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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?

#601

Post by Melchizedek »

sfeng wrote: post #52
mindcrash wrote: post #24

* Remove Jack from CEO position * Let Evan return as CEO (merge with Medium) ... this will restore Twitter management to the situation around 2010, then ... * Reform or cancel the Trust & Safety council * Restore open API access and app ecosystem * Remove side wide censorship tools, add self censorship tools (a la Gab) * Reverse the timeline changes * Stop pandering to far left ideologues Something like that?

How is any of this gonna result in Twitter making more money?

People will stop switching to gab.ai? Twitter actually thrives on conflict - stop trying to turn it into a safe space for the easily offended! Or at least don't force it to be a neutered safe space for everyone - leave it up to the users to turn it into that for themselves, not for everyone else.

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

#602

Post by wila »

potatolicious wrote: post #447
euyyn wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doing it has friction, both for the writer and for the readers. If you remove the friction, you get more of it.

This feels like maybe a [citation required] thing. Facebook doesn't have any particular length limit on posts, and anecdotally vast screeds are quite rare on my feed, and most posts are pretty terse regardless. Is there data to suggest that people will just rant all the time if they're permitted to? [edit] Anecdotally, my current top 20 posts in my FB feed: 17 under 140 chars, 3 greater than 140 chars.

We don't need twitter to be another facebook.

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

#603

Post by joantune »

I came a bit too late to the party.

While I get the 140char limit, and they should stick with that, having something like a 10k limit that was only shown when the tweet is expanded, is, in my perspective, essential [for someone that comes from FB the 140 char limit is ludicrous bad UX]. I get that longer formats should go on something like medium, but asking people to change websites to do that is ludicrous. It's putting the barrier too high for the input of content.

I know that the shareholders of Twitter that also are medium's wouldn't be happy with the lifting of that limit, yet, for those read on:

Regardless of feasibility (as they are two distinct companies) more than 140characters would transform itself on a medium post and commentaries and highlights could become tweets.

That's one of the two suggestions that I think would help twitter improve a lot. Enough of texts as image and other crappy UX

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

#604

Post by petetnt »

iamatworknow wrote: post #332
nikcub wrote: post #128

1. cut costs by a lot. they shouldn't be spending $2B per year 2. allow the apps to be used without a login - with the default view showing 'what is on now'. almost every member of my family has attempted to use twitter at some point and just been confused. 3. reformat all the explore pages into ordinary twitter streams 4. acquire nuzzel. their view of 'whats on now' is better than twitter's view 5. drop the video pa…

>7. let people pay to get a checkmark Isn't (or maybe "wasn't") the intention of the check mark to differentiate legitimate public figures from those who would attempt to create fake profiles and impersonate them? Lately it seems like anyone who has had any sort of notoriety has been getting one, but if you could just pay for it instead that would completely defeat the purpose.

You can just request a checkmark from https://support.twitter.com/articles/20174631.

"The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic.

We approve account types maintained by users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, sports, business, and other key interest areas. If you believe your account is of public interest and should be verified, this article outlines information about submitting a request."

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

#605

Post by verdax_1 »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #444
dandare wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first Twitter clone I remember came up with the killer feature - infinitely long Tweets. How many times did I hear this dumb idea? It is not a sandwich, longer does not mean better! The scarce resource is not the number of electrons you send, the scarce resource is the attention of the reader.

Why is exactly 140 still the right length? Why not 145, or 73, or 280? Answer cannot contain words "always", "traditional", or "nostalgia". There's a large distance between 140 and infinitely long.

Maybe the code base contains a bunch of edge cases where they assume 140 and trying to do anything else causes crashes or other poorly defined misbehavior. (Not what you were talking about but also a legitimate but unfortunate answer)

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

#606

Post by westiseast »

gregmac wrote: post #375
aphextron wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let people pay $1/month to raise their limit to 280 characters per message. The format is the entire point of twitter. It forces the condensation of thought. Increasing the limit would fundamentally change the service.

People already hack around this by posting images of text, or using several tweets (usually annotated with "1/" "2/" etc, or merely by replying to their own tweets). The images hurt accessibility, and the streams make it harder to share the discussion (which is partly the purpose of being a social app to begin with).

Yeah, plus what happens now is you get these almost garbled, code-like sentences with emojis, inB4 type abbreviations, truncated URLS, hashtags, @ references and its unreadable/unscannable. I would totally prefer a 140 character block where the hashtags, @references and links fell outside and I coukd parse the tweet more naturally.

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

#607

Post by tragic »

qwertyuiopm wrote: post #593
nikcub wrote: post #128

1. cut costs by a lot. they shouldn't be spending $2B per year 2. allow the apps to be used without a login - with the default view showing 'what is on now'. almost every member of my family has attempted to use twitter at some point and just been confused. 3. reformat all the explore pages into ordinary twitter streams 4. acquire nuzzel. their view of 'whats on now' is better than twitter's view 5. drop the video pa…

I disagree with 7(longer tweets). The 140 character limit is what Twitter is most known for, and sets it apart from a typical social network. It's something like a body-mark of Twitter. It should stay.

There are other things that set it apart from a "typical social network"; for instance, the fact that it's floundering as a commercial enterprise.

Something has to change, and that something will necessarily not be held in common with Facebook.

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

#608

Post by v4n4d1s »

1. Remove all bullshit features: "While you were away", Cards, Ordering. 2. Stop messing with the chronological order of the timeline. 3. Do not monetize it with in-timeline-ads, many people block all accounts serving ads. 4. Remove API limitations for 3rd party developers/apps.

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

#610

Post by masukomi »

tajen wrote: post #580
theincredulousk wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe holding this arbitrary line in the sand as if it were a commandment is why Twitter apparently needs to be "turned around". 280 characters isn't now extensive prose - it isn't fundamentally changing anything. It has been 10+ years and they are still losing a tremendous amount of money, I think it is time to lose the idealism if there is a win-win for users and revenue. At some point "condensed" thought just mean…

Twitter is also a public discussion platform. It's a cog for democracy. But after the 140 limit, Twitter's other annoyance is how public your comments are. You can't remove them and you're extremely liable for them. Making them private (actually, that option exists) would make it look like Facebook, so it isn't the solution, and making them anonymous won't solve trolls. Liability on twitter currently doesn't prevent…

you very much CAN remove them. Tweets are deletable. You're no more or less liable for them than anything else you say in any other public environment. We have no less liability for our public statements here on HN. They're just harder to spread to the masses.
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