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Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#251

Post by LoSboccacc »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #108
lolive wrote: post #40

I used to be a Google Reader/Google Buzz addict. And was interacting with a very living community through those tools. I now use twitter as my exclusive medium for both mainstream and "niche" news. I appreciate the wide availability of content, but still think they are much too conservative with their user experience. The inability to browse tweets by topic is sometimes a pain. The inability to connect with the right…

So a more public/global Slack with recommendations and intelligently aggregating channels by hash tag?

the limitation of which is that most content on a user stream is pulled passively by the users or is a paid advertisement.

as a discovery/exploration tool sucks.

if it had interesting suggestion based on hashtags and followers beyond 'follow this three more person' daily mail it could be a nice networking/news tool, but so far it cannot really help me navigate in the millions streams that might be interesting but are accessible only knowing that exact hashtag

I followed a couple news outlet, I guess there are many more that may interest me but I can't be assed to search them and if I discover them myself they go by preference into feedly, not twitter.

on the other hand, it had been great to follow this and that indie game developer :D

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#252

Post by mahouse »

TheBlueDot wrote: post #223

Well, there goes my weekend/week. As someone who joined Twitter recently this sucks. I left a great job to come work at Twitter because I believe in what they're building and now a few months in I might be looking again. :-( To be fair, the first week I was asking myself what all of these people do. I wish the company had been more transparent with this but I understand why they can't start telling people there will…

> Think before you type a rude comment too, most Twitter people read HN and will see it. :-/

No criticism? Is it bad if I say that they have a very simple product that doesn't need so much people? Is it bad if I say every feature they add they ruin it more? Is it bad if I say I would rather go back to 2010 Twitter?

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#253

Post by [deleted] »

petercooper wrote: post #240
x1024 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps that is the lesson to be learned? That technology with limits... scales? If you want to "do social", do it for small groups. Nobody really has 40 000 friends, so why bother with the use-case that is literally only used by advertising companies?

I don't think the final question is realistic. I have 20K followers (not huge, but far beyond who I could realistically ever "know") and get huge value from it as an individual, not as a business. It would be so boring (to me) to only be able to talk to people one knows closely. There are numerous non-company non-celebs-in-the-Hollywood-sense-of-the-word people who have huge followings on Twitter who get a lot of val…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#254

Post by TheBlueDot »

mahouse wrote: post #252
TheBlueDot wrote: post #223

Well, there goes my weekend/week. As someone who joined Twitter recently this sucks. I left a great job to come work at Twitter because I believe in what they're building and now a few months in I might be looking again. :-( To be fair, the first week I was asking myself what all of these people do. I wish the company had been more transparent with this but I understand why they can't start telling people there will…

> Think before you type a rude comment too, most Twitter people read HN and will see it. :-/ No criticism? Is it bad if I say that they have a very simple product that doesn't need so much people? Is it bad if I say every feature they add they ruin it more? Is it bad if I say I would rather go back to 2010 Twitter?

I'm talking about rude comments about the intelligent people that work there.

Where do you work, lets compare products/people and the impact the product makes on the world shall we?

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#255

Post by donohoe »

zer0defex wrote: post #244
tajano wrote: post #234

I predicted Twitter would be the next unicorn to cut staff and offices ten days ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10300002 ). To be honest, I didn't think it would happen quite this fast. But 4K employees, 2K engineers to support Twitter? If they were still in a rapid growth/innovation phase, perhaps they could get away with this. But rapid growth is over.

"I predicted..." really? with a link to your comment even? hahahahaha, you're so proud of yourself for repeating what's said here every hour of every day, it's amazing. do you act this way in RL?

Do be fair, only part of the prediction was right at best.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#256

Post by joeblau »

nosuchthing wrote: post #75

"Moments" tab gives a good indication that Twitter has no idea where to go and is the sum of boring meetings with marketing consultants. Twitter had potential, but it appears stagnate as all they've done is created a new version of an AOL instant messenger chatroom with hashtags and 128char limit. Limiting the API tokens for 3rd party developers was a really foolish move.

One of the interesting parts about Moments, is that I used TweetBot and that feature is nowhere to be found. That being said, I don't even feel like I'm missing anything. It seems like ownership of the product experience is fragmented and the best implementors of the product experience aren't Twitter.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#257

Post by technological »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #210
amix wrote: post #206

I think the general market could learn a thing or two from WhatsApp: 55 people powering a platform used by 800 million _active_ users across many different platforms. And WhatsApp has innovated, e.g. the new video and calling system works very well. I have often wondered what thousands of Twitter employees are doing all day long? Their platform and apps have been stale for a long time.

The new video and calling system, innovation? Skype, Hangouts and Viber have had those features for years... I don't think WhatsApp introduced any innovation at all, its popularity is derived from network effects, together with the questionable practice of using phone numbers as public ID and automatically adding all your phone contacts as chat contacts without them having any say in the matter.

Innovation = How reliable their calling system is. Even with proper networks it works very well. I call my family back in india and it works so well without any disturbances.

Innovation for whatsapp = Simplicity + Reliability

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#258

Post by VLM »

sdenton4 wrote: post #220
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new video and calling system, innovation? Skype, Hangouts and Viber have had those features for years... I don't think WhatsApp introduced any innovation at all, its popularity is derived from network effects, together with the questionable practice of using phone numbers as public ID and automatically adding all your phone contacts as chat contacts without them having any say in the matter.

Phone numbers as ID is actually a really important innovation. I worked in Kenya for quite a while, and found that many people had email accounts they had no idea how to actually access. Email-based authentication doesn't work for a considerable proportion of the world's population. But cell phones are pretty ubiquitous: This ease of authentication is a big part of why whatsapp is kicking ass in the developing world.

"email accounts"

The plural is an important side issue. I only have one phone and one public phone number. I'm not sure how many email addresses I have, its definitely more than five but less than two dozen? I do know my broadband provider theoretically gave me an email address about a decade ago that I've never used. I hope no one is sending email to that address...

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#259

Post by forgetsusername »

eva1984 wrote: post #190
toomuchtodo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing lasts forever in tech. How will they monetize Instagram and WhatsApp? Don't show me users. Show me profits from those users if you want to count them.

Instagram is pretty trivial: ads. AFAIK, their user base is largely female, and this catalog of inventory is very much desired by advertisers. In terms of Whatsapp, micro-transaction maybe? That I am not quite sure, it is not going to be as straight-forward as Instagram.

At some point the "throw ads in it" model is going to stop working.
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