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I don't disagree with the assessment, but I think it might be orthogonal to the issue. I think it's very hard to monetize engagement, period, even if it's all p

I don't disagree with the assessment, but I think it might be orthogonal to the issue. I think it's very hard to monetize engagement, period, even if it's all positive, constructive, and intellectual engagement. If your service's business strategy is "1) acquire hundreds of millions of users and charge them all $0.00 per year for many years, 2) acquire lots of expensive infrastructure and employees to support the service, 3) ???, 4) profit", it's not going to be easy.

city41 5y ago
And their stock shows that. Especially when compared to other big tech companies that started at about the same time.
villasv 5y ago
As evidenced by the struggle with StackOverflow too, who sits atop a trove of content
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  StackOverflow should be cheap to operate and the value comes almost exclusively from the community. So I don't see any good reason why StackOverflow would need to earn much revenue. Probably an annual fundraiser like what Wikipedia does would be more than sufficient to cover the operating expenses.
- PoignardAzur 5y ago
  The StackOverflow thing is a bit weird, because what the owners have and consider valuable is "a place where people feel comfortable coming and asking questions", but what the core community values is "high-quality curated content", and they're very willing to do aggressive gatekeeping, thus conflicting with value 1, to preserve value 2.
  - forgotpwd16 5y ago
    High-quality curated content has been SO's goal since day one. The question/answer format is a means to this end. That's why it has come that most people can easily find a solution to their problem. https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/991082088689381376 https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/991082088689381376
    - meowface 5y ago
      >I wish more people understood that the goal of Stack Overflow is not "answer my question" but "let's collaboratively build an artifact that will benefit future coders". Perhaps SO could be doing more to educate people about this. -Jeff Atwood Yeah, this is the kicker. I think SO's primary intended audience is people clicking Google search results. If I'm Googling something technical and I see Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange results, I always click those first, because I know I'm almost always going to attain the most helpful-information-per-unit-time that way. Even if an answer's many years old, it's usually going to be more helpful than most of the much more recent links, which are often just cookie cutter blogspam.
      - JI00912 5y ago
        >I wish more people understood that the goal of Stack Overflow is not "answer my question" but "let's collaboratively build an artifact that will benefit future coders". Perhaps SO could be doing more to educate people about this. -Jeff Atwood But the way to built that knowledge base is by answering peoples questions because the questions people ask indicate what is relevant to answer.
  - oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
    I was following StackOverflow back when it was being planned on a podcast. "High-quality curated content" was very much the original mission. This was the driving factor behind the wiki-like interface. In fact, if anything, I'd argue that the problem is that this didn't take off as much as was hoped.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Yeah but now StackOverflow we pay for it in my company. Their value is in the whole info sharing model of the tool, the public one becomes more useless as you grow and the private one is invaluable to ask crazy questions about ultra specific internal idiocy people lost the source code of. I only go to the public one a few times a day now, compared to being wired to it as a beginner :D
  - meowface 5y ago
    I'm jealous. My company bought it and made a huge internal adoption effort, but it never really amounted to anything and is now pretty much dead.
zerocrates 5y ago
"Sell ads" seems to be most places' "Step 3," though I don't know how well it's gone for Twitter.
- meowface 5y ago
  If you're operating at that scale, I think "become a full-on advertising and ad tech company, platform, service, and network from top to bottom" seems like the only viable "step 3" (as with Google and Facebook). I don't think just selling ads is sufficient; especially if it's not a service you can operate at a relatively low cost with a skeleton crew. I think it's probably either that or start charging for something. (Unless your goal isn't to ever make a profit, I suppose.) Discord seemed to make it work (I think?) by combining an initial semi-skeleton crew approach with a freemium charging approach. They tried a few other things, but I think those efforts flopped.
  - zerocrates 5y ago
    Yeah by "sell ads" here I mean "do the whole data collection, targeting, whatever" deal that the platforms do. Discord... definitely different. It's hard for me to believe that Nitro really can be paying for Discord but I guess it's possible?
    - meowface 5y ago
      [removed]
      - joshuaissac 5y ago
        > Forbes estimated 1 million people are using Nitro as of 2020, and they made $130 million in revenue in 2020. If you assume that's all the $10/month Nitro (not the cheaper Nitro Classic), then 1 million users paying for Nitro would only account for a pretty small percentage of that. If the Nitro users estimate is accurate, not sure where the rest comes from. 1 million users * $10/month/user * 12 months/year = $120 million/year That is close to the cited $130m annual revenue.
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
Somehow Google and Facebook figured it out. Why couldn't Twitter?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nemothekid 5y ago
  The both figured it out with incredibly invasive tracking and profiling. I don’t know why this move is being seen as a slight to the company.
  - jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
    I don't have any problem with Twitter adding a paid option. I've never even used Twitter nor will I ever so it so anything they do to the platform doesn't affect me. It just seems weird that people are making the claim that you can't monitize a large unpaid user-base.
    - meowface 5y ago
      You can, but you basically have to masquerade your company as a user-facing service while behind the scenes it's almost entirely just an ad and ad tech platform. I think it's plausible Jack Dorsey maybe genuinely just didn't want to sign that deal with the devil. I know I wouldn't want to if I made Twitter. (I have no idea if that's what happened, of course. Maybe he wanted to but couldn't find a good way to achieve it.)
      - jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
        Well I have faith the MBAs will eventually take over and then monetize away.

