Twitter is Pivoting • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#111

Post by patrickaljord » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 1:15 PM UTC

EvanKelly wrote: post #20

nemesisj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, his post may be insightful and interesting, but the point is that if any other startup on here spent post after post publicly criticising their direct competitor, it would hopefully be viewed as a negative thing. Why is App.net any different? There are plenty of ways to promote your scrappy and noble insurgency without sticking it in the eye of your competitor. Again, I think what app.net is doing is interestin…

DuckDuckGo publicly blogs about what they feel are the shortcomings of Google. I've seen similar feedback in the comments of the DDG articles.

Yep, that was me http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4744621

I think marketing your product by criticizing your competitor is fine, but constantly blogging about how bad/evil your competitor is can be tiring and people just don't care anymore "oh, it's X criticizing Y again to promote his product, how novel!".

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#112

Post by jQueryIsAwesome » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 1:40 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #93

MattRix wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but it's painfully obvious from your post that you don't actually use twitter, at least not regularly enough to "get it". - user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names - replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now. - lists really aren't that hard to use, I don't know what your problem wi…

- user names are a huge part of what makes Twitter interesting, imho it's not meant to be the type of service with real names I am genuinely curious of the use cases where the username adds more value than the name associated with the account. I'd also like to know what type of service twitter is supposed to be in your view. - replies do get grouped as complete conversations, and it's been that way for a while now. T…

- the username adds more value than the name associated with the account

Well; username is actually the ID; what you use to follow someone, reply someone, promote someone, etc.

- 140 char was a great thing to launch with just as facebook restricting to college campuses was a great hook

No, the limitation is actually good in the long run, you _have_ to be concise, very useful for most kinds of massive streams of information. In my view it would be like Youtube hosting pics and users having to navigate through both kinds of media.

In the other aspects I agree with you; Twitter haves many many problems and hasn't really improved much in years. The back button is extremely broken.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#113

Post by shinratdr » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 2:02 PM UTC

marshray wrote: post #90

Alex3917 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had an account since 2007 and this is the first I've ever heard of this also. Here is the explanation: "Place a period before the beginning of the @ if you plan on beginning your message with a mention, or else Twitter will only send that tweet to people who follow both you and the person you are mentioning." http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/09/15/a-list-twitters-lan...

Why is this not documented on Twitter somewhere I would have seen it?

Because it's an unofficial workaround. Twitter didn't assume people would want their followers to see their @replies.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#114

Post by pbreit » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 3:34 PM UTC

Leynos wrote: post #103

pbreit wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still confused. If I'm on someone's profile, the tweet box already includes @user. So if I go ahead and tweet in that box, it will not show up in my follower's feeds? It was not a "reply". I would agree that's totally broken but live feeds aren't even usable past 10 or 20 followees anyway so maybe it doesn't matter that much?

Tweets preceded by "@user" appear only in the timelines of the sender, the user in question and people following that user.

But everyone is saying that you have to be following _both_ people in order to see a "@reply" in timeline?

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#115

Post by ghostblog » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 4:10 PM UTC

"Admit failure and give up on trying to get normal people to tweet."

What are you saying? Fourteen year olds and ethnic minorities use this website. How normal can you get?

"An experienced Twitter user would know to add a “.” at the beginning of his message"

Thanks for the protip, Dalton.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#116

Post by anu_gupta » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 4:23 PM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #51

anu_gupta wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you're Zaid on Twitter, and that's your original account, you signed up about a year after Twitter launched.

Pretty sure I signed up on the day it launched because I remember reading the TC story:) Where do you see the sign up date? I either didn't tweet for a year or deleted my tweets at some point or held another account(unlikely since I don't think I'd get my 4 letter name a year after). edit: I have at least one other account: http://twitter.com/oonth

@zaid - member since August 2007. That's more than a year after Twitter actually launched, and your user number is in the 8 millions (ie more than 8 million accounts were created before that one).

You signed up for your other account in March 2007.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#117

Post by sans-serif » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 4:24 PM UTC

nemesisj wrote: post #2

I hate to be that (negative) guy, but I'm starting to get really tired of Dalton constantly pissing all over twitter. Particularly because he's competing against them. I'm an App.net backer, and I think it's cool what he's doing, but FFS, let someone else carry the water, if it even needs carrying at all. This all just feels really petty and whiney, particularly when you're already at work solving the problem.

How does how it feel to you have anything to do with the merits of the post? He naturally blogs about what he's obsessed with, and his opinions aren't any less valid because of who he is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#118

Post by makmanalp » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 4:29 PM UTC

sans-serif wrote: post #117

nemesisj wrote: post #2

I hate to be that (negative) guy, but I'm starting to get really tired of Dalton constantly pissing all over twitter. Particularly because he's competing against them. I'm an App.net backer, and I think it's cool what he's doing, but FFS, let someone else carry the water, if it even needs carrying at all. This all just feels really petty and whiney, particularly when you're already at work solving the problem.

How does how it feel to you have anything to do with the merits of the post? He naturally blogs about what he's obsessed with, and his opinions aren't any less valid because of who he is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

He didn't say the opinions were invalid. He says it sounds whiny, and it does. He says it's insidiously self-promoting, and it is.

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#119

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 9:29 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #37

spot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/Why-do-some-tweets-have-a-per... i knew twitter was broken but this takes the cake. i have been using twitter for years and had no idea.

Hey, Quora got slightly less obnoxious about blocking their content. Finally. Just a week or two ago, I followed a link to Quora and they were still doing the scummy old Experts Exchange trick of blurring out most of the answers.

I just tried them now and got the blurred answers. Maybe you have a Quora account you're signed into?

Re: Twitter is Pivoting

#120

Post by alxp » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 10:06 PM UTC

bentlegen wrote: post #36

state wrote: post #31

To me, what's implied by this piece — since it's written by Dalton — is that Twitter is leaving behind an opportunity that he plans to take advantage of. What remains to be seen is whether the thing they're leaving behind can be fully realized. Do people really need a short-form messaging platform for communication?

Or perhaps Twitter has already figured out that there is no opportunity, and Dalton is mistaken in believing it exists.

I think the opportunity Twitter is leaving behind won't pay off for Twitter's investors, but it is enough to be worth Dalton's time and effort to scoop up in Twitter's wake.