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Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

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

#471

Post by blisterpeanuts »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #444
dandare wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first Twitter clone I remember came up with the killer feature - infinitely long Tweets. How many times did I hear this dumb idea? It is not a sandwich, longer does not mean better! The scarce resource is not the number of electrons you send, the scarce resource is the attention of the reader.

Why is exactly 140 still the right length? Why not 145, or 73, or 280? Answer cannot contain words "always", "traditional", or "nostalgia". There's a large distance between 140 and infinitely long.

Because it was originally SMS messages which were limited to 160 characters. 140 for the text and 20 for user name.

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

#473

Post by platz »

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.

The stratechery folks have said something akin to that Twitter is unsalvageable that this point from a growth perspective because they've already lost most of their potential customers. People who tried their product and walked away.

If these were fresh potential customers it would be one thing, but convincing someone to come back who already tried your product is much harder

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

#474

Post by PTPells »

Make profiles more robust. Features could include: • Event creation • A forum/group tab so followers of a specific account could more easily communicate with each other • Expanded "About" section • Custom calls-to-action (i.e. "Sign Up," "Message," "Shop," etc.)

Allow people to publish more content natively. Such as: • Long-form writing • Long-form video

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

#475

Post by PTPells »

PTPells wrote: post #474

Make profiles more robust. Features could include: • Event creation • A forum/group tab so followers of a specific account could more easily communicate with each other • Expanded "About" section • Custom calls-to-action (i.e. "Sign Up," "Message," "Shop," etc.) Allow people to publish more content natively. Such as: • Long-form writing • Long-form video

My thinking...

Public figures post on Twitter first. As a result, it's where news breaks. However, due to the constraints Twitter has placed on how people are able to represent themselves (i.e. limited profiles) and communicate with their audiences (i.e. inability to publish long-form written content natively), these people are driven to other platforms (i.e. Facebook) to do things they might've otherwise done on Twitter.

Instead of trying to compete as social utility in the way that Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have positioned themselves, why not cater explicitly to the newsmakers who are already defaulting to their platform, giving them fewer reasons to go elsewhere and attracting non-Twitter users in the process?

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

#476

Post by thisnotmyacc »

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…

FTFY

> 1. cut costs by a lot. they shouldn't be spending $2B per year

Really, is Twitter doing poorly? $2.52 billion in 2016 is more than enough revenue, I'd wager, to maintain a solid company. Twitter seem to me to have an explosive-growth mentality - spend like crazy and grow our way to success - in a post-explosive-growth reality.

Fix the cost structures, and make ~$1 billion in profit, and you have a solid company. With continued YoY growth of say 5%, and a valuation of $20 billion in the near future, about double their current $11.33B, is not out of the realm of possibility. Sure, it isn't Google or FaceBook sized, but is a $20B company in anyway failing?

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

#477

Post by Gustomaximus »

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.

Trial 1c per character over 140.

So many prole would want to finish a sentence for a few cents that would hesitate for $1/mth. Then have a $3 (or something smaller) minimum so people instantly have credit for future use to train behavior for some time. This would also give credit cards for future organisation and easy purchases. For power users 100 character a month would be nothing so it would up earnings there.

Then initially launch with a 'charity' test month. This helps get people using and people accepting longer tweets with good will. Doing a charity month will help reduce the invariable haters of anything new, and offset bad-will if trial goes down like a lead balloon. And then monitise assuming trial goes well

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

#478

Post by epoch1970 »

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…

I don't know if it's still like this, but when I last tried to create a Twitter account it required a phone number and some kind of verification by phone. That's something I refuse to do.

I can sort of understand requiring that to try to combat the creation of spam accounts, for instance. But it made the service pretty much unusable for me.

Unless it's as easy to create an account there as it is to create one here or at reddit, I'll never bother with Twitter.

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

#479

Post by p0nce »

- for the longest time I've wished to tweet to a subpart of my followers; Then only way to have that is multiple account right now. Let me follow "person X + #hashtag".

- support multiple accounts on the website

- Twitter ads do not seem as valuable as other ad services, there is not enough reason to buy them.

- remove the bots

- Twitter need a way to lessen noise from talkative people. Something between muting and following. See point 1.

- order the tweets by most recent, like it was previously. Ordering by popularity ensures your tweets are dwarfed by the popular GIF of the day.

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

#480

Post by thisnotmyacc »

warcher wrote: post #417

There are a few camps of people using twitter, which want different things and are mostly being badly served. 1) Trolls love twitter. The legion of racist eggs sowing destruction for no other reason than their own nihilistic enjoyment is an existential threat to the business and must be culled. The company and the trolls cannot live together in peace. One or the other will die. It feels like twitter hasn't figured ou…

This never has any numbers to support it, which is unfortunate.

Also, in a world of bubbles, how is a less free an open Twitter better? Is a Twitter with no controversy, with no argy bargy, really worth visiting?

I think Twitter's problem with trolls is minuscule compared to the problem of making it more entertaining, and easier to switch in and out of thoughts. If I like the NBA, cricket and South African politics, how do I switch between those three interests when, say, there is an NBA finals and a local election on? That is a problem much more so than trolls.

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