
The End of Twitter? - uptown
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-end-of-twitter
======
ianstormtaylor
> The End of Twitter

Pretty black and white. And then the next sentence after clicking through
is...

> Twitter might rebound in the wake of Jack Dorsey’s reappointment as C.E.O.,
> but the service is still in trouble.

And the article ends with...

> That doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. There are hundreds of millions of
> dedicated users (I count myself among them) who still see tremendous utility
> in the service. ... The company just needs to find the right way to show the
> power of those connections to a bigger audience, and the value of that
> audience to advertisers and partners. Not a simple task, but for Twitter an
> unavoidable one.

Pretty egregiously click-bait. I propose changing the title to something that
better captures the article—like "The Current Problems at Twitter".

Other than that, not really much here other than speculation, and the already-
known worry about lack of growth. Curious to see how Twitter does, I think
there's still chance as long as they quick focusing on revenue above all else,
and focus on the experience first. Unfortunately that's not easy to do as a
public company.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
thanks you saved me the trouble of reading a whole pointless article.

------
tyre
One of the more poorly written pieces I've read in the New Yorker. The author
is all over the place: predicting doom, saying he doesn't see the point of
Twitter, proclaiming himself a dedicated user.

Also, this line of ego-drivel:

> This is especially notable to all of us in the world of media, the people
> who fill these services with highly valuable and hotly traded “content,”
> such as the piece you’re currently reading.

One we should put to rest: the "Facebook can just build this" argument.
Facebook built Paper to take over news. It failed. Facebook built Slingshot to
copy SnapChat. It failed.

Technology companies are not just successful because of their technology.
_Especially_ in social media.

~~~
mandeepj
besides facebook website and its mobile app, everything that FB created has
failed - facebook mobile os, chat heads etc.

~~~
JBReefer
I'm in that horrible demographic (white uppermiddle class New Yorker who lives
in a cool neighborhood) that's probably the most valuable in the US, and
literally _all_ of my friends use Facebook Messenger as their primary means of
communication. Name another service that:

1\. Doesn't require me to ask you for your screenname

2\. Syncs seamlessly between all of my devices

3\. Works well with video/pictures/video phone calls

4\. Isn't swamped with spam

There isn't one. Don't let selection bias blur your view.

------
m52go
Twitter is such an unlikely success. It's a product that few understand, and
even when you do, it's hard to explain it. The functionality is dead-simple.
But, at scale, its effect is magical.

I think closing down the service to developers was its pivotal mistake. The
possibilities were endless, and could have solidified Twitter as the "utility"
Topolosky speaks of...but they got greedy.

~~~
sandworm101
>> But, at scale, its effect is magical.

Yes, much like handing out megaphones at a music festival. I see very little
value in the incoherent rambling that is twitter, but of course I'm not a
market researcher or intelligence analyst.

~~~
m52go
Sounds to me like...you're using it wrong!

But really. Personally, I actually do find it to be magical. It's taken 5+
years of trying, retrying, adjusting, and readjusting to get it right, but my
Twitter feed is superb.

~~~
sandworm101
Like facebook, there is no using it correctly or not. Once you are in you are
socially obligated to follow everyone you know with a feed. Call me old, but I
still use bookmarks. Every morning I check my news from my favorite outlets
and blogs using old html. The things worth my time don't fit with twitter's
approach to information.

~~~
m52go
Yeah I was being cheeky. I was a die-hard Google Reader fan until I started
using Twitter, but that approach lacked social commentary. It was something I
had to experience to understand. What do the people I respect recommend? What
are they thinking?

That might be valuable to you, as it is to me, or it might not be. Beyond
that, Twitter really is just a list of links.

~~~
sandworm101
I guess that's where twitter and me differ. The people I care to listen to do
not broadcast their thoughts on public platforms, at least not the though
worth listening to. They talk via closed communities.

------
ryandetzel
Twitter's cash puts it in a league of its own /
[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a-
le...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/28/twitters-cash-puts-it-in-a-league-of-
its-own.html)

Also revenue has continued to grow year over year on par to be over $2B in
2015.

Sure, user growth has slowed but so, the important people are there for me
anyway. ;-)

Also, don't forget periscope which is growing like crazy and has yet to be
monetized.

There is no platform like Twitter. With a lot of cash in the bank and a slow
burn Twitter will be around for a very long time.

------
Uhhrrr
Interesting that they claim, "the growing wave of harassment and abuse users
of the service were dealing with—a quagmire epitomized by the roving flocks of
hateful, misogynistic, and well-organized “Gamergate” communities who flooded
people’s feeds with hate speech and threats." (archive of article:
[https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70](https://archive.is/IpLBu#selection-529.21-533.70))

Looking at the live feed
([https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamer...](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=gamergate&src=typd)),
I don't see anything that matches this description. Is this old media
scaremongering against new media like video games and Twitter? Or just
terrible reporting?

------
stanmancan
Kind of off topic but:

At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern? For
example, google says as of March 2015 Facebook had 1.44 billion monthly active
users. With an estimated 3 billion people in the world having internet access
that's 50%. Can you really expect to see significant growth at that point?

One other thing I've never quite understood is the concern with users vs.
revenue. I get that for a start up, you want to grow and grow fast. For an
established company like Twitter, as long as your user base isn't actively
shrinking, wouldn't it make more sense to concern yourself with making money
off those users instead of trying to gain more? What would be a better sign,
1% user growth but 15% revenue growth, or 1% revenue and 15% user?

