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Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be “The Pulse Of The Planet”
- vaksel 17y agouser = unique individual having a conscious twitter experience in a given week and they want a billion users like that? Will never happen
- yan 17y agonever say never.
- vaksel 17y agonot in a 5 year time frame at least
- abossy 17y agoHeh. Bill Gates said something similar about 640k of RAM once. There's certainly enough users to fill up that capacity. Why wouldn't it be possible?
- vaksel 17y agoTwitter is useless for anyone who isn't a marketer/promoter. Regular people would rather use facebook. Facebook can reach 1 billion users, twitter cannot.
- catch23 17y agoso most of twitter's 20m users are marketers & promoters? I don't consider myself a marketer and yet I'm on twitter. I'm on there because my friends are on there.
- mahmud 17y agoIf you have a job, career or business, you ARE in marketing. Products and "services" include your own self and skills.
- tedunangst 17y agoWhat Bill Gates said was "I have a processor with a 20-bit physical address space and I have to divide it into a portion for software and a portion for hardware devices like video ROM. 640k seems like a reasonable place to make that division."
- jganetsk 17y agoReally? Crap. My high school yearbook quote was "The computer will never need more than 640kb. -Bill Gates". Oops. All that being made fun of for nothing.
- smokinn 17y agoThe most common quote I see is: "640k should be enough for anybody. - Bill Gates" and it bugs me every time. Thanks to the grandparent for setting the record straight.
- cellis 17y agoCitation needed. Google picked you up nearly instantaneously though.
- ryanwaggoner 17y agoThere's barely 1 billion people online worldwide. Granted, there are more than that who have mobile phones and could use Twitter via SMS, and the number of people online by 2014 will probably be much higher (2 billion?), but they don't want 1 billion user accounts in their database, they want 1 billion active users who interact with Twitter at least once a week. Supposedly something like 80% of people who sign up for Twitter never return, so they'll need 5 billion signups to get 1 billion active users. Does Google even have 1 billion users who interact with them at least once a week?
- raghus 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hairy_Audacious_Goal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hairy_Audacious_Goal
- ryanwaggoner 17y agoWhy stop at a billion, then? Why not a trillion? I think the point is that a billion users who log in once a week is not unrealistic, it's virtually impossible.
- raghus 17y agoOver 2 Billion cellphones in the world - according to WolframAlpha (http://www06.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cellphones+worldwide http://www06.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cellphones+worldwide)
- tonystubblebine 17y agoI hope this story doesn't get killed, because the actual details are pretty interesting.
- maurycy 17y agoI don't get the Marissa Mayer thread. She asked for stats on Twitter's growth but there is already Google Analytics code on all Twitter pages.
- jgilliam 17y agoGoogle employees spying on Google Analytics accounts would definitely be considered "evil."
- maurycy 17y agoThis is very interesting then that Google gave up urge of cheating, and actually follows the rules.
- cdibona 17y agoImagine what Techcrunch, the fence of the internet, would do.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- byrneseyeview 17y agoPerhaps they could send some sort of harmless-seeming emissary to ask for the information they're already stealing, so Twitter will be more certain they don't have it.
- jacquesm 17y agoA truely paranoid individual would see this as proof that google is just pretending not to know...
- raghus 17y agoYes, but also remember that Twitter has a lot of non-web activity that would be completely invisible to Analytics
- sachinag 17y ago
- ssn 17y agoI refuse to follow links to techcrunch.com (see 'ethics') Added: techcrunch is making profit from a crime of privacy violation. this should be simply condemned. nothing else.
- ryanwaggoner 17y agoIf only you refused to comment on them in a self-righteous manner (see 'annoying').
- ssn 17y agoI thought it was self-explanatory. I revised my comment to provide context.
- hymanroth 17y agoWhen the storm fades away you will go back to the site. TC knows this.
- smokinn 17y agoNo I won't. I've been refusing to follow any links to TC for a while now and other than the occasional tinyurl'd link on twitter I've managed to avoid that cesspool entirely. If news.yc would stop voting up every article they write to the front page I wouldn't even have to read their linkbait headlines either.
- hymanroth 17y agoI stand corrected then. Respect.
- vaksel 17y agoit does look like another twitter astroturf, they really haven't reported anything negative about twitter. All the things they posted, could be used as a promotion to pitch twitter to investors.
- hymanroth 17y agoLike the part where they call Google and Microsoft a 'distraction' Or diss Marissa Mayer?
- zimbabwe 17y agoUpon reading the diss of Marissa Mayer I found myself liking Twitter a little more. But then, that's a very geeky reaction coming from somebody whose friends imitate the Marissa Mayer laugh for fun.
- geuis 17y agoI'll admit that the info is somewhat interesting. But I have absolutely no respect for Techcrunch anymore. For a company/blog that garnered a ton of respect over the last few years for helping to promote interesting new startups, they have strayed far from that ideal. That they would accept information that was obtained illegally and then proceed to broadcast that to the world is dishonorable. They can't be trusted to be responsible any more. For any number of upcoming and existing startups whose founders and employees read HN, I can't imagine that they would want any kind of ties to Techcrunch after this. I know that I sure as hell don't.
