
Twitter's Moment - aaronbrethorst
https://stratechery.com/2015/twitters-moment/
======
mschuster91
Twitter lost a decent chunk of its ecosystem and its users when imposing
ridiculous API limits for 3rd party clients and killing them off.

Also, they arbitrarily told Instagram to fuck off by only banning _their_
image embeds, which pissed off even more users.

Now I'm just praying that their new "while you have been away" crap doesn't
get default (or if it does, make it opt out). I'm fairly capable of reading an
entire day worth of backlog (though, again, provided it is not more than 800
tweets, once again a pointless API limit).

Getting new users all right, do whatever the fuck you want, but do not drive
away even more of the most hardcore users unless you want to have a Twitter
filled with brainless 12y kids and #cut4bieber/#cut4dagibee and similar junk.

~~~
frostmatthew
> Now I'm just praying that their new "while you have been away" crap doesn't
> get default (or if it does, make it opt out).

This is actually the first thing they've added that really bothers me. Not the
feature itself (I'm sure this is incredibly useful for many people), but that
there's no way to disable it for people (like you and me) that don't find it
the least bit helpful.

Most people (I think) follow very many accounts (many of which are quite
"noisy") and probably miss most of the tweets of those they follow - but I
don't follow many accounts (and only a handful that tweet more than say a few
times a day) so whenever I open Twitter (several times a day) I scroll down to
where I left off and read up.

~~~
killwhitey
If you click the X in the top right and say no to "did you find this helpful"
it disappears forever.

~~~
jellicle
If by forever you mean "until the next time you open the app".

~~~
killwhitey
It's possible we're on opposite sides of an A/B test, but it hasn't shown up
for me since dismissing it.

------
sparkzilla
Much as I respect Thompson's insights (his Stratechery newsletter is worth
subscribing to), I think that he's off base with this analysis. Moments seems
to be one of those products that media-watchers like, but that actual users
don't really care for. I wrote a post on the reasons why I think Moments will
fail (or at least not contribute meaningfully to user acquisition) [1], the
main points being that Twitter users are not interested in curation, they are
interested in sharing real-time information; and the tweet format is not good
for curation -- it's designed for real-time information, not for the past.
Curation implies context, and there's little context in 140 characters. In
defending Moments others have said it's like Circa. The only problem with that
argument is that Circa failed. Twitter needs to concentrate on product
extensions that work with the real-time nature of the content.

[1] [http://newslines.org/blog/a-momentary-lapse-of-
reason/](http://newslines.org/blog/a-momentary-lapse-of-reason/)

~~~
meowface
I agree. Curation isn't going to be that interesting to a large portion of
users, I think. At least, it's not interesting to me.

It might be more interesting if users are permitted to create and share their
own curation "playlists" with others.

Thompson's comments towards the end about how they should fix conversations
and embedding are spot-on, though. I don't know why they didn't fix these
things many years ago.

------
27182818284
It isn't just Moments, Twitter is failing on a lot of fronts.

* Spam bots that are way obviously spam still make it through, and some days constitute the majority of my new followers. (These are not subtle spam bots, but rather accounts that come in groups of 4 or 5 all using the same strange URL shortener.)

* Moments seems to be what was previously codenamed "Lightning" if that's the case, I'm super disappointed. Not even close to the "game-changer" I had heard about.

* The direct message limit was raised, thankfully, but honestly a little late. I've actually had DMs like "Hey let's switch to GChat" because it was just to communicate and use their site for more than anything tiny.

* People in this thread are already talking about stale content on Moments. The last few times I've logged into Vine, it still highlights the VMAs—which happened in August.

* I used to be OK with the Ads in my Twitter feed, but they've gotten to be too often and too out of touch

Put another way, Paul Graham once mentioned that a mark of something great was
when you can't imagine the world without it anymore. The example he gave was
with HelloFax. If Twitter went away tomorrow, I'd say, "meh," and move on.

------
gjreda
On the day Moments was released, I followed the "Moment" of the Astros-Royals
Wild Card (baseball) game. I loved it - it pulled relevant tweets into my
timeline and let me follow the game with people doing the same thing around
the world. When the game was over, those tweets (and users) were gone from my
feed. It was perfect.

Then, the next night, I wanted to do the same thing for the Cubs-Pirates Wild
Card (baseball) game, only it was never a "live" moment on Twitter.

Right now, the Blue Jays are playing the Rangers in a "win or go home"
situation, but again it's not even a live event for me to follow.

I love Moments from a product perspective, but I can't help but think this was
rushed out too soon - right now, there are only two "live" moments. And
because it's been rushed out, I can't help but think it's going to cause the
same problem Twitter has been trying to fix - that users are going to try it,
not get it, and never come back.

Moments should be about _live_ content. It seems focused on things that were a
moment earlier in the day or week.

------
jlas
I knew Moments was doomed when I opened it for the first time and the top card
was Astros beat Yankees. I don't think I've ever tweeted about sports, why on
earth would you show me this?

