering reporting to Dick. Eventually Chris Fry moved up to SVP and he moved to CTO. So you're mostly right, but there was that weird period in there where he and Chris were peers. Then they were "peers" again, although he didn't have directs.
- sulam 10y ago
  It's a bigger deal than that because he was put back in charge of the engineering organization for real. That means that from when I started there to now, the engineering leadership has been: Mike Abbott Dick Costolo -> (Chris Fry, Adam Messinger, Mazen Rawashdeh) Chris Fry Alex Roetter Adam Messinger ??? Not as bad as product, but illustrative, and there were far more VP/Director changes in there along the way. In general you knew you were in for a re-org that affected you in a material way every 6 months. I had 10 managers in well under 5 years. It's not surprising many people just crawl in a hole and hope they get ignored while they vest and get stuff done.
danso 10y ago
I hope the best for Twitter, as it's probably been the most beneficial of the social media network services (unless you count GMail) for me. I wish I could devote more of my programming class curriculum to teaching the Twitter API, as it has so many rich use-cases and students really enjoy it, but I expect that if Twitter survives for the long-haul, its API probably won't. At least, I expect it to be constrained in the same way Facebook has constrained its previously liberal (in the sense of data scope, not political) data endpoints. edit: grammar
- minimaxir 10y ago
  Interestingly, Facebook is surprisingly liberal with their public data endpoints, with no apparent rate limiting for API retrieval from public Facebook Pages and Groups (source: I develop a scraper and have not been yelled at by FB, yet: https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper ) Twitter, meanwhile, still has that stupid 3200 most-recent tweet limit on historical data, which is apparently a "technical limitation."
  - danso 10y ago
    It's been awhile since I've used the FB API, but one thing that's nice about Twitter is that you have a lot of room to crawl networks of users; for example, I always like getting the list of accounts that U.S. congressmembers follow (based on the Twitter account list maintained by the unitedstates project [0]), as a proxy for such things as perceived political bent of media organizations. An example of the FB limitations I'm thinking about is how you can't query the graph API by username, e.g. http://graph.facebook.com/mark.zuckerberg http://graph.facebook.com/mark.zuckerberg There were other changes made before that, that's just one I remember in my latter days of using their API. Granted, I've always been impressed with the analyses you've done with FB data and have put it on my list someday to learn through your examples :). [0] https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators
    - minimaxir 10y ago
riffic 10y ago
Twitter's failure is a failure to embrace an open web. The next CTO at Twitter should take a deep hard look at decentralization, protocols such as OStatus, and how to provide an open platform (like email) not a walled garden. Say one manages a government agency or any other large organization -- Why the heck would they put all eggs into a provider's basket rather than set up their own GNU social infrastructure? Does anyone not realize the power of controlling their own namespace?
- sulam 10y ago
  I'd love to hear how you think they make money in this world.
  - riffic 10y ago
    advertising, same as any other company. edit: oh are you talking status quo, or an idealized business model?
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Oh neat. So, in order to avoid having ads filtered at federation boundaries, thus delivering zero value to ad buyers and zero revenue to themselves, they now have a very strong incentive to come up with advertising only imperceptibly different from everything that is not advertising.
      - riffic 10y ago
        see edit, I assumed the question was referring to the status quo. A better model than advertising would be to charge those broadcasting their message to a large number of recipients (your CNNs and Trumps should be the ones paying to play).
        sulam 10y ago
        So you drive away your biggest draw? In the media-centric view of the world, those people would be asking for a cut of revenues. There's clearly a major disconnect from reality on one side or the other here. Any examples of successful businesses that do it the way you describe?
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I'm sure it's simply arm chair quarter backing but I feel like Twitter could be turned around and I think almost anyone could do it as long as they can force them to take action and quickly. Honestly I feel like I shouldn't even post this because it's half on topic and half off topic. But I was thinking about some ideas I think Twitter should do and, well, screw it I'm curious to see what the HN community thinks of any of my ideas. Twitter should: - Lay off approx 60-70% of the staff. Seriously Twitter is way, way, way over staffed. I mean I don't want to see this happen but Twitter is so employee heavy I don't understand how they can sustain themselves without losing a large amount of employees. - Longer forms of communication. Yeah yeah I know "Twitter is short it makes people be concise" yadda yadda yadda; look a lot of the top Twitter users constantly do tweet storms. Many post photos of long form content. Sure maybe you keep the same limits but allow a way to stitch together multiple tweets should you want to do something long form. Right now the dialog gets ruined because comments get spliced during the user posting their thoughts. This has to be addressed somehow. They're losing out on too much conversation and context when people post things like photos of text. - Need some focus around various types of media. Video is especially important. Look at Instagram, they copied Snap's stories and BOOM, big success. Twitter is positioned to be a messaging pipe for the internet. Let's get more types of media flowing through it! Make Live even faster to start (dedicated button). Make image taking native, too. Single button, type text, posted. Done. - Better ways of handling discussions. Something threaded, not counting usernames in limits (to a degree; can't have someone spamming hundreds at once). In a similar vein create groups so conversations / discussions can rapidly happen inside of groups. - More tools for filtering, maybe creating separate views for different types of people you follow (like it would be great to see what my friends are saying versus what news sources are saying etc without going through the cumbersome list UX). - Verification so if someone wants to use their real name they can have it verified and can even filter by verified so they can filter out the noise if they want. Facebook is pretty damn successful at real names but you can also create alternate personalities via Pages. I think Twitter should mimic this functionality to a degree.
- Benjammer 10y ago
  Apart from layoffs, how do you see your other ideas adding business value and/or revenue to the company rather than just making the product better for end users? Are you thinking about how Twitter could be a better product or a better business?
sna1l 10y ago
It is disappointing because I personally still believe Twitter has a lot of potential, and it seems like they can't catch a break. I don't work at Twitter, so it is hard for me to tell how much this exec drain has had an effect on delivery and execution, but I'd imagine a good amount. The NFL Thursday Twitter has been super disappointing. I wish there was a way to get the video screen mostly full, and have a live feed of MY timeline on the feed. I definitely am tweeting a ton during sporting events, and feel like I never see targeted ads or well thought out products surrounding that.
