What Twitter Can Be • Hacker News Board

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#31

Post by lfowles » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

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…

Your poll is blocked at work, but I would feel comfortable paying per outgoing tweet, somewhat like SMS. In fact, let's extend that with two plans:

    $20/mo unlimited tweets  

    1¢/tweet, top up your account a dollar at a time

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#32

Post by petercooper » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:18 PM UTC

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…

That's a tricky question, because while I would pay, say, $5 per month for it, if every existing user had to pay $5 for it, the value would decrease significantly as most people probably wouldn't pay that much and it'd decrease my reach. If I were to pay merely for added benefits over what I have now, it entirely depends on what they would be..

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#33

Post by kin » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:18 PM UTC

At first Twitter was awesome because of their API but then that closed off so now I have to use their stuff only I feel as if they haven't done anything in the past few years but scale.

I've tried being a user for years but they really need a better way to manage and view lists. The frequency of celebrity tweets vs. friend tweets vs. company tweets is all different. How I ingest that content is differs depending on my mood or what I want. Thus far, there's no easy way to sort through the content to quickly find what I'm looking for or interested in. It all requires endless scrolling and weeding out the noise.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#34

Post by Igglyboo » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

state wrote: post #30

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?

Charge for less rate limiting?

As the app grows the usage grows and twitter makes more money.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#35

Post by sirbetsalot » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

of course the author misses the biggest reason twitter sucks. Abuse, fake accounts, and trolling cause more "authentic" real name users to leave every day. Twitter does nothing to punish people who can just grab a picture of you from the net, create and account and start ruining your reputation instantly. And we all know you can't win against a troll unless you out troll them with your own bots. Twitter is the stained toilet bowl of human interaction. Twitter would instantly better if it forced real names and banned people for abusive comments outright. Until then, Twitter is unusable.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#36

Post by aaronbrethorst » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

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…

http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-union/

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#37

Post by shortstuffsushi » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:21 PM UTC

This article at one point proposes splitting content into separate apps. I'm unsure of the end goal of this; I guess that it's trying to provide a clearer divide for users, allowing them to filter content in a sense. It seems like this would be better solved by filtering better within the app, separating apps is just going to lead to more confusion, imo.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#38

Post by krisdol » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:21 PM UTC

state wrote: post #30

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?

The way I see it, third party applications increase the value of using twitter, bringing more users to it. Twitter as a social sharing tool has very little value to me, personally, but as a chat tool, marketing tool, or customer support tool I think it has a lot of potential. Its presentation/UX is not very optimized for those experiences, though -- and that's why third party apps exist. If an open source project builds its chatroom on top of twitter, that's a huge value-add and would bring people to use twitter in order to efficiently communicate with the company, in the same way people use Slack because companies host their support on it.

By the way, I think their rate limiting is fine for most third party apps. There is a lot that can be done with intermediate caching and the Streaming API.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#39

Post by mahouse » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

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…

$0, taking into account what was of app.net

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#40

Post by walterbell » Wed, Jun 03, 2015, 7:27 PM UTC

Twitter lists (especially in combination with Flipboard) are useful for filtering/curation, but have seen few improvements and remain unavailable in the mobile app.

Lists could exhibit business value comparable to Pinterest curation, if Twitter paid any attention to the feature. They are micro-social networks that amplify the value of Twitter's main accomplishment: a directory of pseudonymns for writers, marketers, subject-matter experts and other publishers of time-sensitive content.