~~~
sandworm101
>> At what point can a companies growth slow down without it being a concern?

That depends on how reliant the company is on perpetual growth. Many tech
companies are not profitable. If growth slows for them, and the rate of
slowdown points to a bad place, they may never make a profit and so backers
will flee. But others with established businesses don't need growth. They can
go on steadily with a mildly increasing market value or pay slow dividends to
shareholders. Unless they are over-valued and have leveraged whatever stock
they have retained. Such companies may be doomed even if profitable. So there
is no definitive answer.

------
lukasb
Twitter users are some of the most engaged - compulsive, even - users out
there. Is charging money to have an account really out of the question?

~~~
m52go
Yeah that's something I don't understand about companies in the social space
(in general). I'd pay for Twitter. But they won't take my money.

As I mentioned in another comment, however, I think there's more money and a
better sell to developers. Open up the API & charge for high-volume access to
it.

I really don't understand what they're doing. Cash, users, attention, etc. are
all there but they're not doing anything with any of it.

------
orsenthil
The title is provocative "click bait". Just don't fall for it. Read the
content via discussions here.

------
colmvp
[http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why...](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/why-
internet-headline-writers-hate-themselves/385248/)

Or tl, dr:
[http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Scree...](http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2015/02/Screen_Shot_2015_02_06_at_11.15.06_AM/lead_large.png?1430146783)

------
hodder
The media will simply parrot whatever the stock price has done. The stock
price was simply too high for what it was worth or maybe worth for several
yrs. the media interprets this as indicating a dead company.

Twitter has 300 million users and growing, 60% rev price growth to over 2B,
new features like moments, periscope, and a treasure of real time news and
data. Twitter is really an fantastic success and every quarter grows revenue
by an amazing amount.

If the stock was going up (as I suspect it will from here), the media will
parrot the great turnaround... When nothing will have changed fundamentally.

------
autoreleasepool
At some point in my social circle, Twitter transitioned from "a live feed of
what your friends are doing", to a tool people used to read the news and keep
tabs on celebrities.

In my experience, SnapChat's My Story feature has completley supplanted the
"live social feed of your friends" aspect.

IMO, SnapChat's effect on Twitter's is comparable to EverQuest's effect on
text-based MMO's. One platform mercilessly dominated the other because of
visual stimulation, and all the fun micro-features that go with that.

------
SixSigma
> When bombs went off during the Boston Marathon, in April of 2013, users sat
> glued to the feed, suddenly privy to something visceral and real, something
> happening. ... It was raw, but it was streamlined.

But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism ?

After nearly 50 years on this earth I've come to feel that the nowness of
things is not that important. "Quick turn on the news" became "meh, I shall
wait a few days and see how it pans out before spending time digesting it".

I know that's a personal thing.

~~~
DrScump
<But what real value is in that raw stream beyond voyeurism?>

For one thing, it helped feed the Reddit witch hunt that tracked down and
popularized images of... the wrong people.

------
numberwan9
Perfect! Click bait article that describes the current problems at twitter,
the de facto standard vehicle for click bait articles!

------
kra34
You've never really made it big until somebody says you're over.

Twitter isn't going anywhere, the very fact that they have survived terrible
corporate management, high level turnover, and failed advertising initiatives
proves the significant value of their content.

~~~
xyzzy4
I agree. I am fairly confident that Twitter will survive as long as they don't
do drastic redesigns like Myspace did. The Twitter stock price, on the other
hand, will possibly plummet a lot more.

------
twright
Super-side-note: look at how they're styling <a>, not just a simple `text-
decoration: underline;`

