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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

#391

Post by bern4444 »

meerita wrote: post #171
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 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.

Twitter's redone all their APIs and made it easier to get initial access more quickly. Have you looked at it recently?

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/getting-st...

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#392

Post by donkeybeer »

andrew_ wrote: post #251
cronix wrote: post #75

So I never created a Twitter account. Over the years, there are a few people that I liked to read their thoughts on Twitter, so I'd manually go to their wall and read occasionally. They're all verified. Over time, it became cumbersome to continue doing this and I thought I'd give in and create an account (on the website) so that these people were all easy to access from a single point. So I did, and went and immediat…

verified account status these days is meaningless. most of the truly interesting, unique thoughts come from accounts that are not. this is of course my own take after having been on the platform since 2010.

Do you know what verified means? It does not mean endorsement or "high quality user". It just means an account claiming to be a real life person is indeed actually that person.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#393

Post by bern4444 »

sam1r wrote: post #38

Has anyone messed with their developer apis recently? Curious if anything has gotten better on that front.

I think they've gotten a lot better. A whole new version has been released recently. The V2 API

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#394

Post by userbinator »

cronix wrote: post #75

So I never created a Twitter account. Over the years, there are a few people that I liked to read their thoughts on Twitter, so I'd manually go to their wall and read occasionally. They're all verified. Over time, it became cumbersome to continue doing this and I thought I'd give in and create an account (on the website) so that these people were all easy to access from a single point. So I did, and went and immediat…

...and to think that Twitter used to be viewable easily without even JavaScript. Once they blocked that I started using Nitter, but most recently it seems that it's been more intermittent and randomly stops showing tweets.

(I've also never created an account there, and only ever used it in "read-only" mode.)

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#395

Post by userbinator »

teddyh wrote: post #137
cronix wrote: post #75

So I never created a Twitter account. Over the years, there are a few people that I liked to read their thoughts on Twitter, so I'd manually go to their wall and read occasionally. They're all verified. Over time, it became cumbersome to continue doing this and I thought I'd give in and create an account (on the website) so that these people were all easy to access from a single point. So I did, and went and immediat…

> my account locked up and said there was "suspicious activity" and if I wanted to continue I needed to supply my phone number. I have repeatedly heard it said that Twitter does this for every single new account as a matter of course. Twitter wants your phone number, but don’t want you to bounce right at registration.

but don’t want you to bounce right at registration.

Instead, they end up filling their database with countless unused accounts created by those who gave up?

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#396

Post by donkeybeer »

pcmoney wrote: post #342
stevenwliao wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations?

I would strongly bias towards people who have built or created something anything even a small thing vs "experts" "academics" "blue checks" (Eg. John Arnold probably knows a lot more about economic fundamentals than most economists) I would bias towards people who have a concrete position they are advocating for and not just talk about what they are against. Critique is cheap and mostly pointless without a real solut…

Explain in your own words what "blue check" means

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#397

Post by wyclif »

alexpotato wrote: post #354
jazzyjackson wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bots can get phone numbers cheap, a cost of doing business. Speculation: Twitter wants your phone number so they can correlate you with existing marketing data so they can target you more effectively.

I would agree. Twitter has massive data on your interests but collects only minimal information about you vs, say, Facebook which has your name, birthday etc etc. I would also argue that Twitter has BETTER interest data than Facebook b/c you are constantly interacting with thousands of tweets a day across multiple dimensions. Facebook tends to be your family and a couple pages you happened to like. If they get your p…

Twitter doesn't have the purest of intentions in harvesting user phone numbers, that's true. But the flip side of this, especially when I see people getting angry about apps that ask for phone number, is that it's not like 1990's or even 2000's anymore where you wanted to keep your phone number private. It's trivial to get a new phone number now and Signal makes it easy. There's also VOIP services like Google Voice (not sure if Twitter allows the use of VOIP numbers, though).

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#398

Post by adrianN »

userbinator wrote: post #395
teddyh wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my account locked up and said there was "suspicious activity" and if I wanted to continue I needed to supply my phone number. I have repeatedly heard it said that Twitter does this for every single new account as a matter of course. Twitter wants your phone number, but don’t want you to bounce right at registration.

but don’t want you to bounce right at registration. Instead, they end up filling their database with countless unused accounts created by those who gave up?

Space in databases is essentially free.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#399

Post by shp0ngle »

jakub_g wrote: post #196
kilroy123 wrote: post #139

Honestly? It's because their ads are trash. I know lots of marketing people and they all stay away from using them. Say what you will about Facebook and Instagram, their ads are better overall. There's been several times an Instagram ad showed up in my feed, and I said shut up and take my money. Nothing like that has ever happened on Twitter for me.

I've been thinking about this because it's true from my observation, and I wonder what's the main reason: - Is it because they are "not evil enough" compared to FB in tracking people? - Is it because they can't track people in the same way (FB pixel is _everywhere_ on the net, Twitter's code is also widespread but probably less?) - Is it because publisher tools are not as good as FB's? (in FB from what I know you can…

Facebook tracks you almost obsessively all over the web, and on its own website (with many features designed specifically to get more info about you).

Twitter does neither.

Which is great for the users, but probably horrible for the advertisers.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#400

Post by shp0ngle »

cronix wrote: post #75

So I never created a Twitter account. Over the years, there are a few people that I liked to read their thoughts on Twitter, so I'd manually go to their wall and read occasionally. They're all verified. Over time, it became cumbersome to continue doing this and I thought I'd give in and create an account (on the website) so that these people were all easy to access from a single point. So I did, and went and immediat…

lol LinkedIn used to be famously horrible in dark patterns and auto-following everyone.

And what did it get them? Billions USD from Microsoft.

So dark patterns work.

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