7 ms·

It's interesting to see how the power and reach of every word on Twitter by politicians or journalists, yet Twitter is unable to profit from it. On the other ha

by mtw 10y ago

It's interesting to see how the power and reach of every word on Twitter by politicians or journalists, yet Twitter is unable to profit from it. On the other hand, nobody cares about the power of a Facebook posting or an instagram, yet Facebook makes so much money of the frivolity.

schnevets 10y ago
And a Snap is volatile and even more frivolous! Maybe they're even MORE valuable!
- sjg007 10y ago
  Snapchat has a novel engagement mechanism. Short multimedia interactive ads in a captured setting. The format has potential. The Snapstream keeps people hooked. It's basically a next gen Facebook but more private.
danjoc 10y ago
>yet Twitter is unable to profit from it. Twitter could front run wall street on Donald Trump tweets.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  It does seem like having early access to all tweets would be immensely valuable, even if it was only a second of lead time. (Sure, Trump tweets are valuable on their own, but market info has to be encoded into coarse-grained info about individually useless tweets as well.) Unless they have an explicit policy against it, Twitter must be selling this, right?
  - aetherson 10y ago
    New business model: For $1M per tweet, you can have a 50ms head-start on tweets from Trump. Just Trump, just one tier of headstart/pricing. You prepay for the next N tweets. You can set time-ranges (like, "when the markets are open") for when you want to pay for the headstart. I bet they could get a few tens of millions of revenue there. Probably HFT firms would at least experiment with it, right? Might get them into some serious regulatory crosshairs.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      What regulation? Insider trading requires actual insiders; non-insiders are generally allowed to trade on non-public information.
      - wtvanhest 10y ago
        A non insider that posseses material, nonpublic info is not allowed to trade on it until it becomes public.
        mck- 10y ago
        But this is already common practice with Bloomberg terminals -- banks paying big bucks get 15min earlier information than the public
        wtvanhest 10y ago
        Prices are not nonpublic info. You can get them a number of ways without using bloomberg. Most people in finance believe in at least semi-efficient markets which means prices are not material anyway
        jessriedel 10y ago
        The sources I can find say there is only a violation when the person trading is an insider or is purposefully tipped off by an insider. http://www.sandstormgold.com/_resources/policies/SSL_Stock_Trading_Policy.pdf http://www.sandstormgold.com/_resources/policies/SSL_Stock_T... https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Definition_of_.22insider.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Definition_of_... The most direct version is here: > In 1983, Switzer was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an alleged civil violation of the laws prohibiting "insider trading" of securities. He defended himself as having innocently overheard the information while lounging on the bleacher behind some corporate insiders—at a stadium where Switzer was watching his elder son compete in a track meet. The case was tried in Oklahoma City United States District Court (before a special U.S. District Judge appointed from Kansas). The case was dismissed at the conclusion of the Government's case for its failure to demonstrate that there had been any purposeful disclosure to Switzer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Switzer#After_coaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Switzer#After_coaching https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/1986/062086grundfest.pdf#page=09 https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/1986/062086grundfest.pdf#pag... Do you have a source that says otherwise? The situation is even more clear for Twitter. If I'm a marine biologist making the world's most detailed measurements of the ocean, I can clearly use this info to buy or sell stock in a fishing company, even if I don't release that info publicly. Likewise, I can sell that info to someone else who makes the trades.
