It already is, is it not?
Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
11–20 of 320 posts
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#12How about charging users?. Like monthly plans etc.
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#13There's no reason a craigslist style nonprofit version of a service similar to Twitter couldn't launch. The open Facebook alternatives never took off though - very hard to get traction against deep pocketed and connected rivals.
Doesn't look as though anyone is going to buy Twitter which is embarrassing for them
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#14Twitter is the odd one out. While others built walled gardens, twitter kept the gate open. We now have a general catalog of human discourse for the last decade. Record of great tragedy, revolutions, elections past and future. It would be shame if this was bought and locked up by some gardeners.
>general catalog of human discourse I would contest this. Twitter represents a very narrow sector of society.
People that hold OPs opinion tend to be on twitter, and this blind to the size of the outgroup
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#15This would be fantastic. Twitter's utility is in its open (inherently less profitable) nature. As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.
>As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.
Does that actually mean it's valuable? Just because something's one of a kind doesn't mean it's worth that much.
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#16It would only be better if they unbanned everyone and stopped trying to bend the messages sent over the platform. At the moment it seems like it might be better for it to just burn down, so something more open can replace it.
Do you think they should unban people who threaten to rape and kill people because they disagree about video games? If so, why?
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#17There's no reason a craigslist style nonprofit version of a service similar to Twitter couldn't launch. The open Facebook alternatives never took off though - very hard to get traction against deep pocketed and connected rivals. Doesn't look as though anyone is going to buy Twitter which is embarrassing for them
> There's no reason a craigslist style nonprofit version of a service similar to Twitter couldn't launch.
Launch, sure. Scale? That's a much harder problem in terms of user acquisition (and if you can do that, you can deal with the technical side of things even as a nonprofit, maybe). I think there's only room for one Twitter. If you don't have 99% of the people interested in that sort of service, you might as well have nobody.
And I don't think the arguments towards federation and distribution help--you can have a thousand federated hosts, and if you have no users, you will get no users. It's a really hard problem.
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#18How about charging users?. Like monthly plans etc.
Wasn't there some "Twitter alternative" launched by someone who used HN? Its entire business model was to bill users. I can't remember the name of it, or the founder, but I think the service failed to gain traction.
edit: The service was/is App.net, and it was founded by Dalton Caldwell. It used to make the rounds on HN all the time.
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#19This would be fantastic. Twitter's utility is in its open (inherently less profitable) nature. As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.
>As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled. Does that actually mean it's valuable? Just because something's one of a kind doesn't mean it's worth that much.
The phrase "x is unparalleled" implies uniqueness by virtue of the value it provides.
GP is basically saying twitter has accumulated a vast wealth of social data that is immensely valuable to the research community.
Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?
#20Twitter is the odd one out. While others built walled gardens, twitter kept the gate open. We now have a general catalog of human discourse for the last decade. Record of great tragedy, revolutions, elections past and future. It would be shame if this was bought and locked up by some gardeners.
Not quite. Have we already forgotten how Twitter closed-off most third-party clients a few years ago, that were innovating on top of Twitter?
http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/9/3135406/twitter-api-open-cl...