usaphp 10y ago
While it's a topic about twitter I'd like to ask a question that always puzzles me. Twitter has 3900+ employees and good portion of those are developers, I just don't understand how can such a basic product that almost never pushes any updates or radical changes/improvements require so many employees. What the hell are they doing except for burning investors cash? Just curious...
- deleted 10y ago
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- djfm 10y ago
  It's probably harder than we think because of the scale of it.
  - markcerqueira 10y ago
    Yeah, but that only really applies to specific engineering teams like backend services and ops right? Web (frontend), iOS, Android, etc. don't really care about scale.
    - was_boring 10y ago
      Seriously. The amount of people on the android team can't be more than 5 people devs, right? Maybe allocate 10 so you have some redundancy when people get sick.
  - sulam 10y ago
    Also a surprising fraction goes to data science and advertising infrastructure. Stuff that would go away if they weren't worried about making money. :)
  - zcam 10y ago
    Whatsapp is a good counter example.
    - RBerenguel 10y ago
djfm 10y ago
I have mixed feelings about twitter. On the one hand I see it as a nice way to make interesting conversations surface and reach a wide audience. On the other hand I see it as a constant stream of ads. I don't know if I'd be happy if it all goes down, or if something better comes along. Which problem is twitter actually trying to solve?
- deleted 10y ago
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- dmix 10y ago
  > Which problem is twitter actually trying to solve? Somewhere between a real time news platform and wasting time ala social entertainment?
  - djfm 10y ago
    Yeah, can it really do both properly?
brilliantcode 10y ago
when will we see the same for Facebook? If Twitter falls then it's a shift in investor's attitude towards "should make lots of money at unknown time down the road". Money today is more valuable than money tomorrow. Tech seems to have been a curious exception as it was in the 2000 bubble.
- awa 10y ago
  If you look at the financials, FB is making a chunk of money already.
- kin 10y ago
  I don't see it happening any time soon if at all. Companies spend an insane amount of money advertising on Facebook platforms. If you're at all familiar with how companies buy ads in digital marketing, you'll realize how Facebook's targeting is super valuable and companies pay a pretty penny to target specific users. Not to mention, Facebook is quite the pioneer in tech. React is one of the most used front end libraries and the community around it is super positive. Then there's VR and their progress in 360 video. The list really goes on with Facebook.
- Mahn 10y ago
  Facebook is massive, at nearly 2 billion users they hold a monopoly that covers most of the connected world, and it's only going to continue to grow. They are not going away. Twitter on the other hand, it's not that they have failed, but probably that they were aiming a bit too high. Investors were likely expecting another Facebook, but Twitter is never going to become that, because it's not perceived as a fundamental part of people's digital lives. Everyone has a Facebook account, but only some use Twitter.
throwyawa62134 10y ago
A lot of Twitter's management in product/engineering seems to be from a very particular demographic. Graduated Stanford in early 2000s and quickly rose up the ladder in Google -- Alex Roetter, Josh McFarland, Keith Coleman. Aside from being what I assume to be exceptionally talented individuals, what do you guys think separates these people from their peers to make it to the VP level so quickly? As someone just getting started in my career, what steps can I take to put myself in a position to grow so quickly?
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  Join a hot startup that is growing, and rise the ranks. Or don't try to be the 1% of the 1% -- you don't seem cutthroat enough.
- marcinzm 10y ago
  The first question is what you want out of life, do you want to be manager, and executive, a technical lead or do you want to be purely technical? All four offer promotion paths at large and (increasingly) small companies although staying technical will hit an age issue eventually. They are also very different tracks. That said, it sounds like you want to be an executive and let's say one at a larger company (ie: not a paper executive but an actual one). The skills you need for that are going to be leadership, management, charisma, politics, and networking. Since you're not going the technical track your technical skills are secondary at best. You want a nice title on your resume so pick a top company and join there. Find a manager who is not afraid of your ambition (a career middle manager will likely be, find someone with ambition), act like a leader and get promoted. This will give you pedigree while also teaching you about politics and management. You will eventually hit diminishing returns. Then, like the people you mentioned, jump to a startup as one of the founders or the person running it. This will teach you how to be a standalone leader, build up a network, and give you some executive-ish experience. It's vital you have the skills at this point to impress people at first impressions and maintain a networking relationship with them. Then either get acquired by a larger company or switch after a while using your network to find the new position.
- baccheion 10y ago
  They are not that good, rising mainly due to timing and the political climate.
wyck 10y ago
There is this thing called the foundation of America and it centres on what's called the 1st amendment. If you think twitter or any social platform should interfere with that and somehow grants him a platform to destroy the world then I suggest you re-evaluate your stance, stop over reacting like a 15 year old, and pick up a copy of 1984.
- fullshark 10y ago
  I disagree with SapphireSun but Twitter isn't the gov't. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
  - SapphireSun 10y ago
    To be honest, I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, but it does seem like real damage might be done. I'm frankly worried about him starting a nuclear war. Most of our principles presuppose that the world won't end if we do something stupid. I'm not sure that assumption is valid in this case. EDIT: In nearly every other case, I am very pro-free speech. It 's an indicator of how shocking this is that I'm rethinking it at all.
    - wyck 10y ago
      So you thing censorship is the answer to your irrational fears? Thank god we don't live in the 17th century or you would be burning people at the stake for the same reasons.
      - SapphireSun 10y ago
        Why are my fears irrational? Are you saying he can't destroy most of human life on earth with the push of a button? We may disagree on his temperament, but the material fact remains.
        wyck 10y ago
        Can and will are not the same, that's why your fears are irrational. Unless you have some specific point on why he would as you say "push the button". Anyhow this was about censoring an opinion on Twitter, if you want to dilute your judgement then by all means go ahead, but this does come at a cost and censoring someone one twitter to prevent an imaginary war is certainly a stretch of the imagination, and I'm being polite. There is an actual argument that Hillary was going to impose a no fly zone on Russia in Syria. Would that have somehow alleviated tensions? Let's not forget about the red line, the sarin gas smuggled out of Libya (Bengazi), and the murder of Qaddafi in the streets, all very pertinent to the region. But alas I talk about things which can be argued and not "feelings", the hallmark of the emotionally comprised.
