Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#141

Post by mcintyre1994 » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

jrometty wrote: post #137

criddell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dave Winer mocked up how a fat tweet could look and I think he has it right: http://scripting.com/2015/10/02/whatWouldAFatTweetLookLike.h... Obviously, they've thought of this internally too. I wonder what the point of the 140 character limit is today (I think it made sense originally).

that looks terrible. my favorite part of tweetstorms is the compartmentalization of ideas and arguments. if a point in the story is 50 chars, its 50 chars with a break point. if its 100, let it be 100. making the story one string feel like reading long text, whereas breaking it down feels more comfortable to me. but this is all subjective, and that website's design is pretty sleek :)

This is an interesting point - my first thought was isn't this solved with paragraphs, that can obviously be variable lengths? But what about favourites and retweets - I disagree with you that it's easier to read parts as separate tweets than paragraphs would be, but the UI to retweet or favourite a paragraph seems awkward and I think those functions on parts of a tweet storm are important.

That also raises the question of whether a paragraph should be restricted to 140 characters (assuming that's the see more limit) so it doesn't create a see more tweet itself when retweeted, not sure whether that matters.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#142

Post by abalone » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:29 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…

Realtime news and straight-from-the-horse's mouth access to celebrities is fundamentally a good opportunity that no one does better than Twitter right now. The question is whether they'll have the decisiveness to make it a better experience for a broader audience without alienating the core that generates the best content.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#143

Post by shampine » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

tajano wrote: post #133

meatysnapper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they need to figure out how to fundamentally improve the ease of use of the whole thing I've frequently heard this theory, that Twitter's problem is that it's too complicated. I don't buy it. It has a simpler UI than Facebook or Snapchat, and it's not significantly more complicated than Instagram or Vine or Periscope or any other media sharing platform. If you personally enjoy Twitter and derive value from it, it's…

I think that was more common to hear as people didn't seem to understand @messages and #hashtags. So when they saw:

> .@jack #awesome

They didn't know what that meant. Now that hashtags and @ style messaging are just about everywhere, I don't think it is a valid theory.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#144

Post by misiti3780 » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #60

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…

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…

"because i'm so special i'll only work 6 hours a day, 4 days a week, 1 week a month"

generally curious, where did you read about Dorsey having this mindset?

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#145

Post by pratyushag » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

uptown wrote: post #95

timboslice wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to vanity reasons (they have "your" handle?) or for some other reason?

It correlates to a domain for a site I'm in the process of building. I haven't registered the brand's trademark yet, so I'm unable to claim the Twitter username based on that criteria. Seems like the only route they provide for this kind of thing.

I believe if you have the domain name you should be able to get the twitter handle. You can always just submit for a trademark, that's easy and cheap.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#146

Post by misiti3780 » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

SonicSoul wrote: post #27

bru_ wrote: post #5

People are worried that Jack will be too busy between Twitter and Square, but what they don't know is that the dude's been completely spaced out for the last 4 years, making the same motivational presentation about his Dad's pizza shop to anyone that will listen. Nobody at Twitter talks to Jack anymore, even the most Senior people.

There was a great article a while back [on founding and rise of Twitter and Dorsey's bio] that did not paint him in a good light: "All is fair in love and Twitter" [0] As one former Twitter employee has said, “The greatest product Jack Dorsey ever made was Jack Dorsey.” [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/all-is-fair-in-lo...

Nick Bilton's "Hatching Twitter" painted a pretty bad picture about him also - I was surprised - I thought it was going to be a puff piece before I read it.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#147

Post by curiousjorge » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:46 PM UTC

What if you created a website that no matter how hard you try, you can never make enough money to justify it's insane valuation? You hire the guy that created it. If that fails years down the road, hire a blonde.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#148

Post by hockley » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

killwhitey wrote: post #117

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.

If they went back to their roots as a messaging API for other apps, they would not have to build new apps. Become the messaging backbone for the Internet. That's plenty of scale to go after.

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#149

Post by 001sky » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:49 PM UTC

nkohari wrote: post #135

talmand wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my point.

It's hard for me to get that from what you wrote. It seemed that your point was more that the existence of Twitter means it's easy to reproduce it, but before Twitter, it was difficult to envision a site like Twitter. My counterpoint is that it's not actually the idea that's interesting, it's the fact that they've convinced lots of people to use it, and have built a system powerful enough to support that scale.

The original comment expressly states a "non-scaling" version of twitter...what is so hard about that? this sub=thread then clearly illustrates what "non-scaling" means and doesn't mean. smh

Re: Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive

#150

Post by loganu » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 6:51 PM UTC

mattzito wrote: post #116

Osmium wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sti…

From what I've read in the Musk biography and elsewhere, he is involved in really really low level decisions, to the point that he's been labelled a "nano-manager." Surely he's not involved in absolutely every decision, but by all accounts he is much, much closer to the details than you would expect a CEO to be. Especially when it comes to design/ engineering details.