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Having a founder and product visionary (Jack) in the driver's seat at Twitter is absolutely the right move. Sure, Jack has his quirks, and seems a little bit cr

Having a founder and product visionary (Jack) in the driver's seat at Twitter is absolutely the right move. Sure, Jack has his quirks, and seems a little bit crazy and minimalistic, but that's exactly what makes him the right person for the job. Twitter is executing on its vision now just fine, but that's just the problem: There hasn't been any vision left in the company. No truly big moves have been made, and the product has remained almost entirely the same (with the exception of fonts and colors constantly moving around the screen and a lot more ads).

wyclif 11y ago
The problem with this, as an early Twitter user (summer 2006), is that I don't really want Twitter to significantly change. The minimalism is a feature. It was SMS on the web. I always wanted Twitter to be more like a public utility, but that's impossible now because it's been "monetized."
- pyre 11y ago
  > I always wanted Twitter to be more like a public utility Twitter is a business, how were you expecting this to work? For the USG to aqui-hire them?
  - Kalium 11y ago
    Sometimes, I think it would be for the best if the USG had a way to acqui-hire companies that are best suited to be public services.
    - hellbanner 11y ago
      Or if government funded open-source software research.
      - afarrell 11y ago
        DARPA does
        hellbanner 11y ago
        Can't edit, but I meant to say *more. And DARPA, IIRC, is mostly focused around its namesake, yes? Where are the open-source softwares for supply-chain management, payment processing, calendar programs etc.. day to day needs of many citizens?
    - larrys 11y ago
      Then you end up with the "postal service".
      - binxbolling 11y ago
        Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. If our "leaders" stopped actively sabotaging the USPS, it could be doing even better.
        yummyfajitas 11y ago
        It was only wildly successful until our leaders "sabotaged" it by forcing it to obey standard actuarial practices. (Unlike the rest of the govt, the USPS is now required to fully fund it's pension plans.) See this comment for a more detailed explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6710602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6710602 Also, it's pretty hard not to be "wildly successful" when you get a legally enforced monopoly. Comcast is also "wildly successful", but we certainly don't want to expand that model.
        themartorana 11y ago
        Yes and no. It's a monopoly that can't charge what it takes to stay afloat. Raising prices or changing delivery schedules requires an act of Congress! No member of Congress wants to have to answer for that, so the price of sending a letter hundreds - if not thousands - of miles, to be hand-delivered remains under one-half of one dollar $USD. THAT IS INSANE. It's been argued, deftly, that even with a decline in volume for mass mailers, raising the price from $0.49 to $1 would not only put the USPTO all the way in the black but enable them to meet obligations for years to come. But convince Congress that it's a good idea...
        refurb 11y ago
        Wait a second. I thought they would be profitable if it weren't for the pension funding? If so, then $0.49 per stamp is high enough.
        11y ago
  - wyclif 11y ago
    It's a business now. You can't go back and reinvent it now, which is clear from my comment above. But that wasn't always so. In 2006 it wasn't so. I remember those early days when only nerds were using Twitter. Now, you can't sustain a business that way, I know that. But Twitter was always supposed to be minimalist and web-enabled SMS. It's a shame, IMO, that because of "monetization" they have to make all these moves to make it more complicated and harder to surface useful information and conversations. Promoted tweets that are intrusive. Cards. Etc. I think there was a time when Twitter could have been "rolled in" to the public Internet in a way that would be more open and free of this grasping for a profit strategy. That time has passed, and it's sad.
    - pyre 11y ago
      > I think there was a time when Twitter could have been "rolled in" to the public Internet in a way that would be more open and free of this grasping for a profit strategy. Hey, I remember such a time. I remember when Twitter was the "in" thing, and "everyone" (read: only techies in the Bay area) was using it. I remember how lots of conventions that are baked into the system today (@ notation for user references, "RT:" for retweeting, etc) were organically generated community standards. All of that said, Twitter as a system had major hurdles to overcome to become a utility in the way that you want. But assuming that they published a standard, and created some sort of federated system (e.g. XMPP) how would this be anything but a money-sink? Would Twitter still be in use today? Would Facebook have copied most of what the public wants out of Twitter, and that would be it? How expensive would it be for a major provided of "Twitter Protocol Service" to maintain an SMS gateway? Would anyone actually pay for this service? What about inter-node security? Would we see something akin to the joke that is TLS between SMTP servers?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- istvan__ 11y ago
  Exactly! I am pretty sure that they could monetize enough on the ads, I found twitter ads pretty relevant almost all the time, i don't even removing them with adblock.
