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Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

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Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#261

Post by tomjakubowski »

panarky wrote: post #156
grey-area wrote: post #147

It's time to rethink twitter and launch another service. Readers want to see the content they select, in the order they select, from people/posters they find interesting. Have conversations and maybe connect with people they follow. Posters want to control their feed and who sees it, control the conversation a bit more, perhaps pay for better tools to curate replies, get rid of spam/trolls etc, have their complaints…

> Advertising is at the root of the problems of Twitter This is true, but it's not only advertising. Replace ads with any revenue generator large enough to sustain the service and you'll find that (1) the audience disappears or (2) big compromises in user experience or privacy. Maybe some services just can't be delivered by profit-maximizing corporations at all. A big reason for the wildly improbable success of Wikip…

> Maybe the only way to accomplish that is with a community-driven collective effort, not a commercially-driven corporate service.

A modest fee to join/unban yourself (and not infrequent bannings) worked for Something Awful but social media is slowly killing it off.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#262

Post by darawk »

PixyMisa wrote: post #236
darawk wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: You think that the hard part of creating a billion dollar company is getting attention from VCs?

You think it's not?

Erm...seriously? You believe that the hardest part of starting a billion dollar company is getting...funding? You think billion dollar companies primarily don't exist because nobody is funding them? It's hard for me to believe that you actually think that.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#263

Post by darawk »

rorykoehler wrote: post #250
darawk wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: You think that the hard part of creating a billion dollar company is getting attention from VCs?

It's pretty much one and the same until you go public.

What? So, you think that if you hand a million dollars in VC funding to any idiot off the street, they could create the next Square or Twitter?

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#264

Post by darawk »

code_duck wrote: post #260
darawk wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me get this straight: You think that the hard part of creating a billion dollar company is getting attention from VCs?

Yes, that’s right. Personal faith from funders is a significant contributor to getting funding, which is important for success.

It's a contributor to funding sure, but that's not what I asked.

The issue is, would a random person off the street be able to take VC seed money and turn it into a billion dollar business? The answer is obviously no. And they definitely wouldn't be able to do it twice.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#265

Post by rorykoehler »

darawk wrote: post #263
rorykoehler wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much one and the same until you go public.

What? So, you think that if you hand a million dollars in VC funding to any idiot off the street, they could create the next Square or Twitter?

It's not what I said but it's fairly obvious that money is like steroids. You can't turn a donkey into a race horse but any semi-competent person can be successful with enough cash injection and network to get good advice.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#266

Post by ada1981 »

craftyguy wrote: post #241
ada1981 wrote: post #233

I’m still curious why they don’t pull the plug on Trump. It’s within their legal rights and it would irritate him. Seems like a no brainer.

He's their most prized user. Cratering him would likely crater the entire service, despite donald's blatant violations of twitter's TOS.

When I was in grad school I used to give talks to students about avoiding MLM schemes.

Later, after having invented and patented a product, I came to the sobering realization that the majority of my revenue was coming from MLM companies.

I released the IP to the public domain and shut down the company.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#267

Post by aantix »

rorykoehler wrote: post #214
darawk wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that Jack Dorsey also founded another successful company in Square, right? Pretty hard to argue that he lucked into both of those things.

Not really. Once he had VCs attention he could do what he wanted as he wasn't exactly starting from zero.

Because money is all that's needed for a successful company?

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#268

Post by criddell »

username3 wrote: post #113
ordinaryperson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But does Twitter even experiment to see? Take Maggie Haberman, NYT reporter. Her Twitter replies are always a cesspool...what if she could lock down her tweets so only a whitelisted group of users (say people she follows) could comment? You'd still (hopefully) get contrary opinions but none of the dreck that dominates her feed now. I don't know if that's the answer. But I don't see Twitter even trying, just Do…

She can moderate her replies, but what if we want to see all the replies? What if we can choose our own moderators?

That sounds too complicated.

If it's her thread, she should be able to curate it in anyway she wants.

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#269

Post by ketzo »

rorykoehler wrote: post #265
darawk wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? So, you think that if you hand a million dollars in VC funding to any idiot off the street, they could create the next Square or Twitter?

It's not what I said but it's fairly obvious that money is like steroids. You can't turn a donkey into a race horse but any semi-competent person can be successful with enough cash injection and network to get good advice.

Doesn't this run counter to even conventional wisdom about VC? 25-30% of all VC-backed startups liquidate all assets, and 75% return only the original investment.

https://www.inc.com/john-mcdermott/report-3-out-of-4-venture...

Re: Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter

#270

Post by byuu »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #191
veryworried wrote: post #24

Excuse my outburst, but I'm wondering when these social network algorithms are going to realize: I don't follow "interests", I follow PEOPLE . If you want to show users random news and gossip, then make a fucking news website already. It's like if you build a chatroom, except instead of simply showing things that people in the current room are saying as they say it, it mostly pulls in vaguely similar stuff that peopl…

By making it more of an interest-based network, they further increase the interest-based siloing of users, making interest-based advertising more effective and more expensive. Like David Auerbach wrote about in Bitwise, the modern technology economy has now become about labeling users. The more labels you can apply, the more ads you can sell. Having said that, I do agree with another comment I saw here in that, if I…

> Having said that, I do agree with another comment I saw here in that, if I am following someone in the software architecture space, I care 0% about their political tweets, and if I follow someone in the Formula 1/motorsports space, I really don't need to see their thoughts on golf.

Absolutely, we need tags, and the ability to make them opt-in or opt-out for followers. So I can file ^food as an opt-in, and people who don't care about that can ignore them and just get the ^programming ones. Right now, followers and friends are all lumped together and so while friends follow you for life updates, followers generally only care about what you can do for them, eg your work. It's draining to try and manage multiple accounts. Some followers may find the side stuff cool, too.

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