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Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

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101–110 of 207 posts

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#101

Twitter should do group messaging and structured tags. I want to do things like: @friends Don't forget my birthday party on #(Aug 20, 8pm) at #SomePub or @friends Don't forget my birthday party! #invitation(Aug 20, 8pm, SomePub) And I want to be able to create a list where all invitations from people in the @friends group go And finance people could do things like Twitter has bottomed #buy(TWTR) And I want to be able…

I think Twitter now (recently) has group messaging.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#102
post #99

I have never installed Snapchat. I don't know if it is good or bad. All my friends doesn't have Snapchat, but everyone has Twitter. I found Twitter a better place, and it's ageless to me compared to all those new-UI paradigms that come each year. The problem of Twitter is they cut off all the innovation of 3rd party software developers to keep their shitty in house software.

snapchat is pretty cool

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#103

Twitter hasn't focused on anything else besides twitter. Facebook is taking on the mission of "connecting the world". Google has gone well beyond being only a search engine. Amazon has expanded into mobile, AWS and ... Twitter, on the other hand, is still pushing the same product.

Well there's Periscope. And Vine. Their music app that went belly up. Not as much as some others, but they haven't exclusively been stuck on the Twitter app.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#104
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really hard to sell/explain to the uninitiated because it's a diverse platform. Even my twitter feed is very diverse- breaking news and headlines from the beat writers for my favorite teams, activists and protesters covering police brutality, and developer blogs. With this mix, my twitter feed varies greatly. Unrest in Ferguson? Breaking news from the ground. Microsoft Build conference? Latest in tech from Redmo…

No, I've tried it. I've really tried to like it, but it just didn't click with me. I know it's perfect for others, but it can never reach the growth of a platform like Facebook that is more universally liked. That's pretty much my point.

>Facebook that is more universally liked. That's pretty much my point.

Facebook is pretty much engineered to give you what you like - the "news bubble". There's no "civil unrest" on Facebook, or is there any disagreements or arguments or storms - things you don't like just go away. There are upsides to this of course, there is better user engagement and there's no trolls. However compared to Twitter, Facebook is a Brave New World.

Twitter, once it clicks is an addicting source of news - and its so hard to get it to click, I only really started seriously using twitter when I had blocked Facebook, Reddit, HN, and other distractions in an attempt to stay focused on work - even still, I don't tweet.

My "twitterverse" is much more diverse than any other platform I visit - (my facebook feed is now nearly exclusively pictures 20-something yuppies on vacation or HN which might as well be heavily curated) and there are a lot more interests outside my own bubble that I can at least pretend to have insight to just be being exposed to it.

However without the curation nor the inherent network effects of Facebook I can see why Twitter can be hard to use - you really have to invest in the platform and it does take a while.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#105
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying AOL wasn't mainstream? The Internet might have been niche as a whole, but out of that, AOL was as mainstream as it got. AOL was synonymous with Internet, like Facebook and Twitter are synonymous with social media.

I said: > Everyone had an AOL keyword. AOL isn't dead, but it fell hard. Ubiquity isn't enough. Every business having a Twitter account won't save Twitter any better than everyone having an AOL keyword saved AOL.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. AOL didn't initially position itself as a portal. It positioned itself as an ISP with a portal.

Had AOL built itself as a web portal like Yahoo from the start it may very well have stayed relevant. I still have business partners (in non tech fields) that use their AOL email and news/portal services.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#106

To me the problem with Twitter lies solely with what Twitter's logged-out homepage looks like. I don't know what it's trying to be but asking me to sign up, browse categories (?), and read top celebrity posts is not it. Why is logged-out Twitter not a search engine? They have up-to-the-second thoughts from their users about everything and it's the first place I go when a site is down, or some news story is breaking.…

I've long wondered this. I haven't followed the evolution of Twitter's homepage, but I'd be really shocked if they hadn't tested this to death. The thing is, this keeps causing me to miss moments to engage with them. Someone posts a link, I find something on a website, etc. that go to Twitter? BAM! SIGN-UP NOW OR LEAVE! While I do of course have an account, if I were a non-user, I'd keep thinking "why would I sign-up…

Three answers, one of which makes me feel shamefully too much of an asshole.

1) I think optimizing the naive-to-twitter experience is something which can't really be done through incremental A/B testable changes.

2) They have had technical capability limits which prevent them from surfacing great content for users based on what anyone else would call "ad tech". These are both technical and organizational/philosophical (which, over a long enough timescale, are the root cause of technical limitations in a $20b company).

3) (the obvious one involving the quote about clown cars and gold mines).

It's not just "not logged in", it's "haven't been an active user for a long time". If one of my friends joins and JUST follows me, Twitter is boring/useless as can be. Their "recommend to follow" thing is utterly inadequate. Compare this to Facebook which is fucking awesome from your first interaction.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#107
post #92

I never thought the problem was the product, rather it is the management and the community. What's valuable about hacker news is the people who are involved, and what's great about Quora are the people who give a response. It's not helpful that most people spam useless tweets constantly. It took a while, but I finally set my twitter to follow news updates perfectly.

It's a delicate mix of both. Ello caused a mass migration away from Facebook but new users had difficulty understanding the Ello UI, and eventually after the hype simmered, people generally stuck with Facebook as their main network interface.

There was also much talk around the time Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook.. people were eager to find alternatives and could easily migrate.

I can't imagine Twitter being around in 5 years. IMO the best aspect Twitter has right now above all other services is it's realtime tag/search/trend system. The 140 char limit is antiquated, the userbase is mostly twitter joke addicts and an unceasing torrent of self promotional noise.

I'm still sorta hoping Ello get's their shit together. I'd gladly pay for their service instead of being immersed in AOL 2015.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That prompts a question as to whether Twitter can best grow its future value more through user signups / conversions, or through maximizing one-way consumption as a broadcast medium. I read the nytimes.com all the time. They have no idea who I am and never will. I'll never signup for an account. They still get to feed me ads. I consume ESPN one-way. They have no idea who I am and never will. It's worth $50 +/- billio…

How do you read nytimes "all the time" with the paywall? Edit: I'm confused by the downvotes. I wasn't trying to turn it into a discussion about whether paywalls are right or wrong, I was just drawing out that either the parent was not reading nytimes all the time, or they were evading the paywall, or they were paying for access. They're talking about how Twitter should get value from giving readers access and using…

Google the article title, click the link.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#109
post #92

I never thought the problem was the product, rather it is the management and the community. What's valuable about hacker news is the people who are involved, and what's great about Quora are the people who give a response. It's not helpful that most people spam useless tweets constantly. It took a while, but I finally set my twitter to follow news updates perfectly.

It's a delicate mix of both. Ello caused a mass migration away from Facebook but new users had difficulty understanding the Ello UI, and eventually after the hype simmered, people generally stuck with Facebook as their main network interface. There was also much talk around the time Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook.. people were eager to find alternatives and could easily migrate. I can't imagine Twitter being aroun…

"A mass migration"? A lot of people signed up for accounts (curiosity, namespace landrush) then did ~nothing.

Re: Twitter Falls Below IPO Price as Concerns Mount Over CEO, Growth

#110
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a delicate mix of both. Ello caused a mass migration away from Facebook but new users had difficulty understanding the Ello UI, and eventually after the hype simmered, people generally stuck with Facebook as their main network interface. There was also much talk around the time Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook.. people were eager to find alternatives and could easily migrate. I can't imagine Twitter being aroun…

"A mass migration"? A lot of people signed up for accounts (curiosity, namespace landrush) then did ~nothing.

> "A mass migration"?

Maybe for Danish architecture enthusiasts.

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