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Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

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Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#41

Post by glastra »

SonicSoul wrote: post #22

side point, but i really hope Twitter doesn't try to mimic FB type algorithms that serve content im likely to click vs content as is from people I follow. This includes withholding updates so that users keep pulling the lever to get a trickle of content. I hate it so much when i F5 on a window in Facebook (or hit the back button) and completely different front page loads.

This is probably happening already. The feed itself is no longer sorted by date (you get some highlights that you can dismiss but hey, here they are again), and then even content liked (not retweeted) by people you follow shows up. This makes absolutely no sense for the user, as it happens on Facebook. I assume it's a way to tackle the lack of original content generated from individual users / content consumers (e.g. friends you follow).

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#42

Post by grenoire »

wongarsu wrote: post #21
eb0la wrote: post #8

Q1 and Q2 MAU are the same: 328 million worldwide. Only in the US -2 million MAU less than in the first quarter. Not tragic, in my opinion.

And 328 million is 4.5% of all humans. That sounds like a pretty solid audience.

And those are not all humans.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#43

Post by visarga »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #4

Twitter is such a fascinating platform. I use it on a professional basis and I really enjoy it. I get the opportunity to interact with the rock stars of my field. These are people whom I would probably never have the chance to ping otherwise. I consume more media on TWTR than FB at this point because I trust the people I follow to be great "taste makers". Clearly the company has some value, but how they fix the busin…

That's what amazes me as well. In a single day I got replies from two or three of the most important people in DL. How is it possible to get even one second of their time?

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#44

Post by ghaff »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #9

Anyone still actually having a good time on this service? Just feels a cacophony of (US Centric) political screaming and foot stamping from both sides the past two years. Just utterly draining to scroll through my timeline some days and I only follow artists, devs and designers. I grew to rely on Twitter to find interesting content after Google killed Reader. But starting to think it really needs a big "Politics" che…

If Twitter's looking for a business model, I'll be the first to raise my hand to pay for filtering out tweets that have certain names in them.

>I grew to rely on Twitter to find interesting content after Google killed Reader.

RSS still exists even though Reader doesn't. I use Feedly although I admit that I don't carefully curate a large number of feeds any longer because, outside of a relative handful of people/sites I want to follow, I figure news will find me through Twitter and other sources.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#45

Post by swiley »

fgandiya wrote: post #26

> Twitter began investing heavily in video, aiming to draw a more mainstream set of users and premium advertising deals What's with this whole "pivot to video" trend among websites? Why is it preferred to text which is probably easier to write, needs less network and is more accessible than a large number of videos (which don't have captions)?

Firefox/chrome is the new television. People don't want to read they just want to scroll and watch videos and get emotional.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#46

Post by ezekg »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #9

Anyone still actually having a good time on this service? Just feels a cacophony of (US Centric) political screaming and foot stamping from both sides the past two years. Just utterly draining to scroll through my timeline some days and I only follow artists, devs and designers. I grew to rely on Twitter to find interesting content after Google killed Reader. But starting to think it really needs a big "Politics" che…

You should start muting people who talk politics and Twitter also allows you to block tweets containing keywords/phrases[0]. Honestly, I've started to enjoy Twitter so much more now that my feed is void of politics and sexism/sjw arguments.

[0]: https://twitter.com/ajlkn/status/878717797588762624

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#47

Post by Tistel »

Twitter owns https://www.mopub.com an ad exchange too. I think its one of the bigger ones. Ad exchanges are the things that provide revenue to app devs. Basically, when you open a free(mium) app there is a market bidding for the right to show you an ads. There is all kinds of tech trying to characterize you based on your phone's id so you see relevant ads. Having an audience of 320+ million people and ad tech powering a significant portion of the app world seems like nice problems to have.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#48

Post by yttrium »

mox1 wrote: post #13
dforrestwilson wrote: post #4

Twitter is such a fascinating platform. I use it on a professional basis and I really enjoy it. I get the opportunity to interact with the rock stars of my field. These are people whom I would probably never have the chance to ping otherwise. I consume more media on TWTR than FB at this point because I trust the people I follow to be great "taste makers". Clearly the company has some value, but how they fix the busin…

I mean interact is a strong term here. You send 0-140 characters towards them and they get to send 0-140 back. Yes I'm sure sometimes meaningful conversations happen, but I doubt that is the norm. I get to interact with a rock star if I hang out near the exit door after the concert. I can shout at them and (s)he might say something back. If I'm lucky and it's a cool musician we might be able to have a brief conversat…

I mean - this seems like you don't actually use the service. I do JS development, and I can pretty reliably get someone like Dan Abramov or other JS 'rockstars' to look at/comment on an issue if it's required. Additionally, I can see these people interact with their peers and discuss ideas. Fundamentally, twitter has become a platform for idea exchange and conversation that has professionals on it, discussing things professionally! It doesn't really get more meaningful than that.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#49

Post by mrkrabo »

SonicSoul wrote: post #22

side point, but i really hope Twitter doesn't try to mimic FB type algorithms that serve content im likely to click vs content as is from people I follow. This includes withholding updates so that users keep pulling the lever to get a trickle of content. I hate it so much when i F5 on a window in Facebook (or hit the back button) and completely different front page loads.

They are doing similar stuff already, not that bad, but it's getting worse every month. It was always a chronological feed, but these last years they just shuffle thing around when they see fit.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#50

Post by visarga »

AznHisoka wrote: post #6

Twitter needs to: 1. Charge businesses that tweet $20/month. ok, so you are a small business and can't afford it? nobody will miss you and you will contribute less noise to Twitter anyway. 2. limit the number of links you can tweet a day based on your overall popularity. you can still post an unlimited number of replies and tweets with no links. 3. show less tweets from unverified accounts that never reply or interac…

> I believe the noise problem is a huge issue in twitter.

There is a simple (but limited) solution: simple binary classifier, trained by signals from the user. It would quickly learn what to exclude.

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