10 ms·

Twitter Needs New Leadership

95 points by jkestner 12y ago

jbob2000 12y ago
Twitter just has way too small of a scope to be useful for most people. I imagine most of their growth was hype-train growth, not really true usage growth. Not only that, but I'm quickly realizing that having a public record of short little quips I've made is actually a really bad idea.
nvk 12y ago
2¢; Twitter needs to learn how to let me, as a small company advertise at affordable prices. Facebook learned this, even though we all know bots click on "Boosted" posts. Give us, millions of small companies lots of amazing tools and charge for it. (Start with multi user support for the corporate handle, buy Buffer and get back to respecting developers)
- wslh 12y ago
  ... and as a small company connect to their firehose at an affordable price.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Have you tried their advertising products? https://ads.twitter.com/login?ref=gl-tw-tw-twitter-advertise https://ads.twitter.com/login?ref=gl-tw-tw-twitter-advertise I have on a very small scale so I can't speak to the effectivene4ss, but it's (advertising options) been available for quite some time.
- kaolinite 12y ago
  I recently did a very small amount of advertising on Twitter and managed to reach 20,000 people for around $15 which I thought was quite reasonable, although I haven't tried any other platforms yet. You don't pay for views, only interactions, so it can be quite affordable.
igl 12y ago
Yes. And a redesign. And a paid premium (200 chars) account. And a enterprise (500chars + in-tweet-auto-playing-video) option. There is clearly not enough advertisement on twitter, no wonder the users are running away.
lessthunk 12y ago
Facebook has millions of real people on it -- for sure also bots, while twitter has a much smaller hardcore fraction of people, next to too many bots. Advertising performs better on FB.
firebones 12y ago
Some of these advertising-related problems seem to be related to Twitter's ad delivering mechanism offering too much transparency into the effectiveness of the advertising, while other networks profit from opacity. In other words, by letting advertisers be more efficient, Twitter should have a better handle (and perhaps later, collect a premium) for the value inherent in better matchmaking and conversions. Is there a path for an efficient social network that has the right buyers and sellers on it transacting in highly efficient ways, but which isn't beholden to conquer-the-world MAU metrics that have it scrambling to attract the masses at the lower end of the Facebook curve (e.g., old high school acquaintances who find it the perfect outlet to display their self-betraying views on conspiracies, politics and race?)
mschuster91 12y ago
I'd love if there was a universal way for me to pay a central distributor e.g. 10€ a month and then distributes the money to the websites I visit, with the same financial result for the website operators. Like an optout for ads, because let's face it I won't be buying a Porsche because of an Instagram photo or a tweet. Ads are just fucking annoying, and it sorta works for pay tv.
- pricechild 12y ago
  Something like this: https://www.google.com/contributor https://www.google.com/contributor ?
  - mschuster91 12y ago
    I hope that this takes off but unfortunately it'll only be for Google ads which aren't obtrusive like layerads or youtube video ads...
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  > I won't be buying a Porsche because of an Instagram photo or a tweet I thought fancy car ads weren't supposed to net new customers so much as comfort those who have just shelled out money for one. The ROI comes in the form of reduced returns / resells not increased sales.
- seren 12y ago
  Have you heard of Flattr[0] ? I don't have the feeling there are that successful, but the original idea is neat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr
  - mschuster91 12y ago
    It's inconvenient and especially it doesn't get me rid of the ads (and I think this is part of its problems).
- jen729w 12y ago
  I had a discussion with Ben Thompson (author of the article) about exactly this point. TL;DR: because you're willing to pay the ten bucks, you're worth far more than ten bucks. It'll never happen.
lhnz 12y ago
I would bet that in 20 years time many other social networks will not be standing yet Twitter will. Maybe it makes less money and grows slowly, but I check Twitter every day and can't see myself stopping. On the other hand, Facebook is a ghost town. Many social networks explode into the scene but most burn out quickly. It's nice to find a way to make a quick buck, but I think they should be thinking of the long-term, too.
- efuquen 12y ago
  Have you stopped to consider that for most other people the opposite might be the case?
- bane 12y ago
  I'll bite. I've tried to use Twitter for something for years, yet the best I've gotten out of it are shortened links to content I'm already aware of through other channels (like HN, reddit, etc.). My Facebook feed on the other hand is full of more information on family, friends and my local neighborhood than I can reasonably process in a day.
  - newsreader 12y ago
    My experience is completely the opposite to yours. My Facebook feed is full of information I really don't care about: what people had for dinner, where they are, invitations to play games, ugly pictures, etc. My Twitter feed on the other hand is full of nuggets that keep me informed on things I'm "really" interested in. My advice to you is that you just need to follow the right people.
    - sosborn 12y ago
      > My advice to you is that you just need to follow the right people. That advice works both ways doesn't it?
      - jen729w 12y ago
        But on Twitter it's perfectly acceptable to not follow your close friends. It's not expected that you do. On Facebook, the opposite. Hence why I'm an avid Twitter user, but don't have a Facebook account.
XLDRT 12y ago
Twitter needs to create a better platform for international social media. That will save it's bottom line and place itself into a completely new market for enterprise accounts.
hrvbr 12y ago
