6 ms·

Whats going on with Twitter? The stock is significantly down and they seem to be going through re-orgs frequently. Have they become stagnant? Its not going to g

by yalogin 12y ago

Whats going on with Twitter? The stock is significantly down and they seem to be going through re-orgs frequently. Have they become stagnant? Its not going to go away but I don't know what else they can do to increase revenue or increase adoption.

ForHackernews 12y ago
Honestly, I've never understood the appeal of Twitter. Maybe many other people feel similarly? I read somewhere that the vast majority of Twitter accounts are bots or completely inactive.
- sosborn 12y ago
  Twitter is the new water cooler. I don't use it, but I can see why some people do. Having said that, I really don't see how they will be profitable in the long term.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    My company (like many many others) have tried advertising on Facebook, and other social networks (Twitter included). You pay a bunch of money to them, and get almost nothing in return. It's not nearly as effective dollar-for-dollar as using, for example, google advertising... or just investing in using Email Marketing and building a list. (I don't see how any social networks will be profitable long term).
    - Macsenour 12y ago
      I think specific social networks will be profitable. Such as a doctors social network, or golfers network. I think a larger catch all network has issues as we're all talking about here.
      - Alupis 12y ago
        We came to the conclusion that people (customers) don't visit social networks (of any kind) with the goal of being sold to. They visit social networks with the intention to be social. Reading an advert, clicking on it, and buying some product is the last thing on their mind.
    - izacus 12y ago
      Why are you surprised that people didn't react to advertising on a medium they use for personal communication? We don't go to Twitter to read ads.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
      Social networks are entertainment. Entertainment ads are not great for directly driving sales. No one really expects people to see a TV ad, then buy the product or service 10 seconds later. Well, Twitter is the same way. So if you try to measure its effectiveness the same way you measure a search ad, it's going to look terrible. Twitter is good for brand marketing, which is inherently harder to measure. It's also great for reaching audiences that are heavy users of Twitter--like tech folks, "thought leaders," and reporters.
- salgernon 12y ago
  I'm with you there. Every time I've tried to engage, it felt like a million conversations that had nothing to do with me and for which I had nothing to contribute. What is frustrating to me though: as an outsider that is not logged in to twitter, is that visiting the site almost forces you to log in before you can find anything. If you know you can go to twitter.com/search/ then fine, but you won't find that link on their home page. For that matter, the twitter home page doesn't even tell you what it is, I guess at this point we're just supposed to know.
  - frostmatthew 12y ago
    > For that matter, the twitter home page doesn't even tell you what it is, I guess at this point we're just supposed to know. Well it does say "Start a conversation, explore your interests, and be in the know." so it does give some indication. But yeah I'm guessing not many people are landing on their home page having no clue what Twitter is.
- thefreeman 12y ago
  I actually like twitter as a product and company much more then facebook or others in their vertical. It does one thing and it does it well, disseminating news and opinions within your "social" circle. They don't invade your privacy or try to become your portal to the internet or do many of the other things that I don't like about facebook. Sadly, it looks like investors and the economy feel differently. I could honestly see a post-social-media world though where facebook dies and twitter is the sole survivor.
- m0nastic 12y ago
  I think people use Twitter for different things, but for me Twitter has completely replaced RSS, IM, and news. Unlike Facebook, where none of the people I follow have relevant interests to me, on Twitter I only follow people who post things I'm interested in. Over time, I've learned to unfollow actual news sources, but instead I follow a collection of editors (who wind up performing a very useful curation function). I'll still follow links to actual news stories, but I never go to any news web pages directly anymore. I'm pretty good about constantly pruning my follow list, as I actually read all of my timeline. (Most people seem to have decided that that is futile, and only occasionally read their stream).
  - jonathansizz 12y ago
    How many people are you following? How long did it take you to build a really high-quality stream? My stream has around 60 accounts, and I also read my whole timeline. It already feels like this is approaching the maximum that I'll be willing and able to give proper attention to. I'll probably prune some of the lower quality ones out before I add any more.
    - m0nastic 12y ago
      I just checked, and it looks like I follow 500 people (which is actually way more than I would have guessed, and I'll admit is kind of ridiculous). Most of them aren't super high-output though, which helps. I've had to unfollow lots of people who tweet a lot. I've been using Twitter since 2007 (my account id number is in the 6-figures range). I feel like it took about a year or so to figure out how I wanted to use the service (and for there to be people I was interested in following), and it's only maybe the past year that I've discovered the benefit of unfollowing news accounts and following specific editors instead. I also have pretty varied interests (I think the mix of people I follow is pretty evenly distributed between fashion people, photographers, news editors, functional programming people, infosec people, and comedians). That mix gets adjusted periodically as my interests shift (I unfollowed a lot of infosec people about a year ago as I've tried to extract myself from that community). It's a work in progress.

