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Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

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Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#311

Post by grandalf »

pjc50 wrote: post #307
grandalf wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> threatens violence or is intended to foment violence against a person or people I see no reason why having a clear, public record of such communications is worse than forcing those involved to use a different messaging system. It's just words. The simple answer is press the "unfollow" button, or follow it, read it, and act in your best interests based on it.

It's not coming from the people that users follow, it's coming from strangers who either @ them directly (e.g. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/lily-allen-stillbir... ), or use twitter to forment violence against persons or people who aren't even on twitter. Milo was banned not because of anything he said directly against Leslie Jones, but because he drove a hate mob against her. Twitter really needs to give…

> Twitter really needs to give people the anti-abuse tools they demand.

I strongly agree with this. It's a far better solution than censorship.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#314

Post by tmalsburg2 »

kleiba wrote: post #162
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter's modern-day utility seems very low outside of news/sports/politics What's the evidence for this claim? In academia, Twitter is super important, much more than Facebook or any other social platform. Academics are addicted to Twitter and I think you could charge them, e.g., for tweets longer than 140 characters.

I'm academic. I'm not addicted to twitter, nor is anyone of my coworkers.

Well, you should consider the possibility that you and your coworkers are not representative of academics more generally. In my research field Twitter is quite matter of factly really big. Also note that this was just an example showing that there are more areas where Twitter is doing really well than those that OP listed.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#315

Post by [deleted] »

kleiba wrote: post #162
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter's modern-day utility seems very low outside of news/sports/politics What's the evidence for this claim? In academia, Twitter is super important, much more than Facebook or any other social platform. Academics are addicted to Twitter and I think you could charge them, e.g., for tweets longer than 140 characters.

I'm academic. I'm not addicted to twitter, nor is anyone of my coworkers.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#316

Post by zapt02 »

lhnz wrote: post #79

I would try to eat journalism. I would create a system where subscription to News on Twitter helps to automate payment for individual articles. 1. The lede or quote gets pulled into the tweet. 2. http://t.co becomes a payment-debiting gateway (402 Payment Required). Basically, you would monetise the audience on behalf of the publishers who would be able to make their paywalls more porous. Almost everybody would benef…

This pretty much combines the three things big media companies hate:

- Someone else owning and displaying their content.

- Someone else owning data on their viewers.

- Not being able to set their own prices.

For those reasons, I don't see any chance of serious publishers being interested in this sort of deal. There's just very little in it for them.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#317

Post by returnbuyer »

burkaman wrote: post #102
sergiotapia wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saudi investment money means none of that is ever ever going to happen. Twitter ain't ever going back from regressive left ideologies. If anything they're going to double-down. The fact that Feminist Frequency is on the "safety council" should tell you enough about it and how useless it is.

How are you connecting Saudi Arabia to promoting feminism

Poison the well, make your enemy weaker. It's basic long-term strategy: Marxism for your enemies, powerful fascism for yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#318

Post by keypusher »

jy1 wrote: post #306
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #283

I'd tear it apart until all that's left is a profitable, maintainable core. Like Craigslist. Twitter's payroll (to say nothing of its stock-based compensation expense) is bloated. Slashing staff isn't a popular play. This is a textbook private equity deal. Twitter's habit of ringing in the year with $500MM losses could be single-handedly cut with a 2/3rd staffing reduction (which costs lots in payroll and $800MM in s…

That's not a turn around scenario. It would be better to try to find a buyer at the current price.

Finding a new buyer does nothing to turn the business into a profitable enterprise. They need to cut costs.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#319

Post by david-cako »

Making the UX not shit is a great start.

Twitter is really an unpleasant site to use for following discussions of any sort. When I click a thread-view for a post, I want to see a clear tree-view of all of the posts and replies like any other sane website, not the current flat-layout bullshit wherein you have no clue what the chronology of anything is, or who is responding to what.

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread for how twitter can refocus and monetize itself, but I think before all that you need to make it a site that more people enjoy using beyond its original use case of "waiting at the airport -- hmu".

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