deleted 10y ago
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cekvenich3 10y ago
Jack is now doing political activism. Against the administration.
- rrggrr 10y ago
  This. Dorsey is destroying the product pandering to political interests.
  - alecco 10y ago
    Yep https://twitter.com/jack https://twitter.com/jack Hemorrhaging top execs and alienating userbase. Yet his feed is all PC Bro.
- AlwaysBCoding 10y ago
  Twitter's book burning of conservative accounts was horrific. One of the grossest displays from a tech company that I can remember. I have no idea how employees at Twitter aren't up in arms over it.
  - legodt 10y ago
    Bold of you to refer to a Holocaust event when the banned accounts were filled with hate speech, harassment, and neonazi views
dboreham 10y ago
Same old story: Making it up on volume...
throwaw12ay 10y ago
Twitter can make money, all it has to do is reduce its operational costs first. Then launch new products to grow. Twitter isn't going to become the new ad-sense or Facebook if it isn't a platform at first place. And you don't become a platform if your product isn't relevant to a lot of people. People use Google for search. People use Facebook to connect with friends and family. Who needs a Twitter account aside from journalists and attention-seekers? my grand mother doesn't need a twitter account. Nobody cares about her cooking a chicken or planting cucumbers in the garden BUT her closest relatives. And there is already Facebook for that.
- _audakel 10y ago
  i would totally pay a few dollars a month for an ad free experience on twitter
  - throwaway5752 10y ago
    Honestly, I was going to say that didn't square with their valuation per user, but I hadn't realized that it was less than $50/active user now. At $3.95/mo it appears to make sense at their current valuation / profit margin (admittedly very back of envelope) edit: before anyone notes it, I'm just thinking about offering it and the relative value of each on a per user basis vs ads. Yes, it would churn their userbase out of existence.
- tw04 10y ago
  What twitter SHOULD have done, and should probably re-consider, is leave the API open, but charge a fee to utilize it at scale. Let startups come up with creative new uses for your platform, and if they get traction - acquire them. You print money and find an easy target for growth. Twitter's problem is their continued refusal to recognize themselves as a platform. It's probably too late at this point, but I don't think they have anything to lose.
  - mgkimsal 10y ago
    Similar to aws? micro-pricing, or some free level? paying, say, 1c per 100 tweets for my app(s) would probably be doable. Or perhaps giving more metrics for paid accounts, or prioritized delivery?
sheraz 10y ago
I acknowledge that CEO is not an easy job, but in light of all the departures and drama, I honestly wonder if @jack really is the right person for the job? Seems that the problems with product, PR, and investor relations got worse when he came back. How much rope will the board give him before he hangs himself?
- mathattack 10y ago
  It seems like the model of "Strong Investment Banker elbows everyone else out" is winning over "Charismatic founder surrounding himself with talent." http://www.recode.net/2016/12/6/13814264/twitter-anthony-noto-growth-promotion-jack-dorsey http://www.recode.net/2016/12/6/13814264/twitter-anthony-not...
pritianka 10y ago
I think it's sad that Twitter is facing so many departures. It's unclear what is really happening but I do hope this service doesn't collapse. It's mind boggling to me that something so useful is struggling to stick around.
sherifmansour 10y ago
Can someone please tell me why the press hate Twitter so much?! It seems that every Twitter story these days is spun so negatively...
samstave 10y ago
ELI5 why this is important? (tell me the future of twitter)
sidcool 10y ago
I won't be surprised by this activity. Exodus of employees sometimes points towards a possible impending discounted acquisition.
- yellowbeard 10y ago
  Why? Do you have historical examples?
firebones 10y ago
No one is asking my opinion, but here it is: Trifurcate Twitter into three distinct parts: * The social--what users actually use it for. * The ad platform. * The realtime gestalt/search platform. The latter is what is inadequately funded and considered. Twitter has a latency advantage on the pulse of thought across the user base. The user base is already high-value for this relative to the morass of Facebook users. This is the key differentiator. This is what you base the platform and the value of search upon. You don't bury it by restricting the API, or trying to shift it into the realm of the social platform with "Moments"--you build dependency upon it, and monetize that unique value by those who need to keep the pulse. This creates value for the other two parts. It is also woefully underfunded. Someone mentioned an AWS-like model. That is thinking along the right track. Make the gestalt a utility that people will pay for. Yes, you still have all the spam/hate issues on the social platform, and those need to be solved. But those only become a corporate imperative if Twitter is resigned to merely being a social network rather than a platform. Maybe it's actually 4 parts--I forgot about the live event deals (e.g., NFL games). There's a raw, traditional media part, but I'd align that with the advertising part.
- nyxtom 10y ago
  Didn't they buy out Gnip precisely for this reason?
  - hnthroooow 10y ago
    I have no way to verify this is true, but I was told that they bought GNIP because (this sounds too ridiculous to type) they forgot to invoice them for two years for firehose access...when they remembered, GNIP couldn't afford the invoice, so buyout! Like I say, it's a rumor that may have shades of truth, but that's what I heard.
    - pmorelli 10y ago
      As someone who worked on that acquisition, that rumor is total horseshit.
jorblumesea 10y ago
Is it just me or do people feel that images/video are the future of digital interaction? Looking at IG/Snapchat and I feel like I'm viewing the future world of interactive social media being born. It's not that text based media is incorrect, it just feels like the communication form of the past. I want to be shown experience, not just read about them.
- dec0dedab0de 10y ago
  people use snapchat for text too.. its the fact that things arent saved by default that make it apealing.
- beagle3 10y ago
  > Is it just me or do people feel that images/video are the future of digital interaction? I feel images/video are the future of digital interaction in the same way that candy is the future of food. It is nice to have in moderation, but try to replace the basics completely and you'll have cavities and bad health.
known 10y ago
Twitter need CIO, not CTO.
baccheion 10y ago
Twitter's Senior Management rating on Glassdoor is a 3.0/5 (where the goal is 4.0/5 or higher), one of the lowest among Bay Area companies. It's down there with eBay (3.0), HP (2.7), PayPal (3.1), etc. That is, they clearly need to replace their entire management structure. For reference: Facebook (4.3), Google (3.9), Uber (3.9), Snapchat (3.8), AirBnB (3.7), Quora (3.7), Dropbox (3.6), Abobe (3.6), Apple (3.5), Pinterest (3.5), and Microsoft (3.4).
ensiferum 10y ago
And why is this newsworthy?
wattt 10y ago
I heart this

