Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by tyrust » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

chisleu wrote: post #112

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…

Reddit has become very much the same as Tumbler and Twitter became. It's no longer a tool for expression and conversation. It's an echo chamber with separate factions occupying separate areas... downvoting and banning every opinion that goes against the "reddit circle jerk". Hacker News has become the only place I can have reasoned conversations about science, politics, etc without so much of an issue. The requiremen…

Reddit is fine if you subscribe to small [0] or heavily moderated [1]. Default and large subreddits have practically always been as you describe.

>requirement of quality comments

Ha. You won't have shitposts or rehashed jokes, but you also won't always have quality. I'll refer to a past comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16154688

[0] - Usually niche interest or specific geographic

[1] - e.g. /r/askhistorians, /r/askscience, /r/neutralpolitics

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

#122

Post by jandrese » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

chisleu wrote: post #112

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…

Reddit has become very much the same as Tumbler and Twitter became. It's no longer a tool for expression and conversation. It's an echo chamber with separate factions occupying separate areas... downvoting and banning every opinion that goes against the "reddit circle jerk". Hacker News has become the only place I can have reasoned conversations about science, politics, etc without so much of an issue. The requiremen…

HN tends to avoid hot button political issues issues. I guarantee that if it started posting climate change/evolution/abortion/political articles on a regular basis the troll brigade would show up.

Arstechnica is another tech oriented news aggregator/comment section and the ideological trolls on that board are a well oiled machine. They're on top of any relevant article before the bits are dry; pushing their agenda and gaming voting system until it finally falls off of the front page.

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

#123

Post by bdamm » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

ericmoritz wrote: post #72

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…

I've pretty much dumped Twitter for Mastodon. My mental health couldn't keep up with the air of constant outrage on Twitter.

Does Mastodon solve the problem of migrating from one server to another? Without that I don't see how users have gained anything over, say, facebook.

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

#124

Post by curun1r » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #119

jedberg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem, or _a_ problem, is that people can only handle so much controversy. They have lives to lead. You're so spot on. You know how everyone says, "Seinfeld is a show about nothing!" It wasn't about nothing, but what did make it different is that the characters never changed. They didn't have these huge arcs and defining life moments. They just went about their lives and we watched. People say "it was about n…

If most people don't like drama, why are drama shows so popular? Including reality shows, which are pure drama and no plot.

Escapism. We like vicariously experiencing drama that is more than we want to personally experience. We love watching violent movies but don't want to experience or commit violence. We love stories with convoluted romantic intrigue and yet most of us just want to settle down with our partner. We love a view into a life we're too scared to live.

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

#125

Post by throwawaysecops » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

md224 wrote: post #84

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…

I have a different perspective: Twitter is a digital Public Sphere, and Public Spheres are always noisy. "Controversy" is just another name for clashes of opinions that have occurred since the beginning of humankind and will likely continue to occur until the extinction of our species. These clashes occur within discursive spaces, and Twitter is one such space. This is why I'm bullish on Twitter. It's a space for con…

> clashes of opinions that have occurred since the beginning of humankind

> This is why I'm bullish on Twitter.

Fuck Twitter. Its roles and permissions structure is a disaster to effective and FAIR communications and there is little reason by Twitter to disallow the more viral concepts circulating within its web. Time to deploy active measures to give humanity some means by which education on these concepts can occur.

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

#126

Post by sekou » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

This excellently shows the problem with how value is currently assessed in the social media landscape. The "In case you missed it" algorithm-based organization of tweets and the focus on video to "increase engagement" at any cost are same reasons why there has been a widespread backlash against Facebook. On the other hand, building your feed from the ground up granularly is one of the larger differences between Twitter and Facebook.

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

#127

Post by draw_down » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

sova wrote: post #20

Bloomberg claiming they know why the stock rose. You could cite any reason

Come on.

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

#128

Post by waytogo » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #96

waytogo wrote: post #65

Rediscovered Twitter for blockchain news. Why: Subreddits for different tokens/currencies end up being echochambers (but still good resources as long you follow multiple subs). HN rarely shows blockchain stuff and the upvoted ones are often just anti crypto. Following 30-50 crypto influencers on Twitter provides a good mix.

Anyone you follow who's prominently against cryptocurrencies structured like Bitcoin, Ethereum's Ether et al - that aren't stable?

Not one who is 'prominently against cryptocurrencie' in general but most have clear preferences and dislikes. The field is super wide.

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

#129

Post by elago » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #123

ericmoritz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've pretty much dumped Twitter for Mastodon. My mental health couldn't keep up with the air of constant outrage on Twitter.

Does Mastodon solve the problem of migrating from one server to another? Without that I don't see how users have gained anything over, say, facebook.

How has it ever been a problem? Create a new account on a new server, post a message on your old account "hey I'm moving to ". Conversations are usually only a day or two old before going stale, who cares whether or not toots from a year ago are linked to your account. What I gain over facebook: no ads, not being tracked across the internet via 'like' buttons, not contributing to a massive dataset exclusively available to potentially evil corporation, and interacting with interesting strangers.

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

#130

Post by ModernMech » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #119

jedberg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem, or _a_ problem, is that people can only handle so much controversy. They have lives to lead. You're so spot on. You know how everyone says, "Seinfeld is a show about nothing!" It wasn't about nothing, but what did make it different is that the characters never changed. They didn't have these huge arcs and defining life moments. They just went about their lives and we watched. People say "it was about n…

If most people don't like drama, why are drama shows so popular? Including reality shows, which are pure drama and no plot.

Surrogate drama. We like drama, but we don't like it in our own lives. It results in anxiety, uncertainty, and other negative feelings. But when we watch it on TV, we can interact with it like real drama, but it stays at a safe distance from our own lives. e.g. "OMG, did you see what Meredith did last night on Grey's? I can't believe she did that, what was she thinking?" We can partake in the drama, but no matter what she did, it doesn't really have any bearing on us.