7 ms·

Ex-Twitter Employee Didn’t Want to Work for an “Ad Company”

52 points by hariis 16y ago

hariis 16y ago
It's an interesting dilemma for every company that is pioneering, isn't it? To Ad or Not to Ad to sustain and to see the idea through.
- moolave 16y ago
  Looks like another iteration of Dorsey's "move" from Twitter to Square. Being with the same pool of folks who run Twitter, you'd probably assimilate the same notion too and innovate something similar.
jayruy 16y ago
i've never understood why some are so averse to ads as a business model in new media... it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff i might actually want, which could be a great service in and of itself. sure - the execution isn't quite there yet - but it seems we'll get there in the next 5 years? i don't work in the industry so i could be misguided - will the actuality be more akin to a bunch of spam in my twitter feed?
- hariis 16y ago
  I think the problem is that currently Ads are shown to you Not as a service to you but a way for the companies to sustain themselves. Ads as a service, that's a nice idea!
  - jsharpe 16y ago
    Why can't ads be both a service and a way of making money?
- gyardley 16y ago
  There are people who are adverse to advertising itself, and then there are people who are adverse to working for an advertising company. I've worked for a variety of online advertising companies, and while no two companies are identical, they do deal with a lot of common problems that some people just might not be interested in implementing.
  - jayruy 16y ago
    isn't the base problem one of collaborative filtering? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering seems like a fairly interesting problem to me - or am i idealizing? i suppose some developers would rather work on language/framework problems than data analysis problems...
- ben1040 16y ago
  > it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff i might actually want, which could be a great service in and of itself. As a programmer working in data mining problems, I can certainly concede just don't find the idea of working on an ad platform to be sexy enough to work on. But when I put my consumer hat on, I think highly relevant ads are just fine and I'm far, far more likely to click them and generate revenue for the person showing them to me. A few months ago I booked a trip to SF, and alongside the e-ticket confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail context ad for zeppelin tours of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures. I had absolutely no idea this was available, but it seemed awesome, and immediately went to book a tour. If you can show me an ad for something I might be interested in (a tour) at the time I'm most likely to make a purchase (I already had my credit card out from booking the airline reservation) then that's awesome. In fact I might even perceive that as a service if the product is something I would have never known about before.
  - orangecat 16y ago
    alongside the e-ticket confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail context ad for zeppelin tours of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures That is freaking awesome and the best argument for context-sensitive ads I've seen. How was it?
    - ben1040 16y ago
      My scheduled zeppelin tour ended up getting rained out, but the next time I'm in the bay area and have the time to spare, I'm totally going to give it another try.
    - access_denied 16y ago
      This is _the_ argument for ads in general. Advertising is "good" if it informs the consumer.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
mikeryan 16y ago
It seems a little naive to think this wasn't the direction twitter would go. I guess Google would be out of his list of companies to work for?
- raimondious 16y ago
  I don't think he's naïve, since he left. He has no illusion about where Twitter will be soon. Edit: My point being that he worked for the company when it was in the form he liked, and when that changed, he left.
hariis 16y ago
What else could Twitter do?
- nfnaaron 16y ago
  Open Twitter, allow anyone to be a Twitter server, and sell their services to Twitter providers who don't want to deal with Twitter nuts and bolts, as Disqus does for comments and Google does for gapps. Be an expert in Twitter and sell training to implementers and users, as GitHub does for git. Have free and paid levels, as GitHub, Disqus, Dropbox and countless others do. Have all paid services, as old school businesses do. There's probably more else that I haven't covered.
  - brown9-2 16y ago
    What type of paid services could Twitter conceivably sell? What type of paid services would people conceivably want to buy from Twitter?
    - nfnaaron 16y ago
      Cooler Twitter. Enterprise Twitter. Better Personal Twitter management. "What possibly" and "conceivably" assumes that the current form of Twitter is all it could ever be. If they're smart enough to do Twitter, they're smart enough to enhance Twitter in a way that people will pay for it. Keep in mind, this is all based on the linked article's characterization of Twitter as an ad company, and what they might do instead.
    - axod 16y ago
      Twitter T-Shirts, Twitter mugs. Twitter fail whale plush toy. I'm joking by the way.
      - what 16y ago
        Why joke, merchandising is good business. Look at the Star Wars franchise, over 30 years it's earned an estimated $22B of which $6.68B was generated at the box office. The largest chunk comes from merchandise ($9B). [1] Granted, kiddies might be less interested in a plush fail whale than a plastic light saber. [1] http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/24/star-wars-revenues-tech-cx_ag_0524money.html http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/24/star-wars-revenues-tech-cx_...
euroclydon 16y ago
He's starting a new Bank, "Bank Simple" From their FAQ: Why do other banks make it such a pain to transfer money? Many banks make transferring money from your account painful as they fear losing your deposits. We figure if we make it easy to do the things you want to do, you’ll be happier and less likely to leave. So, transfers are simple with us. I've always viewed the difficulty of transferring money out of my account as a robust security feature.
- carterschonwald 16y ago
  hows that a security feature? If someone has access to your account, end of story. That being said, a bank which spells out the semantics of how different sorts of transaction will work and doesn't relegate understanding how your account works to reams of fine print or reading a subsection of wikipedia would probably be a refreshing experience. (and thats without looking at how poorly maintained many bank webapps are, i recently had the experience where BOA complained that chrome mac beta was out of date and I should upgrade to netscape navigator!!!!)
  - euroclydon 16y ago
    How is it "end of story?" If someone logs into my bank account right now: 1) they can't transfer money; the feature is not available. 2) they can set up a bill pay, but I get an email notice in time to stop it. How else can they steal from me?
    - carterschonwald 16y ago
      do you mean that a) you have transferring disabled for your account or b) that your bank doesn't let you do that?
- axod 16y ago
  Basically it sounds like he's trying to create a non-US style bank, in the US. Transferring money in the UK is a simple process - login, click transfer, put in the amount and destination, and click [go]. It'll appear in the destination account in an hour or 2 usually. There's nothing insecure about that (Login is done using chip+pin card, pin, or one-time keychain generator thingy etc etc)
Semiapies 16y ago
"For a long time, the promise at Twitter was that we were going to look at different ways of making money, and to some degree I feel that hasn’t happened." In other words, all the hand-waving didn't lead to human-powered flight, so Twitter is looking at the booooring aspect of actually sustaining their business.
T_S_ 16y ago
Let's not be snobby about ads. Relevant ads actually help people. I l-l-l-like the ads on google. There I said it. Why was that so difficult? Simply because my opinion of ads is colored by mass marketed ones that are not relevant the vast majority of the time. I see them, more or less by accident, trapped in a passive moment. Ads of the future will seem more like helpful suggestions as I go about my day. Look at Kayak. It's essentially nothing but a marketing tool and I love it.
pvdm 16y ago
I guess working for google would be out of the question.
ecaradec 16y ago
This is actually a good timing, there is many people upset by banks behaviour today, that some may be considering moving. I'm french and I use a bank that was a 2000 internet startup (boursorama ). They didn't start as a bank but as a low cost solution for the money market. So creating a bank as a startup is definitly possible. It's a better bank than others I have used, but it's still a bank. Their website is powerful but designed like crap though. However all of my money isn't there, as I fear a little bit doing a move I didn't understand (because of crappy design ) and loose everything.

