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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?

#171

Post by sputknick »

sambobeckingham wrote: post #165
slackoverflower wrote: post #157

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 sta…

50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?

Serious question (because I've never worked on a site that large) does the size of the site mean anything as to how many engineers are needed to maintain it? I would think it would be more a function of complexity?

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#172

Post by err4nt »

Raed667 wrote: post #9

I can't forgive Twitter for what it has done with TweetDeck after buying it. They have taken a great tool and striped it so that it fits their blurry vision of what the service should look like.

Are you talking about https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ or a desktop or mobile app? I think tweetdeck.twitter.com is my preferred Twitter UI because it allows me to keep on top of keyword searches as well.

Staying on top of current conversations and trends in a niche area of web design is a big chunk of Twitter's value to me and it's very time consuming to do that in their mobile app or regular Twitter.com

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#173

Post by CoryG89 »

TenOhms wrote: post #164
CoryG89 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily hold this view, but I can see the merit in it. I tend to lean toward purist as far as free speech goes. Slippery slope arguments and what not. Personally, I like the concept of outsourcing the policing/moderation of a community to the community itself. I think what online forums do by promoting moderators from the long time, trusted user base is a step in the right direction. The upvote/downvote s…

Raw community policing doesn't work either. That's what Reddit does and looking at /r/politics, that hasn't worked very well because it's being kept 99.99999% pro-Hillary and/or anti-Trump by whoever is willing to put in the time to keep it astro-turfed, most likely CTR.

I would think this just suggests the community is made up of more people who lean toward those politics.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#174

Post by zhemao »

treehau5_ wrote: post #90
enraged_camel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>and a lot were genuinely surprised that Twitter does not in fact represent the will of the Democratic Primary. Yep, we found out that a small group of DNC insiders do, by controlling the media narrative and conspiring with party insiders to sabotage the campaign of the non-favored candidate. I mean, let's get real: there is a reason the DNC chairwoman Debbie Schultz resigned. re: downvotes... everything I've said i…

The silicon valley bleeding hearts don't like to hear the truth when it doesn't fit their narrative or look good through their valley, rose colored, horn rimmed glasses. Even Mountain View coordinated with her campaign. As much as a self serving narcissist Trump is, I find it equally appalling that she gets so much support. The entire Wallstreet transcript scandal once again got buried by Trump-mania. This will be th…

LOL, most openly corrupt president. Somebody clearly hasn't read much US history.

Andrew Jackson literally handed out political appointments to his supporters and relatives.

Hilary Clinton isn't even close to being the most corrupt. She probably wouldn't even be in the top ten.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#175

Post by CoryG89 »

eropple wrote: post #163
stale2002 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there WOULD be consequences. The consequences is that you would end up on a lot of people's ban lists. That way you don't have to interact with people you don't want to.

The consequence for these crimes when they do not occur on the Internet is jail time. What, exactly, does a ban list mean by comparison?

Not true. I can mail anyone a letter, anonymously to their house. I can even drop it in a public mailbox w/ no return address and it will be delivered to you. Unless I mess this up some how there will be no jail time. This doesn't mean everyone wants the government to go through all of the letters and filter out the bad ones. Same goes on the internet.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#176

Post by inopinatus »

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?

You know what they say? "Never read the comments". But Twitter is all comments. Ergo, never read Twitter.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#177

Post by [deleted] »

eropple wrote: post #170
dominotw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If so, why? Because they are arbitrarily applied based on ideological lines and what your caste is in progressive caste system. I see tons of accounts asking for Donald Trump to be anally raped but none of them are suspended. Why do you support this gross and repulsive censorship?

If an account threatens to rape Donald Trump, I am 100% in favor of seeing that account shown the door (and, where possible, the person behind it be barred from the service and prosecuted if feasible). Why would I not be?

[deleted]

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#178

Post by dominotw »

eropple wrote: post #170
dominotw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If so, why? Because they are arbitrarily applied based on ideological lines and what your caste is in progressive caste system. I see tons of accounts asking for Donald Trump to be anally raped but none of them are suspended. Why do you support this gross and repulsive censorship?

If an account threatens to rape Donald Trump, I am 100% in favor of seeing that account shown the door (and, where possible, the person behind it be barred from the service and prosecuted if feasible). Why would I not be?

> I am 100% in favor of seeing that account shown the door

What are your thoughts on why Twitter choose not to do that?

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#179

Post by luhn »

sputknick wrote: post #171
sambobeckingham wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?

Serious question (because I've never worked on a site that large) does the size of the site mean anything as to how many engineers are needed to maintain it? I would think it would be more a function of complexity?

I don't have any experience with large-scale sites either, but here's my view:

It is a function of complexity, but complexity is often necessitated by scale. More users means more problems with scale, which leads to increased complexity to address the problems, which leads to a larger team needed to maintain the software.

That being said, 50 engineers seems enough to me for maintenance.

Re: Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit?

#180

Post by adventured »

sputknick wrote: post #171
sambobeckingham wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?

Serious question (because I've never worked on a site that large) does the size of the site mean anything as to how many engineers are needed to maintain it? I would think it would be more a function of complexity?

There is a loose correlation, yes.

Security, abuse / harassment, fraud, community interaction, developer relations, 24/7 maintenance & ops, APIs, marketing & PR, legal, advertising, physical security / cleaning etc (whether outsourced or not it's a cost), secretarial, accounting, human resources & recruiting, sales, engineering, various management and so on.

The notion that you could run a $2.5 to $3 billion sales business with 100 people is a very bad joke. To deliver on that kind of sales level, you need more than a hundred people working in your sales organization alone. There are only a few types of businesses that can operate that thin at that size of sales, most of which are in the financial world.

Twitter doesn't need to cut down to 100 people to become nicely profitable, they need to cut down to 1,000 - 1,500 (while reducing infrastructure costs). Facebook delivers $1.5 million in sales per employee. Twitter's overall business is less complex and easier to operate than Facebook, they could deliver a higher ratio.

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