Twitter's website has so many annoyances it is no more a pleasure for me to check it. For example: - Photos are very badly cropped and clicking on the tweet does not diplay them full size anymore. We have to click a second time on the photo. - Photos are now displayed above the text which somehow makes the bad cropping even worse. - People who want to post photos have all moved to Instagram anyway. Twitter is an actor, not a victim, of this move. They seem to consider photos as a feature for advertisers, not for users. - Embedded tweets (retweets with a comment) don't have functionnal links. Clicking them opens the tweet's page in a way that ruins the auto-scrolling of the main stream. The trick against that is to right-click on the embedding tweet's time and open the link in a new tab. WTF, designers? - If one wants to post a longer text, Twitter leads them to create an account elsewhere. Twitter could easily just display the title and hide the longer text behind a click. WTF, strategists? Twitter definitely needs a new leadership.
- binxbolling 12y ago
  I think you're totally correct to harp on design and functionality. I'm sure it's a business problem, too, but it's also the fact they keep screwing with the app with no real improvement. I continue to think removing Discover and Activity were big mistakes, and, no, Search does not replace them at all. Tweetdeck is similarly embarrassing.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  Your post is interesting. Your first three points are about photos, and then the third point says anybody who wants to post photos is already on Instagram. This is ironic considering most of the people I follow post their Instagram photos - on Twitter. I do agree however on the embedded tweets. In a world where apps go to great lengths to minimize the amount of clicks people have to make to get to their content, it seems Twitter is incredibly behind the times in this regard. As for longer tweets, I've read several interviews with the founders and they said they will steadfastly defend a limit on the amount of characters for posts. They say this is what separates Twitter from other social media platforms. As a user, if I have something I need to write about, I never do it on Twitter, there are an abundant other options to do this. I do agree they need new leadership. As other social media platforms have morphed to keep pace with the changes their users want, Twitter has effectively done nothing to help make their platform any better than when I joined almost five years ago.
signaler 12y ago
I have decided to make a small list of posts out that talk about Twitter in recent times. Some are more cogent and authoritative than others. - http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2015/04/30/twitters-multi-billion-dollar-mistake-happened-five-years-ago/ http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2015/04/30/twitters-multi-b... - http://john.do/twitter-quit/ http://john.do/twitter-quit/ - http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/22/twitters-dilemma http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/22/twitters-dilemma - https://alexgaynor.net/2014/oct/30/i-hope-twitter-goes-away/ https://alexgaynor.net/2014/oct/30/i-hope-twitter-goes-away/ - http://www.novaspivack.com/uncategorized/why-twitters-engagement-has-fallen http://www.novaspivack.com/uncategorized/why-twitters-engage... - http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/a-eulogy-for-twitter/361339/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/a-eulo...
ams6110 12y ago
At some point I think people will start to realize that there is no "investment" in social media. It's too fad-driven. And internet speed has greatly accelerated the pace at which fads rise and fade. Nearly by the time something appears to be getting popular, the new users are already looking at the next thing. Twitter is slowing because it's just not "the thing" anymore. Facebook also, though both services have millions of users, they're not attracting the younger users anymore. They've already moved on. I predict that in less than 10 years, both services will be seated at the "MySpace" table in internet history. There's only so many ways you can create interest in a proprietary package around "sending notes and pictures to friends" which is all these services really offer the average user as a value proposition. As soon as it becomes too heavy, too bloated, too ad-infested, or "what my parents use" then the next batch of users moves on. The "value of the graph" which is what these services claim is the true value, is meaningless to the average user. They don't give a shit about the graph, beyond their own little piece of it. And if the users go elsewhere, the graph ceases to have any value beyond academic.
- jcfrei 12y ago
  What I think should be even more concerning for any future social media startups is that most users will be mobile users. And mobile users already have a social graph that they can take anywhere they want: Their address book. Thanks to it any new startup can theoretically create a disruptive community within days.
- jkestner 12y ago
  That's why Facebook has bought Instagram and Whatsapp, and tried to buy Snapchat - to make sure they're riding the wave. What has Twitter bought? Vine and Periscope are good, but seem like features to their existing network. Will they bring in a new audience?
- yarrel 12y ago
  Yes. Social media adoption is (high school) generational. The more successful the current round of social media is, the less the next round of high school students will want to be any where near its inhabitants.
austenallred 12y ago
