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Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

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Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#31

Post by Analemma_ »

sdegutis wrote: post #17
niftich wrote: post #7

Machine learning on your images and videos to "enhance our strength in live and video and opens up a whole lot of exciting creative possibilities for Twitter"! As ironically stated here [1], "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." Though Twitter has a good record of open-sourcing internal infrastructure projects, I think it's it's safe not to expect any substantive amount of…

> As ironically stated here, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." Thanks. Perfectly succinct summary of what I hate so much about today's business world. Dear all advertisers: how about you stop trying to figure out how to make people want your product/service more, and focus on making it discoverable and clearly understood when the time comes where they finally realize t…

I don't know if advertisers are the villains here, or at least they're not the only ones. People want things that are expensive to run and maintain (journalism, social networking services, accurate internet search), but don't want to pay for them. AFAIK, advertising is the only way to square that circle.

Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#32

Post by sdegutis »

grok2 wrote: post #25
sdegutis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As ironically stated here, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." Thanks. Perfectly succinct summary of what I hate so much about today's business world. Dear all advertisers: how about you stop trying to figure out how to make people want your product/service more, and focus on making it discoverable and clearly understood when the time comes where they finally realize t…

As I was reading your comment, I was thinking - "Why not? Why shouldn't advertisers figure out how to advertise in ways that comes somewhat close to what you are suggesting, but make you want to buy before you know you want something?" ;-)... Sometimes I think we are in a difficult dichotomy -- we like Twitter and we consume it voraciously and love that it is free, but we don't want them to use advertising as a sourc…

For sure, we're a greedy, selfish, and short-sighted species. But that doesn't make the advertisers right for doing what people are implicitly asking them to.

Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#34

Post by rqebmm »

Zephyr314 wrote: post #15
niftich wrote: post #7

Machine learning on your images and videos to "enhance our strength in live and video and opens up a whole lot of exciting creative possibilities for Twitter"! As ironically stated here [1], "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." Though Twitter has a good record of open-sourcing internal infrastructure projects, I think it's it's safe not to expect any substantive amount of…

> "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." There is a strong argument that as long as they continue to publish and produce open source (which they have been doing) then you could think of ads as just a source of funding and tons of data to continue to push the state of the art. It can also be a stepping stone to other ventures [1]. [1]: http://www.wsj.com/articles/where-would…

Since the last few generations used weapons research to fund scientific advancements, I guess this is progress after all!

Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#36

Post by [deleted] »

fizx wrote: post #30
niftich wrote: post #7

Machine learning on your images and videos to "enhance our strength in live and video and opens up a whole lot of exciting creative possibilities for Twitter"! As ironically stated here [1], "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." Though Twitter has a good record of open-sourcing internal infrastructure projects, I think it's it's safe not to expect any substantive amount of…

> "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." The best minds of the previous generation were thinking about how to kill Russians. I'd say it's an upgrade.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#37

Post by GrumpyYoungMan »

fizx wrote: post #30
niftich wrote: post #7

Machine learning on your images and videos to "enhance our strength in live and video and opens up a whole lot of exciting creative possibilities for Twitter"! As ironically stated here [1], "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." Though Twitter has a good record of open-sourcing internal infrastructure projects, I think it's it's safe not to expect any substantive amount of…

> "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." The best minds of the previous generation were thinking about how to kill Russians. I'd say it's an upgrade.

>The best minds of the previous generation were thinking about how to kill Russians. I'd say it's an upgrade.

At least the results of the previous generations research went (largely) unused, whereas the results of ad clicking research is targeted against and used on people on a daily basis, to their considerable detriment. An upgrade? If so, it seems kind of dubious at best.

Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#38

Post by Alexey_Nigin »

This is very sad news.

The #1 reason why I moved from Facebook to Twitter was that the latter service used straightforward algoritms for deciding what to show me. When I opened Twitter, I could be almost sure that the timeline would only contain posts from people I followed, arranged in chronological order.

Of course, there were some exceptions. Firstly, they always had ads. I see how many people here get angry about it, but I think ads on such site is perfectly normal. After all, they have to make money somehow, right?

Secondly, there were times when I saw "While you were away" box. This was the thing I found annoying from the beginning. How did Twitter infer that I was interested in these five posts more than in those five posts? It got worse over time. In fact, now this box shows up after a few hours of my absence, as if I am expected to check Twitter 10 times a day.

And it appears that they are planning to take these features to a new level. I really hope they don't do everything they talk about, but if they do, maybe I will have to seek a new social media service.

Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#39

Post by mox1 »

It would be super cool if Twitter let me write my own algorithm to decide what I get to see.

Or even better, let me "publish" an algorithm and let other people use it.

Re: Twitter Acquires Magic Pony

#40

Post by leoc »

ultramancool wrote: post #4

This headline is far better if you don't know what Magic Pony is.

TWITTER ACQUIRES MAGIC PONY; Joke Writes Itself

Come to think of it, this is also more evidence for the case that Silicon Valley can't get any more outlandish than Silicon Valley, isn't it?

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