Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#181

Post by hsod » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 6:39 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #84

proksoup wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They became the defacto place for public discussion instead. The focus on 3rd party api's hindered that and would have hurt their growth in that regard maybe? Journalism happens on twitter first, it's where famous people talk to each other, not facebook, yeah?

I am not sure I would call what happens on Twitter discussions. It's a great platform for posting things that are easily misunderstood or taken out of context due to their brevity. Then someone starts a witch-hunt, which in turn sparks a counter-witch-hunt. In the end no one is any wiser, but everyone is little more bitter. I think the appeal of Twitter is feeling "in the loop" due to the real-time nature of the serv…

Twitter is a huge, huge place and your conclusions are massively over-generalized. There's lots and lots of good stuff: analysis of news stories, humor, statistics, low-level or amateur reporting. Covering tons of niches: sports, politics, music, "Black Twitter".

It's true that it's a poor platform for adversarial conversation or debate, but that's no reason to dismiss the whole thing.

I've been on Twitter for seven years and in that time I've curated a timeline which is, bar none, the most entertaining and informative web destination available to me, specifically tailored to my interests and disposition.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#182

Post by sunnyps » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #167

criddell wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The depressing thing for me is to know that when they show me a Starbucks ad, Twitter makes pennies for that. I would much rather just pay those pennies myself and not see ads.

I feel a bit like a shill because of how much I bring it up, but checkout Google Contributor[0]. It lets you pay a specific amount per month (IIRC from $2 to $15 or so) that you use to "bid" for ads spots just like the advertisers. If you win, then you'll see whatever you choose in place of the ad. Any money left over at the end of the month is refunded. It won't help you in the twitter case, but it does remove a goo…

I think you're underselling Google Contributor by not mentioning its killer feature: replacing banner ads with cat photos.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#183

Post by jimmytidey » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #154

jimmytidey wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having looked at this in some detail, my feeling is that no federated solution can work. The reason is that the underlying architecture leaks through to the user experience in unacceptable ways. As soon as a user has to understand federation - at all - I believe the proposition is dead to most people. For example Diaspora's 'pods' are, I think, fatally confusing. (I think Zuckerberg realised this, which is why he don…

> no federated solution can work I don't see why not. Is the problem fundamentally different than SMS messaging or email?

Two thoughts: - How would you provide the functionality that hashtags do on the public timeline?

- How would users know which nodes they could trust?

I think email and Sms are pretty weird user experiences that have succeeded in part because there was no alternative.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#184

Post by vram22 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

hbosch wrote: post #133

zeroami wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it was too early back then to see the value in it, but does anyone remember App.net? Dalton Caldwell (now working at YCombinator) had a plan to build a backbone for developers to build on top off without fear of APIs being taken away from them[0]. The idea came about from this exact topic (Twitter becoming more and more hostile to developers)[1]. [0] http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal [1] http://da…

I remember App.net with fondness. I was a paying customer and the community was awesome, pretty much entirely troll-free techie types, and I never felt awkward just jumping into a random thread or conversation. First was the great apps, and the features that continued to roll out for users. Unfortunately it was under appreciated.

What happened to it?

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#185

Post by paulmd » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 6:57 PM UTC

slezakattack wrote: post #179

tarancato wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, they had an XMPP interface, but that doesn't mean they use XMPP in the backend

I'm not sure I fully understand this comment. What does it mean to have an "XMPP backend" but not as the interface? And yes, they did use a full, open source XMPP solution for Facebook chat when it started out called "ejabberd". Ejabberd is a terrific solution if you quickly want to have a scalable, real-time messaging and event solution with low maintenance.

I'm not the person you responded to but I would assume that it would look like any other service that uses a different protocol or format on the front-end than the back-end. E.g. a REST service that talks JSON on the front end but speaks SQL to a database. So they have an XMPP backend that uses a translation layer to send a custom AJAX or socket-based protocol to the browser.

Yeah, I was pretty sure that Facebook was just using straight-up XMPP at one point in time. They have been actively trying to drive traffic to their Facebook Messenger app - first by shutting down their XMPP interface, then blocking applications that talk to their web interface, and finally by removing Facebook Messenger functionality from their mobile website.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#186

Post by Touche » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:01 PM UTC

slezakattack wrote: post #175

Touche wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are XMPP messages published for public viewing? That's the use case of Twitter, not private chat.

XMPP is simply a publisher/subscriber architecture. So you can just have a "global" publisher that any user subscribes to when they get on the service (registered user or not) for public viewing. The protocol isn't limited to just private chat.

So then XMPP doesn't solve this problem as you need a service which saves and publishes the message for public viewing.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#187

Post by lhnz » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:05 PM UTC

fredguth wrote: post #90

lhnz wrote: post #16

Kind of insane that they've reached this point. Why didn't they attempt to monetise journalism by providing users of Twitter with a subscription that allows them to skip the paywalls of big newspapers and that could automatically aggregate the individual micropayments into a revenue stream for the publishers that sign up? (This would make sense to me: often an individual interaction is worth very little, but the aggr…

Like a Netflix for News?

Cheaper - and you would never hit a paywall or login screen again.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#188

Post by Arnt » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:09 PM UTC

vram22 wrote: post #184

hbosch wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember App.net with fondness. I was a paying customer and the community was awesome, pretty much entirely troll-free techie types, and I never felt awkward just jumping into a random thread or conversation. First was the great apps, and the features that continued to roll out for users. Unfortunately it was under appreciated.

What happened to it?

Income < expenses.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#189

Post by jimmytidey » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:09 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #127

omouse wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter should be owned as a worldwide co-operative at this point, it's too useful as infrastructure to hand it over to some greedy jackasses.

> it's too useful as infrastructure to hand it over to some greedy jackasses. This is an extremely dubious claim and I don't see why everyone is so eager to support it. What exactly makes Twitter valuable infrastructure? What compelling service does it offer to people and society? What other things would stop working if Twitter were shut down? All I see is a bunch of people shouting at each other. Most people do not…

Twitter is a (I think very well designed) forum for public debate.

Good systems for public debate are the precondition for democracy.

In a democracy they are the infrastructure on which all other infrastructure depends. Every subsequent spending decision is influenced by them.

If you turn off public debate nothing will break the next day, but in a decade most people's lives will be misery.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#190

Post by sedachv » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:11 PM UTC

jimmytidey wrote: post #183

criddell wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no federated solution can work I don't see why not. Is the problem fundamentally different than SMS messaging or email?

Two thoughts: - How would you provide the functionality that hashtags do on the public timeline? - How would users know which nodes they could trust? I think email and Sms are pretty weird user experiences that have succeeded in part because there was no alternative.

> How would you provide the functionality that hashtags do on the public timeline?

That is what search engines are for. The whole point of the Internet is that you can build businesses on top of open protocols with interoperable implementations. Giving up on open protocols and control of data (you can't even save images on Instagram...) "because hashtags" is incredibly shortsighted.