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Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#31

Post by swombat »

billnapier wrote: post #29

wait. It's still not clear to me that Twitter has succeeded as a business. Are they making money? It's not clear to me yet that they are.

http://mashable.com/2009/12/21/twitter-is-already-profitable...

According to Bloomberg, the microblogging service will make a small profit this year off of $25 million in revenue, thanks to the search deals it completed with Google and Microsoft, which were reportedly worth $15 and $10 million, respectively. Those deals pay Twitter for access to tweets that are in turn included in real-time search results on each property.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#32

Post by messel »

imownbey wrote: post #17
qeorge wrote: post #7

Solved a real problem: sending text messages to a group. Later, it allowed people to get semi-personal access to people they admire.

Although this is true, I think it is missing the point. What was the problem text messages was trying to solve? A quick, semi-personal connection between two people across a distance. This can further be boiled down as humans interest in connection and conversation. It turns out that Twitter, due to the social network (both existing and being one sided) solves this problem better then text messaging. So really it evo…

As an entrepreneur on the look for the most fertile soil, evolving an existing solution has the highest potential pay off. Plus the thought of frankensteining multiple existing technologies together brings a smile to my face every time.

There's an infinite variety of cool stuff we can build, but what will have the biggest payoff for my time now, what can I and my team members execute best on right this moment.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#33

Post by sayrer »

Twitter legitimized and monetized spam.

Since you allegedly don't see messages from accounts you don't follow, spam is more socially acceptable.

In the extreme case, it's a platform for spam bots to subscribe to messages from other bots. We humans are just a small slice of the traffic. :)

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#34

Post by dasil003 »

petervandijck wrote: post #16
qeorge wrote: post #7

Solved a real problem: sending text messages to a group. Later, it allowed people to get semi-personal access to people they admire.

Sending text messages to a group is not a real problem, and Twitter doesn't easily let you do that either (unless everyone has a twitter account).

Agreed. The narcissistic element is key to Twitter. You can tweet one-liners all day with very little effort and get a lot of @ replies from people doing the same thing. It has the same addictive quality as great games because the effort / reward cycle is short.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#36

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

yanilkr wrote: post #10

A Lot of people feel a need to say something and many feel a need to be heard. Twitter was a good solution, because it limited how much one can say. I doubt it was planned, But it seemed to have satisfied some psychological needs.

Some services lower the bars to entry- Twitter also lowered the ceiling.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#38

Post by samratjp »

I'll answer the business question - it's simple - Twitter makes money from the Twitter fire hose APIs and whitelisting privileges.

And these days, it seems twitter will purely survive from random #Bieber trends (yes, the tweens have found twitter it seems).

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#40

Post by dotBen »

1) What problem does Twitter solve?

I've been a big proponent of this methodology - build something people want, the product will have an inherent value.

However companies like Twitter and Zynga are proving that isn't the only methodology out there.

One could argue that Farmville + co solve the problem of "how do I entertain myself"/etc, but that's fairly contrived. Social/Casual games don't solve any problems and are popular mainly because they are addictive (in the same way roulette doesn't solve a problem but makes casinos a lot of money).

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