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Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

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Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#51

Post by otalp »

bad_user wrote: post #42

I've been very active on Twitter in the past 2 years and not due to Trump or other controversies. A lot of developers I want to follow are active on Twitter. So it might be due to Trump, don't know, but I'm glad it's going well for them.

I didn't join twitter due to Trump, but I kept going there to see if his ludicrous tweets were real, when one day I decided on a whim to create an account since I liked the design compared to Reddit and Facebook. I found a lot of good people and pages to follow, and now I login everyday, and it's probably a more useful use of time than my usage of Reddit/YouTube/Facebook.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#52

Post by Steeeve »

4lch3m1st wrote: post #29
Steeeve wrote: post #18

Twitter loves Trump. It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc. But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again. The problem, or _a_ problem, is that…

While I expect a lot of people to not agree with what I am going to say, I believe this is much more linked to the political moment than to Twitter having a problem with "handling controversy". This just feels like an excuse to find a way to filter human communication, at this point. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Brazilian and the latest years' politics headlines have been flooding Twitter around here too, but spurious p…

> This just feels like an excuse to find a way to filter human communication

Interesting. I've modded a fair amount of communities and the censorship argument to moderated discussion comes up frequently as new rules are implemented.

From an online discussion point of view I don't think it holds merit at all. If I run a football board and have a rule that says "no basketball talk" that's my prerogative.

As long as it's not government driven, censorship is perfectly fine (if you don't like the rules of my service, you are free to use someone else's). When it is government driven, censorship is murky territory at best, but not immediately bad and illegal/unconstitutional. The FCC in some form or another has rules against broadcasting certain types of content. You can't swear, you can't show nudity (or certain types of nudity anyways). That's government driven censorship, and its largely accepted.

Slashdot had a hands off approach for a long time. I couldn't go to their site without seeing a n-word reference in the comments because their approach was abused. If you go to reddit, facebook, twitter, snapchat, instagram, or any other major site you run into astroturfing campaigns. We've grown to accept that Microsoft is good at it and Sony is bad at it. But somehow when AT&T does it, it's evil.

I don't know what the solution looks like. I just know that we need to evolve. Filtering communication is part of it. A bigger part of it would be finding ways to drive healthier habits.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#53

Post by jonknee »

jxub wrote: post #47

It's amazing how tech companies and unicorns are valued. If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their a es and their value stays neutral, and first signs of profit send the stocks to the moon. That is also the behaviour of crypto, but in this case the stocks aren't overvalued to start with, as decades of inflation have done to stocks. Looking from another side, in crypto we haven't developed a sound inve…

> If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their aes and their value stays neutral

In the past year TWTR has been as low as $14.12, it has been anything but neutral.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#54

Post by jxub »

wbl wrote: post #49
jxub wrote: post #47

It's amazing how tech companies and unicorns are valued. If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their a es and their value stays neutral, and first signs of profit send the stocks to the moon. That is also the behaviour of crypto, but in this case the stocks aren't overvalued to start with, as decades of inflation have done to stocks. Looking from another side, in crypto we haven't developed a sound inve…

How did being a protocol work out for DEC? Or Sun?

Being a protocol company is risky for adoption, but helps develop a huge moat over the competition, which doesn't remove the possibility of becoming an E-Corp-like company and/or dying from inefficiency. No idea about these two in particular sorry.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#55

Post by jxub »

jonknee wrote: post #53
jxub wrote: post #47

It's amazing how tech companies and unicorns are valued. If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their a es and their value stays neutral, and first signs of profit send the stocks to the moon. That is also the behaviour of crypto, but in this case the stocks aren't overvalued to start with, as decades of inflation have done to stocks. Looking from another side, in crypto we haven't developed a sound inve…

> If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their aes and their value stays neutral In the past year TWTR has been as low as $14.12, it has been anything but neutral.

Sorry, I might be too used to the swings in crypto. Last year has been bad for twitter indeed looking from traditional-Buffetian investing point of view.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#56

Post by icedchai »

jxub wrote: post #47

It's amazing how tech companies and unicorns are valued. If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their a es and their value stays neutral, and first signs of profit send the stocks to the moon. That is also the behaviour of crypto, but in this case the stocks aren't overvalued to start with, as decades of inflation have done to stocks. Looking from another side, in crypto we haven't developed a sound inve…

How is Twitter a protocol company? Protocol implies open standards, like IRC or SMTP... The only place I can tweet is Twitter.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#57

Post by CM30 »

Retric wrote: post #40
Steeeve wrote: post #18

Twitter loves Trump. It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc. But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again. The problem, or _a_ problem, is that…

That line of thinking strongly reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc As a counter point, I think maximizing controversy is a short term optimization that reduces the number of users over time. Most people drop things at one point or another, and people are more reluctant to go back if their memories are stressful instead of fun.

It's definitely a short term thing with unfortunate long term consequences. Indeed, I've seen tons of communities founded on drama and hate for something else, and the vast majority will die in a matter of weeks or months. That's because people get bored with bashing the same things all the time or trying to kill each in other in an online flamewar, and the community will need to either build a real focus or accept its defeat.

Also, the more drama a site or service attracts, the more good members it'll inevitably lose. People with the kind of personality you want in a community aren't the kind to get into cat fights or attack people for months on end, and those you do attract with such 'content' tend to be the worst kinds of people.

So yeah, it's definitely a short term optimisation which can blow up in their face further down the line.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#58

Post by kirRoyale »

bad_user wrote: post #42

I've been very active on Twitter in the past 2 years and not due to Trump or other controversies. A lot of developers I want to follow are active on Twitter. So it might be due to Trump, don't know, but I'm glad it's going well for them.

Twitter has become so bloated with advertisements and "artificial" trending topics that its nearly useless.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#59

Post by trs80 »

orf wrote: post #31
trs80 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Twitter loves Trump. Hidden camera investigations[1] into Twitter employees suggest otherwise. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64gTjdUrDFQ

Seems like a lot of out of context clips to push a narrative, standard project veritas stuff. Like the clip about banning certain groups of people: the engineer says "it's going to ban a certain way of talking". You might take from this based on the video that he's talking about inadvertently banning right-leaning users. Well, what if he's talking about banning racism or messages that use ((subtle dog-whistles)) inst…

If you watched the whole thing you'd see the context of each interview.

Re: Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit

#60

Post by darkerside »

kirRoyale wrote: post #58
bad_user wrote: post #42

I've been very active on Twitter in the past 2 years and not due to Trump or other controversies. A lot of developers I want to follow are active on Twitter. So it might be due to Trump, don't know, but I'm glad it's going well for them.

Twitter has become so bloated with advertisements and "artificial" trending topics that its nearly useless.

Corollary: Twitter is so useful that it seems to be thriving despite being bloated with advertisements and "artificial" trending topics
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