- _yosefk 10y ago
  This is the funniest thing I read today. The problem of course is how to trade them.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Got you covered, fam: https://github.com/maxbbraun/trump2cash https://github.com/maxbbraun/trump2cash
xyzzy4 10y ago
They're potentially able to profit from it, but they feel the need to have thousands of employees.
swamp40 10y ago
They should charge you for each 'like' you get for a post. First 100 would be free.
- mirimir 10y ago
  They could at least charge by completed likes. That is, hold likes as prospective, and complete only after payment.
gdubs 10y ago
It's reminiscent of the way that broadcast news was transformed as profit became a motive (basically the themes that are explored in the movie 'Network'). News orgs were never in themselves meant to be profitable, yet they were at the heart of the big three network's identities (and had enormous reach).
- linkregister 10y ago
  > News orgs were never in themselves meant to be profitable Can you talk more about this? I was always under the impression that newspapers and newsrooms were always for-profit enterprises.
  - genericpseudo 10y ago
    Local ad networks masquerading as news organizations. Record labels and newspapers have a lot in common; they were global logistics companies first (the core competence of Atlantic was shipping highly-processed petrochemical discs around the world) and media companies not really at all. What newspapers had was a lock on the business now owned by Craigslist, with the transport and fulfillment network (newsagents and delivery vans!) being the key asset. Once that went away they were no longer businesses. They didn't see it that way, but that's because their core business was so good they could afford to delude themselves - it didn't matter that they didn't know what they were really doing, the business model was that powerful. Google is remarkably similar in many ways.
    - dilemma 10y ago
      AAA+ comment.
  - cclements 10y ago
    You, know I remembered seeing something about this in the show 'newsroom': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrOqjS9ZyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrOqjS9ZyA But trying to do a little research on it, the best I could come up with for proof is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Time_Access_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Time_Access_Rule Still a good show though.
anigbrowl 10y ago
Oh I care about the power of FB posting and indeed instagram. I think you're seriously underestimating the reach and popularity of those platforms.
gozur88 10y ago
You can reach people on Twitter, but there's some question as to how much you can influence people. Periodically I see articles from people with hundreds of thousands of followers who admit to being unable to translate that into sales, or hits to their site, or votes, or whatever. Twitter is a great platform to keep your name in the public consciousness. So... indispensable if you're a Kardashian. Other than that, though, it's not clear. A lot of people are wasting a lot of time building up a subscriber account that ends up being meaningless. Facebook makes money because people give it a lot more information than they give twitter. Too much, IMO.
AznHisoka 10y ago
thats untrue. Look at all the articles written when Beyonce posts her pregnant body on Instagram as an example. we only think twitter has so much influence because thats where a lot of techies hang out.

