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The Decay of Twitter

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Decay of Twitter

#51

Post by Jtsummers »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #37
johnward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter and facebook serve completely different purposes for me. Facebook is where I mostly interact with people I actually know in real life. I use twitter like you do, to follow interesting things. Then linkedin is people I have worked with. Each network serves a different purpose. I'd never pay for any of them though. I guess I should say I'd rather pay with my privacy.

Nothing wrong with using Twitter to meet people IRL. It seems weird to force those artificial boundaries on your social networks.

Perhaps I've just missed it, but my problem with twitter is this: Is there a way to send messages to just these 10 people, and not all 100 followers? That's what I need from a social network. I need a public (everyone can see) channel, and I need channels (that I control) that are visible to specific individuals and groups.

My soccer team (in general, some overlap obviously) doesn't need to know about my ballroom dance plans or my BJJ tournament or my date this Saturday. And none of them need to know about my family reunion plans (zero overlap), though I may post some photos to the public channel.

If the adoption in my friend groups had been higher, G+ seemed perfect for this to me. FB with effort, making groups that I invite people to. But I want it to be transparent. I want you to see me, not me(soccer) and me(ballroom). If you happen to be in both, it's the same, not separate spaces.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#53

Post by mschuster91 »

dspillett wrote: post #24
mschuster91 wrote: post #18

Twitter has fallen victim to the advertising plague hitting a boatload of other websites. Offer your users a cheap way to opt out of ads (1$ a month) and you'll make far more money than you could ever do with ads.

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 $.

In most cases it's just too unsimple/too expensive to pay $1, and especially recurring.

Look at how many people buy stuff in Free2play games, and it works because it's dead simple (enter your appstore password, click "confirm" and be done - and you can even disable the password verification). Time to buy literally less than 10s if done well.

Now compare this to a typical micropayment on a desktop site:

1) Payment provider forces autocomplete off => remember which email you signed up with

2) Payment provider disables password pasting => manually type in your secure 32 char password

3) Two screens of confirmations, if you're extra unlucky you have a two-factor stuff in the loop, too

4) Redirect to the original content (compared to mobile, where payment is an overlay)

Total time wasted: minimum 2-3min.

To make stuff worse: PayPal e.g. demands 20ct of 1€ transferred, and German VAT takes another ~15ct AND corporate taxes (assume them at 10ct, and even then it's low) - which means you're out 50% of the payment value after fees and taxes. Not very profitable...

Oh, and another thing I forgot: often enough even paying for a newspaper/service doesn't get rid of all adverts! In my eyes that's outright fraud. And even if services DO disable all ads, I have yet to see one that also cuts the data-milking tracker services. I paid for the product, so I'm NOT the product any more.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#54

Post by forgetsusername »

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.

>That's the problem I have with many of these articles

Perhaps Buzzfeed type listicles are more your speed then? Every time there's an article like this posted on HN, there's inevitably someone who posts, "Fewer words! More facts!" (Bonus points for you for getting in a dig about them useless Humanities!)

A thesis isn't right or wrong; it's presented and supported. It's an idea. This is literary journalism. Some people, myself included, enjoy it.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#55

Post by patsplat »

The original use of my twitter account was to serve as an SMS distribution link for online-gaming invites between a small group of friends.

Presently it provides a less spammy equivalent to linked-in groups. Sort of like delicious in it's hey day.

Discussing media theory is challenging. Something of the OP's point is demonstrated by personal example. But it's never a simple conversation.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#56

Post by johnward »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #37
johnward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter and facebook serve completely different purposes for me. Facebook is where I mostly interact with people I actually know in real life. I use twitter like you do, to follow interesting things. Then linkedin is people I have worked with. Each network serves a different purpose. I'd never pay for any of them though. I guess I should say I'd rather pay with my privacy.

Nothing wrong with using Twitter to meet people IRL. It seems weird to force those artificial boundaries on your social networks.

That seem like natural boundaries to me. That's what the platforms target. I wouldn't want the random people that follow me on twitter knowing the kind of things I post on Facebook.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#57

Post by dasil003 »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #37
johnward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter and facebook serve completely different purposes for me. Facebook is where I mostly interact with people I actually know in real life. I use twitter like you do, to follow interesting things. Then linkedin is people I have worked with. Each network serves a different purpose. I'd never pay for any of them though. I guess I should say I'd rather pay with my privacy.

Nothing wrong with using Twitter to meet people IRL. It seems weird to force those artificial boundaries on your social networks.

It doesn't seem weird to me in the least, it's the nature of those two products that points in those directions. Sure Facebook wants you to make everything public, and sure Twitter offers private profiles and some private features like DMs, but in general they naturally gravitate towards the type of usage the GP describes.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#58

Post by duggan »

DanBC wrote: post #11
pmelendez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Ads should allow me to opt out of any alcohol or gambling company's campaign. If the ad network is slurping all my data they should use that info to serve ads that have some relevance to me. I'm happy for stuff to end up in my twitter stream. I'm not happy for anything to sound like it's come from me, or has my endorsement or recommendation.

I'd actually be ok with explicitly endorsing something if it's something I really like (and not get a revenue cut). The sort of product/services where I'm a "Net Promoter" 9-10.

Could have a sort of "tinder for endorsements" built into the platform, refreshed once every week maybe, that lets companies request your endorsement for a particular ad/message.

You flip through with an endorse/don't endorse (and some granularity around "I'll never endorse" this) and have that tied to a custom decay function where your endorsement expires and needs to be requested again.

Maybe you have a paid sub to opt out of this system entirely. And for those who don't want to pay or endorse, ok, let's see if the other mechanisms are enough to support them too.

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#59

Post by chad_strategic »

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.

Bravo, Bravo. This can't be more true. I don't follow friends on twitter, just news sites twitter accounts and other interesting people that I don't know in IRL. Friends don't follow me on twitter, so I'm not trying to impress people with the latest family "staged" photo shoot.

I have always argued that Twitter is nicely organized RSS feed / generator.

Twitter, I believe is a very important in spreading news, in real time. Most of the time before main stream media. Remember the guy that inadvertently tweeted the Osama bin Laden operation? Finally, since it's only 141 characters, there isn't a lot of spin on news via twitter, just the facts. At that point you can chose which direction to go with the spin...

However the internet can be a cesspool, but I see twitter as the filter that cleans out.

okay, I got to get back to work...

Re: The Decay of Twitter

#60

Post by rsync »

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, my profile, my twitter stream, the people I follow, etc etc. I have no idea where Twitter gets information about me, but it doesn't seem to come from Twitter."

I am very interested in this ...

We did a (roughly) 6 month long experiment here (rsync.net) in advertising on twitter - on paper it seemed like a very good idea:

- Target very specific linux/unix/backup/ZFS keywords - really low volume, hyper specific stuff - and show our rsync.net sponsored tweet.

Two things happened:

1. Zero actual results - nothing at all that could be quantified.

2. TONS of garbage/fake followers/retweets/favorites.

We tried. We couldn't make it work at all. Not for real, targeted customer acquisition. If you're pepsi and you just need people to see the word "pepsi" I'm sure it's great, but if you need to pay X and get Y customers ... difficult to see how you make that work.

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