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Twitter hit upon some narrow product-market fit despite itself. It has never seemed to understand why it worked for some people or what it wanted to be, and how

Twitter hit upon some narrow product-market fit despite itself. It has never seemed to understand why it worked for some people or what it wanted to be, and how those two were related, if at all. But in a twist of fate that is often more of a factor in finding product-market fit than most like to admit Hear, hear! Most internet companies have no deep or useful understanding of how they pioneered their early successes, or how to tackle the widespread growth decline that they are now encountering. Reddit is another fine example of this effect. I think the one thing Musk achieved in his folie a un is putting Twitter on the observation deck for long enough that this fact became painfully obvious to many. I think what we're learning - in fact, what we already knew in the days of newsgroups, and IRC - is "if you build it, they will come". And 'it' can be pretty much any medium that removes the potential inconveniences of connecting with other human beings and voicing opinions to them. There really is no product beyond the people and the content. Google did well to realise this and turn itself into a huge parasite pretty much from day one: search aggregated the product, analytics kept tabs on what it was up to, and ads exploited both of the former. That's why we will continue to see VC money and modern social media companies throw themselves at the wall like spaghetti and, eventually for most, off the cliff like lemmings. The current fracture in social media may be the best thing that's ever happened to the internet (a few pennies in the hyperbole jar, sure). Look how much competition we have now in the 'let humans get their opinions and memes to other humans' space: Mastodon, BlueSky, Lemmy, Squabbles, and so on. Sadly capitalism will once again inevitably demand a winner and we'll be back at whatever Twitter/Reddit 2.0 is but at least there's always hope for the cycle to begin again.

PaulHoule 3y ago
Yep, the genius of Facebook was that it got ahead of the decline cycle. It’s survived several half-lives of decay because it saw what happened to MySpace and they weren’t going to let that happen. Getting a two-sided market for advertisers and consumers was a big part (if it is money you care about you want the effective ad network not a social media product that has other good attributes). Other parts have been continuous investment, buying lots of competitors, side bets like “The Metaverse”, … They understand completely that if they aren’t moving forward they’ll quickly wind up like Kodak, Polaroid or AMC. Contrast that to the average communications app (App X) which starts out with an onboarding process that works (like it really does find your microphone) but a few years later they get complacent and it “just doesn’t work” despite having 1000+ engineers and an engineering blog about how badass they are. Now a friend tells you to try App Y and you’ll say “I’m wary of this, look how App X sucks now” and they’ll say “No, App Y is great, remember how App X was 5 years ago?”. 5 years later App Z will take the place of Y and Y will take the place of X.”. Most people don’t get that this is the reason why communication apps are a technological backwater like narrowbody airliners, but Mark Zuckerberg does.
- gonzo41 3y ago
  I don't think Zuck is that clever or ahead of the curve. He built a giant social network that had guard rails, ie fill in the profile, rather than build the website (myspace). And as a consequence has ridden first mover advantage for the last 20 years. If Facebook hadn't been able to acquire Instagram or WhatsApp the internet of today would look totally different. Facebook got lucky because regulators in the US were asleep at the wheel. Anyway, facebook is a dark forest. Threads may have 70M new users but it's got instagrams TOS (no fun) and it's not prioritizing news. Journalists will come quickly and then leave because content will happen elsewhere. Maybe twitter will outlive musk. Maybe.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    I'd describe the acquisitions as a strategy to keep on top, particularly when they have the advertising machine to turn audiences into gold. What I don't understand is how funding for new social media startups has collapsed so completely in the U.S. Insofar as Facebook would buy (or want to buy) any potential competitor that seems like a pretty good exit plan. Today there is more concern that the government would get in the way but I think the funding collapsed happened before anti-trust got fashionable again. I think you're right that Threads won't appeal to journalists like the way Mastodon is not appealing to journalists but particularly Facebook deciding news is not great for business since news organizations are demanding to get paid and news is provocative and inflammatory (who wants to put an ad next to a video of a little bomb dropping out of a drone on someones head or next to somebody getting viciously dogpiled?)
Terr_ 3y ago
Going a step further: It isn't just that some companies don't know how they became successful, but that their success is largely up to un-repeatable factors we can only call "luck". Disregarding the influence of chance is a systemic issue, because humans are hard-coded to look for distinct reasons—stories—even when they are ridiculous. Consider how common it is for people who are flipping a coin to end up talking about "hot streaks" or the opposite outcome being "overdue."

PaulHoule 3y ago

Yep, the genius of Facebook was that it got ahead of the decline cycle. It’s survived several half-lives of decay because it saw what happened to MySpace and they weren’t going to let that happen. Getting a two-sided market for advertisers and consumers was a big part (if it is money you care about you want the effective ad network not a social media product that has other good attributes). Other parts have been continuous investment, buying lots of competitors, side bets like “The Metaverse”, … They understand completely that if they aren’t moving forward they’ll quickly wind up like Kodak, Polaroid or AMC. Contrast that to the average communications app (App X) which starts out with an onboarding process that works (like it really does find your microphone) but a few years later they get complacent and it “just doesn’t work” despite having 1000+ engineers and an engineering blog about how badass they are. Now a friend tells you to try App Y and you’ll say “I’m wary of this, look how App X sucks now” and they’ll say “No, App Y is great, remember how App X was 5 years ago?”. 5 years later App Z will take the place of Y and Y will take the place of X.”. Most people don’t get that this is the reason why communication apps are a technological backwater like narrowbody airliners, but Mark Zuckerberg does.

gonzo41 3y ago
I don't think Zuck is that clever or ahead of the curve. He built a giant social network that had guard rails, ie fill in the profile, rather than build the website (myspace). And as a consequence has ridden first mover advantage for the last 20 years. If Facebook hadn't been able to acquire Instagram or WhatsApp the internet of today would look totally different. Facebook got lucky because regulators in the US were asleep at the wheel. Anyway, facebook is a dark forest. Threads may have 70M new users but it's got instagrams TOS (no fun) and it's not prioritizing news. Journalists will come quickly and then leave because content will happen elsewhere. Maybe twitter will outlive musk. Maybe.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I'd describe the acquisitions as a strategy to keep on top, particularly when they have the advertising machine to turn audiences into gold. What I don't understand is how funding for new social media startups has collapsed so completely in the U.S. Insofar as Facebook would buy (or want to buy) any potential competitor that seems like a pretty good exit plan. Today there is more concern that the government would get in the way but I think the funding collapsed happened before anti-trust got fashionable again. I think you're right that Threads won't appeal to journalists like the way Mastodon is not appealing to journalists but particularly Facebook deciding news is not great for business since news organizations are demanding to get paid and news is provocative and inflammatory (who wants to put an ad next to a video of a little bomb dropping out of a drone on someones head or next to somebody getting viciously dogpiled?)

Terr_ 3y ago

Going a step further: It isn't just that some companies don't know how they became successful, but that their success is largely up to un-repeatable factors we can only call "luck". Disregarding the influence of chance is a systemic issue, because humans are hard-coded to look for distinct reasons—stories—even when they are ridiculous. Consider how common it is for people who are flipping a coin to end up talking about "hot streaks" or the opposite outcome being "overdue."