~~~
ryanSrich
That + I have no idea what it's even supposed to provide me with. I mean,
can't you just search a hashtag and you get the same info?

------
swanson
I'm not sure I get why "Moments" are any different than putting a hashtag into
the search box and hitting "Live". The only difference I can tell is there are
a bunch of auto-looping 3 second video thumbnails when I view "Moments" on
Twitter.com

So for me, it's another swing and miss. I'm in the Android beta so I get early
access to new stuff and the past 2-3 new features haven't interested me at
all: the "While you were away" just gets in my way as I try to scroll, the
weird lockscreen "Highlights" tweets are poorly done and unwanted.

The only new thing I've liked is that one twitter account that you follow and
it DMs you when a bunch of people you follow all share a tweet or follow a new
account; that is actually okay and feels like I'm being summoned to check
something out that I'll actually care about.

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xefer
So far "Moments" has only served to remind me how much I miss the "Discover"
section. That at least tended to serve up some interesting stuff. "Monents" is
filled with nothing but the sort of generic stories I don't really need to see
a bunch of tweets about.

------
jonathansizz
I'm sceptical about Moments, but maybe if they start tailoring it per-user it
could work.

What I _would_ like to see is a relaxation of the 140-character limit and the
addition of threaded replies. This would make it actually reasonable to have
discussions on Twitter and would surely greatly increase engagement.

Another useful change would be the addition of tweet categories for each
account. For instance, I might be interested in someone's tweets about
science, but not like or care about their tweets on sport or politics. If
users could categorize their tweets, other users could choose which category
or categories of tweets they want to follow. This would not only be good for
followers but also good for tweeters, since tweeters would no longer need to
worry about alienating followers by posting many tweets that most of their
followers aren't interested in.

------
lemevi
> That diminished stock price undoes rather nicely the golden handcuffs that
> are vesting stock grants, [when VCs are] circling Twitter looking to poach
> the employees most capable of turning Twitter around

There are widespread well publicized rumors from the press that Twitter will
be announcing layoffs[0]. That can't help with keeping people around that
they'll need. I actually was scheduled to interview at Twitter a few years ago
and cancelled when I got another job instead. I'm kind of glad now. :O

[0]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2015/10/11/twitters...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2015/10/11/twitters-
coming-layoffs-if-rumors-are-realized/)

------
jmduke
I'm not the biggest fan of Moments from a product perspective. It feels too
much like Facebook Paper; while I'm sure there are people who want to use
their social networks as a general news aggregation feed, I'm not one of them.

Still, it does give me faith that Twitter is focusing more on the "What
matters?" side of their product, rather than the "What's happening?" side -- a
dichotomy brought up by Thompson two years ago in a post worth reading as a
companion piece to this one:

[https://stratechery.com/2013/might-twitter-maximize-
potentia...](https://stratechery.com/2013/might-twitter-maximize-potential/)

------
danjc
>As far as I can tell, the primary reason none of this has been implemented is
that no one at Twitter has had the authority to tamper with the sacred
140-character limit

This is a very perceptive comment and reminds me of Steve Huffman recently
making the kind of changes at Reddit that only a founder would have the guts
to do.