- staunch 11y ago
  Users don't want change unless it's really good change, then it's the best thing that can happen. Here's what Twitter used to look like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/188430472 https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/188430472 https://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/190576959 https://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/190576959 I remember those days too and the product is much better now. It could be much better still.
  - wyclif 11y ago
    Don't get me wrong; I agree with your "good change" observation, and I wasn't saying the Twitter interface should have been frozen in time at 2006 (and I definitely wasn't saying there is no room for improvement, even now). I'm simply of the opinion that Twitter is rapidly losing sight of what their purpose is.
    - dvanduzer 11y ago
      Twitter doesn't have a purpose, it serves a purpose. We can all disagree about what function Twitter performs for individuals, or in the marketplace, or what have you. But it isn't like there's ever a destination for a company or medium or whatever it is that Twitter is.
- signaler 11y ago
  Seconded. It's like the fabric of the web now. (Possibly why their Fabric API is called 'Fabric'). I wrote about this: http://blog.higg.so/2015/06/12/on-twitter/?24 http://blog.higg.so/2015/06/12/on-twitter/?24
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
thewhizkid 11y ago
Keep in mind Jack Dorsey the interim CEO, so it's only temporary until they find a permanent CEO.
- austenallred 11y ago
  Jack is a wild card. They'll give him a shot and see how it goes. If it goes well they can pull an Apple and say, "The founder is finally coming back!" If not they can quietly find a replacement and say, "Now Jack is going back to Square, just like they said he always would." It's PR insurance, basically, which Twitter desperately needs considering they go through CEOs faster than I go through freelancers.
  - jusben1369 11y ago
    I don't think he can do that to Square and their investors as nice as the story sounds.
    - JonFish85 11y ago
      Do what, leave them? Or return to them after this?
      - jusben1369 11y ago
        Spend any real significant time with split duties. Most of his investors would say "We didn't put $x in this with the understanding that you were going to be a 50% CEO/leader"
    - up_and_up 11y ago
      He has ran both companies simultaneously in the past via 16 hour work days: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/11/14/jack-dorsey-does-8-hours-at-twitter-8-hours-at-square-daily/ http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/11/14/jack-dorsey-do...
      - untog 11y ago
mschuster91 11y ago
> No truly big moves have been made, and the product has remained almost entirely the same Third-party clients have been and are "accidentally" banned and subject to rate limitations, for example. The Android app is a UX mess.
meatysnapper 11y ago
Meanwhile Twitter's engineering talent drain continues, as the company will yet again change directions and nothing will get done. For chrissake's they are still under their "Code Red", otherwise known as reorg-infinity. And the cost-cutting will continue (as it should) for an unprofitable public company- get rid of the crossfit instructors, the chef, have less good food, etc.
throwaway6497 11y ago
I think we tend to overuse the word visionary quite a bit these days in the industry. Have you read the book by other Twitter founder who was ousted? He paints a different picture of Jack. Jack is no slouch but a visionary? He is not in the same league as Elon Musk. Jack is a hipster in a suit; he is smart and has carefully crafted his public persona (probably inspired by Jobs and modeled his persona after his ideas). Simple ideas can be powerful and can touch millions of lives. That doesn't make the person who initially came up with idea or some variant of it a visionary. On that metric, Evan Spiegel is a visionary too. We should collectively be critical about how loosely we tend to use superlatives and not base the stories spun by PR machinery to qualify a person or her work. Elon Musk has invested his money, ideas, energy into - Making solar one of largest sources of clean energy - An electric car which is not a joke and probably better than a BMW M5 to drive, self-driving cars? - Satellites to cover entire land on earth with wifi - A plan to go to Mars and setup a camp there - A plan for rapid transit through tubes. Opensourced design blue-prints. - SpaceX He is not dead and he has long way to go. We should reserve the word visionary for people like him. Let us be honest.
- owens99 11y ago
  Well said.
- abalone 11y ago
  You don't have to be Elon Musk to be a "product visionary". It's simply someone who's good at envisioning new products. They don't all have to save the planet (and Musk is standing on the shoulders of giants with his). We should also be careful not to base our impressions on sensational stories spun by disgruntled ex-employees who've gone on to do jack squat. Not a lot of "hipsters in a suit" have gone on to found a second multi-billion dollar company (Square). Sure, we can debate how good a business Square is but it's clearly in "visionary" product territory. It changed its industry.
  - andybak 11y ago
    > It's simply someone who's good at envisioning new products We risk running out of superlatives if we take that attitude. Can we reserve 'visionary' for those 'once in a generation' types and not degrade it to mean 'competent product manager'.

