Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#351

Post by dzonga » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

vuyani wrote: post #217

dzonga wrote: post #164

Btw I made an app[0] last year as my first iOS app which centers conversations around Live events using hashtags. Based on comments on this thread, with some UX improvements the app could meet a lot your requirements. Will gladly accept feedback, and willing to iterate. [0]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/event-is/id1141185734?mt=8

Honest question, are you a software developer? Wonder how did you get your app review approved with screenshot demo text such as "appStoreTestApp" But anyways. You might have a good idea, but that app doesnt do it justice. Poorly designed and implemented. Also, one screenshot?!?

just a senior CS Student, though not a valid excuse the first attempt is not something I'm proud of....but yeah I will work on the UX and give it an update

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#352

Post by ruipgil » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:31 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #342

Add a down vote button so people can down vote the trolls. You'd see an enormous uptake in regular people using the service if every reply wasn't some random insult with a picture attachment of something disgusting. Twitter is easily the most negative place on the internet, and that's including madness like the Something Awful forums or 4chan. A downvote option would hopefully push the constant arguments out of sight…

You can't fight negativity with negativity. Let the good and positive boil to the top.

Anyway, that would certainly not save twitter. They seem to be lacking better management and focus on their core product.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#353

Post by bthallplz » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #330

nikcub wrote: post #128

1. cut costs by a lot. they shouldn't be spending $2B per year 2. allow the apps to be used without a login - with the default view showing 'what is on now'. almost every member of my family has attempted to use twitter at some point and just been confused. 3. reformat all the explore pages into ordinary twitter streams 4. acquire nuzzel. their view of 'whats on now' is better than twitter's view 5. drop the video pa…

Let people pay $1/month to raise their limit to 280 characters per message. http://blog.zorinaq.com/revenue-idea-for-twitter-1-per-month... Imagine a heated discussion on Twitter... how many would pay $1/month to be able to communicate their points more clearly? Preemptive reply: no, nobody reads Twitter over SMS anymore.

> Preemptive reply: no, nobody reads Twitter over SMS anymore.

I do, yet I still think this should be experimented with. If an account I follow tends to post longer messages, I can deal with seeing only the first line of them.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#354

Post by LordHumungous » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

chambo622 wrote: post #279

LordHumungous wrote: post #245

Allow users to pay to "boost" tweets and expand their exposure. I.e. you can pay $5 in boost credits to increase the reach of the tweet promoting your website or whatever. (Or maybe much more if you are a corporate account- not sure how the pricing model should work). The boosts should be invisible to other users. Basically, monetize the one thing that every wants to do on twitter, which is go viral.

This already exists - promoted tweets

Yeah but make it transparent to users

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#355

Post by dustinlocke » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

lhnz wrote: post #79

I would try to eat journalism. I would create a system where subscription to News on Twitter helps to automate payment for individual articles. 1. The lede or quote gets pulled into the tweet. 2. http://t.co becomes a payment-debiting gateway (402 Payment Required). Basically, you would monetise the audience on behalf of the publishers who would be able to make their paywalls more porous. Almost everybody would benef…

I love this. Publications could choose whether to be pay-per-view ($0.10/article) or included in some base-level subscription with profits shared based on how many clicks you get.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#356

Post by jackmott » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

ban nazis.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#357

Post by scrame » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

isanganak wrote: post #183

Sell it to enterprises as a collaboration tool, charge based on number of users, kinda like #slack.

Like yammer?

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#358

Post by grandalf » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:34 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #346

grandalf wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter really needs to give people the anti-abuse tools they demand. I strongly agree with this. It's a far better solution than censorship.

The people who actually harass (and are the ones who primarily bleat about "censorship" on private services) have been bleating about tools like BlockTogether and similar being "censorship"--how are "better anti-abuse tools" out of Twitter themselves any different? When--not if--these tools auto-block poisonous harassing protofascists from the default because they are poisonous harassing protofascists, how is that an…

> how is that any different?

It's different because then users who don't like content to be censored can turn it off. I turn off Google Safesearch and have not regretted it in the least.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#359

Post by burkaman » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

returnbuyer wrote: post #317

burkaman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you connecting Saudi Arabia to promoting feminism

Poison the well, make your enemy weaker. It's basic long-term strategy: Marxism for your enemies, powerful fascism for yourself.

This is rock-solid analysis, but I still have a couple questions. First, Saudi Arabians have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Twitter. Is this really the best strategy for weakening it? Or are you saying they're using Twitter as a weapon to poison America with the evils of feminism, or something?

Second, on a practical level, how did this happen? Someone from Saudi Arabia called up a Twitter executive and said "hey we think your platform could use more feminist perspectives" and they were like "oh yes, this makes perfect sense coming from you, and as you own 5% of our company we take your word as gospel"?

And obviously, what does Marxism have to do with feminism?

Sorry if you were joking, sometimes it's very hard to tell.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#360

Post by grandalf » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #347

grandalf wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. My comment was not meant to suggest that I think Twitter should promote already illegal forms of speech like threats, etc. To conflate speech with privilege is absurd. We are all equally empowered and equally vulnerable in a free speech society. A non-privileged person is free to draw a cartoon of Trump that looks like Muhammed. In a totalitarian society nobody is free to draw cartoons of certain subjects.…

> To conflate speech with privilege is absurd. We are all equally empowered and equally vulnerable in a free speech society. No, we're not. As a straight white guy, I can say "video games suck because X, Y, and Z" and people might call it stupid or call me a "cuck", but that's about it. A woman who say "video games are generally cool but have some problematic tendencies like X, Y, and Z" gets death and rape threats a…

> does not happen to straight white men

There are many aspects of how society treats men and women differently that are abhorrent to me. One of the most abhorrent is how a girl who struggles in math is more likely to be encouraged to focus on other subjects, while a boy in the same situation is more likely to be encouraged to achieve mastery.

We (as a society) can do so much better... but censoring ideas is not he solution.