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

Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–648 of 648 posts

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

#641

Post by vickychijwani »

wila wrote: post #602
potatolicious wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like maybe a [citation required] thing. Facebook doesn't have any particular length limit on posts, and anecdotally vast screeds are quite rare on my feed, and most posts are pretty terse regardless. Is there data to suggest that people will just rant all the time if they're permitted to? [edit] Anecdotally, my current top 20 posts in my FB feed: 17 under 140 chars, 3 greater than 140 chars.

We don't need twitter to be another facebook.

Not sure why you've been down-voted. Twitter is so different from Facebook in terms of what it's primary use is, that it doesn't make sense to compare them, and while I wouldn't quite word my response this way, I agree with the sentiment that Facebook usage data doesn't tell us enough to predict Twitter usage under higher character limits.

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

#642

Post by returnbuyer »

dang wrote: post #594
returnbuyer wrote: post #384

They're not weakening twitter by weakening western society. If anything, weakening the society with divisive gender war and identify politics empowers twitter. The western economy suffers and more people become reclusive and stay inside all day on the internet. It's basic culture warfare and it's been happening for decades. Listen to some Yuri Besmenov [1] if you don't know what I'm talking about. Basically my point…

Please don't use this site for ideological battle. It's not what it's for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13758157 and marked it off-topic.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=vim%20vs%20emacs&sort=byPopula...

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

#643

Post by prawn »

mnmlme wrote: post #582
prawn wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why is exactly 140 still the right length?" That's common knowledge. They were asking, why is it STILL the right length? If Twitter want to encourage short form content, there are other ways to do it. Either hide 141 onwards behind a [+more] link or style the long ones differently so they have less impact. Better yet, create multi-panel tweets so content is still presented bite-sized, but in a way that people can de…

I could see a version of Twitter that is similar in a way to the latest Instagram release (allowing for up to 10 images per post). So on Twitter you could have up to 10 tweets in a single post. Each still 140 char. Only the first one shows up in everyone's feed (just like it does today) and you swipe/scroll/page to the side to see additional pages. If the first 140 is intriguing enough people will scroll sideways to…

I've posted about that concept before. I think it's a no-brainer and it baffles me that they're yet to do it, and that it took Instagram so long to have their equivalent.

Tweet storms are only getting more common in my experience. Further, entire newspaper articles could be presented as a series of bite-sized pieces. Just limit the first one to 140 IMO.

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

#644

Post by arcticbull »

riffic wrote: post #506
arcticbull wrote: post #435

1. Lay off half the employees. 2. Improve their ad product. That's it really. It doesn't do anything now that it didn't in 2014, and the workforce is significantly larger. It'd be a decent, profitable company. Or, make it a non-profit. It's in the public interest.

make it a non-profit. It's in the public interest. No, a walled garden webapp is not a public utility.

Not because it's a walled-garden web-app, because of what's in it. Public utilities aren't determined by their structure.

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

#646

Post by zapt02 »

lhnz wrote: post #599
zapt02 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micropayments on that level are a race to the bottom. Why read The Times content when you can be presented with a similar article written by some blogger. And why would media companies give Twitter any percentage of the cut? Twitter already supplies them with free traffic, it's in their mutual interest. Facebook tried a similar approach with Instant Articles and the only publications that have jumped on it are the on…

> Micropayments on that level are a race to the bottom. > Why read The Times content when you can be presented > with a similar article written by some blogger. Because "Content is king" [0]. I'm not talking about the big companies that publish clickbait and make money through advertising at scale. I'm talking about smaller, niche, high-quality magazines and newspapers that need to show people that they're worth subs…

Fair point, but I think my meaning did not come across correct.

Most articles today can be substituted with lower-cost versions of the same articles (news/reviews are good examples of this). There's your fungibility. Regardless though, publishers still hold onto their content, because it's one thing that Twitter/Facebook is lacking.

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

#647

Post by valeg »

It's profitable business based on 140 characters messages. Why Twitter is regarded as a disaster just beyond me.

What I add to the mix of Twitter features:

1. Twitter for Newsrooms (like "Facebook for work" but more specified). More precise tracking of twits and streams.

2. Hashtag following

3. Twitter's instant articles

And character limit must be preserved no matter what.

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

#648

Post by neotek »

iamatworknow wrote: post #395
jamestnz wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both. Don't take away the need to be a public figure and to verify your identity. Just make them pay in addition to these things. If you're a big enough public figure to want/need the blue tick, you're arguably making commercial use of twitter already, so you probably have a marketing budget that can sink a thousand bucks a year into maintaining your verified status with Twitter (in addition to proving your i…

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the type of people verified on twitter. I mainly use twitter to follow comedians, and most of them don't make a ton of money (surely not enough to afford "a thousand bucks a year" -- one of my favorite comedians working today has said publicly that he made all of $16k in 2015). And a few have become the victims of imposters who attempt to disrupt their careers by taking on…

>one of my favorite comedians working today has said publicly that he made all of $16k in 2015).

Who's that?

Post reply on HN