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Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

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Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#171

Post by r0fl »

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…

Donald trump seems to be having the best time on Twitter. If he stops using the service the stock will plummet 10-20%

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#173

Post by pier25 »

The problem with Twitter is that it has an identity crisis. It wants to be as massive as Facebook but the way it works is only attractive to a minority.

For example the 140 characters limit which was a novelty at the launch is more of a nuisance than anything. It's very common that users are replying to themselves to be able to say more.

The other big problem is noise. For example I recently started following one of the NPM devs and my feed was flooded with LGBT content. This is not Twitter's fault, but the way its users are using Twitter has become part of the culture.

Twitter could probably solve those two problems, but at the same time it would destroy what Twitter is about for its current users.

The only solution for Twitter is to realise it can't really cater to a mainstream audience and to become profitable it needs to lower its costs.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#175

Post by dkrich »

To me it seems that Twitter is less of a back-and-forth engagement platform like Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram, and more of a platform for anointed experts/celebrities to use as a megaphone to anyone who will listen.

Accepting that, I wonder why Twitter doesn't charge people to use the service to either have a verified account or beyond some # of followers after which it's capped? Celebs obviously get a great deal of value from the service and have the means to pay, so why not charge them? I refuse to believe that there would be a noticeable decline in accounts if you had to pay some fee per, say, 30k followers.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#176

Post by dkrich »

To me it seems that Twitter is less of a back-and-forth engagement platform like Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram, and more of a platform for anointed experts/celebrities to use as a megaphone to anyone who will listen.

Accepting that, I wonder why Twitter doesn't charge people to use the service to either have a verified account or beyond some # of followers after which it's capped? Celebs obviously get a great deal of value from the service and have the means to pay, so why not charge them? I refuse to believe that there would be a noticeable decline in accounts if you had to pay some fee per, say, 30k followers.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#177

Post by unsoundInput »

I'm wondering why they're getting more and more adamant that people register an account, even though a lot of people don't care about having an online persona outside of Facebook and wouldn't ever contribute anything to the platform.

I honestly believe that could do much better by providing a good experience to people that just want to stay up-to-date and follow a few people that they find interesting.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#178

Post by Macsenour »

skewart wrote: post #14

Twitter is so disappointingly annoying to use. Reply threads are a pain. Tweetstorms get old. And all too often there is way too much spam. However, there are amazing communities of people sharing interesting content and having great conversations. Twitter needs to realize that there value prop is the community using it and not the app itself. They need to make radical design and product changes to make for a better…

I'm sure we're not, but Twitter still feels like it's at the 1.0 version of the user experience.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#179

Post by talmand »

unsoundInput wrote: post #177

I'm wondering why they're getting more and more adamant that people register an account, even though a lot of people don't care about having an online persona outside of Facebook and wouldn't ever contribute anything to the platform. I honestly believe that could do much better by providing a good experience to people that just want to stay up-to-date and follow a few people that they find interesting.

Gotta pump up those numbers. Can't show growth without people signing up for accounts.

Re: Twitter Fails to Grow Its Audience Again

#180

Post by thrillgore »

I guess i'll be the only contrarian here and say that Twitter has become the preferred communication platform for some notable political figures (including the current Sitting US President). On that simple premise alone, I can't for good reason work up the nerve to use it anymore.

There was a time when I relied on Twitter to get details about life in a rather medium-sized city. We had tweetups and I even used it for business networking. As it grew bigger, I felt less interested as the value increased on other platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn. Even now, I still find dedicated Subreddits more valuable than Twitter.

To me, Twitter is now a space for low effort comments and input on media. I'm sure it works well for others, and good for you. But I have no time to cultivate relevant trends, and it seems philosophically wrong to suggest a platform should enable or mandate the culling of an audience. Especially since by design, Twitter is supposed to be the cross section of humanity (with its inherent downsides).

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