Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#111

Post by aswanson » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #102

seiji wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk lives in LA and takes his private jet up to San Jose every week to work at Tesla (then back to LA to work at SpaceX). If anything, Musk has two full time jobs (priorities: 1. SpaceX; 2. Tesla; 3. everything else) and actually does 80-100 hours per week of work. He's not out creating vanity designer clothing lines in his spare time. You can't create world class products or companies while maintaing a silly "becau…

Is there any reason that Musk couldn't colocate SpaceX and Tesla in Freemont instead of SpaceX being located in Hawthorne? What's the benefit of SpaceX being in the LA area?

He has stated that most of the experienced aerospace engineers live there and it would be a hard sell to get many of them to relocate.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#112

Post by yuhong » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

From https://twitter.com/SJosephBurns/status/640698530038943748:

"Twitter needs a CEO who is an @elonmusk with the Street and a @pmarca in the tweets. - @zerobeta"

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#113

Post by inthewoods » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

I keep wondering if this is going to be like Marissa Mayer joining Yahoo - much fanfare, some movement, but at the end of the day she's been unable to significantly move the needle. I just wonder if Twitter fundamentally isn't as scalable an idea/product as Facebook et al. It's obviously Jack's job to make it that - but what if the basic form of Twitter just isn't as compelling, no matter how you change it or dress it up?

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#114

Post by jerrickhoang » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:01 PM UTC

kylebgorman wrote: post #44

I'm short Twitter. The fact of the matter is it that Twitter should never have become a multibillion-dollar company. There is no barrier to entry into this space---any competent web developer could make a non-scaling Twitter in an afternoon---except network effects, and those have proved weak due to poor user experience, particularly for new users. Twitter should have treated itself like a utility, and focused less o…

> There is no barrier to entry into this space---any competent web developer could make a non-scaling Twitter in an afternoon---except network effects

As a backend engineer, I feel offended by this statement of yours.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#115

Post by misiti3780 » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #91

kylebgorman wrote: post #44

I'm short Twitter. The fact of the matter is it that Twitter should never have become a multibillion-dollar company. There is no barrier to entry into this space---any competent web developer could make a non-scaling Twitter in an afternoon---except network effects, and those have proved weak due to poor user experience, particularly for new users. Twitter should have treated itself like a utility, and focused less o…

lol if it's so easy, I implore you to create a Twitter competitor... and to make your challenge easier, instead of it being worth $20 billion, we'll lower the bar to, say, $150 million. It's already been done..every major web 2.0 success has many clones that all tried but failed to gain the necessary momentum and marketshare to become as successful as Twitter or Dropbox, for example. Even Evernote, despite all the at…

to further your point (i think) app.net tried and failed build a competitor:

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/app-net#/entity

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#116

Post by mattzito » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:11 PM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #109

ar7hur wrote: post #12

I still think it's impossible to run two companies that both require so much attention, given their stage. Yes Jobs had Apple and Pixar, and Musk has Tesla and SpaceX. But both Pixar and SpaceX don't really require day-to-day CEO attention, they follow long term plans (movies, rockets). That's really different from Square and Twitter, which are both, in their own ways, in a kind of trouble. I'd love to be proven wron…

> SpaceX [doesn't] really require day-to-day CEO attention Really? What's special about SpaceX that it doesn't require a full-time CEO? I'd imagine, considering the scope of their task and the scale of their ambition, it'd require more hands-on time than most.

I'm not the GP, but I think its' not a very full-time role because movement is slow and progressive. They have the next 18 months of what the company is going to do locked down and defined. I would also suspect they have strong 2nd level exec leadership to handle day to day. Elon only needs to get involved on big strategic decisions and crises, plus routine periodic budget and financial assessments.

I'm sure he's still working more than 40 hours a week across all of his companies, but I don't think he needs to be in the room for every major meeting.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#117

Post by killwhitey » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

inthewoods wrote: post #113

I keep wondering if this is going to be like Marissa Mayer joining Yahoo - much fanfare, some movement, but at the end of the day she's been unable to significantly move the needle. I just wonder if Twitter fundamentally isn't as scalable an idea/product as Facebook et al. It's obviously Jack's job to make it that - but what if the basic form of Twitter just isn't as compelling, no matter how you change it or dress i…

Then his job is find something else for Twitter to make. Facebook has launched a lot of experimental apps like Paper, Rooms, Slingshot, Messenger. And they bought Instagram which is very successful. Under Costolo Twitter bought vine and periscope, but they haven't tried to experiment with new app ideas internally.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#118

Post by niccaluim » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

jerrickhoang wrote: post #114

kylebgorman wrote: post #44

I'm short Twitter. The fact of the matter is it that Twitter should never have become a multibillion-dollar company. There is no barrier to entry into this space---any competent web developer could make a non-scaling Twitter in an afternoon---except network effects, and those have proved weak due to poor user experience, particularly for new users. Twitter should have treated itself like a utility, and focused less o…

> There is no barrier to entry into this space---any competent web developer could make a non-scaling Twitter in an afternoon---except network effects As a backend engineer, I feel offended by this statement of yours.

They did say "non-scaling." Though that's a bit like saying any competent shipbuilder could build a non-floating boat.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#119

Post by meatysnapper » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

inthewoods wrote: post #113

I keep wondering if this is going to be like Marissa Mayer joining Yahoo - much fanfare, some movement, but at the end of the day she's been unable to significantly move the needle. I just wonder if Twitter fundamentally isn't as scalable an idea/product as Facebook et al. It's obviously Jack's job to make it that - but what if the basic form of Twitter just isn't as compelling, no matter how you change it or dress i…

Almost certainly. Twitter's user base is not growing, and their product basically hasn't changed in 5 years. They have a valuable brand, but they need to figure out how to fundamentally improve the ease of use of the whole thing and make a decent value proposition. Photos, messages, videos, search... make the app not suck.

Snapchat and Instagram are very quickly taking over the celebrity/new/sports one-to-many angle from Twitter. Once celebrities depart, Twitter will have only news, and that's not enough most likely.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#120

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #17

fitzwatermellow wrote: post #9

Congrats, @jack Would love to see twtr become a platform for a myriad of third-party apps. Wouldn't it be great to place a market order by messaging @bats "buy $TWTR 10,000 30.00". Or order a limo with @uber "2 people in one hour to jfk airport"?

> Or order a limo with @uber "2 people in one hour to jfk airport"? Why would typing out a generic request to a several square mile area without any identifying information be better than a GPS enabled app with real time communications, mapping, and integrated payment? I see this kind of comment all the time (eg that ridiculous "magic" SMS startup) and always wonder how otherwise rational, linear thinkers develop thi…

You describe a tech problem, and not a really intractable one. It already has "real time communications (as, yknow, the main purpose of the service)", it can already do GPS coords, and expect payment integration soon.

I'd love to see Twitter become a "command line of the web". Add voice integration on top of it via siri/google/etc, and it come become the plaintext glue between a lot of services.

What we have here is a pub/sub message transmission layer that just happens to be used by a lot of people for personal communication. Having machines use that for other things is something that's already been experimented with - using it as a de-facto API layer is a logical step.