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Twitter clones thus far have all been cover bands with a different (speaker) stack. Focus seems to be entirely on the backend protocol side - important for dece

by npunt 3y ago

Twitter clones thus far have all been cover bands with a different (speaker) stack. Focus seems to be entirely on the backend protocol side - important for decentralization but fixing only part of the problem. I haven't seen much in the way of innovation on the UX itself, which is what I'm really interested in. I guess its a mix of a) why mess with success, twitter-like design is proven to work, b) a lack of experimental startup product culture that's willing to try new things, c) not having good ideas, and d) just not enough time because they're focused on basics.

rglullis 3y ago
> which is what I'm really interested in. Whenever I see comments like these, my immediate thought is "How interested are you, if you had to put a dollar figure on it?" Also, you are missing alternative (e): availability bias. Maybe you haven't seen a lot of innovation around UX not because people are not trying, but because those who tried to experiment with different UX were aiming at such a niche that completely failed as social network?
- duxup 3y ago
  >failed as social network Is that the case? Serious question, I'm curious about any social networks that have tried some new UX? The twitter clones seem to play things very close to twitter's style. At least it looks that way to me as someone who isn't a heavy twitter user. Also what is "failed as a social network" when Twitter, one of the biggest bleeds money as it is? Is the market just messed up? Or maybe UX where I actually feel like I can find or interact with things I want just doesn't work for profitability (Facebook doesn't show me what I want)?
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Some guy here posted on HN about his project non.io[0] Still hanging around https://non.io/ https://non.io/
  - npunt 3y ago
    I'm of the opinion there aren't a lot of good alternative ideas circulating. There's been some work in a design pattern libraries but it's hard to design new features from the outside, and I don't think until very recently people saw starting a rival social network as a good business move, since social networks are defined by their network effect moat. Twitter's meltdown has created some opportunity but it remains to be seen if the attack of the clones is just a fracturing versus a cambrian event.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    > I'm curious about any social networks that have tried some new UX? And I'm curious about flipping this question: can you think of any UX that would be interested for you in a social network?
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > The twitter clones seem to play things very close to twitter's style. At least it looks that way to me as someone who isn't a heavy twitter user. A lot of this is they're trying to capture the user base of an incumbent and users like familiarity. > Also what is "failed as a social network" when Twitter, one of the biggest bleeds money as it is? Twitter has millions of users and it doesn't cost a lot in infrastructure to host tweets. Twitter bleeds money because the company has been mismanaged (going back long before its current ownership), not because putting ads on a social network with that number of users couldn't turn a profit. A "failed social network" is one that nobody uses. > Or maybe UX where I actually feel like I can find or interact with things I want just doesn't work for profitability (Facebook doesn't show me what I want)? There's probably a short-term/long-term thing here. Big companies run on metrics, so they make a change and the number goes up so they keep the change. But the way the change works is by frustrating people into spending more time on the site, which short-term increases the metrics and long-term makes people hate you and be eager to switch away at the first opportunity. What you probably want here is a service with a single owner who actually uses it and cares about making the service good (and, most importantly, is competent), but what usually happens instead is it becomes a publicly traded company controlled by shareholders who institute the aforementioned metrics-based bureaucracy. The key is somehow getting the one with benevolent leadership and the one with millions of users to be the same one.
- npunt 3y ago
