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Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#271

Post by FalconSensei »

They failed to get revenue from ads, just started a paid version that doesn't offer anything attractive for most people (I would be willing to pay a bit for a good experience), and by focusing SO MUCH on engagement without a way to opt-out, they make people hate the tool and their timelines. Tik Tok at least has two tabs: Following and For You. On following I only see content from users I follow. But Twitter refuses to let this happen, and clutter my timeline with things I don't wanna see.

And even if I create lists for people I want to see posts from (suggestion from another post from earlier this week), I still can't make my likes not be 'advertised' to everyone that follows me. So basically sometimes I can't even give a like to a tweet if it's risqué for example, because some followers might not like seeing that and then unfollow me.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#272

Post by BitwiseFool »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #259
BitwiseFool wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of those things where in theory and in the rule of law the CEO can do so. It does make me feel uncomfortable, though. As time goes on I am less and less supportive of the notion that private companies can do as they please on the basis that they are private companies. I don't know what 'the solution' is, but I do sense a precedent being established that I am weary of. Twitter is simultaneously a public spher…

> Twitter is simultaneously a public sphere where politicians are prohibited from blocking users I do not know what public sphere means, but I doubt Twitter stops specific accounts from blocking other accounts. I do not see why that is relevant either. The president of the United States, of all people, has the capability to put an RSS feed on Whitehouse.gov or the president’s personal website anytime they want.

Sure, but you'll have a hard time convincing people that is an effective alternative. How many people do you know who visit the official website of the White House to read press releases and memos? Does the average person know that the president used to give a weekly radio address? The medium of the message is just as important as the message itself.

I also believe AOC would be a nobody if she didn't have a Twitter account. She'd be the same as the other 435 Representatives who release statements on their house.gov website that no one realizes exists.

Edit: >"I doubt Twitter stops specific accounts from blocking other accounts."

This was actually a court ruling. I have no clue if Twitter actually coded this requirement on @realDonaldTrump after the fact. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/trump-can-t-block-users-his...

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#273

Post by charcircuit »

thejohnconway wrote: post #25

Maybe there just aren't enough people in the world that want to be a part of something like Twitter. It's an aggressively public platform, which many people understandably don't want. one in twenty people in the world using your platform aught be enough for anybody, but the whole financial system we've set up around these companies is insane.

>It's an aggressively public platform

You can easily make a private account.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#274

Post by screye »

scarface74 wrote: post #133
screye wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter aggressively censors anyone without institutional approval. Twitters scratch the elites' backs, so the elites scratch back. Trump was banned from Twitter first. Any one with mildly right wing opinion is insta-banned from twitter. Blue checkmarks are strongly tied to institutional approval and fringe institutional voices are given a megaphone. Twitter perpetuates the current class system. So those in power hav…

Since when wasn’t someone who is supposedly a billionaire not part of the “elite”?

The cultural elite is completely different from having money. It is the same reason that Trump was ridiculed for putting ketchup on steak or why journalists/post-docs are willing to make pennies on jobs that grand them access the cultural elite. I give the example of Trump because he the clearest contrast that differentiates wealth from the elite.

Phrases like 'Nouveau Riche' or 'Paise aaye, par aukaad nahi aaye' (money without class) have existed in different cultures for centuries. This is not a new concept.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#275

Post by riffraff »

tshaddox wrote: post #263
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #160

As a heavy twitter user who mostly enjoys it (I'm very particular of who I follow), I just don't understand what they've been doing all this time. Their product has been incredibly stagnant for years save for the occasional feature here and there and some styling. They've screwed over devs trying to build on their APIs and eroded all trust along the way. New features have been rolled out haphazardly, and they totally…

What they’ve been doing is tons and tons and incomprehensibly many tons of work on targeting and selling advertisements.

Based on the ads I see in my timeline, they didn't do a great job at that. I have used the service for many many years and I have literally never seen any ad that I wanted to click.

