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The more interesting and less reported question is the influence of David Sacks and Jason Calcanis in some of these decisions. We know that David in particular

The more interesting and less reported question is the influence of David Sacks and Jason Calcanis in some of these decisions. We know that David in particular has form with coming in and cutting headcount early: https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/804922277842272256 https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/804922277842272256 We also know both are right-leaning and I wonder how much of that factored in to the firing of the human rights, ethics, accessibility etc teams. The teams they may not appreciate but advertisers absolutely did.

bpodgursky 4y ago
Twitter's CPM is absolutely pathetic [1]. The advertisers clearly didn't really care, or the impression price would have at least been comparable to Facebook — infamously a "brand safety" disaster, yet somehow far more effective at getting advertisers to pay. [1] https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/ https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/
- threeseed 4y ago
  Twitter has always been a second-tier advertising platform behind Facebook/Google and its percentage of total ad spend reflects that. It's why Musk's actions (or more likely David/Jason) have been so incompetent. Because now those advertisers have nothing but reasons not to come back.
  - bpodgursky 4y ago
    I don't intend to argue whether Musk will or will not destroy the platform further. I just don't want people to pretend that pre-Musk Twitter had any idea how to competently sell ads. They didn't.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  FB knows a lot about their users and they have boat loads of them up for grabs; look-alike audiences can be very effective. Actually, I'd say that they're the only thing that makes FB worth advertising on, without them it's just a pit to throw money in. I don't know if the same can be said about twitter.
  - pevey 4y ago
    That used to be the case, but much less so today. Look alike is at least 10x less effective in my experience since more than 90% of clicks are mobile, and most on iOS.
    - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
      Sometimes I feel like I'm brain damaged: Why does is the iOS popup so damaging? Users have to log into the FB App to use it right? Then once logged in, FB knows who the user is, and voila, personalized ads. Where is the loss? It honestly doesn't help that when I try to look it up, all I find are FB press releases or various surface-level articles.
      - alphabettsy 4y ago
        As I understand it the Facebook analytics sdk that many other apps used allowed them to track user actions across applications and Apple made it significantly harder or impossible to do so.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  Twitter conversion rates are terrible however they do offer something that other platforms don’t or at least not easily and that is sentiment analysis in response to ads and direct engagement. Retailers, CPGs and other brands as well as many ad agencies and data science companies in the retail use the Twitter APIs to data-mine tweets for analysis often hand in hand with the promotion, ad or engagement campaigns that they or their clients are running. On other platforms you often only get a binary match with a certain level of confidence to a sale as you can’t easily get what people are talking about. With Twitter being primarily a public platform you can get much more than has a person bought an item within X hours/days of having an ad served to them. So the “marketing” spend on Twitter is split often between servings ads and consuming the analytics API, and the latter is used more often however it’s only valuable as long as brands advertise and directly engage with users on the platform. This is also why advertisers dropping Twitter as a platform is worse than just lost ad revenue since it also harms their only other major revenue stream.
jacobolus 4y ago
Sacks and Calacanis both come across in their public and private communications (https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/jason https://twitter.com/jason https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/ https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/) as relatively ignorant and uncurious but incredible Elon ass-kissers. (Seems like Elon in general surrounds himself with such people, and is extremely sensitive to the mildest criticism.) While ideology could also contribute here, it doesn’t seem like the fundamental problem.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  These text logs present an incredibly bleak picture: a small group of extraordinarily wealthy and powerful men who have convinced themselves that they are the arbiters of our natural and legal rights. There are endless legitimate criticisms of social media, moderation, the companies that dominate our online landscape, &c.. But nothing in terms of opacity and sheer unaccountable power compares to this.
kumarm 4y ago
Sounds like David Sacks will rundown twitter just like he did with Zenefits. Very few seem to have noticed that Parker Conrad built Rippling after Zenefits and David Sacks ran Zenefits to literally nothing (Valued less than what they raised even in 2021). Rippling: valued at 11B (Raised 700M) Zenefits: valued at 200M (Raised 600M). Edit: Added numbers. Grammer.
- elevenoh 4y ago
jcollins1991 4y ago
take that entire thread of his with a MOUNTAIN of salt, i certainly wouldn't be quoting it as proof in relation to twitter actions. (source: worked there a long time before Sacks entered, til after he left.)
elevenoh 4y ago
Siddarth1977 4y ago
> We also know both are right-leaning and I wonder how much of that factored in to the firing of the human rights, ethics, accessibility etc teams. From HN guidelines: Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

