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I wonder if this will have any domino effect, right now the only thing holding Twitter together is its network effects. According to the article on NPR's site[0

I wonder if this will have any domino effect, right now the only thing holding Twitter together is its network effects. According to the article on NPR's site[0], they have 8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner. Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. 0: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter...

spir 4y ago
Last week, the Federal Reserve issued an important update on twitter. So no, I don't think twitter is worried about losing NPR. Twitter has the strongest network effects of any contemporary social network.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  Well, I'm sure they didn't issue it only on twitter, right? That'd just be part of their normal media processes. Post it on the website. Post it on twitter. Post it on Facebook. Send press releases to media outlets. Blah blah blah.
- reset2023 4y ago
  No dopamine hit with twitter anymore.
agluszak 4y ago
Network effect is literally the only thing holding non-federated social networks together
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> no mention of Mastodon in this announcement Mastodon blew its moment. It could have eaten Twitter’s lunch. But onboarding—specifically, choosing a server—was too tedious for non-niche adoption.
- dylan604 4y ago
  This will always be a problem with federated vs unfederated services. It's hard to get a network effect when things are so spread out without a central place.
  - spankalee 4y ago
    You don't need a central place, but you do need places that are large enough, mainstream enough, and trusted enough, for the masses. Email is like this now.
    - iak8god 4y ago
      > you do need places that are large enough, mainstream enough, and trusted enough, for the masses I think you don't necessarily even need that if you have a better way to support discovery and interaction with content from other places.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - runako 4y ago
    Email stands as a notable counter-example.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      but that's not how you use email. you don't sign up for an email account, and then go searching for other users to follow and what not with in the same server. with social platforms, you do just that. you want to see a centralized list of available users to choose to follow or subscribe or join cult or whatever. i'm deliberately using centralized here as not needing to know that multiple servers exist with different users in each. maybe i'm showing my ignorance of mastodon, but it seems like mastodon.com or whatever central website could just publish a list that mastodon clients can refer to rather than making users discovery a hunt and fetch kind of process. like a torrent index site. if that already exists, then i'll TIL the workings of mastodon. if it doesn't exists, then it seems very short sited.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I am viewing Twitter more than before because I am attracted to the open speech where political banning is no longer occurring. I do not know all who have been blocked under Musk but it feels more open.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
belltaco 4y ago
Fox News probably had more followers when they stopped posting on Twitter a few years ago. Not to mention all the right wing momentum behind Parler, Gab, Telegram, Truth Social etc. didn't make a noticeable dent.
- RobAtticus 4y ago
  For a company that "stopped posting on Twitter" they sure post a lot: https://twitter.com/FoxNews https://twitter.com/FoxNews
  - belltaco 4y ago
    If you're going to be wrong at least don't be snarky. https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-breaks-16-month-twitter-silence-with-tweet-about-coronavirus-coverage/ https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-breaks-16-month-twitter-sil...
jeffwask 4y ago
I think the Dominoes have been falling for a while. I mostly quit the bird in November. I pop over once or twice a week these days to see what's happening and the degradation of content is very apparent. It may be because of departures or it may be because his constant weaponizing, sorry monetizing, of the algorithm but it's a lot quieter. A lot of the people I liked to follow from our industry are gone. It's a stark contrast to what the app was even a year ago. All while their CEO rebrands them as Titter and has people repaint signs. The most recent gaff of exposing people "private" circles to the main feed (including private nudes) is probably going to create a new slew of legal issues.
rvz 4y ago
> Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. I think it is time that we can call it a day after 7 years, and we should also admit that the Mastodon experiment has become unviable, unscalable, obsolete and already extinct as a serious alternative against Twitter. It had its slither of a chance, and it still failed. Maybe a lesson in networks effects will tell you why the 220M+ daily active users on Twitter still continue to use the platform. Unsurprisingly.
- riffic 4y ago
  mastodon as an open source project is wildly successful what are you even talking about?
  - rvz 4y ago
    Had you read my comment, you would know that my point still stands unrefuted.
dylan604 4y ago
I would assume a single account with 8.7 million followers isn't a big deal to Twitter. It's not like the 8.7 million NPR followers are unique to NPR and are going to disappear. Those 8.7 million followers probably follow 8.7 million other things themselves. I'd be willing to guess a single Kardashian has more followers than NPR (maybe I'm too cynical). Eventually, the way Musk is running Twitter, he'll give a free blue check mark for the Brawndo Corp. Maybe he could just rename Twitter to "Ow, my balls"
- acdha 4y ago
  That’s true to some extent but NPR and its people provide a ton of timely content which keeps users active. People like the “what’s going on” aspect and news organizations disproportionately help provide that.
  - gkbrk 4y ago
    Worst case, Twitter can set up something like "system accounts" that automatically fetch headlines from news websites or RSS feeds and post them with links on Twitter.
    - galleywest200 4y ago
      Twitter has recently been playing cat and mouse with its API access -- why wouldn't these news sites just block twitter's RSS agents?
      - gkbrk 4y ago
        How do you even block one organization from accessing your RSS feeds or your homepage HTML while allowing others to access it? How do you tell apart my requests and Twitter's requests if they both come from a residential IP or a common VPN?
        acdha 4y ago
        These are companies, they work with the law: put terms of use on your content which ban cloaking your identity. When the unique identifier you put in your feeds shows up on the unauthorized profile, you now have evidence not only that they were illegally using your content but also they knew that and were trying to defeat an access control mechanism. At that point, all of the big content companies are on your side – none of them are going for a “but we really want to use their content without paying for it!” argument – and it further increases the number of people reconsidering their continued use of the site.
pixxel 4y ago
8.7 million followers but take a look at their feed. Go back a week in time (for a snapshot) and the like/retweets/comments are generally in the 10s or low hundreds, with a few exceptions (low thousands). Same with NYT. Last time I looked they had 50+ million followers with similar low engagement. So how many of their followers are bots and what’s NPRs true value to Twitter? I don’t know. I’ve got a small 5k following and I have similar engagement.
- effingwewt 4y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. Most twitter account followers are nothing but bots. Millions of 'followers' but likes and retweets only in the dozens. It also makes for huge egos. Like, they know they bought all their followers, but they wake up one day and forget, and start to believe their own bullshit. To be fair it is everywhere, youtube accounts will millions of followers do the same. Never more than 200 comments or likes on them. Seems to me the only organic accounts are the ones with only a few K. I assume anything with 100k-1 million followers is 95% bots. No one ever thought it was odd that these accounts all got their million followers in the first few days of acct creation, then literally didnt gain any more ever? Or how odd it is that every celebrity or business just happened to hit 1mil+?
  - philistine 4y ago
    Low engagement does not absolutely equate paid bots. Twitter is ooold. I bet the overwhelming majority of NPR followers are inactive accounts by people who signed up somewhere in the '10s and went to the website twice.
    - effingwewt 4y ago
      Not when all their followers were gained the first week. Please show me the celebrity/business/politician with even a quarter as many retweets or likes as their follower count. It doesn't happen. It's an open secret they all buy their followers. They call it 'growth hacking' or 'fake it till you make it'- I call it bullshit. There are firms that do nothing but increase follower count. Simply do an internet search for 'where to buy twitter followers'. It's pretty sad its literally that simple.
mdaniel 4y ago
And too bad, also, since the On The Media hosts seem to have joined a journalist-centric server that would have been the perfect place for them: https://journa.host/about https://journa.host/about I wouldn't envy the hosts having to read our their addresses but npr.org could absolutely implement WebFinger if they were thus inclined
hnburnsy 4y ago
Wonder what all those social media interns are going to do all day long when they shut down those 52 accounts.
moralestapia 4y ago
>8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner Nah.

