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Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

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Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#151

Post by JBiserkov »

sverige wrote: post #126

I've never been able to understand Twitter's popularity. To me, it's like a website's comment section without the attached content. And most of the stuff I've seen on Twitter is only slightly better than YouTube comments, and often worse. I know there are lots of Twitter users here -- seriously, I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic, I just don't get the appeal. What am I missing?

According to Paul Graham (April 2009):

>[Twitter] is a new messaging protocol, where you don't specify the recipients. New protocols are rare. Or more precisely, new protocols that take off are. There are only a handful of commonly used ones: TCP/IP (the Internet), SMTP (email), HTTP (the web), and so on. So any new protocol is a big deal. But Twitter is a protocol owned by a private company. That's even rarer.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#152

Post by ghaff »

csallen wrote: post #150
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the news reporting I've seen cast on individual Reddit communities. I don't think such a thing can be done as easily as twitter except through hashtags, thus the coverage on twitter being more twitter-wide hashtagging rather than sub-tweet communities.

What's interesting is that, even though they're not well-defined, there certainly are specific communities on Twitter. There's tech, and sports, and science, psychology, politics, music, etc, and each of those can be further divided. I'm sure that if Twitter put in the work, they could suss out all these communities based on who is following who and what they tweet about. (In fact, I'd be surprised if they aren't alr…

I'd be pretty sure that "Who to Follow" is based on some sort of social graph though probably in a simplistic way, e.g. lots of people you follow follow this person and you don't.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#153

Post by peatmoss »

peatmoss wrote: post #32

It's worth mentioning that the more principled alternative is GNU Social: https://gnu.io/

Wow, cascade of downvotes. We're talking about whether or not Twitter constitutes enough of a public benefit to consider whether it should be a non-profit. I'm genuinely interested to hear why the idea that it should also be an open platform is also controversial!

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#154

Post by csallen »

ghaff wrote: post #152
csallen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that, even though they're not well-defined, there certainly are specific communities on Twitter. There's tech, and sports, and science, psychology, politics, music, etc, and each of those can be further divided. I'm sure that if Twitter put in the work, they could suss out all these communities based on who is following who and what they tweet about. (In fact, I'd be surprised if they aren't alr…

I'd be pretty sure that "Who to Follow" is based on some sort of social graph though probably in a simplistic way, e.g. lots of people you follow follow this person and you don't.

Yeah, that's the only thing I've seen from them in this domain. It's just woefully lacking imo. I don't want to pick people to follow individually... I want to pick entire communities of people to follow.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#155

Post by ghaff »

csallen wrote: post #154
ghaff wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be pretty sure that "Who to Follow" is based on some sort of social graph though probably in a simplistic way, e.g. lots of people you follow follow this person and you don't.

Yeah, that's the only thing I've seen from them in this domain. It's just woefully lacking imo. I don't want to pick people to follow individually... I want to pick entire communities of people to follow.

So essentially lists created using social graph algorithms. I probably wouldn't use it personally but I can see how it could be useful.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#156

Post by pessimizer »

adevine wrote: post #122
pessimizer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a great example; because Sanders had far greater non-Democratic Party support than the other primary candidate, Twitter was reflecting the opinions of a more general population than the primary would. To say it another way - Democratic primary voters reflect a narrower sector of society than Twitter does.

I'd challenge that interpretation. Lots of Hillary's disproportionate support came from people much less likely to use Twitter (e.g. older black voters), while Sanders' strength with younger voters would be much more likely to show up on Twitter.

I'd agree with both points, but only 32% of voters are registered Democrats. Sanders polled far better than Clinton within the other 68%, although amongst registered Democrats, Clinton stayed 15-25% ahead during the entire primary IIRC. On Twitter, in addition to Democrats, there were also Republicans, Independents, Argentinians, and others commenting on the primary. That's the definition of a wider sample.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#157

Post by slackoverflower »

Twitter's best bet is cut costs by bring employee count down to 100, 50 sales related, 50 engineering and move their infrastructure to AWS/Google Cloud which take the company to profitability. I think once they become profitable, it opens a lot more opportunities to explore new markets. Right now they are in a scramble to get users. Being profitable and focusing on one thing at a time will do them wonders. Should start by shutting down Periscope and have a new tab in the app for Live.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#158

Post by ghaff »

sukilot wrote: post #130
product50 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of those losses is because Twitter pays its employees large amounts of stock to retain them. Check out this analysis on how exorbitant Twitter's stock based compensation is vs. Facebook: https://medium.com/@fwiwm2c/stock-based-compensation-faceboo...

So if the stock price collapses, losses will decrease?

If their employee compensation, which includes stock-based compensation, decreases then their expenses will go down and their losses will decrease. Of course, presumably their ability to attract and retain employees will also decrease.

A lower stock price could translate into lower stock-based compensation costs but you'd have to dive into the details of what they issue and how they issue it.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#159

Post by pessimizer »

jessaustin wrote: post #110
pessimizer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had a Twitter account, and I've never seen that.

Maybe scroll down a bit further?

I've gone back months/years on some accounts, on some lazy days. Maybe it's a desktop/mobile client thing; I'm not a twitter user, so I don't use twitter on my phone.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#160

Post by morgante »

ghaff wrote: post #120
chatterbeak wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We routinely run 5MM simultaneous TCP/IP connections on a single 12-core box (with Erlang!). There's no reason for Twitter to need all those employees and all that hardware. If someone can get it at a fire sale price, and reduce it to 100 employees, they can have a nice business.

As a point of reference, even the Wikimedia Foundation had almost 300 staff and contractors as of 2015. This is admittedly a lot fewer than Twitter employs today. However, I suspect that even a minimalist Twitter without sales, etc. needs more employees and would have more of other types of costs than Wikimedia.

> As a point of reference, even the Wikimedia Foundation had almost 300 staff and contractors as of 2015. This is admittedly a lot fewer than Twitter employs today.

Exactly, that's actually a pretty good argument for why Twitter should downsize substantially.

In no way does Twitter need more than 1,000 employees.

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