Twitter was built as a way to follow the lives of and content created by people you're interested in. Trying to turn it into a content aggregator service is a vision incompatible with the foundation of Twitter and its user base. People don't go to Twitter to find good recipes and learn about dinosaurs; they go to Twitter to see what their favorite author is up to and watch celebrities make fools of themselves.
Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
301–310 of 369 posts
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#302Abuse and misinformation are certainly the big issues but even more bigger and rather meta-issue is the strong hub-and-spoke model that Twitter promotes. Here's an example: You could tweet some of the most informative and useful tweets relevant to, say, robotics enthusiasts for day after day and years after year, and you might still end up with absymal engagement in terms of likes, retweets and followers. Meanwhile,…
That's not an issue of Twitter, but of human nature. I don't think technology can do anything about it. That is just wishful thinking about "future people" who spend their time learning and improving their skills 24/7, instead of slacking and having fun. Unrealistic - presumably people simply need time outs. You could argue that Twitter actually does well with that problem: after all, if you follow a robotics enthusi…
There are plenty of things that technology can do about this. For the nuclear option, complete anonymity would resolve this problem instantaneously. Comments would only be driven by the merit of themselves rather than by the merit of who's saying them. There is an obvious argument against this in that you'd ostensibly much prefer to hear from a nuclear physicist than an english major on topics of nuclear physics, and without the indicator of whose speaking this knowledge of expertise is removed. But on the other hand, I think this argument is very weak since we're already discussing the issue that, in practice, most people don't listen to the nuclear physicist - they listen to the english major.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? So, you think that if you hand a million dollars in VC funding to any idiot off the street, they could create the next Square or Twitter?
It's not what I said but it's fairly obvious that money is like steroids. You can't turn a donkey into a race horse but any semi-competent person can be successful with enough cash injection and network to get good advice.
> You can't turn a donkey into a race horse but any semi-competent person can be successful with enough cash injection and network to get good advice.
You've obviously never actually started a company. Talk to me when you have. People with money flame out every day. A huge percentage of companies that do receive VC funding fail. Way, way more than half. An infinitesimal fraction of companies VCs invest in go on to be worth more than a billion dollars. An even smaller fraction of those go on to be worth more than 10 billion dollars. Jack Dorsey created two of them. There are only a handful of people on earth who have done that. And when I say a handful, I mean like you can literally count them on your hands.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#304So first they redefined and ruined the Tweet (the word their success added to the dictionary), by doubling the length. Now they're talking about redefining and ruining "following." I mean what else is there about Twitter besides tweeting, and followers? Read the signs, this guy wishes he were only in charge of Square.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't this run counter to even conventional wisdom about VC? 25-30% of all VC-backed startups liquidate all assets, and 75% return only the original investment. https://www.inc.com/john-mcdermott/report-3-out-of-4-venture...
That is a consequence of two things. 1) the all or nothing approach to business that VC backed startups take and 2) the lack of quality network for many founders. It's why I specifically mentioned network for good advice. If you look at the patterns emerging from silicon valley with the PayPal mafia and even YC itself there is a clear advantage to be had from A) access to immense amounts of cash coupled with B) a net…
So, again, to be clear, you believe that a person with access to:
A) A "network", i.e. is friends with talented people
And has access to:
B) "Immense amounts of cash". How much cash? 1 million? 10? 100?
Can easily earn a 10x-100x return on that money? You think turning 10 million into 100 million is easy? Do you know how many people are trying to do that? Do you have any idea how difficult that is even with access to a network and cash?
Money is extremely cheap. The biggest problem in silicon valley right now isn't access to capital - it's that there's too much capital chasing too few good ideas. VCs are desperate for something worth investing in, precisely because of how hard it is to create a good company.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
"User engagement" is not a single, well-defined, easily measurable thing. For one thing, it's easy for A/B tests to show something that looks good in the short term, but has longer-term negative effects. If your goal is to iterate quickly and stop your test as soon as you think it shows a positive result, you'll never see that. But more to the point, there's no guarantee that the "user engagement" metrics Twitter car…
I guarantee Twitter’s data scientists are using more than just “amount the user is clicking” to decide whether a UI or ranking change is beneficial.
it's hilarious that your main defense of twitter's design decisions is an appeal to twitter's own authority.
"twitter is doing these things for a reason and surely these reasons are good, otherwise they wouldn't be doing them!"
case closed my circular dude
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#307Earlier 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'm not really sure what you're trying to argue here. The simple fact is the guy created two deca-corn companies. That basically completely invalidates any ex-post arguments by some author about the quality of his management. What I mean by that is that if a thing succeeds spectacularly, maybe you should question your premises before questioning its methodology. The process that appears to you to be disorganized and aimless produced Twitter. It obviously did something right.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an honest question - why on earth should Twitter be an official support channel for a business? If I had a business, I would respond to Twitter support requests with “please see our support website for how to contact us” or “thanks, we are now contacting you.” I don’t know why Twitter users should get better support and it seems odd to me to rely on Twitter to provide or to ask for support.
> why on earth should Twitter be an official support channel for a business? The same reason you do anything - they’ll take their business elsewhere unless you provide service and support in the way they want it. People don’t like being told to go away and follow some other procedure when they have a problem. Might as well tell them they should avoid having any problems requiring support while you’re at it - that’ll…
This is flawed thinking. Surely you're not proposing to implement every support channel your users might want to use? People are generally happy to use designated channels, as long as it's discoverable, easy to use and effective.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
+1000 This completely ruins using Twitter as an official support channel for a business. I want to be notified immediately whenever my company is mentioned, but enabling email/push notifications so that I'm aware of these asap also means constantly opening Twitter just to dismiss whatever unsolicited spam they're trying to put in front of me. It adds up to quite a lot of wasted time and is a downright obnoxious user…
why on earth should Twitter be an official support channel for a business?
Note that the poster said "an official support channel" rather than "the official support channel". Adding more ways for customers to contact support is usually a good thing. There was no mention of taking away other channels that you might prefer.
Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter
#310The "one size fits all" approach to Twitter can't make everyone happy, maybe not even most people. Reddit really took off when they introduced subreddits so that there could be different interests, different rules, and different moderation.
So now the shameless plug: we built Bettr.social from the ground up to support groups for just this very reason. Users want the option of joining and/or creating their own groups that have control over content and behavior. It's sort of like a "Twitter with groups". You can also follow hashtags so you can follow topics, and not get someone's personal political views mixed in with their sports analysis or whatever. Not sure why Twitter has never allowed following hashtags. Weibo does.
Dorsey also mentioned the "Like." Facebook did well adding more reactions that just "like." People may like a post for different reasons, and people may react to a post in other ways than a "like." If there's no other reaction available, then they'll write something, often something nasty, and then the discussion can continue to go nasty and perpetuate. At Bettr.social we have several reactions like skeptical, troll, wow, and others (even Fake News). We think this helps reduce the snide remarks and drive-by one-time insults.
I don't think Twitter has innovated much in user experience in the past several years. They've change algorithms, and AI detection of abuse, but the features haven't really changed in awhile. And although not all change is good, it seems like there should have been some changes for the better in the UX.