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

nytimes.com

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

#31

Post by kluck »

dingo_bat wrote: post #17
kordless wrote: post #9

While I agree with the article's intent, we're missing the forest for the trees. The reason a billionaire has to do this is because it can't be done with traditional business models. Twitter is infrastructure. Rapid bursts of semi-trustworthy data for us to consume and consider, at our own peril. That Twitter has to change its core behavior providing that service in order to make revenue is the problem. The value it…

Twitter is not infrastructure. An LTE network is infrastructure. An optical fiber cable is part of infrastructure. Amazon AWS is perhaps infrastructure. I don't get these weird redefinitions of common words that don't convey the original meaning at all.

Yep, same with the word "hacker": Some people like to call themselves a hacker when they simply made a meal or put some clothes into a bag nicely ...

Then again, isn't language always changing and words are constantly redefined, reused, ommitted and invented etc. Although we should strive for common definitions of words, we should also allow for change.

Twitter is not infrastructure though.

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

#32

Post by kluck »

I like how the article transformed my view of Twitter. I never saw it as a kind of newspaper without a filter and I think I like the analogy.

Twitter does give a voice to people and the magnitude of participation by people on Twitter speaks for itself. Weither we (or anyone) _need_ to hear all those voices is debatable though. Maybe some filter is not too bad after all.

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

#33

Post by oblio »

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…

I'm pretty sure reddit is operating at a loss, as is hackernews. You need better examples :)

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

#35

Post by namaemuta »

I can't believe how quickly you guys are jumping to the conclusion of letting twitter die. It has a lot of value for common people to report problems and make them being noticed. For example, I've lost the count of how many people have gotten a better deal with companies that in the first place offered them a bad service / product, just by publicly reporting them on twitter.

Also lot of people get a quick support response just by typing "@company problem" no matter what company or the problem is. That's an incredibly easy way for users to solve many of their problems.

The world will keep going on without twitter for sure, but the hole that it will leave behind will be noticed.

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

#36

Post by pjc50 »

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…

I think when dealing with twitter it's a mistake to talk about the "average user". Just because there aren't clear boundaries between subcommunities doesn't mean they don't exist.

And there are a lot of communities which derive real value from Twitter. Few of them could be described as news, they're more like "fandoms". Fandoms of TV shows, sports, pop stars, books, comics, games. Also what now look like "political fandoms". And just like football there's a fan hooligan problem at the edges. The "ultras" need to be corralled away from everyone else they're throwing abuse at.

Various people have pointed out that, on Vine, it was young black kids who were doing especially well on the platform. There's a substantial "black twitter" as well, not just related to the specific issues of BLM but covering entire fields of entertainment and politics.

(A paper from the dawn of Twitter on communities and social nodes; the specifics will be out of date but I think the principles still hold http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf )

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

#40

Post by ThomPete »

Twitters problem is simple, they are a router not a destination. The simple fact that you are linking to an article but not debating it on twitter unless you really hit some nerve is why they cant make money. 140 chars dictatorship have hindered them doing any real innovation and the puritans unfortunately have been able to slowly choke twitter.
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