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/reddit-
founder-...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/reddit-founder-
steve-huffman.html)

------
smtddr
Count me as a Twitter-believer.

I don't have facebook; too many social pressures & awkwardness with
friends/family would occur if I did. Twitter is the place to be for me. I've
always liked it and I like moments. But, in general, I like knowing what
people are up to outside of the tech-world. I find moments, especially the
videos, to be really good and drawing me into whatever is happening. I've also
heavily used Twitter's Periscope app to follow HedKandi's Ocean Beach Ibiza
event this past summer and it was great.

I think Twitter's services are fantastic, it's just too bad nobody has figured
out the profitability angle. I mean, clearly twitter is providing something a
lot of people like and use daily. Now, just how do you get money from them,
directly or indirectly? =/ I dunno, but I really hope someone solves that
puzzle.

------
pjjw
i think it's funny seeing analyses of twitter that act like the problem is
that the product needs tuning. the problem is they need to make money, and as-
is there's basically not much good reason to pay them for advertising over
facebook, who offer much better targeting.

~~~
solofounder2
I agree with Ben Thompson's previous sentiment about Twitter although I take
it perhaps slightly further than he would which in my own words is this:

At one point years ago, perhaps for the first time in history, a single
company (Twitter) had the opportunity for it's privately owned HTTP API to
become a ubiquitous defacto Internet Protocol for a particular type of global
communication (the notification message) potentially replacing email. (tweet +
privmsg could have threatened email)

If they would have stepped into this _integrative_ role, by keeping the API
access open and available as a building block for third party developers then
I think this may be precipitated quite naturally.

Just as a small example of what I mean by procotol.. the entire "Internet of
things" could likely be running on top of Twitter with the twitter @name
serving as the defacto way for your refrigerator to claim it's unique global
identity and to route messages to your toaster.

    
    
       In addition to kitchen appliances Twitter could largely be serving as the messaging backbone for hundreds of the most popular apps and games if it had opted to embrace the Open Web.  Sure serving as a messaging backbone for the whole world would have put additional burden on their server infrastructure, and it would have allowed third parties to monetize tweets, but it also widens Twitter's on-boarding funnel dramatically because it locks myriad diverse products, games, and services into their API.  
    

More importantly I think Twitter would have become the defacto Internet
Protocol for both notifications and Identity / Reputation. It would have meant
that new systems wouldn't have been able to afford to not integrate with
Twitter which contrasts greatly with today's situation where none of them can
integrate with because of the onerous legal restrictions outlined in the
terms.

    
    
      Instead Twitter chose to lock down their API and focus instead on monetizing what traffic they had already captured.  They turned it into an content discovery portal when it could have been a content discovery portal *and* the defacto Internet architecture primitive powering diverse social communities and integrated into just about every network-enabled device on Earth.  After all even the TV news networks were embracing both the @name and the #hashtag.  But then the executives at Twitter somehow decided to dig a moat around the platform, and then a swamp, and then fill it with alligators I mean lawyers, and now in 2015 Twitter has of all things a growth problem.
    
      I believe that the true hidden potential of the platform lies in Twitter's potential role as the world's ubiquitous identity and reputation broker.. In other words the @name was more valuable than the tweet.
    
     I think that if somehow the iron fist is relaxed so that the tweets flow open and free then the world at large would learn to embrace the @name as their preferred way to establish digital identity & reputation in place of the fragmented email+linkedin+website that people use today.
    

I believe that in order to achieve this Twitter should optimize for SCALE
rather than revenue. Restrictive terms are massive friction for scale because
they dramatically limit the number of vectors through which any individual can
discover the product and engage with it.

------
charlie_vill
"It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn"

No buddy it's not. It's darkest at midnight not before dawn. Try again...

~~~
wmt
You do know that Schrute Facts like
[http://www.quickmeme.com/img/72/725fc27cb2efcb89cbde96955e32...](http://www.quickmeme.com/img/72/725fc27cb2efcb89cbde96955e3216afa50ab41598c7ee6203dc1c6877e84be9.jpg)
are a joke, right?