The bigger problem with Twitter is how damn hard it is to use the service well. Twitter's value increases or decreases along with one's ability to curate his or her feed. It seriously took me years of careful tweaking to get my feed (and lists) where I want them. Now Twitter is absolutely incredible; Twitter lets you be in a room with anybody in the world you want to. That's really, really cool. For me, that's startup legends and tech geniuses. I not only get to see what they're saying, but often what they're reading and thinking about. Because of that I wanted to see the feeds of some of the top tech investors look like, so I created them in lists. They're fascinating to watch (lists are here http://theireyes.austenallred.com/pages/viewlist http://theireyes.austenallred.com/pages/viewlist) But I look at so many of my friends who don't use it, or who have an account and don't log in, and it's almost always because they haven't taken the time to follow the right people. That's hard to do. Facebook is easy - my grandma knows me so she'll accept my friend request. Twitter, by its nature, forces you to be proactive in creating and culling that list. That's an action that most people don't take. So Twitter is trying something new - what if we put together lists of what people want and had those available as the logged-out homepage, letting people quickly get involved? It's an admirable effort, but look at the categories available: It recommends I search for stuff like #NationalDayOfPrayer or #BadBloodMusicVideo. The top categories right now are literally politicians, high-end fashion designers, nascar drivers, and hotels/travel agents. I get that they're trying to show you variety, but talk about shots in the dark. I don't know what the solution is. But I think Twitter's biggest problem is that it simply takes too much work before anyone gains value from Twitter. There are a lot of people on this planet who will never put that much work in before expecting something of value back out of a service.
- newsreader 12y ago
  Personally I find Facebook much more complicated to use than Twitter. Ever since I started using Twitter I use it all the time and I can go days without checking my Facebook account. Having said that, I do agree with your statement regarding friends having accounts that don't use them. I have a hard time convincing people to create a Twitter account.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Anecdotal but related... My dad (60+) and my sister (30+) both recently signed up for Twitter, and despite following less than 10 people each immediately found value. Their first follows were someone they knew, or wanted to follow for a specific reason. Not sure how many sign up without any intent - but I thought I'd share this counterpoint.
sensationaltru 12y ago
Twitter's principal prob is information overload that users experience inevitably on as they dedicate or spend more time on the platform due to the reality of its non filtered laissez-faire stream of tweets[0]. The second most nagging prob for Twitter is the blurring line between its FB page-like accounts and real/personal ones. Both unfortunatey stand on an equal footing in the platform unlike the situation on Facebook where everything is distinct and clear and the line is drawn quite obviously between groups, pages, personal accounts ...etc ([0]: I like that it way as I am not in favor of FB's authoritarian policy of curating/dictating what content should I consume. I'm very OK with rationing and having full control of my TW time the way I see fit)
pinaceae 12y ago
the ad-based business model is as toxic for quality as being a public company dependend on quarterly results. if you have no other fallback revenue, you get pushed in a very specific, user-hostile direction. google search as case in point, banner ads, etc., all broken promises. why not do what linkedin does? offer paid premium accounts. the 'verified' badge is already much coveted, so mark affluent users. re-sell short, unused twitter handles. cap the number of followers at say 500, above needs to be premium. want to persist your tweets longer than x months? premium. want to connect an official 3rd party app? premium. remove fucking ads? guess... and i am not talking about making this expensive, it does not need to be. earn enough money to keep the lights on with premium users. twitter has the best content on the net, so they're like HBO - but trying to make money like network TV. tl,dr: build a premium and 3rd party connector paid system, a mix of LinkedIn and Slack's models. don't like my idea? discuss.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I generally agree with you on the issues of advertising. The value of an eyeball or a click has been dropping for 20 years. The point of most advertising is to distract, which puts it in direct opposition to the point of most content. But I think search-related ads are a different thing. When people are actively looking for something, telling them about relevant somethings can create value instead of destroying it. So I'm fine with Google search, but less fine with Twitter's in-stream ads. I think premium accounts could be great, but it's a tricky thing to get right. Part of the value of Twitter is audience, so anything that might reduce the audience is dangerous. You list several premium features that might have worked from the beginning, but now would be perceived as a loss by non-premium users, surely driving some from the platform and creating a wave of negative comment.
  - pinaceae 12y ago
    tweaking those features to something that makes sense would be the job of twitter's leadership. and if making money wasn't tricky, well, anyone could do it, no? :)
    - 11y ago
wpietri 12y ago
Reading this, I can't help but think how much of Twitter's job has shifted from doing the work to tap-dancing about the work. So much of this is about failure to meet "expectations", failure to meet possibly-arbitrary comparisons to possibly-relevant things. I also hate, hate, hate the cult-of-the-CEO viewpoint here. It could be that Twitter's CEO role is so central that a) all the issues trace back to its current occupant,and b) all problems can be solved by installing a new occupant. But if that's really the case, then I'd call that a very badly designed system. In what software would replacing 1/4000th of the code solve all the performance and user interface problems? It seems like the model is less, "creative, involved, self-directed workforce" and more "3rd-world cult-of-personality banana republic".
- austenallred 12y ago
