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What Twitter Can Be

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Re: What Twitter Can Be

#61
post #45
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 used Twitter quite a bit for work purposes (before I left CNET/CBS last year to found a recommendation startup) and might have paid for it then. But the value for me was in interacting with a large number of people, and I suspect even charging a few dollars a year would lead to the vast majority of accounts disappearing, reducing the remaining users' incentive to pay, leading to more accounts disappearing, etc.

Lets say one had to pay 1 cent to tweet, don't you think that the quality of data would be much better? A lot of spam bots would be out of business.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#62
post #33

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 m…

What is it about Twitter's list manager that doesn't address this issue for you?

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#63
post #50

One of the best use cases of twitter for me is customer service, a few complaints about @comcast is way more effective than calling and waiting on the phone for 20 minutes and fighting with the customer service agent... I was able to resolve my issue with a few back and forth DMs with @comcastcares ... I don't think many people have enjoyed this experience, it's like night and day.

Yup. I also resolved my issue with Ubisoft UPlay much faster via Twitter message.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#64
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…

The users who have the most to gain from Twitter are those with a huge following as they monetise their following outside of Twitter. Be it that they have something to sell or that they are campaigning. I there would find it reasonable to charge accounts that have more than 1000 followers per tweet a small fee.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#66
post #53

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, s…

How do you combine twitter list with flipboard?

Username (top left corner) -> Following -> Accounts -> Twitter -> Your Lists -> Follow

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#67
This might sound very weird in this day and age, but in my professional life (web developer), Twitter and G+ compete content-wise. And G+ wins easily.

Disclaimer: I'm a very light Twitter user. I'm almost surely missing out on features I never bothered to discover.

The main advantage G+ has in my eyes is its signal to noise ratio. It seems far better than Twitter's. Again, specifically in my professional world, quite a lot of relevant people post on G+. I guess they either don't post personal stuff or efficiently use Circles. Many, but definitely not all, are of course close to Google.

Some other advantages for me: the fact that you can read the whole story (not just sentence-per-sentence) and the -theoretical- ability to drag in non-professional relationships (yes, I like Circles).

I realize no one takes G+ serious anymore and that it's a graveyard for most. But it seems to work well for some (professionally). In a way it can make Twitter lose (one of) its edge(s): follow tech-people.

This isn't meant as a G+ promotion. I just wanted to make clear why Twitter might not be a good fit for some.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#68
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"tweet" became a verb and noun.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#69
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 am a Twitter user but only because of social network inertia. If they charged me $0.01 once, I'd happily take the opportunity to leave. On the other hand, I would happily pay ( today ) for something that gave me full control over my content.

I'm not a twitter power user, so what exactly do you want to control about your twitter content? More than just deleting tweets/pictures? Serious question.

Re: What Twitter Can Be

#70
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as the biggest problem with Twitter also. Twitter is my favorite app, but it's because I have spent five plus years curating my feed. There is a fundamental problem with the way they onboard new users and this is why so many people don't stick around. The onboarding process asks you to select interests and then recommends people to follow based on those interests. However, they often recommend celebrities…

How did you go about curating your feed? I tried to get into Twitter for a while and ultimately stopped using it. Part of the problem I think is I have kind of a wide range of interests -- sports, software, entrepreneurship, etc. So Twitter probably can't gauge my interests very well. I ended up with a lot of those self-promotion feeds and ESPN writers, but nothing ultimately with substance (except for certain people…

Lists are the way to go.

Conference or other temporal hashtags are a good way to discover users who are focused on a single topic, who you can then curate into a list. Once you find a few topic experts, they become a discovery source for other experts.

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