
Why Twitter has run into trouble - wyclif
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/02/economist-explains-5
======
jusben1369
Twitter is a poster child for why diversity is key. Not racial, but
socioeconomic. Twitter is very popular with people who have reached a certain
threshold of technical competence. After that though it falls away quickly.
They needed to really hire non SF based techno geeks and advisors to change
the product. It was pretty telling when older people on their board never used
it.

My Dad loves FB; he's kind of the family stalker now where no picture or
comment goes unnoticed! He really wanted to use Twitter but has given up after
multiple failed attempts. I think that's their problem in a nutshell. He so
wanted it to work.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Your dad sounds like me! I can #not @understand @twitter #at #all. Every
message is 90% noise.

Facebook on the other hand, is full of interesting news from people I love.
Technology has come a long way when I get more accurate news from my mums
friends than I do from the local TV news station. Our village had floods and
the local pumping station failed, Facebook friends (and shared posts) kept us
all in the loop and organised sands bags, pumps and help for the elderly.

~~~
irl_zebra
I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, a pretty competent programmer and data analyst,
and I cannot figure out how to use Twitter. I mean, I know physically how to
create an account and tweet, and I've made multiple tries of getting into it,
but can't find a use for it. So much noise.

~~~
wyclif
If you think Twitter is too noisy, it's probably a sign that you're following
too many people.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
How is the user supposed to know how many people is a good amount to follow? I
think that is Twitter's problem, not the user's.

~~~
wyclif
It's definitely a problem, which is why I recommend following very
incrementally. If you add too many power users at once, it gets noisy fast.

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stirlo
Fourth reason: Twitters product, while useful to news junkies and journalists
who report on it, is actually inferior to the average person who simply wants
to interact with their friends, aka Facebook.

~~~
BonsaiDen
Most of my friends actually use it as a async, direct and realtime
communications channel, pretty much like Whatsapp, just with more "social
integration" (read: the whole internet).

They don't use Facebook because its algorithmic "timeline" isn't realtime in
any sense of the word and they consider themselves more than capable enough to
decide on their own what's worth their time or not, they don't want to be fed
things / advertisments somebody else wants them to see.

They'll probably all switch to the next best thing available once Twitter's
rumoured algorithmic timeline is to be introduced.

Personally, I left the whole Twittersphere way back when the alienated their
third party devs, for me that was more than enough indication of the way they
were heading. Nowadays they have nobody left who could actually come up with
the Next Big Thing (tm) for Twitter, because all of their engineers are
mostlikely busy trying to figure out how to commercialize the platform in the
shortest amount of time in order to satisfy their shareholders.

~~~
varjag
> ..they don't want to be fed things / advertisments somebody else wants them
> to see.

Good that they use AdBlock then, cause Twitter puts ads in your feed.

~~~
BonsaiDen
Yes, they use AdBlock, but there's still a difference here, right now they're
seeing the tweets of their peers in-order, with ads intermixed - which makes
the ads trivial to filter out (bad for twitter, good for my friends).

In the future they might see whatever Twitter thinks is important to them,
which might still be ads, but in the form of other peoples / companies tweets
which just "happen" to end up in their "timelines".

Now, of course they can start blocking just about every company/user they
don't care / like on twitter, but the effort might not be worth the gains at
some point. And who knows, maybe you won't event be able to block some things
from their algorithmic timeline, because that might defeat their monetization
goals.

And yes, I realize that I might be reading a lot into Twitter's actions at the
moment, but given how they treated their platform in the past year(s), all I'm
seeing is that they want monetize it at all costs.

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matthewmacleod
I take a different view – Twitter is 'in trouble' because people expect it to
be far more than it should be.

It seems like it could be a really simple product – an asynchronous method to
receive small updates, recommendations and so on from people or organisations
you are interested in. And I love that! I follow a good selection of people
who share things I am interested in. There's nothing wrong with that, and
there's an obvious path (through advertising) to monetisation.