Maybe they do better for the US, but they seem to have done far worse than their competitors in ad space.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#276

Post by digianarchist »

agentultra wrote: post #229

It's the only social I use really but I've been looking into alternatives. Ever since Twitter decided to open up a crypto/web3 team and introduced NFT profile pics I'm out and won't support it... but as the only social I have to keep in touch with other open source contributors and projects I work on/follow it's going to take some time before I totally close my account. That being said, good recommendations are welco…

I honestly thought this stuff was going to disappear with the change of leadership but it looks like they’ve doubled down.

NFT profile pictures? Who wants this?

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#277

Post by winternett »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #160

As a heavy twitter user who mostly enjoys it (I'm very particular of who I follow), I just don't understand what they've been doing all this time. Their product has been incredibly stagnant for years save for the occasional feature here and there and some styling. They've screwed over devs trying to build on their APIs and eroded all trust along the way. New features have been rolled out haphazardly, and they totally…

They've actually screwed up the very basis that made it useful though, they reduced control over what users can elect to see, they've completely wrecked real time timelines, and they are covertly ratio-ing user accounts so that even their subscribers see posts later than they are completed or even in many cases not at all, and now they're marketing to users (main contributors to all the platform's content) to pay in order to boost their posts... The whole business model is like telling people they can ride electricity generating stationary bikes in order to charge up teslas for the wealthy.

I've never seen any other tool as productive as it boched terribly... Facebook was never really as useful for real time news and events in nature (mind you).

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#278

Post by nradov »

dktp wrote: post #165
samwillis wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they are, they have just announced a $4B stock buyback. They are a “dividend” stock without proper dividends. Not everything needs to be a growth stock. Having said that 10% down in 10 years isn’t great, especially with where the rest of tech has gone in that time.

In what way are they a dividend stock? They don't pay dividends and despite share buyback stock is down since IPO

From an investor standpoint, dividends and stock buybacks are roughly equivalent. Both are ways of returning cash to investors. Buybacks can be more tax efficient for investors using taxable accounts.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#279

Post by thewebcount »

rybosworld wrote: post #193

I think Twitter is a victim of it's niche. It's hard to describe why some people love twitter and others don't. But it seems fairly difficult to change it in such a way that you gain new users and don't lose the current.

Really? I can describe pretty precisely why I hate it. I don't have an account, so when I get a link to Twitter, I see one or more of the following:

- A reply to someone else that I can't see, so I now have no context about what I'm looking at. It's like coming in in the middle of a conversation.

- A normal tweet followed by a set of replies that appear to be incomplete. There are a bunch of buttons to press to "see more". Often when you click on them there's only a single additional response, not a very long thread, so it's unclear why I had to click to "see more". Other times there are several back-and-forth replies in a row shown, most of them inconsequential. What decides whether I need to click to "see more"?

- Bots, crypto scams, misinformation, ads

- The entire interface appears to be an overlay over something else. Like it looks like you're reading a popup that you can dismiss to see the actual content. But when you do that, it shows you something unrelated.

- Sometimes, but not always, I see the tweet I was intended to see, but instead of seeing replies, there's a bunch of completely unrelated tweets below that where the replies normally are

I'm old, so it's probably me, but I just can't parse a Twitter page because it's so bizarrely laid out, and so much of the expected content either isn't shown, or is hidden by default, and so much unexpected content is shown. Call me crazy, but I don't have time to figure it out just to read someone's hot take on the latest trend.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#280

Post by riffraff »

atorodius wrote: post #178
meerita wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What killed me it was Twitter killing developers apis: no more interesting apps than theirs. It sucks big time. They're also screwing the chronology, sometimes you get the latest tweets (most interesting) and sometimes they switch you to Recommended, which, normally, it sucks. Let me browse chronologically as it was in the old days.

I recently wondered about this, from another angle. In a way it was "weird" that they had an API, given our times. I.e., it was different: imagine if FB/Instagram/WhatsApp had an API. (I think it would be awesome, but it puts into perspective that it was weird that they had one imo)

It wasn't our times, it was a time when every service provided APIs, and many services provided parsable html to be scraped. The era of "mash ups".

It's incredible how things changed since the 00s.

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