city41 5y ago

And their stock shows that. Especially when compared to other big tech companies that started at about the same time.

villasv 5y ago

As evidenced by the struggle with StackOverflow too, who sits atop a trove of content

fxtentacle 5y ago
StackOverflow should be cheap to operate and the value comes almost exclusively from the community. So I don't see any good reason why StackOverflow would need to earn much revenue. Probably an annual fundraiser like what Wikipedia does would be more than sufficient to cover the operating expenses.
PoignardAzur 5y ago
The StackOverflow thing is a bit weird, because what the owners have and consider valuable is "a place where people feel comfortable coming and asking questions", but what the core community values is "high-quality curated content", and they're very willing to do aggressive gatekeeping, thus conflicting with value 1, to preserve value 2.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  High-quality curated content has been SO's goal since day one. The question/answer format is a means to this end. That's why it has come that most people can easily find a solution to their problem. https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/991082088689381376 https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/991082088689381376
  - meowface 5y ago
    >I wish more people understood that the goal of Stack Overflow is not "answer my question" but "let's collaboratively build an artifact that will benefit future coders". Perhaps SO could be doing more to educate people about this. -Jeff Atwood Yeah, this is the kicker. I think SO's primary intended audience is people clicking Google search results. If I'm Googling something technical and I see Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange results, I always click those first, because I know I'm almost always going to attain the most helpful-information-per-unit-time that way. Even if an answer's many years old, it's usually going to be more helpful than most of the much more recent links, which are often just cookie cutter blogspam.
    - JI00912 5y ago
      >I wish more people understood that the goal of Stack Overflow is not "answer my question" but "let's collaboratively build an artifact that will benefit future coders". Perhaps SO could be doing more to educate people about this. -Jeff Atwood But the way to built that knowledge base is by answering peoples questions because the questions people ask indicate what is relevant to answer.
- oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
  I was following StackOverflow back when it was being planned on a podcast. "High-quality curated content" was very much the original mission. This was the driving factor behind the wiki-like interface. In fact, if anything, I'd argue that the problem is that this didn't take off as much as was hoped.
xwolfi 5y ago
Yeah but now StackOverflow we pay for it in my company. Their value is in the whole info sharing model of the tool, the public one becomes more useless as you grow and the private one is invaluable to ask crazy questions about ultra specific internal idiocy people lost the source code of. I only go to the public one a few times a day now, compared to being wired to it as a beginner :D
- meowface 5y ago
  I'm jealous. My company bought it and made a huge internal adoption effort, but it never really amounted to anything and is now pretty much dead.

zerocrates 5y ago

"Sell ads" seems to be most places' "Step 3," though I don't know how well it's gone for Twitter.

meowface 5y ago
If you're operating at that scale, I think "become a full-on advertising and ad tech company, platform, service, and network from top to bottom" seems like the only viable "step 3" (as with Google and Facebook). I don't think just selling ads is sufficient; especially if it's not a service you can operate at a relatively low cost with a skeleton crew. I think it's probably either that or start charging for something. (Unless your goal isn't to ever make a profit, I suppose.) Discord seemed to make it work (I think?) by combining an initial semi-skeleton crew approach with a freemium charging approach. They tried a few other things, but I think those efforts flopped.
- zerocrates 5y ago
  Yeah by "sell ads" here I mean "do the whole data collection, targeting, whatever" deal that the platforms do. Discord... definitely different. It's hard for me to believe that Nitro really can be paying for Discord but I guess it's possible?
  - meowface 5y ago
    [removed]
    - joshuaissac 5y ago
      > Forbes estimated 1 million people are using Nitro as of 2020, and they made $130 million in revenue in 2020. If you assume that's all the $10/month Nitro (not the cheaper Nitro Classic), then 1 million users paying for Nitro would only account for a pretty small percentage of that. If the Nitro users estimate is accurate, not sure where the rest comes from. 1 million users * $10/month/user * 12 months/year = $120 million/year That is close to the cited $130m annual revenue.

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

Somehow Google and Facebook figured it out. Why couldn't Twitter?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nemothekid 5y ago
The both figured it out with incredibly invasive tracking and profiling. I don’t know why this move is being seen as a slight to the company.
- jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
  I don't have any problem with Twitter adding a paid option. I've never even used Twitter nor will I ever so it so anything they do to the platform doesn't affect me. It just seems weird that people are making the claim that you can't monitize a large unpaid user-base.
  - meowface 5y ago
    You can, but you basically have to masquerade your company as a user-facing service while behind the scenes it's almost entirely just an ad and ad tech platform. I think it's plausible Jack Dorsey maybe genuinely just didn't want to sign that deal with the devil. I know I wouldn't want to if I made Twitter. (I have no idea if that's what happened, of course. Maybe he wanted to but couldn't find a good way to achieve it.)
    - jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
      Well I have faith the MBAs will eventually take over and then monetize away.