Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left • Hacker News Board

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#61

Post by ajmurmann » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:23 AM UTC

niftich wrote: post #28

ajmurmann wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Twitter user I wouldn't like to see that happen. What other platform do you suggest I use instead?

Most power users who command an engaged audience ('influencers' or 'VIPs' or 'celebrities' or 'streamers' or insert-your-noun-here) already cross-post on every single service. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, Twitch... Staying exclusive to a particular platform only pays if the platform literally pays you for your content. Otherwise you want to reach as wide of an audience as possible.

I'm certainly not a power user. I mainly use Twitter to keep up with friends and acquaintances in the tech community. None of the other platforms seem appropriate for that.

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#62

Post by lojack » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

andyjdavis wrote: post #23

dkarapetyan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is valuable about it? I keep hearing this but it is just a jumble of collective stream of consciousness. Has anyone that has read Ulysses actually made any sense of it? Twitter is the collective analog of Ulysses.

>it is just a jumble of collective stream of consciousness Much of it isn't even that. A huge proportion are not even real humans but are instead accounts being operated by one of the myriad of pieces of software that enable automatic posting on behalf of a human. Perhaps my view is skewed as we have a travel blog and know many other travel bloggers but a vanishingly small percentage are real humans actually typing t…

However, most of that software can be filtered and controlled via the API. Part of the reason Twitter is so hostile to third party apps (with exceptions) that duplicate its own functionality is so they can get analytics about actual users and not marketing bots.

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#63

Post by kristianc » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

niftich wrote: post #54

beagle3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter just doesn't have an idea about where to evolve. They've tried small changes, and nothing helped their bottom line. Rumors are that part of the reason is that they are not sure what their "secret sauce" is, so they are reluctant to change anything in fear of harming it. Also, they are dying. They have never turned a profit. Facebook or Google or Microsoft will eventually buy them, because of the users - but t…

Twitter (the service, not the company's) secret sauce is: You can have a public platform, using an identity you choose for yourself, to broadcast snippets of information. Where do you evolve this? Blogger, Blogspot, Livejournal, Tumblr, Medium, they're all in this same space, except they focus on traditional, long-form content. I don't see Twitter as a social network (although many do, that's okay). I see it as a bro…

They have value to anyone who has an interest in selling interest / location / cross-device based advertising, so that's exactly Facebook, Google, Microsoft. Yahoo would buy it for exactly the same reason they bought Tumblr - trying to stumble on a new business model via acquisition.

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#64

Post by niftich » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:30 AM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #61

niftich wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most power users who command an engaged audience ('influencers' or 'VIPs' or 'celebrities' or 'streamers' or insert-your-noun-here) already cross-post on every single service. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, Twitch... Staying exclusive to a particular platform only pays if the platform literally pays you for your content. Otherwise you want to reach as wide of an audience as possible.

I'm certainly not a power user. I mainly use Twitter to keep up with friends and acquaintances in the tech community. None of the other platforms seem appropriate for that.

Tumblr is another blog/social hybrid, but in your particular case you're subject to network effect (or the lack thereof) in your community of interest. Also, Tumblr is similarly faltering in engagement and owned by a corporate parent that is trying to leverage it as part of a wider strategy to turn its fortunes around.

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#65

Post by maherbeg » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:32 AM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #58

tlrobinson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that two major newsworthy events in the US in the past week (Philando Castillo killing and Dallas attack) were live-streamed on Facebook rather than Periscope. Facebook already has a huge advantage with 10x the active users of Twitter, AND they integrated live video directly into the app that many of those users already have, rather than a separate app most of them don't. "App constellations" may be a better…

> AND they integrated live video directly into the app that many of those users already have, rather than a separate app most of them don't. > "App constellations" may be a better user experience... if you bother to download the whole constellation... but I think a similar principle to "the best camera is one you have with you" applies. I agree. Why does Facebook insist on Messages being a separate app then? They sho…

I imagine it's because Facebook has a huge amount of existing penetration and active usage with Facebook Messenger which allows them to have a separate app. They already have the stickiness with the platform.

I imagine, once live streaming gets a sufficient enough user base, it'll have its own application experience.

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#66

Post by JonnieCache » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #19

dkarapetyan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is valuable about it? I keep hearing this but it is just a jumble of collective stream of consciousness. Has anyone that has read Ulysses actually made any sense of it? Twitter is the collective analog of Ulysses.

It can be pretty useful for sentiment analysis across large populations - for a lot of different purposes/clients

Do we have sentiment analysis techniques that actually work now? Last I checked they weren't so great.

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#67

Post by kevindeasis » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:37 AM UTC

I've seen people moving to different platforms. There seems to be always a platform replacing another platform. I have yet to see this with Facebook. It seems like the new Google Hangouts and their new messaging app (allo?) might be in the radar. But, at this point is it even possible to have a facebook replacement withing the next 3 years?

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#68

Post by majani » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:41 AM UTC

dkarapetyan wrote: post #14

I've seen this cycle a few times now. Just give it a merciful death (vine and twitter). Some things are meant to be ephemeral. I think vine and twitter are in that category. Just like a forest needs fires to be a healthy ecosystem. People should be more willing to let go of business ideas that see explosive growth but lack the business fundamentals to be sustainable. Instead what's gonna happen is that it is going to…

I feel like this is the fate of all the social networks whose main purpose is to feed into people's vanity. Surely 20 year companies can't be built off of people's desire to show off how much better their lives are to ours?

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#69

Post by valgaze » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 5:43 AM UTC

niftich wrote: post #54

beagle3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter just doesn't have an idea about where to evolve. They've tried small changes, and nothing helped their bottom line. Rumors are that part of the reason is that they are not sure what their "secret sauce" is, so they are reluctant to change anything in fear of harming it. Also, they are dying. They have never turned a profit. Facebook or Google or Microsoft will eventually buy them, because of the users - but t…

Twitter (the service, not the company's) secret sauce is: You can have a public platform, using an identity you choose for yourself, to broadcast snippets of information. Where do you evolve this? Blogger, Blogspot, Livejournal, Tumblr, Medium, they're all in this same space, except they focus on traditional, long-form content. I don't see Twitter as a social network (although many do, that's okay). I see it as a bro…

>> I don't see Twitter as a social network (although many do, that's okay). I see it as a broadcast medium, a soapbox, a blogging platform.

A few years back Peter Kafka wrote an article [1] about how joe/joan-shmoe twitter user will probably never have their tweets read by anybody at all. It was astonishingly small number of folks who broke 500 followers (writing 3/4 years ago)

ex. “The median Twitter account has a single follower. Among the much smaller subset of accounts that have posted in the last 30 days, the median account has just 61 followers.”

It is from a few years ago, maybe things have changed but if that's the experience of the average person why invest time in it?

[1] http://allthingsd.com/20131223/almost-no-one-is-reading-your...

Re: Vine isn’t growing and most of its top executives have left

#70

Post by genericpseudo » Wed, Jul 13, 2016, 6:04 AM UTC

niftich wrote: post #25

It's such a shame, really; arguably Twitter, much more so than their competitors, tries to stick as close to the original form of their product as they can. I admire that. Facebook (and Instagram) and Snapchat have both transformed from their original incarnations, in ways that have improved the companies' valuation, but have not always improved the experience of users. It seems every single social network is trendin…

Twitter isn't a product. It's, at best, a product-construction command line; every product they've had (photo-sharing before murderized by Instagram, for instance) has been accidental.

How not to product manage 101.