426 points by bootload 10y ago

Tweet from the CTO: https://twitter.com/adam_messinger/status/811326653339025408 https://twitter.com/adam_messinger/status/811326653339025408

chollida1 10y ago

I think its valid to ask if Jack Dorsey is the next executive to leave. The moment Anthony Noto went to Twitter, all wall street could talk about was that he was brought in to sell the company. Who ever the next CTO is, they're going to have some tough decisions to make. Twitter already has to pay out an extreme amount of compensation in stock options just to get and retain talent. I don't want this to seem inflammatory to people as twitter obviously has some serious engineering talent, but does anyone consider them to be a big name in tech anymore? They seem to be in the range of say PayPal in that they have a decent reputation but they aren't really a name that gets you any resume recognition anymore. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/business/dealbook/twitters-steep-premium-the-cost-of-employee-stock-grants.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/business/dealbook/twitters... > By way of comparison, the company reported $2.2 billion in revenue for 2015 — meaning that it paid out 31 cents in stock-based compensation for every dollar of sales it collected. You're going to be fighting several battles that aren't really engineering related, - how to finally fix harassment that seems to be much more pronounced on your platform than pretty much any other mainstream social media site. - how to get alot more advertising dollars on your site to an audience that short of reddit, seems to dislike advertising more than most social media sites. And on top of all of this, you're probably going to have to shrink your engineering head count to make yourself look more appetizing to potential acquirers. Yikes......

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
The moment Dick left was when I felt a disturbance in the twitterverse (but I also have a disdain for Dorsey). It kind of felt weird to me that Twitter went from this platform of literally starting revolutions to managing expectations of its users in the name "fighting harassment". I now use it simply to tweet out my latest recipes...
- SapphireSun 10y ago
  Since the US election, Twitter has been headline newsworthy nearly every day. Whether you think that's a bad thing or not, it's still a potent force in the world, surprisingly to me.
  - basch 10y ago
    twitter itself is newsworthy, or are you saying what people write on it. do you consider the email protocol or telephone newsworthy daily?
    - slouch 10y ago
      My local ISP doesn't implement Twitter
  - stonecodegump 10y ago
    I signed up specifically so I could follow Trumps tweets post election. It seems this is where government policy is going to be formed for a while.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> They seem to be in the range of say PayPal in that they have a decent reputation but they aren't really a name that gets you any resume recognition anymore. PayPal doesn't get you "name recognition" anymore? In fact I would expect Twitter would garner more because of their larger open source initiatives but I still hear lots of chatter about PayPal and the people who have worked there. Maybe I'm just in a weird bubble but I still consider PayPal one of the big tech names.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
grandalf 10y ago
> a big name in tech anymore Donald Trump is making headlines using Twitter every day. I think that once users/victims become immune to Facebook's dark patterns, Twitter will look pretty good. The only thing it can do to screw that up is continue censoring content and allowing botnets.
- narrator 10y ago
  What's just bizarre is that they were seriously considering censoring Donald Trump's account at one point and even announced it. From a purely business standpoint, that was a dumb idea even to propose. It makes you wonder about the rationality of management and if they view the company as some sort of hipster San Francisco hobby paid for by VCs and not as a profit making enterprise.
  - SapphireSun 10y ago
    It's amazing from a business perspective, but at a certain point ethical questions arise. Should Twitter give a world shakingly powerful lier an unfiltered platform to the public? If he had to go through the press, everything he said would be filtered by editors and fact checkers. Incredible business opportunity, but frankly, the fate of the world is in part being determined by Twitter's granting him a platform. I can understand their vacillation around this issue.
    - sumedh 10y ago
      > Should Twitter give a world shakingly powerful lier an unfiltered platform to the public? All Politicians lie. Twitter is not in the business of being a fact checker.
      - foldr 10y ago
        Not all politicians retweet white supremacists, though.
        10y ago
slg 10y ago
Was Twitter ever really about tech excellence? My perspective as an outsider who doesn't live or work in Silicon Valley, it always seemed more of a communications and media company founded on a tech backbone. Beyond their early scaling problems, which they spent a long, long time fighting, what really exciting tech has emerged from Twitter? Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook all have much more impressive technology to show for themselves over the last several years.
- nightski 10y ago
  "Tech excellence" sounds like such a useless buzzword. There is no such thing, just incrementally better.
- blackaspen 10y ago
  Twitter's Github: https://github.com/twitter https://github.com/twitter Apache Aurora, Bootstrap, Storm, Heron, Pants, ThriftMux, DistributedLog, Apache Cotton, Iago, just to name a few.
  - slg 10y ago
    Can't most of those projects be boiled down to dealing with scaling? Twitter has seemed to have been mostly focused inwards, trying to get themselves more efficient at being Twitter. The other companies I mentioned seem more ambitious in expanding their tech outwards.
    - minimaxir 10y ago
      That's a No True Scotsman perspective. Scaling isn't easy.
      - slg 10y ago
        I'm not saying it is easy or disparaging the work of the engineers there. I am saying it seems like they have a different approach to how tech fits in with the goals of the company. To oversimplify, Twitter is focused on efficiency while others are focused on growth. Maybe the actual goals are different, but that is the impression I get looking at their output.
user5994461 10y ago
> Twitter already has to pay out an extreme amount of compensation in stock options just to get and retain talent. Lay off then no need to pay it. There are 4000 employees, which is about one order of magnitude too much.
- popcorncolonel 10y ago
  You suggest they lay off 90% of their employees?
  - throwanem 10y ago
    No, just a hair over three quarters. Anyone can see that's perfectly reasonable. (...he said, not realizing it was on the close order of what someone else here is advocating. Whence comes the idea that Twitter is overpopulated? Do we hear it from current or ex-Twitter-ers?)
    - mikekchar 10y ago
      Not going to argue with you. 4000 employees is going to lead to a lot of inertia when doing development (even if only 10% of them were devs). However, the culture and process changes you need to institute in order to make such a change work is not trivial. Probably necessary for the future growth of the company, but could quite easily end up killing it in the process.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Not asking you to argue with me. I'd just be interested to see some substantiation for the claim that Twitter is overstaffed. It seems like that claim turns up a lot, and I'm sort of surprised that no one seems to have taken the time to explain why he thinks so.
        user5994461 10y ago
        The claims come from current and ex employees. Basically, in the least offense terms, doing nothing all day and got nothing to do.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
makomk 10y ago
Twitter's problem isn't just that they have to fix harassment, it's that they have to do it without touching social justice activism that sure looks similar to it from the outside, right down to the doxing, threats, and smears. Oh, and they'll get no sympathy for getting this wrong as the difference is apparently obvious... except that everyone defines it differently (usually based on who their friends are) and simply assumes the world shares their definition. Good luck.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  Isn't the platform just the best medium for harassing and trolling? What else can you do with 140 chars? Have you ever heard about good tweets? It's always negativity.
  - makomk 10y ago
    Twitter's popular with journalists for some reason, most likely because it's an easy way to find potential stories and promote their work. This is probably part of the problem - it means that when ordinary users are nasty to them or their friends it's personal, and the same when they or their friends get their accounts suspended.
    - redthrowaway 10y ago
      And twitter being popular with journalists makes it a fantastic platform for news junkies like myself. But that's mostly a one-way street.
    - angry-hacker 10y ago
      Because only celebrities and journalists benefit from Twitter. It's boring for regular joe's, unless you like to only consume. Or troll :)
  - inimino 10y ago
    Since the election I've been spending time on HN and to a lesser extent Twitter. Every time I visit Twitter I find myself instinctively reaching for the downvote button, but there isn't one. About the only thing you can do when someone says (or retweets) something totally idiotic on Twitter is either unfollow, or, of course, reply. In other words, there is no way to register disapproval without simultaneously calling attention to the very thing you disapprove of. One of the absolute best features of HN is the downvote button and the way it is implemented. Downvotes are stronger than upvotes, and the downvoted content gets buried. A community that lets anyone join has to work hard to maintain a high standard. Downvotes don't kick people out, but they kick bad content off. Twitter has nothing like this, so the worst content gets the most attention. You can choose who you follow but users get no negative feedback on inappropriate tweets. So the norms shift towards whatever creates engagement, which is often outrage, fear, and strongly negative emotional content, with or without any rational foundation. If Twitter wants engaging and constructive dialog, they need a way to take out the trash. Unfortunately, Twitter's problem is that their potential for social good and their potential for revenue may never align. Since they are failing at turning a profit, it is unsurprising that they seem to be giving no consideration whatsoever to social responsibility.
gotthemwmds 10y ago
Anecdotally speaking, in the last 2 years, I've seen 3 ex-Twitter (as their most recent position) people apply, and none of them made it passed the second phone interview, which was the first real technical one. I didn't do the interviews myself, but I watched them, and I was very unimpressed with the applicants. I can say this about most (70%) Amazon people too... (and am in Seattle, so we see a lot of them).
pritianka 10y ago
I think the product is solid, for a specific purpose, for a specific audience. However, they've failed to figure out the broad appeal that can lead to advertising dollars. I think their usage demographic is too narrow for a public company level of earnings. To me this is a product leadership issue. I agree that perhaps Jack Dorsey would be the next to leave. The biggest fear I, as a Twitter fan, would have is a private equity fire sale.