bpodgursky 4y ago

Twitter's CPM is absolutely pathetic [1]. The advertisers clearly didn't really care, or the impression price would have at least been comparable to Facebook — infamously a "brand safety" disaster, yet somehow far more effective at getting advertisers to pay. [1] https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/ https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/

threeseed 4y ago
Twitter has always been a second-tier advertising platform behind Facebook/Google and its percentage of total ad spend reflects that. It's why Musk's actions (or more likely David/Jason) have been so incompetent. Because now those advertisers have nothing but reasons not to come back.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  I don't intend to argue whether Musk will or will not destroy the platform further. I just don't want people to pretend that pre-Musk Twitter had any idea how to competently sell ads. They didn't.
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
FB knows a lot about their users and they have boat loads of them up for grabs; look-alike audiences can be very effective. Actually, I'd say that they're the only thing that makes FB worth advertising on, without them it's just a pit to throw money in. I don't know if the same can be said about twitter.
- pevey 4y ago
  That used to be the case, but much less so today. Look alike is at least 10x less effective in my experience since more than 90% of clicks are mobile, and most on iOS.
  - MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
    Sometimes I feel like I'm brain damaged: Why does is the iOS popup so damaging? Users have to log into the FB App to use it right? Then once logged in, FB knows who the user is, and voila, personalized ads. Where is the loss? It honestly doesn't help that when I try to look it up, all I find are FB press releases or various surface-level articles.
    - alphabettsy 4y ago
      As I understand it the Facebook analytics sdk that many other apps used allowed them to track user actions across applications and Apple made it significantly harder or impossible to do so.
dogma1138 4y ago
Twitter conversion rates are terrible however they do offer something that other platforms don’t or at least not easily and that is sentiment analysis in response to ads and direct engagement. Retailers, CPGs and other brands as well as many ad agencies and data science companies in the retail use the Twitter APIs to data-mine tweets for analysis often hand in hand with the promotion, ad or engagement campaigns that they or their clients are running. On other platforms you often only get a binary match with a certain level of confidence to a sale as you can’t easily get what people are talking about. With Twitter being primarily a public platform you can get much more than has a person bought an item within X hours/days of having an ad served to them. So the “marketing” spend on Twitter is split often between servings ads and consuming the analytics API, and the latter is used more often however it’s only valuable as long as brands advertise and directly engage with users on the platform. This is also why advertisers dropping Twitter as a platform is worse than just lost ad revenue since it also harms their only other major revenue stream.

jacobolus 4y ago

Sacks and Calacanis both come across in their public and private communications (https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/jason https://twitter.com/jason https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/ https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/) as relatively ignorant and uncurious but incredible Elon ass-kissers. (Seems like Elon in general surrounds himself with such people, and is extremely sensitive to the mildest criticism.) While ideology could also contribute here, it doesn’t seem like the fundamental problem.

woodruffw 4y ago
These text logs present an incredibly bleak picture: a small group of extraordinarily wealthy and powerful men who have convinced themselves that they are the arbiters of our natural and legal rights. There are endless legitimate criticisms of social media, moderation, the companies that dominate our online landscape, &c.. But nothing in terms of opacity and sheer unaccountable power compares to this.

kumarm 4y ago

Sounds like David Sacks will rundown twitter just like he did with Zenefits. Very few seem to have noticed that Parker Conrad built Rippling after Zenefits and David Sacks ran Zenefits to literally nothing (Valued less than what they raised even in 2021). Rippling: valued at 11B (Raised 700M) Zenefits: valued at 200M (Raised 600M). Edit: Added numbers. Grammer.

elevenoh 4y ago

jcollins1991 4y ago

take that entire thread of his with a MOUNTAIN of salt, i certainly wouldn't be quoting it as proof in relation to twitter actions. (source: worked there a long time before Sacks entered, til after he left.)

elevenoh 4y ago

Siddarth1977 4y ago

> We also know both are right-leaning and I wonder how much of that factored in to the firing of the human rights, ethics, accessibility etc teams. From HN guidelines: Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.