wyclif 11y ago

The problem with this, as an early Twitter user (summer 2006), is that I don't really want Twitter to significantly change. The minimalism is a feature. It was SMS on the web. I always wanted Twitter to be more like a public utility, but that's impossible now because it's been "monetized."

pyre 11y ago
> I always wanted Twitter to be more like a public utility Twitter is a business, how were you expecting this to work? For the USG to aqui-hire them?
- Kalium 11y ago
  Sometimes, I think it would be for the best if the USG had a way to acqui-hire companies that are best suited to be public services.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    Or if government funded open-source software research.
    - afarrell 11y ago
      DARPA does
      - hellbanner 11y ago
        Can't edit, but I meant to say *more. And DARPA, IIRC, is mostly focused around its namesake, yes? Where are the open-source softwares for supply-chain management, payment processing, calendar programs etc.. day to day needs of many citizens?
  - larrys 11y ago
    Then you end up with the "postal service".
    - binxbolling 11y ago
      Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. If our "leaders" stopped actively sabotaging the USPS, it could be doing even better.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        It was only wildly successful until our leaders "sabotaged" it by forcing it to obey standard actuarial practices. (Unlike the rest of the govt, the USPS is now required to fully fund it's pension plans.) See this comment for a more detailed explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6710602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6710602 Also, it's pretty hard not to be "wildly successful" when you get a legally enforced monopoly. Comcast is also "wildly successful", but we certainly don't want to expand that model.
        themartorana 11y ago
        Yes and no. It's a monopoly that can't charge what it takes to stay afloat. Raising prices or changing delivery schedules requires an act of Congress! No member of Congress wants to have to answer for that, so the price of sending a letter hundreds - if not thousands - of miles, to be hand-delivered remains under one-half of one dollar $USD. THAT IS INSANE. It's been argued, deftly, that even with a decline in volume for mass mailers, raising the price from $0.49 to $1 would not only put the USPTO all the way in the black but enable them to meet obligations for years to come. But convince Congress that it's a good idea...
        refurb 11y ago
        Wait a second. I thought they would be profitable if it weren't for the pension funding? If so, then $0.49 per stamp is high enough.
        11y ago
- wyclif 11y ago
  It's a business now. You can't go back and reinvent it now, which is clear from my comment above. But that wasn't always so. In 2006 it wasn't so. I remember those early days when only nerds were using Twitter. Now, you can't sustain a business that way, I know that. But Twitter was always supposed to be minimalist and web-enabled SMS. It's a shame, IMO, that because of "monetization" they have to make all these moves to make it more complicated and harder to surface useful information and conversations. Promoted tweets that are intrusive. Cards. Etc. I think there was a time when Twitter could have been "rolled in" to the public Internet in a way that would be more open and free of this grasping for a profit strategy. That time has passed, and it's sad.
  - pyre 11y ago
    > I think there was a time when Twitter could have been "rolled in" to the public Internet in a way that would be more open and free of this grasping for a profit strategy. Hey, I remember such a time. I remember when Twitter was the "in" thing, and "everyone" (read: only techies in the Bay area) was using it. I remember how lots of conventions that are baked into the system today (@ notation for user references, "RT:" for retweeting, etc) were organically generated community standards. All of that said, Twitter as a system had major hurdles to overcome to become a utility in the way that you want. But assuming that they published a standard, and created some sort of federated system (e.g. XMPP) how would this be anything but a money-sink? Would Twitter still be in use today? Would Facebook have copied most of what the public wants out of Twitter, and that would be it? How expensive would it be for a major provided of "Twitter Protocol Service" to maintain an SMS gateway? Would anyone actually pay for this service? What about inter-node security? Would we see something akin to the joke that is TLS between SMTP servers?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
istvan__ 11y ago
Exactly! I am pretty sure that they could monetize enough on the ads, I found twitter ads pretty relevant almost all the time, i don't even removing them with adblock.
staunch 11y ago
Users don't want change unless it's really good change, then it's the best thing that can happen. Here's what Twitter used to look like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/188430472 https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/188430472 https://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/190576959 https://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/190576959 I remember those days too and the product is much better now. It could be much better still.
- wyclif 11y ago
  Don't get me wrong; I agree with your "good change" observation, and I wasn't saying the Twitter interface should have been frozen in time at 2006 (and I definitely wasn't saying there is no room for improvement, even now). I'm simply of the opinion that Twitter is rapidly losing sight of what their purpose is.
  - dvanduzer 11y ago
    Twitter doesn't have a purpose, it serves a purpose. We can all disagree about what function Twitter performs for individuals, or in the marketplace, or what have you. But it isn't like there's ever a destination for a company or medium or whatever it is that Twitter is.
signaler 11y ago
Seconded. It's like the fabric of the web now. (Possibly why their Fabric API is called 'Fabric'). I wrote about this: http://blog.higg.so/2015/06/12/on-twitter/?24 http://blog.higg.so/2015/06/12/on-twitter/?24