rb808 10y ago

It feels like Twitter the company should be imploding, but it must be a secure business if its the next president's primary communication channel.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
MichaelApproved 10y ago
Trump uses Twitter but he didn't invite them to the tech summit reportedly for not creating a special trending tag for him. Trump enjoys being treated like royalty. I doubt he has loyalty to Twitter and would jump ship to another company that puts him on a pedestal. He would enjoy seeing the millions of customers who follow him.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > another company What other company offers a similar broadcast style approach for text content and doesn't require real name registration?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - symlinkk 10y ago
    gab.ai
  - fooey 10y ago
    r/The_Donald or /pol? Really though, Trump would fit right in on 4chan.
    - lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
      Nah, 4chan is the opposite of the kind of forum he craves. Everyone is a nameless faceless anon, so unless Trump starts leaking things about himself, he's just another boring racist troll in a crowd of boring racist trolls (just maybe 5x the average age).

aresant 10y ago

Bigger to me is the VP of Product - Josh McFarland - just bailed out 30 minutes ago too: https://twitter.com/crazyfoo/status/811331557608652800 https://twitter.com/crazyfoo/status/811331557608652800 AKA outside of Dorsey, who is a split / shared CEO, who is in charge of Twitter?

johns 10y ago
I hope using a tweetstorm to announce his departure was a subtle shot at the company's inability to ship a product the way people want to use it.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  I know I might sound like a vim user, but tweetstorms are honestly one of my favourite parts of twitter. Maybe there could be a better UI for authoring and displaying them, but there's something I really enjoy about reading a story 140 characters at a time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dopamean 10y ago
    Judging by the amount of noise I've heard recently on this topic you may be the only person who like that.
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      It's cute. It's part of the medium. Books must have pages. Tweetstorms must have 140char tweets.
      - trhway 10y ago
        >Tweetstorms must have 140char tweets. seems to be matching the pacing of a graphic novel.

josh_carterPDX 10y ago

Twitter is a business model that will be studied for years IMHO. No clear path to revenue, viral adoption, and very little product development away from its core competencies. I use Twitter often, but it has always seemed like a platform most useful if you have something to promote. One big flaw has been trying to find value to ordinary users who want to do something beyond typing into an echo chamber. If Twitter goes away it would be interested to figure out what would take its place.

criddell 10y ago
> No clear path to revenue I don't know about that. They have $2.2 billion in revenue last year. Get the employee count down to 300 people and you have a great business.
- josh_carterPDX 10y ago
  No you're right. However, aside from having ad revenue I don't see anything they can do to accelerate their revenue growth. But yeah, cut spending, get employee count way down, and they could break even sooner than later.
  - basch 10y ago
    bull. twitters growth stalled because its way to hard to join and sort through. look how long you can be part of reddit before you make an account. you can even bookmark http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience and have a custom mix without having an account. their logged out front page is a pile of shit. imgur.com is better at what twitter is trying to be, twitter should chase digg/medium not lowest common denominator memegrabs.
    - criddell 10y ago
      > twitters growth stalled I think maybe Twitter's growth stalled because it's mostly done growing. Do they need more users? They can already generate billions of dollars every year and maybe that's enough.

argonaut 10y ago

I don't think this is as big a deal as the Twitter departures earlier this year. Several years ago Adam Messinger was already more or less sidelined from the engineering organization when Chris Fry was made VP of Engineering (CTO does not imply the VP of Engineering reports to the CTO). Later Chris Fry would be replaced by Alex Roetter (thanks commenter below). After Roetter left, Messinger was put back in charge of the engineering organization. But given he had been removed from it (and passed over) in the past, it's not surprising he would leave, voluntarily or involuntarily.