spir 4y ago

Last week, the Federal Reserve issued an important update on twitter. So no, I don't think twitter is worried about losing NPR. Twitter has the strongest network effects of any contemporary social network.

fknorangesite 4y ago
Well, I'm sure they didn't issue it only on twitter, right? That'd just be part of their normal media processes. Post it on the website. Post it on twitter. Post it on Facebook. Send press releases to media outlets. Blah blah blah.
reset2023 4y ago
No dopamine hit with twitter anymore.

agluszak 4y ago

Network effect is literally the only thing holding non-federated social networks together

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> no mention of Mastodon in this announcement Mastodon blew its moment. It could have eaten Twitter’s lunch. But onboarding—specifically, choosing a server—was too tedious for non-niche adoption.

dylan604 4y ago
This will always be a problem with federated vs unfederated services. It's hard to get a network effect when things are so spread out without a central place.
- spankalee 4y ago
  You don't need a central place, but you do need places that are large enough, mainstream enough, and trusted enough, for the masses. Email is like this now.
  - iak8god 4y ago
    > you do need places that are large enough, mainstream enough, and trusted enough, for the masses I think you don't necessarily even need that if you have a better way to support discovery and interaction with content from other places.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- runako 4y ago
  Email stands as a notable counter-example.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    but that's not how you use email. you don't sign up for an email account, and then go searching for other users to follow and what not with in the same server. with social platforms, you do just that. you want to see a centralized list of available users to choose to follow or subscribe or join cult or whatever. i'm deliberately using centralized here as not needing to know that multiple servers exist with different users in each. maybe i'm showing my ignorance of mastodon, but it seems like mastodon.com or whatever central website could just publish a list that mastodon clients can refer to rather than making users discovery a hunt and fetch kind of process. like a torrent index site. if that already exists, then i'll TIL the workings of mastodon. if it doesn't exists, then it seems very short sited.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I am viewing Twitter more than before because I am attracted to the open speech where political banning is no longer occurring. I do not know all who have been blocked under Musk but it feels more open.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

belltaco 4y ago

Fox News probably had more followers when they stopped posting on Twitter a few years ago. Not to mention all the right wing momentum behind Parler, Gab, Telegram, Truth Social etc. didn't make a noticeable dent.