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

thewhizkid 11y ago

Keep in mind Jack Dorsey the interim CEO, so it's only temporary until they find a permanent CEO.

austenallred 11y ago
Jack is a wild card. They'll give him a shot and see how it goes. If it goes well they can pull an Apple and say, "The founder is finally coming back!" If not they can quietly find a replacement and say, "Now Jack is going back to Square, just like they said he always would." It's PR insurance, basically, which Twitter desperately needs considering they go through CEOs faster than I go through freelancers.
- jusben1369 11y ago
  I don't think he can do that to Square and their investors as nice as the story sounds.
  - JonFish85 11y ago
    Do what, leave them? Or return to them after this?
    - jusben1369 11y ago
      Spend any real significant time with split duties. Most of his investors would say "We didn't put $x in this with the understanding that you were going to be a 50% CEO/leader"
  - up_and_up 11y ago
    He has ran both companies simultaneously in the past via 16 hour work days: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/11/14/jack-dorsey-does-8-hours-at-twitter-8-hours-at-square-daily/ http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/11/14/jack-dorsey-do...
    - untog 11y ago

mschuster91 11y ago

> No truly big moves have been made, and the product has remained almost entirely the same Third-party clients have been and are "accidentally" banned and subject to rate limitations, for example. The Android app is a UX mess.

meatysnapper 11y ago

Meanwhile Twitter's engineering talent drain continues, as the company will yet again change directions and nothing will get done. For chrissake's they are still under their "Code Red", otherwise known as reorg-infinity. And the cost-cutting will continue (as it should) for an unprofitable public company- get rid of the crossfit instructors, the chef, have less good food, etc.

throwaway6497 11y ago

I think we tend to overuse the word visionary quite a bit these days in the industry. Have you read the book by other Twitter founder who was ousted? He paints a different picture of Jack. Jack is no slouch but a visionary? He is not in the same league as Elon Musk. Jack is a hipster in a suit; he is smart and has carefully crafted his public persona (probably inspired by Jobs and modeled his persona after his ideas). Simple ideas can be powerful and can touch millions of lives. That doesn't make the person who initially came up with idea or some variant of it a visionary. On that metric, Evan Spiegel is a visionary too. We should collectively be critical about how loosely we tend to use superlatives and not base the stories spun by PR machinery to qualify a person or her work. Elon Musk has invested his money, ideas, energy into - Making solar one of largest sources of clean energy - An electric car which is not a joke and probably better than a BMW M5 to drive, self-driving cars? - Satellites to cover entire land on earth with wifi - A plan to go to Mars and setup a camp there - A plan for rapid transit through tubes. Opensourced design blue-prints. - SpaceX He is not dead and he has long way to go. We should reserve the word visionary for people like him. Let us be honest.

owens99 11y ago
Well said.
abalone 11y ago
You don't have to be Elon Musk to be a "product visionary". It's simply someone who's good at envisioning new products. They don't all have to save the planet (and Musk is standing on the shoulders of giants with his). We should also be careful not to base our impressions on sensational stories spun by disgruntled ex-employees who've gone on to do jack squat. Not a lot of "hipsters in a suit" have gone on to found a second multi-billion dollar company (Square). Sure, we can debate how good a business Square is but it's clearly in "visionary" product territory. It changed its industry.
- andybak 11y ago
  > It's simply someone who's good at envisioning new products We risk running out of superlatives if we take that attitude. Can we reserve 'visionary' for those 'once in a generation' types and not degrade it to mean 'competent product manager'.