streblo 10y ago
He wasn't even the head of the engineering organization before Roetter. He (Messinger) was sidelined by Chris Fry before Roetter ever took over.
- argonaut 10y ago
  Yeah that sounds about right.
  - sulam 10y ago
    After Mike Abbott left he was responsible for user-facing engineering reporting to Dick. Eventually Chris Fry moved up to SVP and he moved to CTO. So you're mostly right, but there was that weird period in there where he and Chris were peers. Then they were "peers" again, although he didn't have directs.
sulam 10y ago
It's a bigger deal than that because he was put back in charge of the engineering organization for real. That means that from when I started there to now, the engineering leadership has been: Mike Abbott Dick Costolo -> (Chris Fry, Adam Messinger, Mazen Rawashdeh) Chris Fry Alex Roetter Adam Messinger ??? Not as bad as product, but illustrative, and there were far more VP/Director changes in there along the way. In general you knew you were in for a re-org that affected you in a material way every 6 months. I had 10 managers in well under 5 years. It's not surprising many people just crawl in a hole and hope they get ignored while they vest and get stuff done.

danso 10y ago

I hope the best for Twitter, as it's probably been the most beneficial of the social media network services (unless you count GMail) for me. I wish I could devote more of my programming class curriculum to teaching the Twitter API, as it has so many rich use-cases and students really enjoy it, but I expect that if Twitter survives for the long-haul, its API probably won't. At least, I expect it to be constrained in the same way Facebook has constrained its previously liberal (in the sense of data scope, not political) data endpoints. edit: grammar

minimaxir 10y ago
Interestingly, Facebook is surprisingly liberal with their public data endpoints, with no apparent rate limiting for API retrieval from public Facebook Pages and Groups (source: I develop a scraper and have not been yelled at by FB, yet: https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper ) Twitter, meanwhile, still has that stupid 3200 most-recent tweet limit on historical data, which is apparently a "technical limitation."
- danso 10y ago
  It's been awhile since I've used the FB API, but one thing that's nice about Twitter is that you have a lot of room to crawl networks of users; for example, I always like getting the list of accounts that U.S. congressmembers follow (based on the Twitter account list maintained by the unitedstates project [0]), as a proxy for such things as perceived political bent of media organizations. An example of the FB limitations I'm thinking about is how you can't query the graph API by username, e.g. http://graph.facebook.com/mark.zuckerberg http://graph.facebook.com/mark.zuckerberg There were other changes made before that, that's just one I remember in my latter days of using their API. Granted, I've always been impressed with the analyses you've done with FB data and have put it on my list someday to learn through your examples :). [0] https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators
  - minimaxir 10y ago

riffic 10y ago

Twitter's failure is a failure to embrace an open web. The next CTO at Twitter should take a deep hard look at decentralization, protocols such as OStatus, and how to provide an open platform (like email) not a walled garden. Say one manages a government agency or any other large organization -- Why the heck would they put all eggs into a provider's basket rather than set up their own GNU social infrastructure? Does anyone not realize the power of controlling their own namespace?

sulam 10y ago
I'd love to hear how you think they make money in this world.
- riffic 10y ago
  advertising, same as any other company. edit: oh are you talking status quo, or an idealized business model?
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Oh neat. So, in order to avoid having ads filtered at federation boundaries, thus delivering zero value to ad buyers and zero revenue to themselves, they now have a very strong incentive to come up with advertising only imperceptibly different from everything that is not advertising.
    - riffic 10y ago
      see edit, I assumed the question was referring to the status quo. A better model than advertising would be to charge those broadcasting their message to a large number of recipients (your CNNs and Trumps should be the ones paying to play).
      - sulam 10y ago
        So you drive away your biggest draw? In the media-centric view of the world, those people would be asking for a cut of revenues. There's clearly a major disconnect from reality on one side or the other here. Any examples of successful businesses that do it the way you describe?

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

I'm sure it's simply arm chair quarter backing but I feel like Twitter could be turned around and I think almost anyone could do it as long as they can force them to take action and quickly. Honestly I feel like I shouldn't even post this because it's half on topic and half off topic. But I was thinking about some ideas I think Twitter should do and, well, screw it I'm curious to see what the HN community thinks of any of my ideas. Twitter should: - Lay off approx 60-70% of the staff. Seriously Twitter is way, way, way over staffed. I mean I don't want to see this happen but Twitter is so employee heavy I don't understand how they can sustain themselves without losing a large amount of employees. - Longer forms of communication. Yeah yeah I know "Twitter is short it makes people be concise" yadda yadda yadda; look a lot of the top Twitter users constantly do tweet storms. Many post photos of long form content. Sure maybe you keep the same limits but allow a way to stitch together multiple tweets should you want to do something long form. Right now the dialog gets ruined because comments get spliced during the user posting their thoughts. This has to be addressed somehow. They're losing out on too much conversation and context when people post things like photos of text. - Need some focus around various types of media. Video is especially important. Look at Instagram, they copied Snap's stories and BOOM, big success. Twitter is positioned to be a messaging pipe for the internet. Let's get more types of media flowing through it! Make Live even faster to start (dedicated button). Make image taking native, too. Single button, type text, posted. Done. - Better ways of handling discussions. Something threaded, not counting usernames in limits (to a degree; can't have someone spamming hundreds at once). In a similar vein create groups so conversations / discussions can rapidly happen inside of groups. - More tools for filtering, maybe creating separate views for different types of people you follow (like it would be great to see what my friends are saying versus what news sources are saying etc without going through the cumbersome list UX). - Verification so if someone wants to use their real name they can have it verified and can even filter by verified so they can filter out the noise if they want. Facebook is pretty damn successful at real names but you can also create alternate personalities via Pages. I think Twitter should mimic this functionality to a degree.

