561–570 of 1001 posts
Happy to see a CTO promoted to CEO, hopefully a signal that Twitter is still committed to growing/incubating the engineering side of the business.
I agree, but is Twitter really suffering with any engineering problems? I generally would like to see a CTO come in charge but here's a unique case where someone from product might be more suitable.
It will be interesting to see how Twitter changes as a result. Twitter with selective following and setting your timeline to 'time order' creates a pretty good environment for me. It feels like the equivalent of living in only a few chosen 'subreddits' rather than getting the full frontal reddit experience.
This seems to hold true for many social media sites: facebook, reddit, twitter. It takes effort on behalf of the user to make their experience on the site "better". And by better I mean, less divisive, and less mindless scrolling of memes/low effort content. Thinking about it from the business's perspective, it probably ultimately also lowers their user engagement metrics. Users get a higher quality experience using…
It takes effort on behalf of the user to make their
experience on the site "better"
I would say that for me, Twitter falls approximately halfway between:
1. Facebook: which is only barely tolerable, after much effort, and still seems to optimize for negative emotions, spam, etc
and
2. Reddit: with minimal effort (just need to subscribe to subreddits) it is an entirely personalized experience of exactly what I want to see
Twitter and other social media are probably the biggest problem of our time. By providing simple rules of information flow: small amount of content, retweet, followers) and rewards (likes), they've created the most efficient engines for finding and spreading novelty at the expense of everything else. There are no incentives to improve accuracy, increase thoughtfulness, paint nuance. Fact checking gets lost in the win…
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011647630/ William Randolph Hearst ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst ) did all of this first in the early 1900s. (Along with his rival Pulitzer. But the image above is clearly in Hearst's image, a fact probably lost to the modern audience) The "problems" you state are far older than Twitter, and its best to study history and the problem of "Yellow Journalism".…
The old press was broadcast-only and had to catter to the lowest common denominator. As a result, at least some people were immune.
The new "press" is crowdsourced and tailored just for you. Social media doesn't even have to do research on what works or what doesn't on who. Natural selection by means of retweeting does all the work. You can find misinformation of all levels of sophistication, all the way to incorrect scientific papers if thats your shtick. (It will mostly be based on reading abstract conclusions in those cases without checking quality of methodology, or on whatever the funding intrests of big companies are)
It will be interesting to see how Twitter changes as a result. Twitter with selective following and setting your timeline to 'time order' creates a pretty good environment for me. It feels like the equivalent of living in only a few chosen 'subreddits' rather than getting the full frontal reddit experience.
This seems to hold true for many social media sites: facebook, reddit, twitter. It takes effort on behalf of the user to make their experience on the site "better". And by better I mean, less divisive, and less mindless scrolling of memes/low effort content. Thinking about it from the business's perspective, it probably ultimately also lowers their user engagement metrics. Users get a higher quality experience using…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The class of problem and its origins are constant in the interaction between human nature and an open market. The specific problems of today are utterly unlike anything older. The medium is overwhelmingly determinate of impact. The simplistic version of this is: there are profound non-linearities introduced by lack of friction. "Superficial" differences in the role of feedback and tailored results which are noise in…
> The specific problems of today are utterly unlike anything older. The medium is overwhelmingly determinate of impact. The USA literally started a war on false pretenses and took over the Philippines as a result of Yellow Journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(1889) This included at least 15 years of harsh occupation, as the Philippine Katipunan (in the north) and Moros (the Muslims of the south) fough…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much of the value that a CEO adds is in figuring out which rules can be broken without adverse consequences. They're accountable for results; if they raise shareholder value doing terrible things but never get caught, that's a win for shareholders, and they get to keep their position. If they do get caught, they get to be the fall guy, they resign, the board gets to say "We are shocked that such things occurred, we h…
> The average person doesn't like to inhabit the Hobbesian reality that CEOs do, where they're accountable for results and any bad things happening are automatically their fault Does this actually happen though? I'm not sure I've ever seen a President or CEO of a company be held accountable for bad behavior or bad decisions in any meaningful way. Best case scenario, you mess up and get "fired" (with a million-dollar-…
Ironic that his very own medium is insufficient to convey enough information, so he has to post a picture of a document. smh.
I have no particular beef with Dorsey but I think this would make sense. He's been CEO of both Square and Twitter for years now and no matter what time you wake up in the morning or however many specials diets you undertake you're not going to be able to give the focus a solo CEO is. I think the bigger issue is who gets to replace him: will it be someone with smart ideas or someone to serve as a puppet of activist in…
I've noticed that lots of C-suite and owner/CEO startup people have like three to five active business roles on their Linkedins. A fun case of "rules for thee, but not for me" when it comes to anti-moonlighting clauses and such. I can't "give it my all" if I take some weekend gigs, but you can hold two C-suite positions, be on two boards, plus have an "advisory" role with some startup? It's a lot like drug testing fo…
Ironic that his very own medium is insufficient to convey enough information, so he has to post a picture of a document. smh.
The medium supports images so I’m not sure this critique is valid.