by mtw 10y ago

schnevets 10y ago

And a Snap is volatile and even more frivolous! Maybe they're even MORE valuable!

sjg007 10y ago
Snapchat has a novel engagement mechanism. Short multimedia interactive ads in a captured setting. The format has potential. The Snapstream keeps people hooked. It's basically a next gen Facebook but more private.

danjoc 10y ago

>yet Twitter is unable to profit from it. Twitter could front run wall street on Donald Trump tweets.

jessriedel 10y ago
It does seem like having early access to all tweets would be immensely valuable, even if it was only a second of lead time. (Sure, Trump tweets are valuable on their own, but market info has to be encoded into coarse-grained info about individually useless tweets as well.) Unless they have an explicit policy against it, Twitter must be selling this, right?
- aetherson 10y ago
  New business model: For $1M per tweet, you can have a 50ms head-start on tweets from Trump. Just Trump, just one tier of headstart/pricing. You prepay for the next N tweets. You can set time-ranges (like, "when the markets are open") for when you want to pay for the headstart. I bet they could get a few tens of millions of revenue there. Probably HFT firms would at least experiment with it, right? Might get them into some serious regulatory crosshairs.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    What regulation? Insider trading requires actual insiders; non-insiders are generally allowed to trade on non-public information.
    - wtvanhest 10y ago
      A non insider that posseses material, nonpublic info is not allowed to trade on it until it becomes public.
      - mck- 10y ago
        But this is already common practice with Bloomberg terminals -- banks paying big bucks get 15min earlier information than the public
        wtvanhest 10y ago
        Prices are not nonpublic info. You can get them a number of ways without using bloomberg. Most people in finance believe in at least semi-efficient markets which means prices are not material anyway
      - jessriedel 10y ago
        The sources I can find say there is only a violation when the person trading is an insider or is purposefully tipped off by an insider. http://www.sandstormgold.com/_resources/policies/SSL_Stock_Trading_Policy.pdf http://www.sandstormgold.com/_resources/policies/SSL_Stock_T... https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Definition_of_.22insider.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Definition_of_... The most direct version is here: > In 1983, Switzer was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an alleged civil violation of the laws prohibiting "insider trading" of securities. He defended himself as having innocently overheard the information while lounging on the bleacher behind some corporate insiders—at a stadium where Switzer was watching his elder son compete in a track meet. The case was tried in Oklahoma City United States District Court (before a special U.S. District Judge appointed from Kansas). The case was dismissed at the conclusion of the Government's case for its failure to demonstrate that there had been any purposeful disclosure to Switzer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Switzer#After_coaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Switzer#After_coaching https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/1986/062086grundfest.pdf#page=09 https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/1986/062086grundfest.pdf#pag... Do you have a source that says otherwise? The situation is even more clear for Twitter. If I'm a marine biologist making the world's most detailed measurements of the ocean, I can clearly use this info to buy or sell stock in a fishing company, even if I don't release that info publicly. Likewise, I can sell that info to someone else who makes the trades.
_yosefk 10y ago
This is the funniest thing I read today. The problem of course is how to trade them.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Got you covered, fam: https://github.com/maxbbraun/trump2cash https://github.com/maxbbraun/trump2cash

xyzzy4 10y ago

They're potentially able to profit from it, but they feel the need to have thousands of employees.

swamp40 10y ago

They should charge you for each 'like' you get for a post. First 100 would be free.

mirimir 10y ago
They could at least charge by completed likes. That is, hold likes as prospective, and complete only after payment.

gdubs 10y ago

It's reminiscent of the way that broadcast news was transformed as profit became a motive (basically the themes that are explored in the movie 'Network'). News orgs were never in themselves meant to be profitable, yet they were at the heart of the big three network's identities (and had enormous reach).

linkregister 10y ago
> News orgs were never in themselves meant to be profitable Can you talk more about this? I was always under the impression that newspapers and newsrooms were always for-profit enterprises.
- genericpseudo 10y ago
  Local ad networks masquerading as news organizations. Record labels and newspapers have a lot in common; they were global logistics companies first (the core competence of Atlantic was shipping highly-processed petrochemical discs around the world) and media companies not really at all. What newspapers had was a lock on the business now owned by Craigslist, with the transport and fulfillment network (newsagents and delivery vans!) being the key asset. Once that went away they were no longer businesses. They didn't see it that way, but that's because their core business was so good they could afford to delude themselves - it didn't matter that they didn't know what they were really doing, the business model was that powerful. Google is remarkably similar in many ways.
  - dilemma 10y ago
    AAA+ comment.
- cclements 10y ago
  You, know I remembered seeing something about this in the show 'newsroom': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrOqjS9ZyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrOqjS9ZyA But trying to do a little research on it, the best I could come up with for proof is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Time_Access_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Time_Access_Rule Still a good show though.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Oh I care about the power of FB posting and indeed instagram. I think you're seriously underestimating the reach and popularity of those platforms.

gozur88 10y ago

You can reach people on Twitter, but there's some question as to how much you can influence people. Periodically I see articles from people with hundreds of thousands of followers who admit to being unable to translate that into sales, or hits to their site, or votes, or whatever. Twitter is a great platform to keep your name in the public consciousness. So... indispensable if you're a Kardashian. Other than that, though, it's not clear. A lot of people are wasting a lot of time building up a subscriber account that ends up being meaningless. Facebook makes money because people give it a lot more information than they give twitter. Too much, IMO.

AznHisoka 10y ago

thats untrue. Look at all the articles written when Beyonce posts her pregnant body on Instagram as an example. we only think twitter has so much influence because thats where a lot of techies hang out.