  I think you're underestimating the power of leadership. Of course, replacing one person in a large organization isn't going to make a huge difference statistically, but it makes an enormous difference if that person is directing all of the other people. If there are 4,000 people towing a ship, a change in the captain could change which way they're rowing.
  - smitherfield 12y ago
    Or, to use a real-world example, does it matter who is President of the United States? The federal government employs 4 million people, and the President has far less control over them than a CEO has over their employees.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    If we were towing ships, that would make sense to me: the task is simple enough that one person can understand what's going on, and the 4000 people might as well be 4000 chimps or 4000 engines. But that's not Twitter's situation. Note also that there's an enormous difference between leadership and direction. MLK for example led many people but directed few of them. I think the former is important but rarely happens precisely because CEOs can just direct people and get apparent compliance.
- 12y ago
yesbabyyes 12y ago
Three things about Twitter's advertising: F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen explains data mining and Twitter's ad targeting at re:publica 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbF0sVdOjRw&t=12m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbF0sVdOjRw&t=12m42s Here are two recent ads ("promoted tweets") on Twitter: weev tells white people they need to stand up and defend yada yada. White supremacy is apparently a-ok with Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReginaSmall/status/595211478648651776 https://twitter.com/ReginaSmall/status/595211478648651776 Apple has an ad in Swedish. It's gibberish. Here is my best shot at translating it (if it makes no sense, my translation is good): "the good news is for the inhabitants of Sweden now can get iphone 6 set price at 10 kr, beatings not until late" https://twitter.com/ehsanfadakar/status/596304927724548098 https://twitter.com/ehsanfadakar/status/596304927724548098 Let me just say I'm not surprised if it doesn't work out for Twitter financially, 'cause if they have all that data Mikko is talking about, and they can't do better than spreading nazism and basically 419 scams, they deserve bankruptcy, so as to make room for someone who can do it right. That's how, I understand it, capitalism is supposed to work.
- nicky0 12y ago
  You realise that's not a real Apple ad don't you.
  - yesbabyyes 12y ago
    Sorry, yeah, it's obvious to you and me. That's part of the problem, of course. Why do they take money for actual spam? They're dragging both Apple's and their own brand in the dirt.
- theorique 12y ago
  weev got banned from Twitter Ads after his little stunt. Apparently the messages were considered unwelcome by the people who saw them (no surprise - that's what he was aiming for).
tdeang 12y ago
Wait, there is no mention of Periscope or Meerkat in this post. Have I been moved to a parallel dimension?
- monkbent 12y ago
  http://stratechery.com/2015/twitter-might/ http://stratechery.com/2015/twitter-might/
rifung 12y ago
Can someone explain the value of Twitter to me? I certainly can see its value for advertisers, or even to get breaking news, but I have a Twitter account and don't use it at all. What do you guys use it for? What's the target market for this exactly? I certainly don't expect people to follow me, some random guy on the internet, so there's no incentive for me to tweet myself. Besides news articles, what interesting things do you read from tweets?
- idlewords 12y ago
  I find it to be a good medium for customer support, especially during an outage. It's also a good way to get news from very high quality sources. Lots of domain experts and freelance journalists tweet, and their feeds can be far more informative and timely than regular media coverage.
  - mreiland 12y ago
    can you give an example of this?
    - idlewords 12y ago
      @ionacraig for the latest on what's happening in Yemen; @jonostrower for aviation and aerospace. The former is a freelance journalist who writes for the BBC a lot; the latter is a beat reporter for the WSJ.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Not the OP, but for instance: Peter Nickeas at the Trib does real-time crime reporting from the South Side of Chicago; @peternickeas I get a pretty constant feed of Middle East stuff that I don't see elsewhere from Laura Rozen (though I'm uncertain of her ideological tilt, she pulls in lots of random other sources); @lrozen There are a couple court reporters in Chicago that I've picked up. Saved You A Click does a pretty good job of condensing most of modern journalism into a short Twitter feed; @SavedYouAClick M&A/corpdev comings and goings in the Valley, startupland's "Weddings Section", that's @pinboard. Of course, there's @scotusblog. There are lots of kinds of news that Twitter is just a lot better at delivering than websites or (gag) RSS. Since it's so easy to compose twerps, especially once you get the hang of it, it seems like it draws a lot of reporters in who would not do real-time reporting so aggressively in a different medium, but will do it so long as the expectation is set that they only have to tap out 140 characters an hour. This is also an advantage Twitter has over Facebook.
themeek 12y ago
On the flip side of all of this, I think its important to recognize that Twitter has - of most of the large social media platforms - been the best with regard to resistance to censorship and propaganda initiatives. Twitter will take down specific accounts, but as far as I can tell this is the state of the art for them - they do not have automated reasoning that 'accidentally' prevents spreading unwelcome news articles and leaked documents, etc. This of course makes Twitter a viable target for propaganda efforts by AQAP, ISIL, Russia, Israel, the US and others - but it also frees the service from being controlled by any particular group (I suppose either is bad). It is likely that with a change in leadership these policies will also change and Twitter will become another Facebook/Reddit.
sjg007 12y ago
Twitter should adopt deep-linking in app install ads.

