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As Tom Nicholas (the British YouTuber) pointed out, a chat app that's used by the vast majority of the population (like WeChat in China, or perhaps in some coun

As Tom Nicholas (the British YouTuber) pointed out, a chat app that's used by the vast majority of the population (like WeChat in China, or perhaps in some countries WhatsApp) can add a payments method and be successful, but Twitter has only ever been a niche. An influential niche, popular with journalists and celebrities, but a niche nonetheless. A chat app first needs the massive audience, and to be a normal way to send private messages to people you know in real life, before it can become a successful payments app. WhatsApp could perhaps do it, but most of the countries where WhatsApp is popular already have decent payments infrastructure.

theshrike79 3y ago
> Twitter has only ever been a niche. An influential niche, popular with journalists and celebrities, but a niche nonetheless. This is the key. Elon has been in this niche and can't see it from the outside, from the viewpoint of the Regular People who only hear about Twitter on the news but never actually go to the site. Same with journalists and "journalists" who create "news" about some two follower default profile picture account with a hot-take on Twitter, pretending that it's the view of some larger crowd just because it was said on Twitter. Twitter lacks what IRC had decades ago and Discord/Telegram have, a way to moderate who can see your message within a group. Currently it's just shouting to the void (with hashtags).
- astrange 3y ago
  > Twitter lacks what IRC had decades ago and Discord/Telegram have, a way to moderate who can see your message within a group. It has that, Circles. Except they announced they were going to remove it recently but… haven't. I think they may actually be unable to remove things and have just told him it's gone.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    I always thought circles were for some kind of voice chat real time podcast thing? And people could just join them at-will without any moderation. But I'm not a heavy twitter user in the least :)
    - belltaco 3y ago
      That's Spaces.
    - gingerrr 3y ago
      Circles were a near-exact lift of the same-named feature from Google Plus. You could (can still?) set up ring privilege layers of your followers or specific subgroupings and send tweets only visible to those in that group.

theshrike79 3y ago

> Twitter has only ever been a niche. An influential niche, popular with journalists and celebrities, but a niche nonetheless. This is the key. Elon has been in this niche and can't see it from the outside, from the viewpoint of the Regular People who only hear about Twitter on the news but never actually go to the site. Same with journalists and "journalists" who create "news" about some two follower default profile picture account with a hot-take on Twitter, pretending that it's the view of some larger crowd just because it was said on Twitter. Twitter lacks what IRC had decades ago and Discord/Telegram have, a way to moderate who can see your message within a group. Currently it's just shouting to the void (with hashtags).

astrange 3y ago
> Twitter lacks what IRC had decades ago and Discord/Telegram have, a way to moderate who can see your message within a group. It has that, Circles. Except they announced they were going to remove it recently but… haven't. I think they may actually be unable to remove things and have just told him it's gone.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I always thought circles were for some kind of voice chat real time podcast thing? And people could just join them at-will without any moderation. But I'm not a heavy twitter user in the least :)
  - belltaco 3y ago
    That's Spaces.
  - gingerrr 3y ago
    Circles were a near-exact lift of the same-named feature from Google Plus. You could (can still?) set up ring privilege layers of your followers or specific subgroupings and send tweets only visible to those in that group.