Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 64 posts

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#21

Post by basch »

M_Grey wrote: post #13
yabatopia wrote: post #10

So the solution for Twitter's problem is to find an idiot willing to pay $12 billion for a medium that many people consider the digital equivalent of an open sewer? An idiot who's willing to spend another few billion dollars to turn that sewer in a hallowed spring for journalism? And Larry Page is supposed to be that idiot? Good luck with that. Twitter hasn't an old media problem, Twitter's problem is that it has a g…

"Open sewer"... pretty much. Then again, at some point most people are going to figure out that it's true of most big social media platforms. Anything which connects to you to the teeming mass of humanity is thrilling, then tiresome, then downright corrosive; there are just too many trolls, nuts, and dim bulbs to be borne.

that's just not true. slashdot taught us you can intake data, have humans tag it with metadata, and then let the viewer sort the data based on their own preferences and parameters. and that it works really really well. reddit/hackernews are a simplification of that idea brewed down to just upvote/downvote/flag.

twitter is unnavigatable by itself in any sort of abstract high level way. that doesnt mean you cant use software to parse, sort, and display the content in a more organized manner. the first step is to get people to tag and describe the data that exists.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#22

Post by LordHumungous »

kapitza wrote: post #19
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google guy to run Twitter, too. What does that solve? Google has already tried and "failed" in the social area, Page buying it doesn't strike me as some kind of panacea. What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the n…

Here's a great picture of "families who have understood that the press is a civic calling" (what is this supposed to be, the Venetian Republic?) in action: When bloomberg was having problems w the times he called Arthur [Sulzberger] and asked for coffee. He made the case that they were treating him like a billionaire dilettante instead of Third term mayor. It changed the coverage moderately but also aired the issues…

Not sure what the big deal is here. Political operatives are angling for good coverage? That kind of thing has always gone on. If you think this is bad, you should read about what went on back in the old days.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#23

Post by hackaflocka »

kapitza wrote: post #19
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google guy to run Twitter, too. What does that solve? Google has already tried and "failed" in the social area, Page buying it doesn't strike me as some kind of panacea. What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the n…

Here's a great picture of "families who have understood that the press is a civic calling" (what is this supposed to be, the Venetian Republic?) in action: When bloomberg was having problems w the times he called Arthur [Sulzberger] and asked for coffee. He made the case that they were treating him like a billionaire dilettante instead of Third term mayor. It changed the coverage moderately but also aired the issues…

Yglesias is brown?

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#25

Post by xirdstl »

remarkEon wrote: post #6
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google guy to run Twitter, too. What does that solve? Google has already tried and "failed" in the social area, Page buying it doesn't strike me as some kind of panacea. What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the n…

In a similar sense, it seems like there's an additional fixation (I see it in a lot of places) on thinking of Twitter as a news platform. It's true for obvious reasons that Twitter can "get you closer to the action" and you can "see things happening in real time" (I guess), but I'm still skeptical that we should think about it as a news platform for the exact reasons you outlined. I've seen it pointed out here elsewh…

The worst is when you read a news "story" that is basically fluff using 3 - 4 hand-picked tweets as citation to justify its thesis. As if snarky one-liner reactions to events on Twitter somehow constitute news.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#26

Post by newjersey »

basch wrote: post #20
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

There's a bizarre focus on Larry Page buying it for whatever reason. Sounds almost like a plea. But hey, let's imagine that's possible - why do we want Google guy to run Twitter, too. What does that solve? Google has already tried and "failed" in the social area, Page buying it doesn't strike me as some kind of panacea. What this election cycle has proven to me is that the old media and rapidly more and more of the n…

Apple is a better fit. Google already has Youtube and Youtube Comments. Apple has AppleTV but doesnt control the metaconversation around their content they host. If Apple wants to be a part of live-reality, Periscope+iPhone puts them in a good position against Facebook. They also both have somewhat stagnant software innovation right now, so they could grow old slowly together. But more importantly, Apple could run Tw…

> But more importantly, Apple could run Twitter at a loss as a data platform around their product.

This is something I don't understand. Pardon me if this sounds pie in the sky but how much does it cost to RUN Twitter without any expectations of profit? It seems like the people here in the conversation have knowledge that I lack about Twitter's expenses. It probably is public information but I can't find anything satisfying from a cursory Google search. Anyone want to help me out?

If Twitter were to tighten it's belt today, how would it's operating expenses look like?

I remember talking to Justin TV (precursors to twitch) folks and they said operating a live streaming site wasn't expensive and that one ad every couple of hours was enough to keep the lights on. I imagine running Twitter should be cheaper except for maybe dealing with SMS providers but Twitter is big enough that it could ask for special treatment from telecom providers to get a favorable rate if not to not have to pay anything entirely.

I understand that I'm asking two different questions here. One is how much it costs to operate Twitter at a profit versus what it costs to run Twitter at all (and I'm thinking like a highly upscaled https://mastodon.social than anything Twitter is today, none of this augmented reality play). I do understand that to make a profit, Twitter must be spending heavily to pour over analytics day and night to find s breakthrough but if you remove the need to make a profit, things should be less hectic, right?

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#28

Post by vonklaus »

The article makes virtually no logical case for its own claim. The example that Larry Page should buy twitter because it is great, is immeadiately under cut by the follow up reason. Larry Page is Jewish and Twitter is an extremely vitriolic place, especially towards people of color or minority groups. The "Old Media" problem is that no-one wants to pay for content. Twitter is less of "content" and more real-time news pings-- closer to reuters than NYT. If the author were to make the case they should go the way of Reuters, I would at least entertain it, but Twitter as a b2c play seems like a stretch at this point.

Twitter has an extremely viable business. They should try this innovative model I was reading about called subscription billing. The hail mary play is to ask users for $1 a month. Users would churn and they would have to limit adverts so their current model would take a hit, but it makes sense.

I think users would pay $1 per month per 160 char addition to their monthly limit. At minimum advertisers would. kill adds, sell tweet length. I get it Jack, you want to preserve the arbitrary SMS thing, but it needs to go before your company does.

Re: Twitter Has an Old Media Problem, Here’s a Solution

#30

Post by mschuster91 »

basch wrote: post #21
M_Grey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Open sewer"... pretty much. Then again, at some point most people are going to figure out that it's true of most big social media platforms. Anything which connects to you to the teeming mass of humanity is thrilling, then tiresome, then downright corrosive; there are just too many trolls, nuts, and dim bulbs to be borne.

that's just not true. slashdot taught us you can intake data, have humans tag it with metadata, and then let the viewer sort the data based on their own preferences and parameters. and that it works really really well. reddit/hackernews are a simplification of that idea brewed down to just upvote/downvote/flag. twitter is unnavigatable by itself in any sort of abstract high level way. that doesnt mean you cant use so…

> reddit/hackernews are a simplification of that idea brewed down to just upvote/downvote/flag.

HN has the unique advantage that it's a niche board. This means that the userbase is small, which makes moderation infinitely easier, because the pool of potential trolls just is extremely small.

Reddit has solved this problem by shifting the moderation load to volunteers for each subreddit. Of course, that can go south too (as witnessed with /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/thefappening, ...) but most of the time Reddit seems to be OK.

4chan just lets everything stay except childporn, because it doesn't have to take care of a public image (everyone knows 4chan is the vilest place on the net, except for the CP sites in the .onion tor net).

Twitter has probably more users than HN, Reddit and 4chan combined and has to rely mostly on automation for anti-spam (which rarely works, because there's a LOT of legit bots) and user reports, which, like FB, don't work at all or lead to brigading, mass-reports etc.

Post reply on HN