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

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

#111

Post by smtddr »

natecavanaugh wrote: post #83

Is there anyone else who hates Twitter because of its 140 character limit and overall focus on broadcasting rather than sharing? For the 140 character limit, I get the historical SMS reasons and that it helps you "focus" your content, but taking 10 minutes to squeeze a thought in that turns from something half interesting to "bc u r 4 the GPL" or whatever. Sure MAYBE I could reword things a little denser, but a tweet…

>>Is there anyone else who hates Twitter because of its 140 character limit and overall focus on broadcasting rather than sharing?

I actually love twitter for those reasons.

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

#112

Post by vacri »

mikegioia wrote: post #29

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.…

Twitter isn't some fly-by-night company that has to hard-sell what it is. It's a well-known product that has independent mentions in media left, right, and centre. News shows, current affairs shows, morning TV, newspaper websites... all of these mention twitter constantly, as they use it as a lazy source of react quotes. Even talking-head panel shows have runners at the bottom of the screen showing what's happening with twitter. Twitter doesn't have a problem with people understanding what it's about.

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

#113

Post by kmonsen »

mattzito wrote: post #90
adventured wrote: post #65

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…

Open links in an incognito window

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

#114

Post by ohazi »

vacri wrote: post #112
mikegioia wrote: post #29

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.…

Twitter isn't some fly-by-night company that has to hard-sell what it is. It's a well-known product that has independent mentions in media left, right, and centre. News shows, current affairs shows, morning TV, newspaper websites... all of these mention twitter constantly, as they use it as a lazy source of react quotes. Even talking-head panel shows have runners at the bottom of the screen showing what's happening w…

I can know exactly what twitter is and still not want an account. I can get what I want out of twitter, and twitter can get access to my eyeballs by just showing me things when I want to see them.

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

#115

Post by vacri »

shostack wrote: post #79
mikegioia wrote: post #29

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…

> Someone posts a link, I find something on a website, etc. that go to Twitter? BAM! SIGN-UP NOW OR LEAVE!

If they force you to sign up, they get more user data for the pool. I don't think that the slice of their market they're losing out on by this is very big.

> Lowering the barrier to entry for that is critical.

The barrier to entry for content creation on twitter is absurdly low. It's not the login process. It's the content itself, which is only a couple of sentences. It's not editing a video, or writing a short article, or creating an image, or managing a forum. It's just 'spurt out what I'm thinking right now in one sentence'. Login processes are not the barrier to content creation, effort required is.

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

#116

Post by meatysnapper »

OldSchoolPro wrote: post #78
mrdrozdov wrote: post #76

Stop stressing out. Twitter will be fine.

IMHO with the current management Twitter will stagnate and die.

As opposed to the previous management? 3 heads of product since 2013: Sippey, Graf, Weil. How's that supposed to work?

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

#117

Post by nkozyra »

teaneedz wrote: post #86
natecavanaugh wrote: post #83

Is there anyone else who hates Twitter because of its 140 character limit and overall focus on broadcasting rather than sharing? For the 140 character limit, I get the historical SMS reasons and that it helps you "focus" your content, but taking 10 minutes to squeeze a thought in that turns from something half interesting to "bc u r 4 the GPL" or whatever. Sure MAYBE I could reword things a little denser, but a tweet…

It's what makes Twitter, well Twitter. I love the 140 char limit because it enforces brevity and aids quick consumption. That's me.

But often it encourages abusing the limitation by splitting long(er)-form content into multiple tweets.

I agree that it's so fundamental to the brand and Twitter's identity that it might cause a lot of problems if it were reverted, but frankly it's completely arbitrary. If you want to produce 140 (or less) content, you can do that without a hard limit.

People hack around it because it's such a ubiquitous platform, but people would also like to address that audience in long(er)-form. It culminates in inconvenience for both producer and consumer.

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

#118

Post by hkmurakami »

digisth wrote: post #77
walterbell wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter blocked Flattr from providing micropayments based on favoriting, then failed to fill that gap in the market. There are so many gaps which could have been filled by 3rd-party developers, but Twitter's API posture scared away investors from building on their API.

Hopefully, they'll reconsider some of those policies now. We know the data (including certain event data, like favoriting, like you say) is probably their most valuable asset, but opening the valve on it a bit more would be in everyone's interest, I think.

What can they do to regain the lost trust though, even if they do open the gates to the city again?

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

#119

Post by imauld »

vacri wrote: post #112
mikegioia wrote: post #29

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.…

Twitter isn't some fly-by-night company that has to hard-sell what it is. It's a well-known product that has independent mentions in media left, right, and centre. News shows, current affairs shows, morning TV, newspaper websites... all of these mention twitter constantly, as they use it as a lazy source of react quotes. Even talking-head panel shows have runners at the bottom of the screen showing what's happening w…

I can't count the number of times I clicked a link to read a news story (even on news outlets like Al Jazeera) and the "article" was basically "Here's what twitter users had to say" followed by a dozen or so tweet cards

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

#120

Post by adventured »

mattzito wrote: post #90
adventured wrote: post #65

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…

As another comment mentioned, Google the title. Also, some parts of their site and some articles are not paywalled. I probably also burn the article limit per month without paying attention. Add it all up, and I can't remember the last time I was blocked out of reading an article on their site.
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