3 ms·

It seems pretty obvious that Twitter is trying to become a business and these alienating changes are part of the strategy but the unfortunate part is that they

It seems pretty obvious that Twitter is trying to become a business and these alienating changes are part of the strategy but the unfortunate part is that they seemingly have picked the completely wrong strategy around what their business should be. Twitter really from a tech prospective is a protocol and it seemed that Twitter as a business was in line with what they were providing. Twitter.com acted as the centralized hub and the developers were invited to build upon and enrich the Twitter protocol. The goal was the more tweets and users the better no matter where they were coming from. Then they realized they need to start making money. It seems that from the business folks the reaction has been to strong arm users back to using Twitter controlled products with the assumption that they can start to serve ads. I don't blame them necessarily in that this is the standard business model for a social network but I think it will fail specifically for Twitter. In my opinion advertising will cannabalize their business - they should be looking to sell analytics and insights - thats where their value is. Yes its harder, less proven but they are just destroying themselves with their current strategy. Im sure nobody wants to see ads on Twitter and I wouldn't be surprised if nobody really wants to serve ads in that Twitter is exceptionally noisy and the functionality is very streamlined. On the other hand the value of real-time trends or the licensing to do so is exceptionally valuable to just about every company. Perhaps its not as easy of a business model as ads but at least its seemingly more scalable with their ecosystem.

kalleboo 14y ago
To me it seems like the larger problem is that Twitter doesn't just have to be profitable. They also have to justify their $9 billion valuation. Which I suspect will be impossible.
OGinparadise 14y ago
On the other hand the value of real-time trends or the licensing to do so is exceptionally valuable to just about every company. Perhaps its not as easy of a business model as ads but at least its seemingly more scalable with their ecosystem. Maybe there is no serious money on that type of business model. Remember, most employees, investors and execs are trying to dump Twitter to investors, who cares what happens 2-3 years from now? The revenue needs to be shown now, ideally before advertisers get to see any hard stats on effectiveness. Facebook has been adding more ads, Google is virtually all ads so why not Twitter. Facebook will tire people with ads, Twitter too, Google will lose their reputation little by little considering that fairness is the core of it's business. But many will have cashed out and others will hold the bag
waterlesscloud 14y ago
"they should be looking to sell analytics and insights - thats where their value is" This seems incredibly obvious to me, and is what I meant elsewhere in the thread where I mentioned knowing what everyone in the world is thinking right now. Yes, it is hard. But they've got the profile and the money to round up the talent for it. Making money from ads is cute and all, but there's a whole other level they could be working on.
- danmaz74 14y ago
  Interestingly, they actually made the conscious decision to leave analytics to others - it is clearly explained in the quadrants here: https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api I just hope that they'll stick to this announcement, as I'm building my hashtagify.me based on that...
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Huh. It seems to me that the lower left quadrant is worth an incredible amount of money, but maybe I'm just wrong. It's been known ot happen.
    - danmaz74 14y ago
      I just guess that they think they can make much more money in the upper-right quadrant...
ExpiredLink 14y ago
> Then they realized they need to start making money. The VC mantra is: 'We acquire a large amount of users for free our services. Someone (the buyer) will monetize them later'. Users are the currency of internet startups.

kalleboo 14y ago

To me it seems like the larger problem is that Twitter doesn't just have to be profitable. They also have to justify their $9 billion valuation. Which I suspect will be impossible.

OGinparadise 14y ago

On the other hand the value of real-time trends or the licensing to do so is exceptionally valuable to just about every company. Perhaps its not as easy of a business model as ads but at least its seemingly more scalable with their ecosystem. Maybe there is no serious money on that type of business model. Remember, most employees, investors and execs are trying to dump Twitter to investors, who cares what happens 2-3 years from now? The revenue needs to be shown now, ideally before advertisers get to see any hard stats on effectiveness. Facebook has been adding more ads, Google is virtually all ads so why not Twitter. Facebook will tire people with ads, Twitter too, Google will lose their reputation little by little considering that fairness is the core of it's business. But many will have cashed out and others will hold the bag

waterlesscloud 14y ago

"they should be looking to sell analytics and insights - thats where their value is" This seems incredibly obvious to me, and is what I meant elsewhere in the thread where I mentioned knowing what everyone in the world is thinking right now. Yes, it is hard. But they've got the profile and the money to round up the talent for it. Making money from ads is cute and all, but there's a whole other level they could be working on.

danmaz74 14y ago
Interestingly, they actually made the conscious decision to leave analytics to others - it is clearly explained in the quadrants here: https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api I just hope that they'll stick to this announcement, as I'm building my hashtagify.me based on that...
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Huh. It seems to me that the lower left quadrant is worth an incredible amount of money, but maybe I'm just wrong. It's been known ot happen.
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    I just guess that they think they can make much more money in the upper-right quadrant...

ExpiredLink 14y ago

> Then they realized they need to start making money. The VC mantra is: 'We acquire a large amount of users for free our services. Someone (the buyer) will monetize them later'. Users are the currency of internet startups.