Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#71

Post by Kiro » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

lilyball wrote: post #43

someperson wrote: post #28

It's worth constantly re-iterating that Vine [1] was shutdown by Twitter in 2017 back when Twitter was losing a lot of cash. It was available for any tech company to purchase for pennies on the dollar and was losing $10 million/month to run [2]. Vine was very popular and a lot of people were very disappointed when it was shutdown. It predated TikTok and Musical.ly and certainly had the vast majority of users for shor…

> adding a news feed algorithm to keep up with a competitor would not have been that hard I'm not convinced this is true. TikTok's algorithmic "For You Page" is astonishingly good. Somehow TikTok manages to zero in on stuff relevant to users extremely quickly, and without relying on spamming a lot of general interest popular content. I created a TikTok account recently and literally within minutes I was getting an ex…

What kind of content do you watch on TikTok?

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#72

Post by fermienrico » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 5:57 AM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #54

The United States' brand is that we are an open, dynamic, stable place to do business in. If you have capital its safe here because of our respect of the rule of law, and private property rights. We should strive to be the best place on earth to do business in. We are an open country and we benefit from being open. We benefit from competition. We are literally richer by definition - when business like TikTok choose t…

United States' brand has been damaged by our own doing. Specifically, the executives that paid off the politicians whose job was to ensure a level playing field in terms of trade. I am really convinced of the following, open for critiques:

US Executives paid off politicians who then allowed trade deficit to pile up, we saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in the history of mankind - Some 30 trillion dollars of growth in China. Whatever was returned then went into American executives' who made sure that the median wages were as low as possible (paid off politicians again) which lead to massive wealth inequality here domestically.

I think the people to blame are not executives. These are the wolves. The real assholes of America are the politicians, both left and right, who put their own interest before public's. Infrastructure, education, building the nation to be capable to compete was put aside, instead they promoted consumerism, big-fat American dream and laughed off to their multimillion dollar estates.

You make a good point about rule of law - yes, it is in favor of big corp. Not for medium and small businesses. Italy has some ridiculous % of GDP coming from companies less than 50 employees. I forgot what that % is, but it is like 50% or more.

This is what America could have been. A powerhouse of innovation, extremely motivated workforce, excellent education system and health system, virtually no poverty and infrastructure could be unlike any other nation.

Living here in Silicon Valley, it feels like a crumbling place ridden with crime, feces and homeless people everywhere. Depressing.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#73

Post by refurb » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 5:58 AM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #54

The United States' brand is that we are an open, dynamic, stable place to do business in. If you have capital its safe here because of our respect of the rule of law, and private property rights. We should strive to be the best place on earth to do business in. We are an open country and we benefit from being open. We benefit from competition. We are literally richer by definition - when business like TikTok choose t…

Don't disagree that an open business climate is optimal, but when a foreign power is using business to undermine our country, that puts our optimal business climate at risk.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#74

Post by chii » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 5:58 AM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #68

I actually prefer Twitter than MSFT After all, they had Vine back then

and managed it terribly, and shut it down to the disappointment of many.

MSFT is a much better business, and have the cash to back a long strategy imho.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#75

Post by chii » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 5:59 AM UTC

thekyle wrote: post #24

tempsy wrote: post #23

Why doesn't Twitter just resurrect Vine? They literally have all the source code.

Maybe management don't want to admit to shareholders that they made a horrible mistake.

Hallmark of terrible management to put their own ego into the equation.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#76

Post by chii » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

mantap wrote: post #37

babesh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vine wasn’t designed right. TikTok is much better designed in terms of content surfacing and content creation.

I don't agree with this at all. It was much easier to find good content on vine because vines spread organically. TikTok rewards whoever can appeal to the lowest common denominator.

What's the difference between organic spread (via manual sharing) and "inorganic" spread by algorithmic feed curation, if the end result is that there is going to be _some_ content that gets popular?

I would argue that the algorithmic feed curation spreads content that has the capacity to be viral much faster.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#77

Post by refurb » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #72

justinzollars wrote: post #54

The United States' brand is that we are an open, dynamic, stable place to do business in. If you have capital its safe here because of our respect of the rule of law, and private property rights. We should strive to be the best place on earth to do business in. We are an open country and we benefit from being open. We benefit from competition. We are literally richer by definition - when business like TikTok choose t…

United States' brand has been damaged by our own doing. Specifically, the executives that paid off the politicians whose job was to ensure a level playing field in terms of trade. I am really convinced of the following, open for critiques: US Executives paid off politicians who then allowed trade deficit to pile up, we saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in the history of mankind - Some 30 trillion dollars of gro…

we saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in the history of mankind - Some 30 trillion dollars of growth in China.

Economic growth is not the same as a wealth transfer. It's not a zero sum game.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#78

Post by Kiro » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

arielm wrote: post #55

rel2thr wrote: post #45

I don’t get how twitter and msft could buy just the US operations of a company like tiktok... like do the developers and PMs still work in China and then twitter just helps maintain the servers. Or does the app diverge into 2 apps at that point with 2 separate dev teams?

There are already separate apps for China and non-China users (and android is split across Europe).

> and android is split across Europe

What does that mean?

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#79

Post by fermienrico » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #77

fermienrico wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United States' brand has been damaged by our own doing. Specifically, the executives that paid off the politicians whose job was to ensure a level playing field in terms of trade. I am really convinced of the following, open for critiques: US Executives paid off politicians who then allowed trade deficit to pile up, we saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in the history of mankind - Some 30 trillion dollars of gro…

we saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in the history of mankind - Some 30 trillion dollars of growth in China. Economic growth is not the same as a wealth transfer. It's not a zero sum game.

It is an opportunity cost though, no? That wealth could have resulted in domestic progress.

If I am making Jeans in 1995 in America, but in 2000 I lay off workers, shut down cotton fields, dying processes, etc. and off shore it, while hiring 2 people instead of 50 - to manage suppliers, that indeed, unquestionably has resulted in loss of wealth.

Can you explain how this would be a zero sum game? I know @naval keeps tooting that and it makes sense to me in macroeconomically, but I can't convince myself - I think of a closed thermodynamic system with system energy = work done + heat transfer out. That's how I think of the economic systems too when it comes to microeconomics.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#80

Post by djeiasbsbo » Sun, Aug 09, 2020, 6:18 AM UTC

someperson wrote: post #46

lilyball wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adding a news feed algorithm to keep up with a competitor would not have been that hard I'm not convinced this is true. TikTok's algorithmic "For You Page" is astonishingly good. Somehow TikTok manages to zero in on stuff relevant to users extremely quickly, and without relying on spamming a lot of general interest popular content. I created a TikTok account recently and literally within minutes I was getting an ex…

Try opening YouTube in an incognito tab and start watching a few videos (on say, cooking). You'll notice the recommended videos on the homepage gets very accurate very fast. The algorithms behind recommendation engines are well understood. Companies can and do invest huge amounts into making their algorithms better and it yes, it definitely takes a lot of effort to tweak and refine the algorithm to make the overall e…

Regarding your example with youtube, how do you know that youtube doesn't just recognise you and serve you your "personal profile"?

Did you completely change your IP address?

Did you spoof/hide any other aspects of your browser configuration?

Private browsing or not, you would probably easily be recognisable based on IP + browser fingerprint alone so youtube could just continue to serve you the same videos.