95 points by jkestner 12y ago

jbob2000 12y ago

Twitter just has way too small of a scope to be useful for most people. I imagine most of their growth was hype-train growth, not really true usage growth. Not only that, but I'm quickly realizing that having a public record of short little quips I've made is actually a really bad idea.

nvk 12y ago

2¢; Twitter needs to learn how to let me, as a small company advertise at affordable prices. Facebook learned this, even though we all know bots click on "Boosted" posts. Give us, millions of small companies lots of amazing tools and charge for it. (Start with multi user support for the corporate handle, buy Buffer and get back to respecting developers)

wslh 12y ago
... and as a small company connect to their firehose at an affordable price.
josefresco 12y ago
Have you tried their advertising products? https://ads.twitter.com/login?ref=gl-tw-tw-twitter-advertise https://ads.twitter.com/login?ref=gl-tw-tw-twitter-advertise I have on a very small scale so I can't speak to the effectivene4ss, but it's (advertising options) been available for quite some time.
kaolinite 12y ago
I recently did a very small amount of advertising on Twitter and managed to reach 20,000 people for around $15 which I thought was quite reasonable, although I haven't tried any other platforms yet. You don't pay for views, only interactions, so it can be quite affordable.

igl 12y ago

Yes. And a redesign. And a paid premium (200 chars) account. And a enterprise (500chars + in-tweet-auto-playing-video) option. There is clearly not enough advertisement on twitter, no wonder the users are running away.

lessthunk 12y ago

Facebook has millions of real people on it -- for sure also bots, while twitter has a much smaller hardcore fraction of people, next to too many bots. Advertising performs better on FB.

firebones 12y ago

Some of these advertising-related problems seem to be related to Twitter's ad delivering mechanism offering too much transparency into the effectiveness of the advertising, while other networks profit from opacity. In other words, by letting advertisers be more efficient, Twitter should have a better handle (and perhaps later, collect a premium) for the value inherent in better matchmaking and conversions. Is there a path for an efficient social network that has the right buyers and sellers on it transacting in highly efficient ways, but which isn't beholden to conquer-the-world MAU metrics that have it scrambling to attract the masses at the lower end of the Facebook curve (e.g., old high school acquaintances who find it the perfect outlet to display their self-betraying views on conspiracies, politics and race?)

mschuster91 12y ago

I'd love if there was a universal way for me to pay a central distributor e.g. 10€ a month and then distributes the money to the websites I visit, with the same financial result for the website operators. Like an optout for ads, because let's face it I won't be buying a Porsche because of an Instagram photo or a tweet. Ads are just fucking annoying, and it sorta works for pay tv.

pricechild 12y ago
Something like this: https://www.google.com/contributor https://www.google.com/contributor ?
- mschuster91 12y ago
  I hope that this takes off but unfortunately it'll only be for Google ads which aren't obtrusive like layerads or youtube video ads...
jjoonathan 12y ago
> I won't be buying a Porsche because of an Instagram photo or a tweet I thought fancy car ads weren't supposed to net new customers so much as comfort those who have just shelled out money for one. The ROI comes in the form of reduced returns / resells not increased sales.
seren 12y ago
Have you heard of Flattr[0] ? I don't have the feeling there are that successful, but the original idea is neat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr
- mschuster91 12y ago
  It's inconvenient and especially it doesn't get me rid of the ads (and I think this is part of its problems).
jen729w 12y ago
I had a discussion with Ben Thompson (author of the article) about exactly this point. TL;DR: because you're willing to pay the ten bucks, you're worth far more than ten bucks. It'll never happen.

lhnz 12y ago

I would bet that in 20 years time many other social networks will not be standing yet Twitter will. Maybe it makes less money and grows slowly, but I check Twitter every day and can't see myself stopping. On the other hand, Facebook is a ghost town. Many social networks explode into the scene but most burn out quickly. It's nice to find a way to make a quick buck, but I think they should be thinking of the long-term, too.

efuquen 12y ago
Have you stopped to consider that for most other people the opposite might be the case?
bane 12y ago
I'll bite. I've tried to use Twitter for something for years, yet the best I've gotten out of it are shortened links to content I'm already aware of through other channels (like HN, reddit, etc.). My Facebook feed on the other hand is full of more information on family, friends and my local neighborhood than I can reasonably process in a day.
- newsreader 12y ago
  My experience is completely the opposite to yours. My Facebook feed is full of information I really don't care about: what people had for dinner, where they are, invitations to play games, ugly pictures, etc. My Twitter feed on the other hand is full of nuggets that keep me informed on things I'm "really" interested in. My advice to you is that you just need to follow the right people.
  - sosborn 12y ago
    > My advice to you is that you just need to follow the right people. That advice works both ways doesn't it?
    - jen729w 12y ago
      But on Twitter it's perfectly acceptable to not follow your close friends. It's not expected that you do. On Facebook, the opposite. Hence why I'm an avid Twitter user, but don't have a Facebook account.

