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The Decay of Twitter

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Decay of Twitter

#41

Post by simplicio »

johnward wrote: post #28
trymas wrote: post #6

Maybe it will seem as a dumb question, but how Twitter can be in the loss (in order of millions of US dollars) since day one, without (IMHO) clear path to profitability and not be bankrupt? It is growing, but it still has huge losses. Do investors believe it will be hugely profitable 5-10 years from now? Is this new normal in business?

On top of that, what kind of revenue do the ads bring in?

They've done a good job upping revenue over the last few years (somewhere north of a billion dollars/yr in 2014). And, IMHO, done so without the resulting ads being too obtrusive.

Their problem isn't that they can't make money. It's that their valuation means investors expect them to make a ridiculous amount of money. So all revenues are plowed back into R&D.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#42

Post by phrogdriver »

benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

>I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain.

The really interesting part of this problem is the network value, not the individual value. The fact that "the network is valuable enough to you that you would be willing to pay" is precisely because of the value provided by the other nodes. Many of those nodes are present only because they do not have to pay. Demand curves are downward sloping but the value of the network is some function of the total nodes, probably the square of the nodes.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#43

Post by richard_mcp »

6stringmerc wrote: post #22

Well, I think the recent 'Favorites' to 'Like' change is a bad omen with structural and community reverberations that will be felt over time. It's a gut instinct, but when 'established' brands and formats like Twitter or Reddit jiggle with the cords, there's backlash - deserved or not. It's the danger of making a tool for 'mobs of people' if you're okay with calling a user base that. The "between a rock & hard place"…

I disagree with the change being a bad thing. It makes more sense to like a tweet than favorite it. Both imply some sort of agreement with the tweet, but favoriting always seemed to imply something more to me. If your goal is to get more user interaction, "like" seems like the better option.

As to user backlash, this happens with every change to a social media site and it almost always blows over. There's nothing out there to threaten Twitter's place and I doubt this has or is causing people to leave the platform. No one's going to drop it because there are now hearts instead of stars.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#44

Post by anunderachiever »

benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

> I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells.

Both are useful, but Twitter is sticking to its domain, while Facebook tries to lure the user into dependency on as many levels as possible.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#45

Post by felipeerias »

pmelendez wrote: post #9
DanBC wrote: post #5

Recently, within the past month, someone I follow either posted or retweeted a link to a survey about paracetamol use in accident and emergency departments in the Uk, and how it was about as effective as opiate meds for most people. Today there are stories on HN where that link would be relevant. I would have posted a link to the tweet, and a link to the study mentioned in the tweet. But Twitter's search is not good…

> I'm ad tolerant, but the ads Twitter show me are always useless. The ads have zero relevance to me I have actually thinking about this and some ideas come up. If you don't mind me asking... What would be your ideal non-introsive ads mechanism? Maybe a relevant mention to you on a recommended tweet?

There isn't a company that knows better what I am really interested in than Twitter, and yet they seem unable to recommend me anything even remotely interesting.

It wouldn't even need to be particularly evil stuff: I'm convinced that my public profile would be enough to sell me e.g. half a dozen good books per year.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#46

Post by dennisnedry »

mikeg8 wrote: post #33
hissworks wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this was a poorly constructed article. Lost me at: "To talk about Stewart’s theory, you have to first tackle the ideas of the 20th-century philosopher of media, Walter J. Ong." No, you really don't. That said, Twitter's never made it easy to digest its content. Sure there are lists, and now moments, but it's not always easy to find what you're looking for, and if you're not really careful about curating your ow…

That was the same spot I lost interest as well. Way too verbose.

That's the problem I have with many of these articles, the journalists try to make use of their philosophy degrees and make nothing into something.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#47

Post by agumonkey »

benten10 wrote: post #14

I really hope twitter somehow makes money. I would be willing to pay a subscription fee if that helps it sustain. Facebook, I'd rather see die in the hottest fires of all the hells. I don't exaggerate when I say this: twitter has made me smarter. If I'm interested in a new field, I just follow the experts in that field that are on twitter. The conversations and the discussions not only make me feel like an insider, b…

That's a fair point. Facebook is very very related to the emotional/interpersonal side of things. There were groups devoted to more intellectual subjects but somehow I never felt it was a place for thoughts. Twitter can be 'topics' oriented. G+ has that too. I'm starting to think that it even appeared as a defect when compared to Facebook even though it's a bit 'apple to oranges'.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#48

Post by theseatoms »

dennisnedry wrote: post #46
mikeg8 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the same spot I lost interest as well. Way too verbose.

That's the problem I have with many of these articles, the journalists try to make use of their philosophy degrees and make nothing into something.

It's as if they're paid by word count. If anything they should constrain word count, much like a certain micro-blog network.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#49

Post by olivermarks »

I wrote this about Twitter way back in 2010 on ZDNet http://www.zdnet.com/article/twitter-tragedy-of-the-commons/

"As an information propagation device Twitter is peerless, but the Tragedy of the Commons - and in this case the commons is your time - is happening all over again.

When multiple individuals acting independently behave only in their own self-interest they will ultimately deplete a shared but limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen, as happened in the original Tragedy of the Commons over land usage".

Twitter never solved this problem and if you want to use it I'd suggest you have to spend a lot of time pruning who you follow and searching for people who are adding value to your life. Very time consuming....

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#50

Post by dspillett »

pmlnr wrote: post #36
dspillett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt that will work. People will just install ad blockers instead. You'd be surprised what lengths many people will go to in order to avoid spending even $1. It isn't poor people either: in my experience the well-off who have time on their hands because they aren't busy living hand-to-mouth are more likely to spend a pile of their time instead of giving you that $.

Adblockers don't work on paid articles or on tweets looking exactly like other tweets.

Oh there will be some way of identifying them, surely?

If they are from people you have actively chosen to follow then the source isn't twitter anyway and you can just unfollow those users if you don't like what they post.

If they are extra items in your display then there will likely be some marker to pick up on. Even if not then someone somewhere will start a service where people can report advertising tweets so subsequent the plugin can remove those from the feeds of subsequent users who use the service... Or perhaps Bayesian filtering as used for email? Not perfect in either case but someone will try and have at least some success.

Of course if the paid posts are truly unidentifiable then presumably that look like they were posted/shared by someone they were not posted/shared by, in which case the service is completely untrustworthy and you should just stop using it because nothing it tells you na be relied upon.

Caveat: I don't use twitter and aren't particularly likely to in future, so I have no particular axe to grind here but might misunderstand how things work.

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