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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

#331

Post by FalconSensei »

woodruffw wrote: post #151
djbusby wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly difficult for Joe Public to get on - how to solve that problem?

Mastodon is about as easy to create an account on as Twitter (if not easier; Twitter's human verification process is pretty cumbersome). You can sign up here: https://mastodon.social/about (Solving the "critical mass of users" problem is left as an exercise to the user.)

I use Mastodon as well as Twitter. Even though there are things that I love about it, I can't say it's easier to use or has more appeal than Twitter.

I think Twitter is easier for the mass public to join. Go to Twitter.com, put username and password, verify phone number. Done! The screens are cleaner and very intuitive.

For mastodon, there's more text and messaging about the differences regarding Twitter, what's the Fediverse, instance rules. So you just landed on the main screen and you have to think about choosing an instance with different number of people, different rules.

After you are in, you can't search!! You can only search usernames or hashtags, but that is REALLY cumbersome and ineffective since people don't write "This is my #Twilight #book #review #bookreview URL". If you are not tech/privacy focused, the trending tags are usually not interesting, apart from #caturday I guess?.

Even after you are able to follow people, you can't quote-retweet (which is a pro AND a con), and even "retweeting" is cumbersome if you are on someone's profile from another instance.

Sharing is also more cumbersome since there's no bookmarklet or chrome extension that I could find, and sites don't have a "share on mastodon" link. The solution was to enable a cross-poster, so I just keep posting on Twitter.

About instances: on some main instances, speed is ok, but try to follow some pic focused profiles on smaller instances. It can take like 5~10 seconds for an image to load. And now on the iPhone official app, I can't seem to be able to download pictures anymore, and the option to bookmark a post (not like) is not there, only on the web-mobile version.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#333

Post by stjohnswarts »

beebmam wrote: post #240
lordnacho wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue they filled out their niche. Took the VC money, made the thing global, does what it says on the tin. The world now has a broadcast-short-messages service that can be used by people to reach their audience. Unfortunately that's not enough, since these tech firms tend to be priced to eat the whole planet, thus requiring a lot more than going global with a little thing that works.

They're not even remotely priced at the magnitude to eat the whole planet. And yet, their market IS eating the entire world (except China, due to insular political reasons). That points to me like they're significantly undervalued.

I think the only thing that keeps them afloat is their importance to political figures who LOVE the short form sound bites. Of course that could just be the conspiracist in me :)

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#334

Post by zardo »

delecti wrote: post #177
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…

I'm amused at you questioning what they've been doing all this time, and then giving instructions to avoid seeing what they've been doing all this time. I don't like those things in my timeline either, but that's your answer. Also those annoying voice chatrooms and their lame attempt at stories.

I've noticed big strides in making the site more annoying to use if you aren't logged in.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#335

Post by FalconSensei »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #299

User growth? Why does it need user growth? It’s twitter, it’s been around a long time, everyone that wants to use a service like that knows what it is. So much opposition with everything having to be bigger and bigger.

yeah, agree. Unfortunately there's always a too big (IMHO) focus on growth, not only on Twitter but in general, instead of offering a good service that is healthy (in terms of paying the bills and generating revenue). They failed to grow in users, then they try to grow in engagement, but everything they do makes the experience less pleasant

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#336

Post by the_other »

doublepg23 wrote: post #316
reaperducer wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue they filled out their niche Between this and Facebook's recent woes, I wish this was a sign of a global tiring of social media in general. I'm frequently wrong about these things, but one can hope.

Wouldn’t TikToks rise be in opposition to that idea?

I don't use TikTok, so I'm probably wrong here.. but isn't TikTok "algorithmically served user generated content" rather than "community" or "social media". As I understand it, it's like a TV station. If there's "dialog", it's in the form of answer-films, rather than actual discussion. If it does behave the way I think it does, then it backs up the idea that social media is on the wane.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#337

Post by ProfessorLayton »

elcapitan wrote: post #329
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…

Do these ublock rules still work? At least in my web ui, most css classes and IDs seem to be randomized now..

They do. Twitter's randomized css means the filters need to be based on something else like aria tags rather than css. Going after these means twitter will have to decide between blocking adblock or... Screen readers.

It's unfortunate that these tags need to be leveraged outside of their intended purpose to make their product more usable, but here we are.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#338

Post by the_other »

mywittyname wrote: post #238
lordnacho wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue they filled out their niche. Took the VC money, made the thing global, does what it says on the tin. The world now has a broadcast-short-messages service that can be used by people to reach their audience. Unfortunately that's not enough, since these tech firms tend to be priced to eat the whole planet, thus requiring a lot more than going global with a little thing that works.

Adding to this: it's really hard for Do One Thing Well companies to pivot.

Well, they could pivot to a paid-for service without ads and sponsored content. Then we'd see their real value.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#339

Post by echelon »

underwater wrote: post #289
beebmam wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not even remotely priced at the magnitude to eat the whole planet. And yet, their market IS eating the entire world (except China, due to insular political reasons). That points to me like they're significantly undervalued.

What is Twitter's market? They seem increasingly like just another online community. Most of my feed is the same few Twitter influencers with high follower counts. The drama, conventions, and memes all make it feel insular and hostile to outsiders. Feels more like Tumblr than some global, open, platform.

Twitter has all of the "smart people" and "money" on it, unlike Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Billionaires are tweeting each other in the open. Politicians. Reporters. CEOs, CFOs.

No other social network is like that. It's the only thing keeping Twitter relevant.

TikTok and Instagram have their celebrities and trend setters (which is where the ad dollars are), but you don't see anyone musing about "metaverse", "web3", and what their latest fund is going to pursue, geopolitics, OSINT, stocks, etc.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#340

Post by riffic »

peterhunt wrote: post #100
ynac wrote: post #26

I feel so naive / out-of-touch when Twitter comes up. How is it we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. Like we do for email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did Unix for that matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great things, but why don't we move from innovation to standardized protocols to enhance the user experience of the internet. Is it just great marketing driven by profits. As I said, I'm probabl…

We do and no one uses it. There is some truth to the classic HN post that "Twitter can be built in a weekend". A service / protocol that can distribute 280 character messages isn't really where the value is for a service like Twitter. It's 20% engineering, 80% recruiting the right users, retaining them, and getting them to engage on the platform. Additionally, open protocols are way harder to evolve and are therefore…

> We do and no one uses it.

This is straight up denialist and hyperbolic FUD. There's a healthy and vibrant ecosystem surrounding the federated social web, which has been a thing since 2008 or so.

Also, I would argue that email's staying power isn't quite backed by the answer you gave ("it locked everyone in with its network effect") but more along the lines that it survived the Lindy effect (the great thing about this is that it's not going to its grave as a technology anytime soon).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

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