RobAtticus 4y ago
For a company that "stopped posting on Twitter" they sure post a lot: https://twitter.com/FoxNews https://twitter.com/FoxNews
- belltaco 4y ago
  If you're going to be wrong at least don't be snarky. https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-breaks-16-month-twitter-silence-with-tweet-about-coronavirus-coverage/ https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-breaks-16-month-twitter-sil...

jeffwask 4y ago

I think the Dominoes have been falling for a while. I mostly quit the bird in November. I pop over once or twice a week these days to see what's happening and the degradation of content is very apparent. It may be because of departures or it may be because his constant weaponizing, sorry monetizing, of the algorithm but it's a lot quieter. A lot of the people I liked to follow from our industry are gone. It's a stark contrast to what the app was even a year ago. All while their CEO rebrands them as Titter and has people repaint signs. The most recent gaff of exposing people "private" circles to the main feed (including private nudes) is probably going to create a new slew of legal issues.

rvz 4y ago

> Also, no mention of Mastodon in this announcement. It sounds like they're just going to use Facebook for the time being. I think it is time that we can call it a day after 7 years, and we should also admit that the Mastodon experiment has become unviable, unscalable, obsolete and already extinct as a serious alternative against Twitter. It had its slither of a chance, and it still failed. Maybe a lesson in networks effects will tell you why the 220M+ daily active users on Twitter still continue to use the platform. Unsurprisingly.

riffic 4y ago
mastodon as an open source project is wildly successful what are you even talking about?
- rvz 4y ago
  Had you read my comment, you would know that my point still stands unrefuted.

dylan604 4y ago

I would assume a single account with 8.7 million followers isn't a big deal to Twitter. It's not like the 8.7 million NPR followers are unique to NPR and are going to disappear. Those 8.7 million followers probably follow 8.7 million other things themselves. I'd be willing to guess a single Kardashian has more followers than NPR (maybe I'm too cynical). Eventually, the way Musk is running Twitter, he'll give a free blue check mark for the Brawndo Corp. Maybe he could just rename Twitter to "Ow, my balls"

acdha 4y ago
That’s true to some extent but NPR and its people provide a ton of timely content which keeps users active. People like the “what’s going on” aspect and news organizations disproportionately help provide that.
- gkbrk 4y ago
  Worst case, Twitter can set up something like "system accounts" that automatically fetch headlines from news websites or RSS feeds and post them with links on Twitter.
  - galleywest200 4y ago
    Twitter has recently been playing cat and mouse with its API access -- why wouldn't these news sites just block twitter's RSS agents?
    - gkbrk 4y ago
      How do you even block one organization from accessing your RSS feeds or your homepage HTML while allowing others to access it? How do you tell apart my requests and Twitter's requests if they both come from a residential IP or a common VPN?
      - acdha 4y ago
        These are companies, they work with the law: put terms of use on your content which ban cloaking your identity. When the unique identifier you put in your feeds shows up on the unauthorized profile, you now have evidence not only that they were illegally using your content but also they knew that and were trying to defeat an access control mechanism. At that point, all of the big content companies are on your side – none of them are going for a “but we really want to use their content without paying for it!” argument – and it further increases the number of people reconsidering their continued use of the site.

pixxel 4y ago

8.7 million followers but take a look at their feed. Go back a week in time (for a snapshot) and the like/retweets/comments are generally in the 10s or low hundreds, with a few exceptions (low thousands). Same with NYT. Last time I looked they had 50+ million followers with similar low engagement. So how many of their followers are bots and what’s NPRs true value to Twitter? I don’t know. I’ve got a small 5k following and I have similar engagement.

effingwewt 4y ago
You hit the nail on the head. Most twitter account followers are nothing but bots. Millions of 'followers' but likes and retweets only in the dozens. It also makes for huge egos. Like, they know they bought all their followers, but they wake up one day and forget, and start to believe their own bullshit. To be fair it is everywhere, youtube accounts will millions of followers do the same. Never more than 200 comments or likes on them. Seems to me the only organic accounts are the ones with only a few K. I assume anything with 100k-1 million followers is 95% bots. No one ever thought it was odd that these accounts all got their million followers in the first few days of acct creation, then literally didnt gain any more ever? Or how odd it is that every celebrity or business just happened to hit 1mil+?
- philistine 4y ago
  Low engagement does not absolutely equate paid bots. Twitter is ooold. I bet the overwhelming majority of NPR followers are inactive accounts by people who signed up somewhere in the '10s and went to the website twice.
  - effingwewt 4y ago
    Not when all their followers were gained the first week. Please show me the celebrity/business/politician with even a quarter as many retweets or likes as their follower count. It doesn't happen. It's an open secret they all buy their followers. They call it 'growth hacking' or 'fake it till you make it'- I call it bullshit. There are firms that do nothing but increase follower count. Simply do an internet search for 'where to buy twitter followers'. It's pretty sad its literally that simple.

mdaniel 4y ago

And too bad, also, since the On The Media hosts seem to have joined a journalist-centric server that would have been the perfect place for them: https://journa.host/about https://journa.host/about I wouldn't envy the hosts having to read our their addresses but npr.org could absolutely implement WebFinger if they were thus inclined

hnburnsy 4y ago

Wonder what all those social media interns are going to do all day long when they shut down those 52 accounts.

moralestapia 4y ago

>8.7 million followers and run 52 different accounts so Twitter is losing a pretty important partner Nah.