Benjammer 10y ago
Apart from layoffs, how do you see your other ideas adding business value and/or revenue to the company rather than just making the product better for end users? Are you thinking about how Twitter could be a better product or a better business?

sna1l 10y ago

It is disappointing because I personally still believe Twitter has a lot of potential, and it seems like they can't catch a break. I don't work at Twitter, so it is hard for me to tell how much this exec drain has had an effect on delivery and execution, but I'd imagine a good amount. The NFL Thursday Twitter has been super disappointing. I wish there was a way to get the video screen mostly full, and have a live feed of MY timeline on the feed. I definitely am tweeting a ton during sporting events, and feel like I never see targeted ads or well thought out products surrounding that.

usaphp 10y ago

While it's a topic about twitter I'd like to ask a question that always puzzles me. Twitter has 3900+ employees and good portion of those are developers, I just don't understand how can such a basic product that almost never pushes any updates or radical changes/improvements require so many employees. What the hell are they doing except for burning investors cash? Just curious...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
djfm 10y ago
It's probably harder than we think because of the scale of it.
- markcerqueira 10y ago
  Yeah, but that only really applies to specific engineering teams like backend services and ops right? Web (frontend), iOS, Android, etc. don't really care about scale.
  - was_boring 10y ago
    Seriously. The amount of people on the android team can't be more than 5 people devs, right? Maybe allocate 10 so you have some redundancy when people get sick.
- sulam 10y ago
  Also a surprising fraction goes to data science and advertising infrastructure. Stuff that would go away if they weren't worried about making money. :)
- zcam 10y ago
  Whatsapp is a good counter example.
  - RBerenguel 10y ago

djfm 10y ago

I have mixed feelings about twitter. On the one hand I see it as a nice way to make interesting conversations surface and reach a wide audience. On the other hand I see it as a constant stream of ads. I don't know if I'd be happy if it all goes down, or if something better comes along. Which problem is twitter actually trying to solve?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dmix 10y ago
> Which problem is twitter actually trying to solve? Somewhere between a real time news platform and wasting time ala social entertainment?
- djfm 10y ago
  Yeah, can it really do both properly?

brilliantcode 10y ago

when will we see the same for Facebook? If Twitter falls then it's a shift in investor's attitude towards "should make lots of money at unknown time down the road". Money today is more valuable than money tomorrow. Tech seems to have been a curious exception as it was in the 2000 bubble.

awa 10y ago
If you look at the financials, FB is making a chunk of money already.
kin 10y ago
I don't see it happening any time soon if at all. Companies spend an insane amount of money advertising on Facebook platforms. If you're at all familiar with how companies buy ads in digital marketing, you'll realize how Facebook's targeting is super valuable and companies pay a pretty penny to target specific users. Not to mention, Facebook is quite the pioneer in tech. React is one of the most used front end libraries and the community around it is super positive. Then there's VR and their progress in 360 video. The list really goes on with Facebook.
Mahn 10y ago
Facebook is massive, at nearly 2 billion users they hold a monopoly that covers most of the connected world, and it's only going to continue to grow. They are not going away. Twitter on the other hand, it's not that they have failed, but probably that they were aiming a bit too high. Investors were likely expecting another Facebook, but Twitter is never going to become that, because it's not perceived as a fundamental part of people's digital lives. Everyone has a Facebook account, but only some use Twitter.

throwyawa62134 10y ago

A lot of Twitter's management in product/engineering seems to be from a very particular demographic. Graduated Stanford in early 2000s and quickly rose up the ladder in Google -- Alex Roetter, Josh McFarland, Keith Coleman. Aside from being what I assume to be exceptionally talented individuals, what do you guys think separates these people from their peers to make it to the VP level so quickly? As someone just getting started in my career, what steps can I take to put myself in a position to grow so quickly?

fjdlwlv 10y ago
Join a hot startup that is growing, and rise the ranks. Or don't try to be the 1% of the 1% -- you don't seem cutthroat enough.
marcinzm 10y ago
The first question is what you want out of life, do you want to be manager, and executive, a technical lead or do you want to be purely technical? All four offer promotion paths at large and (increasingly) small companies although staying technical will hit an age issue eventually. They are also very different tracks. That said, it sounds like you want to be an executive and let's say one at a larger company (ie: not a paper executive but an actual one). The skills you need for that are going to be leadership, management, charisma, politics, and networking. Since you're not going the technical track your technical skills are secondary at best. You want a nice title on your resume so pick a top company and join there. Find a manager who is not afraid of your ambition (a career middle manager will likely be, find someone with ambition), act like a leader and get promoted. This will give you pedigree while also teaching you about politics and management. You will eventually hit diminishing returns. Then, like the people you mentioned, jump to a startup as one of the founders or the person running it. This will teach you how to be a standalone leader, build up a network, and give you some executive-ish experience. It's vital you have the skills at this point to impress people at first impressions and maintain a networking relationship with them. Then either get acquired by a larger company or switch after a while using your network to find the new position.
baccheion 10y ago
They are not that good, rising mainly due to timing and the political climate.

wyck 10y ago

There is this thing called the foundation of America and it centres on what's called the 1st amendment. If you think twitter or any social platform should interfere with that and somehow grants him a platform to destroy the world then I suggest you re-evaluate your stance, stop over reacting like a 15 year old, and pick up a copy of 1984.

fullshark 10y ago
I disagree with SapphireSun but Twitter isn't the gov't. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- SapphireSun 10y ago
  To be honest, I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, but it does seem like real damage might be done. I'm frankly worried about him starting a nuclear war. Most of our principles presuppose that the world won't end if we do something stupid. I'm not sure that assumption is valid in this case. EDIT: In nearly every other case, I am very pro-free speech. It 's an indicator of how shocking this is that I'm rethinking it at all.
  - wyck 10y ago
    So you thing censorship is the answer to your irrational fears? Thank god we don't live in the 17th century or you would be burning people at the stake for the same reasons.
    - SapphireSun 10y ago
      Why are my fears irrational? Are you saying he can't destroy most of human life on earth with the push of a button? We may disagree on his temperament, but the material fact remains.
      - wyck 10y ago
        Can and will are not the same, that's why your fears are irrational. Unless you have some specific point on why he would as you say "push the button". Anyhow this was about censoring an opinion on Twitter, if you want to dilute your judgement then by all means go ahead, but this does come at a cost and censoring someone one twitter to prevent an imaginary war is certainly a stretch of the imagination, and I'm being polite. There is an actual argument that Hillary was going to impose a no fly zone on Russia in Syria. Would that have somehow alleviated tensions? Let's not forget about the red line, the sarin gas smuggled out of Libya (Bengazi), and the murder of Qaddafi in the streets, all very pertinent to the region. But alas I talk about things which can be argued and not "feelings", the hallmark of the emotionally comprised.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cekvenich3 10y ago

