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Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

thetwitcleaner.com

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Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#51

Post by kalleboo »

moocow01 wrote: post #43

It seems pretty obvious that Twitter is trying to become a business and these alienating changes are part of the strategy but the unfortunate part is that they seemingly have picked the completely wrong strategy around what their business should be. Twitter really from a tech prospective is a protocol and it seemed that Twitter as a business was in line with what they were providing. Twitter.com acted as the centrali…

To me it seems like the larger problem is that Twitter doesn't just have to be profitable. They also have to justify their $9 billion valuation. Which I suspect will be impossible.

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#52

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #41
hcho wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leeching bandwidth? Really? This is not 1999 anymore, no one cares if their images are hot linked anymore. Be ready to be surprised, people found ways of making money from hot linked images.

Not true. Some of us are still on shared servers or have limited bandwidth, or just care on principle. When the leechers are popular forums it can be a definite tax. Making a local thumbnail isn't that difficult, likely in whatever language you happen to use.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#53

Post by rdtsc »

lancewiggs wrote: post #7

Once again I'm just sad to see the continued erosion from the awesomeness that was Twitter. Twitter are killing off the good and magnifying the bad, all in the pursuit of goals that seem to be forcing a continuous decrease in the quality of end user experiences. The dumbest thing about this is that monetizing Twitter is trivial, without changing anything else. Just put occassional and obvious ads in our streams, and…

> from the awesomeness that was Twitter.

But was the awesomeness before?

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#54

Post by Karunamon »

stuartmemo wrote: post #28

It's not fun anymore for developers . Of course it isn't, but do normal users care? I can't say I've enjoyed using twitter any less since they introduced the API limit.

I can say I've all but stopped using twitter altogether since their purchase/bastardization of tweetdeck. That client was nearly perfect.. multiple networks support, persistent searches...

Twitter is not important enough for me to have to run a separate application for it.

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#55

Post by sdqali »

sbarre wrote: post #3

Could this be rebuilt for, or ported to, app.net? Seems like a good place for the author to continue what is obviously a project he cares about.

Does App.net as a platform need an application with these capabilities? I would think that App.net has far less spam.

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#56

Post by brownbat »

Do social networks tend to cannibalize themselves over time?

Initially, growth is the most important part of a social network, so it makes sense to prioritize usability. Over time, pressures towards monetization mount (either internally or externally, among spammers). Monetization tends to degrade the user experience, creating opportunities for new entrants.

Network effects can keep you going, but these aren't Ma Bell's network effects. Users can install competing social apps next to each other using almost no time and less money. They get to keep the more established network as a fallback, then spend most of their time using the one with better features or more "exclusivity." Even if this doesn't lubricate transitions enough for established users, network effects are basically nonexistent among new cohorts (read: the young, emerging international markets).

If this is correct, it would explain why no one under 20 actually uses Facebook (or email, for the matter), and why every move from Twitter smacks of desperation.

So, I don't know, all hail snapchat? (At least until something displaces that in five years...)

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#57

Post by nashadelic »

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #46

What I find frustrating is that twitter has ignored /really obvious/ opportunities to monetize in a natural way, in favour of this strategy that involves backtracking on the things that makes twitter /twitter/. Opportunities that I see: -- Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. Remember Ashton Kutcher's race to be the first twitter user with 1 million followers? Yeah.…

> Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers.

You can't. Servies like these grow because of celebrities and their fans. Taxing the celebs will stop their own growth. Also, there are lots of would-be celebs who don't make a lot of money and are trying to use twitter to get the word out there.

> Charge third party developers for increased API capacity.

For the same reason as above, you can't. A lot of people come on facebook and stay there because of apps, charging devs for API access will kill innovation. Also, if something is popular and growing, taxing it will be bad for both the users and the dev if the dev can't pay. Also keep in mind that most popular apps may not have a monetization strategy yet.

> Charge users for special account abilities- like, perhaps, many of the features offered by tweet deck.

This is a good approach and is the LinkedIn model. I'm sure they're thinking of doing this with talk of 'lightweight analytics' etc so long as they don't make the paid users too powerful and disenfranchise existing users.

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#58

Post by dm8 »

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #46

What I find frustrating is that twitter has ignored /really obvious/ opportunities to monetize in a natural way, in favour of this strategy that involves backtracking on the things that makes twitter /twitter/. Opportunities that I see: -- Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. Remember Ashton Kutcher's race to be the first twitter user with 1 million followers? Yeah.…

Do you genuinely think they did not think about aforementioned approaches?

They might have made money via subscription route but they will make more money via ads.

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#59

Post by hnriot »

phillmv wrote: post #50
BlackJack wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you're saying, but you really don't have to "jump through hoops" to get ad-block software. It takes about 30 seconds to install an ad-blocking extension. I think the better argument is that most people don't know/care for ad-blocking software. I think AdBlock and its alternatives are prevalent in the tech community, but we're just a small part of total users.

>It takes about 30 seconds to install an ad-blocking extension. I'd be willing wager that those 30 seconds of barrier would deter like 70-80% of the computer using population. Very few people as a whole know or are comfortable with browser extensions.

It must otherwise google wouldn't be the giant it is.

Re: Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

#60

Post by robryan »

nashadelic wrote: post #57
TheZenPsycho wrote: post #46

What I find frustrating is that twitter has ignored /really obvious/ opportunities to monetize in a natural way, in favour of this strategy that involves backtracking on the things that makes twitter /twitter/. Opportunities that I see: -- Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. Remember Ashton Kutcher's race to be the first twitter user with 1 million followers? Yeah.…

> Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. You can't. Servies like these grow because of celebrities and their fans. Taxing the celebs will stop their own growth. Also, there are lots of would-be celebs who don't make a lot of money and are trying to use twitter to get the word out there. > Charge third party developers for increased API capacity. For the same reason as…

Sure you can charge celebrities, you couldn't have done it early on, why not now though? Facebook is making a ton of pages now through the pay to see seen stuff.

I would keep the API free and open, sure charge for the larger feeds and enforce 3rd parties to show sponsored tweets where appropriate.

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