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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?

#531

Post by IAmGraydon »

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 idea is interesting, but you a forgetting something. In cases of extremely low cost (like $1), sometimes the payment process itself is seen as more costly than the payment itself. In other words, people may be willing to spend $1 for an additional sentence, but would they be willing to get their wallet, pull out the card, type in the number, name, billing address and security code? I bet not.

Beyond that, using a card would force users to attach a real identity to their account, even if it's not public. A lot of people wouldn't like the idea of that.

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

#534

Post by clintonb »

jy1 wrote: post #394
elgenie wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just begging the question. OK, so you've found a buyer; what's the buyer to do to turn Twitter around?

Not answering the question, I'm just saying his solution ends up at a valuation at 50% of current, which isn't really a turn around.

Perhaps the current valuation is too high given the lack of profit.

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

#536

Post by nnash »

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…

You forgot spending less time on favorite icon animations.

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

#538

Post by firebones »

donpark wrote: post #59

I tweeted this few months ago: 1) Add golden heart 2) Sell golden hearts to users. 3) Reward some golden hearts daily to users, perhaps based on tiered ranking. 4) Allow advertisers to gift golden hearts to users. 5) 'Promote' tweets with golden hearts and display them in Moments. In short, allow peer promotion. Red hearts are currently being wasted as weak social signals and nods. This change blurs the line between…

That's not the worst idea on here. I have no idea how much Patreon and various crowdfunding sites take in, but scale those up to Twitter's audience (which has some meaningful overlap with those likely to use or benefit from those services) and they get the foundation for a payment/micropayment type model. Twitter tried doing this with some sort of direct commerce experiment, but "give $5 to a cause/artist/politician" tends to be a more social activity than going right after retail, or hoping to crack the micropayments for content nut.

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

#539

Post by LoSboccacc »

kbenson wrote: post #523
amagumori wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what ways do people see twitter as a cesspool? Im just genuinely curious because I get a lot of value out of twitter. It's a great way for me to be exposed to new work from artists, finding circles of people with overlapping niche interests, reading political dialogue and analysis, funny stuff...etc

To be fair, people using twitter don't generally call it a cesspool, and reading between the lines you know they must get value out of it if they continue to use it, but there's the constant "you have to have thick skin" statements from people about how it can occasionally be toxic. As someone not in the social network, what it looks like is that there may be some value to me if I get involved, but I'll likely have t…

Twitter, as Linkedin, suffers from a poor content to marketing ratio.

I do use it to follow some devs, but every time I step out the established circle into an hashtag or suggestion is nothing but marketing bots oneupping each other.

On the other social is easier to have real social interaction, while talking on twitter is more like people screaming in a crowd plus there are these big tv set all over the place loudness to the max splourting ads.

It was a nice way to grow an asymmetric network built on shared interest as opposed to shared connections when there where genuine people on it but I hardly even login anymore.

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

#540

Post by mxuribe »

__jal wrote: post #367

1. Rebuild Twitter as an open, federated, decentralize service. 2. Write RFCs. 3. Shut down the massively dysfunctional company that should have been a protocol from the beginning so everyone involved can go get jobs doing something useful.

100% agreed!
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