Jack is now doing political activism. Against the administration.

rrggrr 10y ago
This. Dorsey is destroying the product pandering to political interests.
- alecco 10y ago
  Yep https://twitter.com/jack https://twitter.com/jack Hemorrhaging top execs and alienating userbase. Yet his feed is all PC Bro.
AlwaysBCoding 10y ago
Twitter's book burning of conservative accounts was horrific. One of the grossest displays from a tech company that I can remember. I have no idea how employees at Twitter aren't up in arms over it.
- legodt 10y ago
  Bold of you to refer to a Holocaust event when the banned accounts were filled with hate speech, harassment, and neonazi views

dboreham 10y ago

Same old story: Making it up on volume...

throwaw12ay 10y ago

Twitter can make money, all it has to do is reduce its operational costs first. Then launch new products to grow. Twitter isn't going to become the new ad-sense or Facebook if it isn't a platform at first place. And you don't become a platform if your product isn't relevant to a lot of people. People use Google for search. People use Facebook to connect with friends and family. Who needs a Twitter account aside from journalists and attention-seekers? my grand mother doesn't need a twitter account. Nobody cares about her cooking a chicken or planting cucumbers in the garden BUT her closest relatives. And there is already Facebook for that.

_audakel 10y ago
i would totally pay a few dollars a month for an ad free experience on twitter
- throwaway5752 10y ago
  Honestly, I was going to say that didn't square with their valuation per user, but I hadn't realized that it was less than $50/active user now. At $3.95/mo it appears to make sense at their current valuation / profit margin (admittedly very back of envelope) edit: before anyone notes it, I'm just thinking about offering it and the relative value of each on a per user basis vs ads. Yes, it would churn their userbase out of existence.
tw04 10y ago
What twitter SHOULD have done, and should probably re-consider, is leave the API open, but charge a fee to utilize it at scale. Let startups come up with creative new uses for your platform, and if they get traction - acquire them. You print money and find an easy target for growth. Twitter's problem is their continued refusal to recognize themselves as a platform. It's probably too late at this point, but I don't think they have anything to lose.
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  Similar to aws? micro-pricing, or some free level? paying, say, 1c per 100 tweets for my app(s) would probably be doable. Or perhaps giving more metrics for paid accounts, or prioritized delivery?

sheraz 10y ago

I acknowledge that CEO is not an easy job, but in light of all the departures and drama, I honestly wonder if @jack really is the right person for the job? Seems that the problems with product, PR, and investor relations got worse when he came back. How much rope will the board give him before he hangs himself?

mathattack 10y ago
It seems like the model of "Strong Investment Banker elbows everyone else out" is winning over "Charismatic founder surrounding himself with talent." http://www.recode.net/2016/12/6/13814264/twitter-anthony-noto-growth-promotion-jack-dorsey http://www.recode.net/2016/12/6/13814264/twitter-anthony-not...

pritianka 10y ago

I think it's sad that Twitter is facing so many departures. It's unclear what is really happening but I do hope this service doesn't collapse. It's mind boggling to me that something so useful is struggling to stick around.

sherifmansour 10y ago

Can someone please tell me why the press hate Twitter so much?! It seems that every Twitter story these days is spun so negatively...

samstave 10y ago

ELI5 why this is important? (tell me the future of twitter)

sidcool 10y ago

I won't be surprised by this activity. Exodus of employees sometimes points towards a possible impending discounted acquisition.

yellowbeard 10y ago
Why? Do you have historical examples?

firebones 10y ago

No one is asking my opinion, but here it is: Trifurcate Twitter into three distinct parts: * The social--what users actually use it for. * The ad platform. * The realtime gestalt/search platform. The latter is what is inadequately funded and considered. Twitter has a latency advantage on the pulse of thought across the user base. The user base is already high-value for this relative to the morass of Facebook users. This is the key differentiator. This is what you base the platform and the value of search upon. You don't bury it by restricting the API, or trying to shift it into the realm of the social platform with "Moments"--you build dependency upon it, and monetize that unique value by those who need to keep the pulse. This creates value for the other two parts. It is also woefully underfunded. Someone mentioned an AWS-like model. That is thinking along the right track. Make the gestalt a utility that people will pay for. Yes, you still have all the spam/hate issues on the social platform, and those need to be solved. But those only become a corporate imperative if Twitter is resigned to merely being a social network rather than a platform. Maybe it's actually 4 parts--I forgot about the live event deals (e.g., NFL games). There's a raw, traditional media part, but I'd align that with the advertising part.

nyxtom 10y ago
Didn't they buy out Gnip precisely for this reason?
- hnthroooow 10y ago
  I have no way to verify this is true, but I was told that they bought GNIP because (this sounds too ridiculous to type) they forgot to invoice them for two years for firehose access...when they remembered, GNIP couldn't afford the invoice, so buyout! Like I say, it's a rumor that may have shades of truth, but that's what I heard.
  - pmorelli 10y ago
    As someone who worked on that acquisition, that rumor is total horseshit.

jorblumesea 10y ago

Is it just me or do people feel that images/video are the future of digital interaction? Looking at IG/Snapchat and I feel like I'm viewing the future world of interactive social media being born. It's not that text based media is incorrect, it just feels like the communication form of the past. I want to be shown experience, not just read about them.

dec0dedab0de 10y ago
people use snapchat for text too.. its the fact that things arent saved by default that make it apealing.
beagle3 10y ago
> Is it just me or do people feel that images/video are the future of digital interaction? I feel images/video are the future of digital interaction in the same way that candy is the future of food. It is nice to have in moderation, but try to replace the basics completely and you'll have cavities and bad health.

known 10y ago

Twitter need CIO, not CTO.

baccheion 10y ago

Twitter's Senior Management rating on Glassdoor is a 3.0/5 (where the goal is 4.0/5 or higher), one of the lowest among Bay Area companies. It's down there with eBay (3.0), HP (2.7), PayPal (3.1), etc. That is, they clearly need to replace their entire management structure. For reference: Facebook (4.3), Google (3.9), Uber (3.9), Snapchat (3.8), AirBnB (3.7), Quora (3.7), Dropbox (3.6), Abobe (3.6), Apple (3.5), Pinterest (3.5), and Microsoft (3.4).

ensiferum 10y ago

And why is this newsworthy?

wattt 10y ago

I heart this