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Good point. Twitter, iirc, broke out of the reputation of a pointless microblogging concept "nobody cares what you had for breakfast" to a sort of real time inf

Good point. Twitter, iirc, broke out of the reputation of a pointless microblogging concept "nobody cares what you had for breakfast" to a sort of real time information source, because the media for whatever reason got on board and started pushing what people had tweeted about stuff well before anyone actually cared. Eventually, people did care, and it transformed into the live discussion and reporting hybrid it was recently. None of that really was on the strength of technical features (which does suggest that headcount reduction was long coming). So where is the "technical" path to taking Twitter to another level?

frabcus 4y ago
There’s an interesting bit in the recording of Musk on Spaces the other day where he says it took him weeks to understand that the ad targeting has ended up targeting fewer click throughs, as that leads to more impressions. They’ve got into a kind of brand advertising negative feedback loop, it seems. I can imagine him shaking that out - although presumably would be short term revenue hit. It’s a technical change though. Similarly - he talks about telcos scamming Twitter at scale by making bots that request large numbers of 2FA SMS numbers which they make profit from Twitter on. The reason some 2FA broke was to put pressure on those telcos to stop that. Musk’s shitposting and authoritarian banning are awful. I’m excited by the boost this is giving Mastodon and hope Twitter stops being the primary place for many professional communities. Nevertheless, there do seem to be large technical issues in Twitter that for whatever reason nobody before had the power or reward system to fix.
- Zigurd 4y ago
  > They’ve got into a kind of brand advertising negative feedback loop This was a key blind spot for Elon. He thought advertising should work better with more engagement (or something like that if I am ascribing too much intent). It usually should. But that's not how Twitter evolved to work. Once you poop in the brand advertising punch bowl, you are pretty much done.
- cactusplant7374 4y ago
  > They’ve got into a kind of brand advertising negative feedback loop, it seems. I can imagine him shaking that out - although presumably would be short term revenue hit. It’s a technical change though. Could you explain this in a different way. I’m having trouble understanding the consequences? You’re saying more engagement doesn’t mean more click throughs because it’s the same users?
  - frabcus 4y ago
    I think it was that click throughs (and someone say buying something) reduce ad impressions, as they’re no longer scrolling Twitter. As a result Twitter ad targeting has ended up only good for brand advertising, when at least in theory companies would pay for highly targeted ads eg in threads where people were talking about a product. This is so third hand though you should take this comment with a pinch of salt!
- rsynnott 4y ago
  There seems to be a real need amongst some people to ascribe some sort of underlying master plan to Musk’s nonsense. Really, Occam’s, and Hanlon’s, Razor say that he is just severely out of his depth and unwilling to seek help.
  - badwolf 4y ago
    A common thing with people who are constantly told they're a genius/amazing/etc... and get so big they don't have anyone to tell them "No." (think George Lucas, Madonna, and such) It especially doesn't help that Elon surrounds himself with people who worship at his virtual altar, and go to bat for any dumb thing he ever says.

frabcus 4y ago

There’s an interesting bit in the recording of Musk on Spaces the other day where he says it took him weeks to understand that the ad targeting has ended up targeting fewer click throughs, as that leads to more impressions. They’ve got into a kind of brand advertising negative feedback loop, it seems. I can imagine him shaking that out - although presumably would be short term revenue hit. It’s a technical change though. Similarly - he talks about telcos scamming Twitter at scale by making bots that request large numbers of 2FA SMS numbers which they make profit from Twitter on. The reason some 2FA broke was to put pressure on those telcos to stop that. Musk’s shitposting and authoritarian banning are awful. I’m excited by the boost this is giving Mastodon and hope Twitter stops being the primary place for many professional communities. Nevertheless, there do seem to be large technical issues in Twitter that for whatever reason nobody before had the power or reward system to fix.

Zigurd 4y ago
> They’ve got into a kind of brand advertising negative feedback loop This was a key blind spot for Elon. He thought advertising should work better with more engagement (or something like that if I am ascribing too much intent). It usually should. But that's not how Twitter evolved to work. Once you poop in the brand advertising punch bowl, you are pretty much done.
cactusplant7374 4y ago
> They’ve got into a kind of brand advertising negative feedback loop, it seems. I can imagine him shaking that out - although presumably would be short term revenue hit. It’s a technical change though. Could you explain this in a different way. I’m having trouble understanding the consequences? You’re saying more engagement doesn’t mean more click throughs because it’s the same users?
- frabcus 4y ago
  I think it was that click throughs (and someone say buying something) reduce ad impressions, as they’re no longer scrolling Twitter. As a result Twitter ad targeting has ended up only good for brand advertising, when at least in theory companies would pay for highly targeted ads eg in threads where people were talking about a product. This is so third hand though you should take this comment with a pinch of salt!
rsynnott 4y ago
There seems to be a real need amongst some people to ascribe some sort of underlying master plan to Musk’s nonsense. Really, Occam’s, and Hanlon’s, Razor say that he is just severely out of his depth and unwilling to seek help.
- badwolf 4y ago
  A common thing with people who are constantly told they're a genius/amazing/etc... and get so big they don't have anyone to tell them "No." (think George Lucas, Madonna, and such) It especially doesn't help that Elon surrounds himself with people who worship at his virtual altar, and go to bat for any dumb thing he ever says.