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Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

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251–260 of 369 posts

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#251

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Not really. Once he had VCs attention he could do what he wanted as he wasn't exactly starting from zero.

I’m sorry but this is ridiculous. You realize Square is a thriving, $31B public company at the time of this comment? Starting a company is one thing. Creating the phenomenon that is Square is quite another.

It's not that ridiculous if you've ever listened to or read anything Jack Dorsey has had to say.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#252
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that Jack Dorsey also founded another successful company in Square, right? Pretty hard to argue that he lucked into both of those things.

I get your point, but seriously, go read Nick Bilton's book about the early history or Twitter. From the time of Odeo to Jack coming back, none of the people in charge of this company or the board had a consistent idea of what they were building, an appropriate roadmap to get there, or how to monetize effectively relative to other social networks. This happened for years . Square is amazing, but a B2B, modern Point-o…

I don't know what I'm talking about, but judging from the fact that Ev Williams founded or co-founded Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, perhaps he was the real visionary behind the idea. That's three different "write stuff online and share it" startups. He clearly understands social media and blogging and micro-blogging. Maybe Jack is more of the 'biz guy'?

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#253
post #63

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During the Joe Rogan podcast, he mentioned that what they are trying to attempt to give people the "other side" of the story rather than promoting creation of echo chambers.

"Here we have a climatologist, and for balance, someone who believes the Earth is a computer simulation, and another who is certain it's flat and was created by the Illuminati who are alien lizards."

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Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#254
I’m not certain Twitter can be fixed.

I’ve opted-out by deleting my account and choosing not to visit the Twitter site. I’ve done the same with Facebook following the same principle. I won’t suggest that my decision had no costs; I miss out on conversations I could learn from and have to be more intentional about reaching out to people in my network. But the costs are far outweighed by the benefits: less frustration, less anxiety, less FOMO.

I highly recommend opting-out to anyone who’s become fed up with the platforms, their conduct or policies, or the way they are made to feel using their products.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#255
post #219

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I recently created a Twitter account, mostly as an experiment. I just followed some programmers, stuck to programming content. Immediately and every day after, I was constantly being displayed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, etc. Not a single politician or voice not on the left. Considering how powerful Twitter has become, this is troubling. I know this is just one…

Programmers are usually very vocal leftists. I've always assumed that those who don't speak openly about politics don't care or are right wingers, but who knows.

are usually very vocal leftists...those who don't speak openly about politics don't care or are right wingers

It generalizes.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#256

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"More engaging" does not automatically equal "better for users" or "what most users want".

It correlates with what users want better than what a handful of HN professional contrarians think they want.

I'm not so sure about that.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#257
> He suggested that the service works best as an “interest-based network,” where you log in and see content relevant to your interests, no matter who posted it

Sounds like Twitter is taking a page from Google and not knowing when to leave well enough alone.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#258

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What I really dislike is the spam in the notifications section. If someone likes my tweet, replies to it or retweets it, that's relevant. I don't however want to see a notification for something Tweeter deems interesting under other people you follow liked/retweed this as a notification.

Might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually really like this feature. I'm usually not able to get to everything, so it's great to know when something important or interesting got tweeted and I know to check it out. That notification was actually what slowly made me an active Twitter user, because they kept surfacing me interesting content and giving me a reason to come back and it became a gateway for me to discove…

I don't use Twitter, except to look at tweets that people on HN or whatever link to. And the main reason that I don't is that the idea of "following" just doesn't work for me. I tried it. But even people who sometimes post stuff that interests me mostly post stuff that just gets in my way.

I like HN. But I never look at particular users' posts. I just look at the front page, or sometimes at the comments list, so see what people are talking about.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#259
post #210

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Twitter is a great example of fairly talentless people with large egos somehow finding success, and mistakenly thinking it is due to their merits. If Dorsey was going to make a good social network, it would have happened 5-8 years ago. It’s a lot like Etsy - someone had drive, funding and concepts to make a project at the right time. However, they were not actually good at running a business and had no idea what the…

You know that Jack Dorsey also founded another successful company in Square, right? Pretty hard to argue that he lucked into both of those things.

Give me a few billion and the ears of every venture capitalist and who knows, I might just make the most of my amazing natural talents.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#260
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Once he had VCs attention he could do what he wanted as he wasn't exactly starting from zero.

Let me get this straight: You think that the hard part of creating a billion dollar company is getting attention from VCs?

Yes, that’s right. Personal faith from funders is a significant contributor to getting funding, which is important for success.
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