  At least for me, I've spent the last ~3 years designing new feature ideas for twitter and twitter-like products as a hobby and been involved in various communities working on these issues. Ways to improve quality of comments, reduce conflict, improve context, build media literacy, etc. I need to get around to publishing these ideas but have definitely put real work in. This is the only one I've published in blog form [1], tho I've put bits of others out on twitter itself over the years. Fwiw I used to run product/design for a social media co and have on and off run communities all the way back to bbses. As far as I'm concerned the innovation just isn't there in the core loops and UX of twitter-likes, it's all circa 2008 stuff. [1]: https://nickpunt.com/blog/deescalating-social-media/ https://nickpunt.com/blog/deescalating-social-media/
  - rglullis 3y ago
    > designing new feature ideas for twitter and twitter-like products Which is not the same as "innovating with UX" in any way that is incompatible with the status quo. Going by your blog post, do you agree that it is not something that (by itself) a feature so innovative that would make people drop twitter to favor a new social network that implemented it?
    - npunt 3y ago
      No this feature by itself isn't something to attract people to a brand new social network, I hope I didn't represent it that way. My perspective on the problem is that the way twitter's medium is designed doesn't produce a wonderful signal:noise ratio. Some people might revel in the noise, and some amount of noise certainly generates MAUs and ad dollars, but ultimately it's not living up to its potential as a medium and social network. 'A clown car that fell into a gold mine' still applies. My theory of change is that in general, features that improve SNR are going to provide a sustaining MAU advantage to products that implement them, because the vast majority of users want better SNR. They want quality discourse, funny memes, kind interactions, etc. Drama and conflict also produce MAUs, but ultimately they're net negative because of the people they scare off. If you accept that premise, then the question is more when than if features focused on improving the SNR of interactions should be built. Do they meaningfully differentiate and help with the cold start problem? Or are they to be built after some amount of audience has arrived? From what I've seen on the clones, as they grow they're all running into the same SNR ceiling. I think that ceiling is preventing them from being breakout successes, because whatever differentiator they started with (decentralized, free speech, etc) will fade in relevance as they get bigger and their core experience reverts to the mean. They're just twitter, but smaller. Would a product that focused more on improving SNR be able to breakout? I don't know, I'm just disappointed nobody seems to have tried very hard.
joepie91_ 3y ago
I mean, there's plenty of UX innovation going on in the fediverse, for example. But for some reason bringing that up is consistently met with "that can't ever work! nobody can understand this! it's too difficult!" and complete bafflement from the peanut gallery. I think tech companies' lack of interest in experimenting with UX might have something to do with that...
jghn 3y ago
> which is what I'm really interested in Part of the problem is a lot of us don't want "innovation" here. The limitation for the Twitter clones that I've found is none of them (including Twitter these days) have the critical mass of people it used to have.
- npunt 3y ago
  Well it's fine to have that as an individual opinion about your experience, and we all have had experiences of great products horribly transformed through bullshit 'innovation', but surely there's room for improvement on twitter as a whole. The place is kinda a mess and the medium is responsible for part of that.
mjr00 3y ago
Yeah, the problem with the wave of Twitter clones is exactly that: they're clones. You don't make a successful social media site by being the same as an existing site but with different people. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Discord, TikTok, Reddit are all very different in how they function and what types of content is shared. Google+ tried to clone Facebook and was a colossal failure despite hundreds of millions, or perhaps billions of dollars being poured into it. Fundamentally the issue with Bluesky, Mastodon, etc. is that they don't offer anything different to most users. Yes, they run off decentralized protocols, but most people don't care. Yes, there's no Elon, but most people don't care. So I'd put it firmly in (c). Bluesky and Threads both tried to recapture the lightning in the bottle which is 2008 Twitter by copying it (Bluesky going so far as to copy the early 00s invite-only model!). Both are either failures or marginally successful, depending on who you ask. Certainly neither are a home run. If you want to get people off Twitter, don't build Twitter-but-different. Build something better.