52 points by hariis 16y ago

It's an interesting dilemma for every company that is pioneering, isn't it? To Ad or Not to Ad to sustain and to see the idea through.

moolave 16y ago
Looks like another iteration of Dorsey's "move" from Twitter to Square. Being with the same pool of folks who run Twitter, you'd probably assimilate the same notion too and innovate something similar.

jayruy 16y ago

i've never understood why some are so averse to ads as a business model in new media... it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff i might actually want, which could be a great service in and of itself. sure - the execution isn't quite there yet - but it seems we'll get there in the next 5 years? i don't work in the industry so i could be misguided - will the actuality be more akin to a bunch of spam in my twitter feed?

hariis 16y ago
I think the problem is that currently Ads are shown to you Not as a service to you but a way for the companies to sustain themselves. Ads as a service, that's a nice idea!
- jsharpe 16y ago
  Why can't ads be both a service and a way of making money?
gyardley 16y ago
There are people who are adverse to advertising itself, and then there are people who are adverse to working for an advertising company. I've worked for a variety of online advertising companies, and while no two companies are identical, they do deal with a lot of common problems that some people just might not be interested in implementing.
- jayruy 16y ago
  isn't the base problem one of collaborative filtering? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering seems like a fairly interesting problem to me - or am i idealizing? i suppose some developers would rather work on language/framework problems than data analysis problems...
ben1040 16y ago
> it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff i might actually want, which could be a great service in and of itself. As a programmer working in data mining problems, I can certainly concede just don't find the idea of working on an ad platform to be sexy enough to work on. But when I put my consumer hat on, I think highly relevant ads are just fine and I'm far, far more likely to click them and generate revenue for the person showing them to me. A few months ago I booked a trip to SF, and alongside the e-ticket confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail context ad for zeppelin tours of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures. I had absolutely no idea this was available, but it seemed awesome, and immediately went to book a tour. If you can show me an ad for something I might be interested in (a tour) at the time I'm most likely to make a purchase (I already had my credit card out from booking the airline reservation) then that's awesome. In fact I might even perceive that as a service if the product is something I would have never known about before.
- orangecat 16y ago
  alongside the e-ticket confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail context ad for zeppelin tours of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures That is freaking awesome and the best argument for context-sensitive ads I've seen. How was it?
  - ben1040 16y ago
    My scheduled zeppelin tour ended up getting rained out, but the next time I'm in the bay area and have the time to spare, I'm totally going to give it another try.
  - access_denied 16y ago
    This is _the_ argument for ads in general. Advertising is "good" if it informs the consumer.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

mikeryan 16y ago

It seems a little naive to think this wasn't the direction twitter would go. I guess Google would be out of his list of companies to work for?