The problem is the wider perception of failure – the "Why isn't Twitter like
Facebook!?!?" issue. Instead of a solid, well-delivered, sustainable product,
we are witnessing a push for 'growth' and 'development' which I quite honestly
think are exactly the opposite of what Twitter needs. What is frustrating me
most about Twitter recently is:

\- Poor technical choices (the Mac app is shit and they have repeatedly fucked
over the technical community) \- Fucking-up of the core timeline concept (the
introduction of the 'algorithmic timeline' will be the day I leave the
platform) \- Arbitrarily inserting tweets from people I don't follow, nuking
the whole point of it

I'd be much happier if they just slashed the headcount and built a sustainable
business, but I guess that's not going to happen at this point.

~~~
toyg
They did slash headcount, but lower headcount does not necessarily mean better
choices will be made, as the timeline shenanigans demonstrate.

What they need to slash is the attitude of "owning the channel".

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taytus
>" Its market capitalisation is around a third of what it was a year ago, at
$9.5 billion."

9.5 Billion, for Twitter...let that sink in.

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a2tech
Because there's no business in Twitter. There's no path to being in the black
and there never has been.

~~~
jusben1369
Why would you believe that? They have great revenue. They're just not adding
enough new users.

~~~
interpol_p
Why do they need All The Users In The World? Why can't more services be
content with having a significant and active user base that is not the entire
population of Earth.

~~~
jusben1369
I think because the network effect is a fundamental foundation of social
networks. Think of all the SN's that have come and gone. It appears you can't
really remain static with a non/slow growing user base. Eventually, something
else comes along that has a broader range of people making the content better;
you stop opening the older, more static app.

~~~
interpol_p
There are lots of dedicated, niche forums all over the Internet that have
remained relatively stable for a decade or more. Those are social networks,
and they work fine while accepting the users they have.

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bsbechtel
For those commenting here that they can't get into Twitter, but love Facebook,
try stepping away from Facebook for a month, but leave Twitter available as an
alternative. I think you will find after a month that it is much more
enjoyable and useful. I think the real world analogy would be that Facebook is
like going to a party where you know everyone already...it's safe and
comfortable. Twitter is more like moving to a new city where you don't know a
single soul. It's scary and overwhelming, but once you adapt, a whole new
world opens up to you. By taking Facebook out of your daily life for a bit,
you might get to experience this whole new world...if you wish to do so.

~~~
Riod
Maybe. But for most people, twitter, like Facebook, competes for our free
time. And for most people Facebook is a better distraction. You can't force
users to see the product a certain way; it has to be intuitive.

~~~
bsbechtel
Oh I certainly agree, but a lot of people on here are saying they don't
understand it, but want to/have tried. I'm just pointing out a way that might
demonstrate to them the value it can offer. If it's not intuitive to them,
that is Twitter's fault, but that doesn't mean value doesn't exist.

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threeseed
I am actually surprised Twitter never released a business version similar to
Yammer/Facebook for Business.

There would be a lot of benefit in lightweight communication between teams and
especially when integrated with internal services e.g. customer complaint
received.

~~~
jmknoll
When I was back in school, around 2007/2008, I remember reading one of those
'future-of-work' type articles where the author went on about how teams of the
near future were going to keep each other updated via Twitter. Given the early
direction of the product, it seemed like a foregone conclusion.

"@devTeam @productTeam @PMNameHere Currently building out remaining API
endpoints. Complete by standup tomorrow #productName"

It feels like Slack ate what should have been Twitter's lunch. I don't
understand why they didn't push harder in this direction.

~~~
toyg
Obsessed with becoming an advertising company for the masses, they stopped
"productizing" their technology. Amazon doesn't stop other people from selling
stuff with AWS servers, but that's basically what Twitter did when it
destroyed its own developer ecosystem.

The parallel with Slack is very apt. The only real strength of that platform
is how easily and freely it integrates with third-party services. If Skype,
Facebook or Twitter allowed that freedom and ease, Slack would have never
appeared. Instead, they want to maintain an iron grip on who does what (or
endorse a model where your corporate sysadmin maintains such grip, like Skype
For Business does), and they lose.

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SixSigma
> Part of that drop was caused by LinkedIn, a professional social network,
> which forecast lower growth. That prompted jittery investors to push down
> LinkedIn’s shares by more than 40% and knocked down prices for Twitter and
> Facebook stocks too.

[citation required]

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surfearth
A bit off topic, but is anyone else surprised that The Economist's editors
permit the use of 'newbies' rather than 'new users'?

"Third, newbies find Twitter..."

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gnashville
I'd happily pay Twitter $1/mo to keep suggested tweets out of my TL.