XLDRT 12y ago

Twitter needs to create a better platform for international social media. That will save it's bottom line and place itself into a completely new market for enterprise accounts.

hrvbr 12y ago

Twitter's website has so many annoyances it is no more a pleasure for me to check it. For example: - Photos are very badly cropped and clicking on the tweet does not diplay them full size anymore. We have to click a second time on the photo. - Photos are now displayed above the text which somehow makes the bad cropping even worse. - People who want to post photos have all moved to Instagram anyway. Twitter is an actor, not a victim, of this move. They seem to consider photos as a feature for advertisers, not for users. - Embedded tweets (retweets with a comment) don't have functionnal links. Clicking them opens the tweet's page in a way that ruins the auto-scrolling of the main stream. The trick against that is to right-click on the embedding tweet's time and open the link in a new tab. WTF, designers? - If one wants to post a longer text, Twitter leads them to create an account elsewhere. Twitter could easily just display the title and hide the longer text behind a click. WTF, strategists? Twitter definitely needs a new leadership.

binxbolling 12y ago
I think you're totally correct to harp on design and functionality. I'm sure it's a business problem, too, but it's also the fact they keep screwing with the app with no real improvement. I continue to think removing Discover and Activity were big mistakes, and, no, Search does not replace them at all. Tweetdeck is similarly embarrassing.
at-fates-hands 12y ago
Your post is interesting. Your first three points are about photos, and then the third point says anybody who wants to post photos is already on Instagram. This is ironic considering most of the people I follow post their Instagram photos - on Twitter. I do agree however on the embedded tweets. In a world where apps go to great lengths to minimize the amount of clicks people have to make to get to their content, it seems Twitter is incredibly behind the times in this regard. As for longer tweets, I've read several interviews with the founders and they said they will steadfastly defend a limit on the amount of characters for posts. They say this is what separates Twitter from other social media platforms. As a user, if I have something I need to write about, I never do it on Twitter, there are an abundant other options to do this. I do agree they need new leadership. As other social media platforms have morphed to keep pace with the changes their users want, Twitter has effectively done nothing to help make their platform any better than when I joined almost five years ago.

signaler 12y ago

I have decided to make a small list of posts out that talk about Twitter in recent times. Some are more cogent and authoritative than others. - http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2015/04/30/twitters-multi-billion-dollar-mistake-happened-five-years-ago/ http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2015/04/30/twitters-multi-b... - http://john.do/twitter-quit/ http://john.do/twitter-quit/ - http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/22/twitters-dilemma http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/22/twitters-dilemma - https://alexgaynor.net/2014/oct/30/i-hope-twitter-goes-away/ https://alexgaynor.net/2014/oct/30/i-hope-twitter-goes-away/ - http://www.novaspivack.com/uncategorized/why-twitters-engagement-has-fallen http://www.novaspivack.com/uncategorized/why-twitters-engage... - http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/a-eulogy-for-twitter/361339/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/a-eulo...

ams6110 12y ago

At some point I think people will start to realize that there is no "investment" in social media. It's too fad-driven. And internet speed has greatly accelerated the pace at which fads rise and fade. Nearly by the time something appears to be getting popular, the new users are already looking at the next thing. Twitter is slowing because it's just not "the thing" anymore. Facebook also, though both services have millions of users, they're not attracting the younger users anymore. They've already moved on. I predict that in less than 10 years, both services will be seated at the "MySpace" table in internet history. There's only so many ways you can create interest in a proprietary package around "sending notes and pictures to friends" which is all these services really offer the average user as a value proposition. As soon as it becomes too heavy, too bloated, too ad-infested, or "what my parents use" then the next batch of users moves on. The "value of the graph" which is what these services claim is the true value, is meaningless to the average user. They don't give a shit about the graph, beyond their own little piece of it. And if the users go elsewhere, the graph ceases to have any value beyond academic.

jcfrei 12y ago
What I think should be even more concerning for any future social media startups is that most users will be mobile users. And mobile users already have a social graph that they can take anywhere they want: Their address book. Thanks to it any new startup can theoretically create a disruptive community within days.
jkestner 12y ago
That's why Facebook has bought Instagram and Whatsapp, and tried to buy Snapchat - to make sure they're riding the wave. What has Twitter bought? Vine and Periscope are good, but seem like features to their existing network. Will they bring in a new audience?
yarrel 12y ago
Yes. Social media adoption is (high school) generational. The more successful the current round of social media is, the less the next round of high school students will want to be any where near its inhabitants.