- icey 17y agoDid you read the article? This sentence is in the first paragraph: "... we’ve spent much of the last 36 hours talking directly to Twitter about the right way to go about doing that."
- tamersalama 17y agoThe 'right' as in 'my right'? Where's Twitter on that?
- anatoly 17y agoThere is no right way to go about doing that.
- greyman 17y agoBut still, it's like when I would steal your own belongings, then contact you and "talking to you directly" that I will return some of them back to you, and use others for my own benefit, even if it might do harm to you. We are still talking about publishing stolen documents, whether they contacted twitter or not.
- defunkt 17y agoIf I'm reading this right, they predicted 25m users by the end of 2009? As of July, they apparently have 40m. Cool.
- sunir 17y agoThey seem to want 25 million active, living people using Twitter. 40 million accounts is not the same thing. See this post about the difference between active and total users. http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/the-difference-between-total-uses-and-active-users.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/the-difference-between-total...
- defunkt 17y agoOh, so I wasn't reading it right :P
- philfreo 17y agoSeeing all these internal meeting notes published makes me want to never write anything down.
- omouse 17y agoWhy? Are you embarrassed by how crappy your note-taking skills are? :P
- zhyder 17y agoThis is really cool, gives a sense for how these discussions happen at other startups. Some similarities with our startup's discussions too, makes me feel... normal.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- Tiktaalik 17y agoVery interesting read. They seem pretty savvy. It's got to be a concern to them that Facebook has done all of the things they brainstormed in the "how would Facebook kill us" meeting. I wonder what their "how would Facebook kill us" meetings since then have gone?
- hymanroth 17y agoThere's no doubt the content is fascinating - but they're private documents. TC had no right to publish them, and we should all feel a little guilty for in part legitimizing TC's decision to publish them.
- dannyr 17y agoThere are a lot of stories that were based on leaked documents. Stories on watergate, Abu Ghraib, etc. were published because somebody leaked something private. I have to admit though that they have more significance than Twitter.
- carbon8 17y agoIn those cases, there was a legitimate public interest in having them leaked and published. Very different.
- dannyr 17y agoSo who decides what is public interest or not? Twitter has millions of users. We provide some private data to them. Shouldn't we know what is being discussed privately on how they will use it?
- bensummers 17y agoThis is a perfect case study in the importance of choosing a good password and ensuring that everyone in your organisation thinks about security.
- pkulak 17y agoI'm not sure I want any closed technology owned and operated by one company to become "the pulse of the internet".
- vaksel 17y agoIf one company can be called the pulse of the internet, it's Google.
- zhyder 17y agoAgreed, it was bad enough when IM was stuck in various closed networks, but at least then no single network had a monopoly. We need to think about how to build a distributed/federated Twitter alternative. Anyone want to get together to brainstorm how this could work?
- extension 17y agoThere have been myriad Twitter alternatives since long before Twitter existed, most of them having vastly superior functionality. The masses have made it crystal clear that they will accept none but the most crippled and proprietary offering in this domain.
- Raphael 17y agoAlready done. http://laconi.ca/ http://laconi.ca/
- FreeRadical 17y agocould the whole thing be a stunt?
- ulf 17y agoHas anyone thought of the possibility that Twitter leaked those documents intentionally? Do we have a statement from them dealing with the whole affair?
- jorgeortiz85 17y agohttp://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/twitter-even-more-open-than-we-wanted.html http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/twitter-even-more-open-than-...
- lucifer 17y agocynical view here: it is possible twitter is using techcrunch to push disinformation to confuse its competitors.
- hymanroth 17y agoTechCrunch's Faustian dilemma: to sell or not to sell its moral soul (or what's left of it) for an astronomical number of page views? Gee, that was hard - now where's the damn 'post' button?
- tptacek 17y agoOh, look! Here's how "newsworthy" the content TechCrunch got from Twitter was: so newsworthy that they're going to trickle it out one-per-day to maximize page views. Again. I hate to be a killjoy. But last time I suggested this, it worked, so maybe it'll work this time too: What happened to TechCrunch could happen to any YC company, or any company with HN contributors at it. We can't make TechCrunch manage their publication differently, but we can refuse to promote what they're doing here. Just hit the "flag" button on these stories. That's what I just did.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dcurtis 17y agoDo not use the flag button for things like this. That's not what it's for. This is not spam or off-topic. If you don't want to support the story, don't vote for it.
- programnature 17y agoIt would be wrong for Techcrunch to NOT publish this info, because by not publishing, it would simply circulate within the elite by other means. Techcrunch's friends, and any of the many companies with a stake in this, would find a way to get the info. Its the little guy who is disadvantaged by this not coming out. Whatever damage this leak has caused is not from TC publishing this, but from their negotiating partners getting this info. Which would happen no matter what TC did.
- hymanroth 17y agoSure, they did it to help the 'little guy'. Page views never entered the equation.
