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What Twitter Can Be

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Re: What Twitter Can Be

#21

Post by themeek »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #14
rrggrr wrote: post #13

"Tweet nearby" & "Encrypted tweet nearby" & "P2P Tweet": These three functions would blow the lid off active user growth. Across the globe Twitter remains a key means for promoting events, demonstrations and encouraging political action. Give users the means to reach by locale (Concert), and securely by locale (Flash mob), and P2P (Iran, Syria, China) -- and sit back and watch the audience skyrocket.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point on Iran, Syria, China, but you are talking about subverting authoritarian governments, right? Why wouldn't those same governments require Twitter to cut those off? I don't see how a centralized service like Twitter can ever provide that.

You are right to point this out. The United States has tried many times to use social media platforms to cause uprising in other nations. These very same nations (including the ones enumerated above) do cut off the services. Take the US installation of ZunZuneo in Cuba and the governments crackdown on personal phones in response - China's ban of Google for US influence and foreign surveillance - Russia's machinations against Facebook for influencing its audience - Kiev's ban of CSOs as Western organization through UNITER was revealed - North Korea's hacking of SONY in response to its partnership with the US State Department and CIA on The Interview - Israel's hatred over Jeremy Bird's participation in "OneVoice" political campaigning over Twitter - etc, etc.

Continuing to use US private companies as soft weapons will increasingly harm the reputations and global standing of these corporations. The military-industrial complex gig is up. Other nations know what's happening. It's merely a matter of denying the company access to a population while making it look not so bad from the PR side.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#23

Post by Animats »

"Shortcomings in the direct response advertising category have resulted in the company coming in below the financial community’s quarterly estimates."

Well, yes. The problem with all social networks is that ads interfere with the "social". Ads are a big annoying guy getting in your face when you're trying to talk to someone. Or worse, they're your (soon to be former) "friends" who've been tricked into "sharing" (i.e. spamming) ads.

Remember, Twitter's big period of growth was before they had ads. They only put in ads when they had users hooked.

The first one is always free.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#24

Post by brador »

themagician wrote: post #8
marssaxman wrote: post #5

Nothing in there about turning it into a decentralized open network instead of a proprietary service, so I will continue not to care about Twitter.

We tried that. It didn't stick. You have to remember that in the early days Twitter and a log of competition. Jaiku, Pownce, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, etc.. Then you had the open source versions: Laconi.ca, Status.net, Friendi.ca, GNU Social, Twister, etc.. Say what you will about Twitter, but it's the only thing that ever got traction or had any sticking power.

How did Twitter get traction and sticking power where the others failed? What was it doing differently?

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#25

Post by oldmanjay »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #15
marssaxman wrote: post #5

Nothing in there about turning it into a decentralized open network instead of a proprietary service, so I will continue not to care about Twitter.

I don't understand the downvotes. Information is too important to be siloed and dominated by a single service. Identities are too valuable to be contracted into an @whoami which is more or less owned by one organization.

My guess is that the downvotes are because the comment was mostly content-free, expressing only a tangential opinion, with a mildly derogatory tone. That you agree with the opinion doesn't make it a good comment in the general sense.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#26

Post by personlurking »

moxyb wrote: post #3

I think he's describing the perfect digital news platform that I would think of.

IMHO, Twitter should only act as a digital news platform. I usually search for (the same) specific terms and look at nothing else. If Twitter knew this, they could make the whole experience way more seamless and pleasant for me (saved searches and following is a pretty long work-around).

The problem with such a platform would be how to know if someone in a riot (for ex.) is posting 'news' or not. This seems to be where channels would go a long way to sorting through the hay to find the needle.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#27

Post by moey »

Serious question people, out of the people here that USE Twitter, how much would you pay a month for Twitter, if anything?

http://directpoll.com/v?XDVhEtRR2EAlaVw2sOrQkWlBcohF0N2Z

I value the service, and am wondering what other people value it at.

I will post the results here after set number of people vote.

UPDATE Initially I was going to wait a little longer, but after looking at the results from this sample, the trend is pretty be predictable.

RESULTS LINK: (VIEW AFTER VOTING PLEASE) http://directpoll.com/r?XDVhEtRR2EAlaVw2sOrQkWlBcohFw9na8aNc...

I think the results deserve a discussion on their own...

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#28

Post by arxpoetica »

moey wrote: post #27

Serious question people, out of the people here that USE Twitter, how much would you pay a month for Twitter, if anything? http://directpoll.com/v?XDVhEtRR2EAlaVw2sOrQkWlBcohF0N2Z I value the service, and am wondering what other people value it at. I will post the results here after set number of people vote. UPDATE Initially I was going to wait a little longer, but after looking at the results from this sample, the…

I can't imagine ever paying for Twitter—but then, I thought it was a joke when I first heard of it, and I was wrong. ;)

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#29

Post by marssaxman »

oldmanjay wrote: post #25
aaron-lebo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the downvotes. Information is too important to be siloed and dominated by a single service. Identities are too valuable to be contracted into an @whoami which is more or less owned by one organization.

My guess is that the downvotes are because the comment was mostly content-free, expressing only a tangential opinion, with a mildly derogatory tone. That you agree with the opinion doesn't make it a good comment in the general sense.

I'm sorry that it came off that way. I was trying to point out the fact that there is a fundamental problem with twitter's model which this article completely fails to address: the tension between Twitter the company and its need to make money, and Twitter the communication service which needs to facilitate connection between human beings.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#30

Post by state »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #9

For me, the biggest problem with Twitter are their Draconian rules concerning third-party apps. I had several ideas for cool apps built on top of the Twitter API (e.g. a Twitter-based news aggregator, an online volunteering app, ...), but each time I gave up on the idea after reading the terms of their developer program: No showing of tweets with content from other social networks, no altering in the presentation of…

But how exactly do they make money on developers using their API?
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