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Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

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Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#161

Post by cyber_gr1zzly »

davycro wrote: post #96
dotBen wrote: post #18

Refocus the company to be the Netflix of live TV, focusing on the delivery of live sports and news broadcasts while enabling fans/viewers to discuss in real time. It's a greenfield space no one else is really jumping upon yet. Focus may have turned to on-demand TV, but people still want to watch sports live, and Twitter already has acquired some of those deals as the sport franchises get more comfortable with online…

"Twitter's modern-day utility seems very low outside of news/sports/politics" Twitter has tremendous utility for the medical community. I am final year medical student and through twitter can follow worldwide leaders in emergency medicine (my field of interest). These doctors post clinical factoids, cases reports, unique ekgs, and other learning points live from the wards (all de-identified to protect patients of cou…

Twitter also has incredible utility in terms of the InfoSec and Quant communities. All the latest papers and exploits are posted regularly, something that exists nowhere else. It also extends across borders, I follow numerous Chinese, Italian, and Middle Eastern hackers who post code and associating write-ups regularly.

The same goes for stock traders, the network offers incredible insights.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#162

Post by kleiba »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #156
dotBen wrote: post #18

Refocus the company to be the Netflix of live TV, focusing on the delivery of live sports and news broadcasts while enabling fans/viewers to discuss in real time. It's a greenfield space no one else is really jumping upon yet. Focus may have turned to on-demand TV, but people still want to watch sports live, and Twitter already has acquired some of those deals as the sport franchises get more comfortable with online…

> Twitter's modern-day utility seems very low outside of news/sports/politics What's the evidence for this claim? In academia, Twitter is super important, much more than Facebook or any other social platform. Academics are addicted to Twitter and I think you could charge them, e.g., for tweets longer than 140 characters.

I'm academic. I'm not addicted to twitter, nor is anyone of my coworkers.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#163

Post by eropple »

grandalf wrote: post #159

I think Twitter is already pretty great. My suggestions are below: - Twitter is a platform, open it up to allow any clients first class access. - Stop political censorship immediately. It's fine to prevent scams and bot-nets, but do not stifle political speech. - Lower burn rate. Cancel all of the product-oriented projects that are expensive, simply focus on building the infrastructure to make Twitter's platform as i…

> do not stifle political speech

And when that political speech threatens violence or is intended to foment violence against a person or people? 'Cause I'm not saying you're conflating the two, but a whole lot of people for whom this is an axe they grind really kind of constantly do.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#164

Post by dzonga »

Btw I made an app[0] last year as my first iOS app which centers conversations around Live events using hashtags.

Based on comments on this thread, with some UX improvements the app could meet a lot your requirements. Will gladly accept feedback, and willing to iterate.

[0]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/event-is/id1141185734?mt=8

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#165

Post by [deleted] »

eropple wrote: post #163
grandalf wrote: post #159

I think Twitter is already pretty great. My suggestions are below: - Twitter is a platform, open it up to allow any clients first class access. - Stop political censorship immediately. It's fine to prevent scams and bot-nets, but do not stifle political speech. - Lower burn rate. Cancel all of the product-oriented projects that are expensive, simply focus on building the infrastructure to make Twitter's platform as i…

> do not stifle political speech And when that political speech threatens violence or is intended to foment violence against a person or people? 'Cause I'm not saying you're conflating the two, but a whole lot of people for whom this is an axe they grind really kind of constantly do .

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#166

Post by philippz »

nitinics wrote: post #151

1. Customer Service - Provide enterprise solutions for customer service and charge $$$ per transaction. The live nature of this would prove a lot of value for feedback mechanisms for enterprise when they go through their change management. 2. Live Interaction with Events, Games, Television, Radio etc. e.g. Polls, QnA, Sentiment etc. 3. Open Access to Developers to build Apps on real-time content. 4. Enable fact-check…

There is a better "Twitter for Feedback" -> STOMT

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#167

Post by grandalf »

eropple wrote: post #163
grandalf wrote: post #159

I think Twitter is already pretty great. My suggestions are below: - Twitter is a platform, open it up to allow any clients first class access. - Stop political censorship immediately. It's fine to prevent scams and bot-nets, but do not stifle political speech. - Lower burn rate. Cancel all of the product-oriented projects that are expensive, simply focus on building the infrastructure to make Twitter's platform as i…

> do not stifle political speech And when that political speech threatens violence or is intended to foment violence against a person or people? 'Cause I'm not saying you're conflating the two, but a whole lot of people for whom this is an axe they grind really kind of constantly do .

> threatens violence or is intended to foment violence against a person or people

I see no reason why having a clear, public record of such communications is worse than forcing those involved to use a different messaging system.

It's just words. The simple answer is press the "unfollow" button, or follow it, read it, and act in your best interests based on it.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#169

Post by dumbfounder »

Bring back the app ecosystem and this time make a blood oath to protect the apps instead of destroying them all. If apps want to monetize they need to use Twitter's methods of monetization and share the data they generate back to Twitter. Make the rules mutually beneficial, sign that blood oath (an actual public, binding contract), and people will come back and build cool things again.

Re: Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?

#170

Post by nine_k »

lhnz wrote: post #79

I would try to eat journalism. I would create a system where subscription to News on Twitter helps to automate payment for individual articles. 1. The lede or quote gets pulled into the tweet. 2. http://t.co becomes a payment-debiting gateway (402 Payment Required). Basically, you would monetise the audience on behalf of the publishers who would be able to make their paywalls more porous. Almost everybody would benef…

Super-important: make payment frictionless.

Let the payment gateway link to whatever payment method(s) you already have, set a limit for automatic payment per day, and make it one-click ("Buy this article"), or even optionally zero-click below a trivial threshold (e.g. 10¢).

If you hit the daily limit, ask for confirmations, passwords, etc.

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