by npunt 3y ago

rglullis 3y ago

> which is what I'm really interested in. Whenever I see comments like these, my immediate thought is "How interested are you, if you had to put a dollar figure on it?" Also, you are missing alternative (e): availability bias. Maybe you haven't seen a lot of innovation around UX not because people are not trying, but because those who tried to experiment with different UX were aiming at such a niche that completely failed as social network?

duxup 3y ago
>failed as social network Is that the case? Serious question, I'm curious about any social networks that have tried some new UX? The twitter clones seem to play things very close to twitter's style. At least it looks that way to me as someone who isn't a heavy twitter user. Also what is "failed as a social network" when Twitter, one of the biggest bleeds money as it is? Is the market just messed up? Or maybe UX where I actually feel like I can find or interact with things I want just doesn't work for profitability (Facebook doesn't show me what I want)?
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Some guy here posted on HN about his project non.io[0] Still hanging around https://non.io/ https://non.io/
- npunt 3y ago
  I'm of the opinion there aren't a lot of good alternative ideas circulating. There's been some work in a design pattern libraries but it's hard to design new features from the outside, and I don't think until very recently people saw starting a rival social network as a good business move, since social networks are defined by their network effect moat. Twitter's meltdown has created some opportunity but it remains to be seen if the attack of the clones is just a fracturing versus a cambrian event.
- rglullis 3y ago
  > I'm curious about any social networks that have tried some new UX? And I'm curious about flipping this question: can you think of any UX that would be interested for you in a social network?
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > The twitter clones seem to play things very close to twitter's style. At least it looks that way to me as someone who isn't a heavy twitter user. A lot of this is they're trying to capture the user base of an incumbent and users like familiarity. > Also what is "failed as a social network" when Twitter, one of the biggest bleeds money as it is? Twitter has millions of users and it doesn't cost a lot in infrastructure to host tweets. Twitter bleeds money because the company has been mismanaged (going back long before its current ownership), not because putting ads on a social network with that number of users couldn't turn a profit. A "failed social network" is one that nobody uses. > Or maybe UX where I actually feel like I can find or interact with things I want just doesn't work for profitability (Facebook doesn't show me what I want)? There's probably a short-term/long-term thing here. Big companies run on metrics, so they make a change and the number goes up so they keep the change. But the way the change works is by frustrating people into spending more time on the site, which short-term increases the metrics and long-term makes people hate you and be eager to switch away at the first opportunity. What you probably want here is a service with a single owner who actually uses it and cares about making the service good (and, most importantly, is competent), but what usually happens instead is it becomes a publicly traded company controlled by shareholders who institute the aforementioned metrics-based bureaucracy. The key is somehow getting the one with benevolent leadership and the one with millions of users to be the same one.
npunt 3y ago
At least for me, I've spent the last ~3 years designing new feature ideas for twitter and twitter-like products as a hobby and been involved in various communities working on these issues. Ways to improve quality of comments, reduce conflict, improve context, build media literacy, etc. I need to get around to publishing these ideas but have definitely put real work in. This is the only one I've published in blog form [1], tho I've put bits of others out on twitter itself over the years. Fwiw I used to run product/design for a social media co and have on and off run communities all the way back to bbses. As far as I'm concerned the innovation just isn't there in the core loops and UX of twitter-likes, it's all circa 2008 stuff. [1]: https://nickpunt.com/blog/deescalating-social-media/ https://nickpunt.com/blog/deescalating-social-media/
- rglullis 3y ago
  > designing new feature ideas for twitter and twitter-like products Which is not the same as "innovating with UX" in any way that is incompatible with the status quo. Going by your blog post, do you agree that it is not something that (by itself) a feature so innovative that would make people drop twitter to favor a new social network that implemented it?
  - npunt 3y ago
    No this feature by itself isn't something to attract people to a brand new social network, I hope I didn't represent it that way. My perspective on the problem is that the way twitter's medium is designed doesn't produce a wonderful signal:noise ratio. Some people might revel in the noise, and some amount of noise certainly generates MAUs and ad dollars, but ultimately it's not living up to its potential as a medium and social network. 'A clown car that fell into a gold mine' still applies. My theory of change is that in general, features that improve SNR are going to provide a sustaining MAU advantage to products that implement them, because the vast majority of users want better SNR. They want quality discourse, funny memes, kind interactions, etc. Drama and conflict also produce MAUs, but ultimately they're net negative because of the people they scare off. If you accept that premise, then the question is more when than if features focused on improving the SNR of interactions should be built. Do they meaningfully differentiate and help with the cold start problem? Or are they to be built after some amount of audience has arrived? From what I've seen on the clones, as they grow they're all running into the same SNR ceiling. I think that ceiling is preventing them from being breakout successes, because whatever differentiator they started with (decentralized, free speech, etc) will fade in relevance as they get bigger and their core experience reverts to the mean. They're just twitter, but smaller. Would a product that focused more on improving SNR be able to breakout? I don't know, I'm just disappointed nobody seems to have tried very hard.

joepie91_ 3y ago

I mean, there's plenty of UX innovation going on in the fediverse, for example. But for some reason bringing that up is consistently met with "that can't ever work! nobody can understand this! it's too difficult!" and complete bafflement from the peanut gallery. I think tech companies' lack of interest in experimenting with UX might have something to do with that...

jghn 3y ago

> which is what I'm really interested in Part of the problem is a lot of us don't want "innovation" here. The limitation for the Twitter clones that I've found is none of them (including Twitter these days) have the critical mass of people it used to have.

npunt 3y ago
Well it's fine to have that as an individual opinion about your experience, and we all have had experiences of great products horribly transformed through bullshit 'innovation', but surely there's room for improvement on twitter as a whole. The place is kinda a mess and the medium is responsible for part of that.

mjr00 3y ago

Yeah, the problem with the wave of Twitter clones is exactly that: they're clones. You don't make a successful social media site by being the same as an existing site but with different people. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Discord, TikTok, Reddit are all very different in how they function and what types of content is shared. Google+ tried to clone Facebook and was a colossal failure despite hundreds of millions, or perhaps billions of dollars being poured into it. Fundamentally the issue with Bluesky, Mastodon, etc. is that they don't offer anything different to most users. Yes, they run off decentralized protocols, but most people don't care. Yes, there's no Elon, but most people don't care. So I'd put it firmly in (c). Bluesky and Threads both tried to recapture the lightning in the bottle which is 2008 Twitter by copying it (Bluesky going so far as to copy the early 00s invite-only model!). Both are either failures or marginally successful, depending on who you ask. Certainly neither are a home run. If you want to get people off Twitter, don't build Twitter-but-different. Build something better.