by yalogin 12y ago

ForHackernews 12y ago

Honestly, I've never understood the appeal of Twitter. Maybe many other people feel similarly? I read somewhere that the vast majority of Twitter accounts are bots or completely inactive.

sosborn 12y ago
Twitter is the new water cooler. I don't use it, but I can see why some people do. Having said that, I really don't see how they will be profitable in the long term.
- Alupis 12y ago
  My company (like many many others) have tried advertising on Facebook, and other social networks (Twitter included). You pay a bunch of money to them, and get almost nothing in return. It's not nearly as effective dollar-for-dollar as using, for example, google advertising... or just investing in using Email Marketing and building a list. (I don't see how any social networks will be profitable long term).
  - Macsenour 12y ago
    I think specific social networks will be profitable. Such as a doctors social network, or golfers network. I think a larger catch all network has issues as we're all talking about here.
    - Alupis 12y ago
      We came to the conclusion that people (customers) don't visit social networks (of any kind) with the goal of being sold to. They visit social networks with the intention to be social. Reading an advert, clicking on it, and buying some product is the last thing on their mind.
  - izacus 12y ago
    Why are you surprised that people didn't react to advertising on a medium they use for personal communication? We don't go to Twitter to read ads.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    Social networks are entertainment. Entertainment ads are not great for directly driving sales. No one really expects people to see a TV ad, then buy the product or service 10 seconds later. Well, Twitter is the same way. So if you try to measure its effectiveness the same way you measure a search ad, it's going to look terrible. Twitter is good for brand marketing, which is inherently harder to measure. It's also great for reaching audiences that are heavy users of Twitter--like tech folks, "thought leaders," and reporters.
salgernon 12y ago
I'm with you there. Every time I've tried to engage, it felt like a million conversations that had nothing to do with me and for which I had nothing to contribute. What is frustrating to me though: as an outsider that is not logged in to twitter, is that visiting the site almost forces you to log in before you can find anything. If you know you can go to twitter.com/search/ then fine, but you won't find that link on their home page. For that matter, the twitter home page doesn't even tell you what it is, I guess at this point we're just supposed to know.
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > For that matter, the twitter home page doesn't even tell you what it is, I guess at this point we're just supposed to know. Well it does say "Start a conversation, explore your interests, and be in the know." so it does give some indication. But yeah I'm guessing not many people are landing on their home page having no clue what Twitter is.
thefreeman 12y ago
I actually like twitter as a product and company much more then facebook or others in their vertical. It does one thing and it does it well, disseminating news and opinions within your "social" circle. They don't invade your privacy or try to become your portal to the internet or do many of the other things that I don't like about facebook. Sadly, it looks like investors and the economy feel differently. I could honestly see a post-social-media world though where facebook dies and twitter is the sole survivor.
m0nastic 12y ago
I think people use Twitter for different things, but for me Twitter has completely replaced RSS, IM, and news. Unlike Facebook, where none of the people I follow have relevant interests to me, on Twitter I only follow people who post things I'm interested in. Over time, I've learned to unfollow actual news sources, but instead I follow a collection of editors (who wind up performing a very useful curation function). I'll still follow links to actual news stories, but I never go to any news web pages directly anymore. I'm pretty good about constantly pruning my follow list, as I actually read all of my timeline. (Most people seem to have decided that that is futile, and only occasionally read their stream).
- jonathansizz 12y ago
  How many people are you following? How long did it take you to build a really high-quality stream? My stream has around 60 accounts, and I also read my whole timeline. It already feels like this is approaching the maximum that I'll be willing and able to give proper attention to. I'll probably prune some of the lower quality ones out before I add any more.
  - m0nastic 12y ago
    I just checked, and it looks like I follow 500 people (which is actually way more than I would have guessed, and I'll admit is kind of ridiculous). Most of them aren't super high-output though, which helps. I've had to unfollow lots of people who tweet a lot. I've been using Twitter since 2007 (my account id number is in the 6-figures range). I feel like it took about a year or so to figure out how I wanted to use the service (and for there to be people I was interested in following), and it's only maybe the past year that I've discovered the benefit of unfollowing news accounts and following specific editors instead. I also have pretty varied interests (I think the mix of people I follow is pretty evenly distributed between fashion people, photographers, news editors, functional programming people, infosec people, and comedians). That mix gets adjusted periodically as my interests shift (I unfollowed a lot of infosec people about a year ago as I've tried to extract myself from that community). It's a work in progress.