- trefn 17y agoWhat value is this information to the "little guy"? If the only value is "that's interesting" then essentially nothing.
- jpcx01 17y agoInteresting = value
- quizbiz 17y agointeresting != value. Consider the most boring class you took and how you later discovered it was all applicable.
- jpcx01 17y agoI never said it works in reverse. not interesting != not valuable Hoever... something thats interesting is valuable. Always. If you can capture mindshare, you can convert it to dollars. Plain and simple
- ahoyhere 17y agoI'm not sure where you're coming from with the position that "interesting = value." Just look at the top stories on Reddit and Digg (or MSM, for that matter). What tweaks the interesting receptors is often formulaic, sensationalistic, base, pablum.
- omouse 17y agoNo one mentioned the Tipjoy part?! What is wrong with you people?? Twitter likes Tipjoy "has good vision" but Tipjoy is missing the "real banking" part.
- antiismist 17y agoThanks for pointing that out, I missed it the first time. See it here: http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/73.png http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/73.png
- cmos 17y agoIt seems like this might be the 'high tide mark' for both of these companies.. Techcrunch has definitely jumped the shark, and Twitter just might be close as well. Twitter was on Oprah. Google is the new bad. Facebook is parentized. Myspace is still 13. Blogs are overtagged. Digg is all CAPS. Reddit is overtaken with athiesm. When are we going to start laughing at the social media sharefest frenzy of this decade? It started with blogging, and it's going to end with twitter. We're going to end up just like 1995, making our own websites with funky counters.
- enneff 17y ago"Reddit is overtaken with athiesm." Eh?! There are many things one could say it's been overtaken by, but atheism is pretty low on the list.
- nostrademons 17y agoA bigger question for me is "What's next?" After all, you can't make money off last decade's hot idea. Gotta predict next decade's...
- korch 17y agoThe first person to guess Michael Arrington's email password, grab all his secret docs about his upcoming tablet computer and publish them, wins. Let's see TC swallow that poison pill.
- jonknee 17y agoTwitter's best shot at making money is to sue TechCrunch. Other than that it sounds like they don't have many ideas but need to make $68m by 2010. Good luck!
- bearwithclaws 17y agoMike did not just post this.
- jpcx01 17y agoThe big story here, and what's circulating on quite a few of the google news reports about this incident, is the apparent "insecurity" of the cloud. If these documents were on an internal network, it would have been much, much harder for the hacker to grab them since most internal networks are firewalled. This is a huge blow to all of us web app developers looking to sell apps since things like this will make corporations untrustworthy of our defacto security system (username/password + forgot password). Google Docs needs a "high security" option that removes these easy access points (forgot password), and other web app developers handling sensitive data need to follow suit. We can fill in that role through some kind of manual process of confirming a person's identity via other means (not entirely sure how, but i'm sure there's a way).
- jonknee 17y agoJust add an optional access limit by IP address.
- jpcx01 17y agoThat actually sounds like a great solution for some companies. Wonder if Google Docs will add this anytime soon. It'll make the cloud app much less useful (mobile access issues, etc). However I think its worth it in certain cases, like if you're a high profile startup or a bank.
- jonknee 17y agoIf it's available as a per file option it balances the usefulness. For documents that need high security you can choose it. Mobile devices should still be able to connect in through a VPN right?
- brown9-2 17y agoOne option for "higher security" could be to have forgot-password services dial a pre-registered phone number to confirm your identity. Probably harder to intercept than an email account's password. This is how Google Voice asks you to confirm your phone number: an automated system dials your number and gives you a random numeric code which you have to enter on the website.
- joez 17y ago"Nevertheless, the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared. Out of context, rudimentary notes of internal discussions will be misinterpreted by current and future partners jeopardizing our business relationships." -http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/someone-call-security.html http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/someone-call-security.html Sounds like the beginnings of a law suit.
- datums 17y agoI remember a company (FuckedCompany) during the first bubble that all they did was publish private memos, conversations, and documents. I was disappointed to see TC deciding not only prolong the story for days, but also publish some of these documents. What will they do next for traffic?
- kevintwohy 17y agoIt's interesting how difficult it seems to be for people -- in this situation in particular -- to formulate an opinion independent of their emotional bias(es) with respect to the parties here. It seems like the people who are fond of Twitter (and let's just say 'not-so-fond' of TC), are playing the 'ethics of journalism' card a bit hastily. The other side has taken to simplifying the circumstances involved in a way that's willfully reductive. The details matter. The info was stolen. It's out there. It's really unfortunate that it happened. It would have been a kind gesture for TC not to publish the info, but then again, kindness pays minimum wage. Anyone who claims that they're somehow offended or appalled that TC published in this case is being intellectually inconsistent -- every major news outlet gets their hands dirty on a daily basis to get headlines. TC displayed some ambiguous ethics, to be sure -- it's just a bit childish to claim that the scenario is somehow unique when the other party happens to be popular.
- guicifuentes 17y agoThis is an advertorial.