raimondious 16y ago
I don't think he's naïve, since he left. He has no illusion about where Twitter will be soon. Edit: My point being that he worked for the company when it was in the form he liked, and when that changed, he left.

hariis 16y ago

What else could Twitter do?

nfnaaron 16y ago
Open Twitter, allow anyone to be a Twitter server, and sell their services to Twitter providers who don't want to deal with Twitter nuts and bolts, as Disqus does for comments and Google does for gapps. Be an expert in Twitter and sell training to implementers and users, as GitHub does for git. Have free and paid levels, as GitHub, Disqus, Dropbox and countless others do. Have all paid services, as old school businesses do. There's probably more else that I haven't covered.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  What type of paid services could Twitter conceivably sell? What type of paid services would people conceivably want to buy from Twitter?
  - nfnaaron 16y ago
    Cooler Twitter. Enterprise Twitter. Better Personal Twitter management. "What possibly" and "conceivably" assumes that the current form of Twitter is all it could ever be. If they're smart enough to do Twitter, they're smart enough to enhance Twitter in a way that people will pay for it. Keep in mind, this is all based on the linked article's characterization of Twitter as an ad company, and what they might do instead.
  - axod 16y ago
    Twitter T-Shirts, Twitter mugs. Twitter fail whale plush toy. I'm joking by the way.
    - what 16y ago
      Why joke, merchandising is good business. Look at the Star Wars franchise, over 30 years it's earned an estimated $22B of which $6.68B was generated at the box office. The largest chunk comes from merchandise ($9B). [1] Granted, kiddies might be less interested in a plush fail whale than a plastic light saber. [1] http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/24/star-wars-revenues-tech-cx_ag_0524money.html http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/24/star-wars-revenues-tech-cx_...

euroclydon 16y ago

He's starting a new Bank, "Bank Simple" From their FAQ: Why do other banks make it such a pain to transfer money? Many banks make transferring money from your account painful as they fear losing your deposits. We figure if we make it easy to do the things you want to do, you’ll be happier and less likely to leave. So, transfers are simple with us. I've always viewed the difficulty of transferring money out of my account as a robust security feature.

carterschonwald 16y ago
hows that a security feature? If someone has access to your account, end of story. That being said, a bank which spells out the semantics of how different sorts of transaction will work and doesn't relegate understanding how your account works to reams of fine print or reading a subsection of wikipedia would probably be a refreshing experience. (and thats without looking at how poorly maintained many bank webapps are, i recently had the experience where BOA complained that chrome mac beta was out of date and I should upgrade to netscape navigator!!!!)
- euroclydon 16y ago
  How is it "end of story?" If someone logs into my bank account right now: 1) they can't transfer money; the feature is not available. 2) they can set up a bill pay, but I get an email notice in time to stop it. How else can they steal from me?
  - carterschonwald 16y ago
    do you mean that a) you have transferring disabled for your account or b) that your bank doesn't let you do that?
axod 16y ago
Basically it sounds like he's trying to create a non-US style bank, in the US. Transferring money in the UK is a simple process - login, click transfer, put in the amount and destination, and click [go]. It'll appear in the destination account in an hour or 2 usually. There's nothing insecure about that (Login is done using chip+pin card, pin, or one-time keychain generator thingy etc etc)

Semiapies 16y ago

"For a long time, the promise at Twitter was that we were going to look at different ways of making money, and to some degree I feel that hasn’t happened." In other words, all the hand-waving didn't lead to human-powered flight, so Twitter is looking at the booooring aspect of actually sustaining their business.

T_S_ 16y ago

Let's not be snobby about ads. Relevant ads actually help people. I l-l-l-like the ads on google. There I said it. Why was that so difficult? Simply because my opinion of ads is colored by mass marketed ones that are not relevant the vast majority of the time. I see them, more or less by accident, trapped in a passive moment. Ads of the future will seem more like helpful suggestions as I go about my day. Look at Kayak. It's essentially nothing but a marketing tool and I love it.

pvdm 16y ago

I guess working for google would be out of the question.

ecaradec 16y ago

This is actually a good timing, there is many people upset by banks behaviour today, that some may be considering moving. I'm french and I use a bank that was a 2000 internet startup (boursorama ). They didn't start as a bank but as a low cost solution for the money market. So creating a bank as a startup is definitly possible. It's a better bank than others I have used, but it's still a bank. Their website is powerful but designed like crap though. However all of my money isn't there, as I fear a little bit doing a move I didn't understand (because of crappy design ) and loose everything.