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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

#421

Post by mschuster91 »

foepys wrote: post #413
echelon wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "metave…

I don't believe for a second that anything being tweeted by billionaires, C*Os, and politicians is not approved by some marketing and/or social media department. It's not like people are required to tweet, they choose to tweet. In the end Twitter is just the illusion of people talking to each other. It's all just to further their brand or to push their goals, not insight they give up for free. Sometimes someone slips…

In the US, Elon Musk, the 45th and AOC are known to tweet on their own. For the 45th, it was easily discoverable if he tweeted on his own or not by looking on the app ID.

In Germany, health minister Karl Lauterbach, foreign Minister Annalena Charlotte Alma Baerbock (yes, her parents really did name her 1312) as well as a boatload of MPs (most notably Katharina Schulze) also tweet on their own.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#422

Post by tehbeard »

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.

Microsoft also do this.

I had to make a new MS account to migrate a 2nd minecraft account. The account has only ever been used from the game launcher, and they have the analytics that the account was created for the migration. But apparently there was "suspicious activity" that violates TOS and they auto locked it, and rather than contact the gmail address I used for the account, they demand a phone number.

Tbf, I'm considering just raising this with the authorities, given a lot of relevant authorities, as not everyone migrating an account will be ab adult, and asking for kids phone numbers seems like a GDPR slamdunk.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#423

Post by piva00 »

ahartmetz wrote: post #364
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…

>I have never encountered a more hostile website, or company for that matter, towards innocuous behavior. Pinterest images in Google image search results would like to have a word with you.

Fuck. How much I hate Pinterest for basically being a huge spammer on image search...

Worst part is that when Pinterest launched I even used it for a short while, it was useful for some things (e.g. collecting examples of furniture I'd be eyeing, tattoo motifs inspiration) and over time it just became a huge cluttered unusable mess. And then the spam on image search came and I simply despise Pinterest, ranting about them convinced at least 2 close friends to abandon it as well.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#424

Post by rawoke083600 »

robryan wrote: post #143
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have never encountered a more hostile website I think Instagram and/or Pintrest often require you to log in before letting you see even the first picture you click on.

The Reddit mobile website might be the worst. Every aspect of it is geared to making it as annoying as possible to use so that you are forced to download their app (or go find a better 3rd party one).

And it is SLOW as ass ! I keep thinking I need to upgrade my phone (Xiaomi 8 core - Android) but I just can't do it from a principal point of view !

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#425

Post by ThalesX »

pseudo0 wrote: post #404
userbinator wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What are the odds that they still count those unused accounts towards that crucial user growth metric?

Worked for a CEO that used to require his Customer Service to create new accounts whenever a user would request their account be deleted. You can imagine where the company ended up when the CEO's solution to people wanting to delete their accounts is to replace them with fake ones for the vanity metrics.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#426

Post by lurker_22 »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#427

Post by verve_rat »

tehbeard wrote: post #422
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.

Microsoft also do this. I had to make a new MS account to migrate a 2nd minecraft account. The account has only ever been used from the game launcher, and they have the analytics that the account was created for the migration. But apparently there was "suspicious activity" that violates TOS and they auto locked it, and rather than contact the gmail address I used for the account, they demand a phone number. Tbf, I'm…

Do it.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#428

Post by elcapitan »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #337
elcapitan wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks!

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#429

Post by asddubs »

absoluteharam wrote: post #407
patentatt wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old.reddit.com still works, and the day they disable it is the last day I am a Reddit user (which I have been since the YC days, as an original disaffected digg user)

wait till they IPO. They will need to show growth and will erode away old reddit features, with more nags and modals to switch to the “new experience” — so they can boost ad revenue The push to open web links in a mobile app has already become a PITA

they already do it in other ways like having certain features unsupported on the old reddit app. old reddit also shows a cookie modal that if you click it takes you to new reddit because it doesn't exist on old reddit

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#430

Post by shmatt »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #361
teddyh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reaction to the many botnets Makes no sense. If they wanted to require a phone number to keep out bots, they would simply ask for a phone number at registration. Delaying it like this, claiming “suspicious activity” is hard to see any other way than how I described it.

Because even a phone number is not enough to keep out bots. Some VoIP providers do a PAYG model, so you can choose from any number of phone numbers, regional, local landlines or from mobile numbers for free and only pay when you make a call or answer their answerphone. Now obviously Twitter will send text messages so you never incur a cost from the VoIP provider. So how does a phone number solve bot activity?

its a cat and mouse game. lately I've found many websites show an error when I put in my Google Voice number for sms verification

I don't know how the implementation works, if theres a way to check for virtual vs. real number, but some sms verification service provider seems to have successfully implemented a filter on Google Voice

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