austenallred 12y ago

The bigger problem with Twitter is how damn hard it is to use the service well. Twitter's value increases or decreases along with one's ability to curate his or her feed. It seriously took me years of careful tweaking to get my feed (and lists) where I want them. Now Twitter is absolutely incredible; Twitter lets you be in a room with anybody in the world you want to. That's really, really cool. For me, that's startup legends and tech geniuses. I not only get to see what they're saying, but often what they're reading and thinking about. Because of that I wanted to see the feeds of some of the top tech investors look like, so I created them in lists. They're fascinating to watch (lists are here http://theireyes.austenallred.com/pages/viewlist http://theireyes.austenallred.com/pages/viewlist) But I look at so many of my friends who don't use it, or who have an account and don't log in, and it's almost always because they haven't taken the time to follow the right people. That's hard to do. Facebook is easy - my grandma knows me so she'll accept my friend request. Twitter, by its nature, forces you to be proactive in creating and culling that list. That's an action that most people don't take. So Twitter is trying something new - what if we put together lists of what people want and had those available as the logged-out homepage, letting people quickly get involved? It's an admirable effort, but look at the categories available: It recommends I search for stuff like #NationalDayOfPrayer or #BadBloodMusicVideo. The top categories right now are literally politicians, high-end fashion designers, nascar drivers, and hotels/travel agents. I get that they're trying to show you variety, but talk about shots in the dark. I don't know what the solution is. But I think Twitter's biggest problem is that it simply takes too much work before anyone gains value from Twitter. There are a lot of people on this planet who will never put that much work in before expecting something of value back out of a service.

newsreader 12y ago
Personally I find Facebook much more complicated to use than Twitter. Ever since I started using Twitter I use it all the time and I can go days without checking my Facebook account. Having said that, I do agree with your statement regarding friends having accounts that don't use them. I have a hard time convincing people to create a Twitter account.
josefresco 12y ago
Anecdotal but related... My dad (60+) and my sister (30+) both recently signed up for Twitter, and despite following less than 10 people each immediately found value. Their first follows were someone they knew, or wanted to follow for a specific reason. Not sure how many sign up without any intent - but I thought I'd share this counterpoint.

sensationaltru 12y ago

Twitter's principal prob is information overload that users experience inevitably on as they dedicate or spend more time on the platform due to the reality of its non filtered laissez-faire stream of tweets[0]. The second most nagging prob for Twitter is the blurring line between its FB page-like accounts and real/personal ones. Both unfortunatey stand on an equal footing in the platform unlike the situation on Facebook where everything is distinct and clear and the line is drawn quite obviously between groups, pages, personal accounts ...etc ([0]: I like that it way as I am not in favor of FB's authoritarian policy of curating/dictating what content should I consume. I'm very OK with rationing and having full control of my TW time the way I see fit)

pinaceae 12y ago

the ad-based business model is as toxic for quality as being a public company dependend on quarterly results. if you have no other fallback revenue, you get pushed in a very specific, user-hostile direction. google search as case in point, banner ads, etc., all broken promises. why not do what linkedin does? offer paid premium accounts. the 'verified' badge is already much coveted, so mark affluent users. re-sell short, unused twitter handles. cap the number of followers at say 500, above needs to be premium. want to persist your tweets longer than x months? premium. want to connect an official 3rd party app? premium. remove fucking ads? guess... and i am not talking about making this expensive, it does not need to be. earn enough money to keep the lights on with premium users. twitter has the best content on the net, so they're like HBO - but trying to make money like network TV. tl,dr: build a premium and 3rd party connector paid system, a mix of LinkedIn and Slack's models. don't like my idea? discuss.

wpietri 12y ago
I generally agree with you on the issues of advertising. The value of an eyeball or a click has been dropping for 20 years. The point of most advertising is to distract, which puts it in direct opposition to the point of most content. But I think search-related ads are a different thing. When people are actively looking for something, telling them about relevant somethings can create value instead of destroying it. So I'm fine with Google search, but less fine with Twitter's in-stream ads. I think premium accounts could be great, but it's a tricky thing to get right. Part of the value of Twitter is audience, so anything that might reduce the audience is dangerous. You list several premium features that might have worked from the beginning, but now would be perceived as a loss by non-premium users, surely driving some from the platform and creating a wave of negative comment.
- pinaceae 12y ago
  tweaking those features to something that makes sense would be the job of twitter's leadership. and if making money wasn't tricky, well, anyone could do it, no? :)
  - 11y ago

wpietri 12y ago

Reading this, I can't help but think how much of Twitter's job has shifted from doing the work to tap-dancing about the work. So much of this is about failure to meet "expectations", failure to meet possibly-arbitrary comparisons to possibly-relevant things. I also hate, hate, hate the cult-of-the-CEO viewpoint here. It could be that Twitter's CEO role is so central that a) all the issues trace back to its current occupant,and b) all problems can be solved by installing a new occupant. But if that's really the case, then I'd call that a very badly designed system. In what software would replacing 1/4000th of the code solve all the performance and user interface problems? It seems like the model is less, "creative, involved, self-directed workforce" and more "3rd-world cult-of-personality banana republic".

austenallred 12y ago
I think you're underestimating the power of leadership. Of course, replacing one person in a large organization isn't going to make a huge difference statistically, but it makes an enormous difference if that person is directing all of the other people. If there are 4,000 people towing a ship, a change in the captain could change which way they're rowing.
- smitherfield 12y ago
  Or, to use a real-world example, does it matter who is President of the United States? The federal government employs 4 million people, and the President has far less control over them than a CEO has over their employees.
- wpietri 12y ago
  If we were towing ships, that would make sense to me: the task is simple enough that one person can understand what's going on, and the 4000 people might as well be 4000 chimps or 4000 engines. But that's not Twitter's situation. Note also that there's an enormous difference between leadership and direction. MLK for example led many people but directed few of them. I think the former is important but rarely happens precisely because CEOs can just direct people and get apparent compliance.
12y ago

yesbabyyes 12y ago

Three things about Twitter's advertising: F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen explains data mining and Twitter's ad targeting at re:publica 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbF0sVdOjRw&t=12m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbF0sVdOjRw&t=12m42s Here are two recent ads ("promoted tweets") on Twitter: weev tells white people they need to stand up and defend yada yada. White supremacy is apparently a-ok with Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReginaSmall/status/595211478648651776 https://twitter.com/ReginaSmall/status/595211478648651776 Apple has an ad in Swedish. It's gibberish. Here is my best shot at translating it (if it makes no sense, my translation is good): "the good news is for the inhabitants of Sweden now can get iphone 6 set price at 10 kr, beatings not until late" https://twitter.com/ehsanfadakar/status/596304927724548098 https://twitter.com/ehsanfadakar/status/596304927724548098 Let me just say I'm not surprised if it doesn't work out for Twitter financially, 'cause if they have all that data Mikko is talking about, and they can't do better than spreading nazism and basically 419 scams, they deserve bankruptcy, so as to make room for someone who can do it right. That's how, I understand it, capitalism is supposed to work.

nicky0 12y ago
You realise that's not a real Apple ad don't you.
- yesbabyyes 12y ago
  Sorry, yeah, it's obvious to you and me. That's part of the problem, of course. Why do they take money for actual spam? They're dragging both Apple's and their own brand in the dirt.
theorique 12y ago
weev got banned from Twitter Ads after his little stunt. Apparently the messages were considered unwelcome by the people who saw them (no surprise - that's what he was aiming for).

tdeang 12y ago

Wait, there is no mention of Periscope or Meerkat in this post. Have I been moved to a parallel dimension?

monkbent 12y ago
http://stratechery.com/2015/twitter-might/ http://stratechery.com/2015/twitter-might/

rifung 12y ago

Can someone explain the value of Twitter to me? I certainly can see its value for advertisers, or even to get breaking news, but I have a Twitter account and don't use it at all. What do you guys use it for? What's the target market for this exactly? I certainly don't expect people to follow me, some random guy on the internet, so there's no incentive for me to tweet myself. Besides news articles, what interesting things do you read from tweets?

idlewords 12y ago
I find it to be a good medium for customer support, especially during an outage. It's also a good way to get news from very high quality sources. Lots of domain experts and freelance journalists tweet, and their feeds can be far more informative and timely than regular media coverage.
- mreiland 12y ago
  can you give an example of this?
  - idlewords 12y ago
    @ionacraig for the latest on what's happening in Yemen; @jonostrower for aviation and aerospace. The former is a freelance journalist who writes for the BBC a lot; the latter is a beat reporter for the WSJ.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Not the OP, but for instance: Peter Nickeas at the Trib does real-time crime reporting from the South Side of Chicago; @peternickeas I get a pretty constant feed of Middle East stuff that I don't see elsewhere from Laura Rozen (though I'm uncertain of her ideological tilt, she pulls in lots of random other sources); @lrozen There are a couple court reporters in Chicago that I've picked up. Saved You A Click does a pretty good job of condensing most of modern journalism into a short Twitter feed; @SavedYouAClick M&A/corpdev comings and goings in the Valley, startupland's "Weddings Section", that's @pinboard. Of course, there's @scotusblog. There are lots of kinds of news that Twitter is just a lot better at delivering than websites or (gag) RSS. Since it's so easy to compose twerps, especially once you get the hang of it, it seems like it draws a lot of reporters in who would not do real-time reporting so aggressively in a different medium, but will do it so long as the expectation is set that they only have to tap out 140 characters an hour. This is also an advantage Twitter has over Facebook.

themeek 12y ago

On the flip side of all of this, I think its important to recognize that Twitter has - of most of the large social media platforms - been the best with regard to resistance to censorship and propaganda initiatives. Twitter will take down specific accounts, but as far as I can tell this is the state of the art for them - they do not have automated reasoning that 'accidentally' prevents spreading unwelcome news articles and leaked documents, etc. This of course makes Twitter a viable target for propaganda efforts by AQAP, ISIL, Russia, Israel, the US and others - but it also frees the service from being controlled by any particular group (I suppose either is bad). It is likely that with a change in leadership these policies will also change and Twitter will become another Facebook/Reddit.

sjg007 12y ago

Twitter should adopt deep-linking in app install ads.