
The Twitter Contradiction - jshen
http://avc.com/2016/02/the-twitter-contradiction/
======
jasode
The grumbling around Twitter is about its continued quarterly losses and how
it's not fulfilling the expected ROI from the $2.8 billion invested.

Not relevant to puzzling out the losses is explaining all the other "cool"
things about Twitter such as "giving people a voice" or "a broadcasting
platform for journalists/celebrities/revolutionists/politicians". That's
emotional analysis instead of financial analysis.

The common defenses of Twitter often has the same flaws in writing structure:

1) Ignore the billions invested and repeated losses on the balance sheet

2) Then point out some amazing feature or undeniable human benefit that stirs
the emotions and imagination

Examples...

I don't get the narrative and negativity about Iridium/Motorola satellite
phone service?! Who wouldn't want the ability to make global phone calls from
the middle of the ocean, Antarctica, and Mt Everest?! Humanity needs a phone
like that! Well, all those cool things don't matter, the company went
bankrupt.

I don't get the narrative around the Concorde supersonic airplane? Who
wouldn't wouldn't value the ability to fly New York to London in 3 hours
instead of 6?! Well, the airlines cancelled the program after financial
analysis showed it barely broke even or lost money.

Idea for blog quality improvement: Instead of talking up the positive features
of whatever company product, explain how the monetary numbers can work out.

~~~
lingben
you would think a VC - out of the average person out there - would, you know,
kinda sorta pay attention to the numbers, maybe?

but it seems they just throw stacks of bills at targets and hope that one of
them sticks

~~~
jshen
you would think a non VC - compared to a seasoned professional with a great
track record - would, you know, kinda sorta pay attention to what the seasoned
professional says, maybe?

But it seems they just throw out unthoughtful comments and hope that someone
falls for it.

------
coralreef
If you're a celebrity, its a must-use product.

If you're a normal person, nobody cares about you on Twitter. You get
virtually no feedback on the content you produce. It's a one sided tool for
following, not sharing or creating.

~~~
Touche
And it's a bad product for following. I didn't see any of the NBA player
tweets that he mentioned. I didn't know they existed before this article. And
it's something I would be interested in, I just wasn't on Twitter in the few
seconds where that topic was relevant.

~~~
phereford
ESPN published an article the day after with about 10-12 tweets surrounding
the victory. You didn't need to be on Twitter to see it, just on ESPN the day
after to realize what you missed.

~~~
cbhl
But Twitter didn't capture that economic value -- ESPN did.

~~~
jshen
But Twitter created the value -- and that is the twitter contradiction.

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cft
Right, exactly- Twitter has always been a circle jerk, the people who use it
are the large investors, celebrities, politicians and in general moneyed
people, which leads them to think that twitter is valuable, since they "use it
themselves" and "all their friends use it". These people are somewhat detached
from reality.

But the advertising money and growth is in the massive numbers of ordinary
people that click on ads, including those Snapchat and Instagram users that
Twitter is actually loosing.

~~~
mooreds
Access to what "large investors, celebrities, politicians and in general
moneyed people" are thinking and discussing has some value, no?

~~~
cft
That is redundant- 80% is already covered by the media however

~~~
mooreds
I think there's value in Twitter being a primary source, but I guess YMMV.

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Zikes
Yeah, Twitter's got tons of potential. It did a lot to realize that potential
back during the Arab Spring, when it was used as the primary communications
platform among activists. Twitter was proud of that, being such a huge part of
social and political progress.

But that's not the Twitter of today. Now I more often read about how they've
censored this or that. A trending hashtag that they disagree with will be
removed from the trend list. Political activists that Twitter disagrees with
will see their accounts de-verified or even outright banned.

They used to champion freedom of speech, now they are one of the internet's
most prolific censors. To me, that is the Twitter Contradiction.

~~~
yolesaber
This is something that I hope DeRay McKesson can rectify now that he is part
of Twitter's board.

I would argue that Twitter's potential is realized every time someone posts
frontline reportage on it. Every time someone captures police brutality and
spreads awareness via tweeting, that is the power of Twitter. It can be an
incredibly empowering platform. It definitely still is the backbone for a lot
of activists and organizing today

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lingben
riiiiight, beyond cherry picked anecdotal evidence, I guess that explains the
MAU numbers, because errrybody is on twitter twatting away incessantly

twitter was an interesting novelty a few years ago but you can't sustain a
worldclass communication platform when the user can't figure out how to use it
effectively or how to keep track of and follow conversations

when the average user has to become a developer or a UI expert in your own
freakish cult of UI to be able to use your product... well, don't be surprised
when they leave in a confused herd

this isn't rocket science, old fashioned bboards and forums up to now have
this stuff figured out

but twitter came along and said, F* that! what we need are MODAL windows out
the yin-yang to confuse the hell out of each and every user until they leave
and go use something with better UI

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rootedbox
Think the real contradiction is.. that something so valuable is something that
is so hard to monitize.

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billhendricksjr
From the comments section on avc.com:

"Twitter isn't a social network. It's a real-time publishing engine and
consumer-customizable distribution network."

I couldn't agree more. For me it's a news reader and occasionally a content
marketing channel.

~~~
jshen
This highlights my biggest complaint about twitter. I use it largely as your
quote describes, to get publish events from people/organizations I'm
interested in. In short, I use it like a modern RSS feed. The problem is that
a whole bunch of people see twitter as something different, including twitter
if their plan to increase the tweet limit to 10,000 happens. Some use it as a
commenting system. Some use it as a medium (think tweet storms), etc.

And this leaves me with the question, what is twitter trying to be? I honestly
can't figure it out, and that's my issue with twitter.

~~~
prawn
AFAIK, the 10k limit change is intended to enable a publisher to include their
content (article, etc) in an expanded version of their tweet. So instead of
you clicking a headline in your RSS feed and getting the story, you'd hit the
tweet and get the story.

------
jellicle
Yes, Twitter absolutely is and will continue to be (for the near future) a
very important part of the online ecosystem.

But. With every change to put more ads in the faces of users, every change to
control the feed and get rid of the real-time nature of it, Twitter is killing
itself. Once Twitter moves to a fully-controlled feed model, Mr. Wilson will
no longer see those tweets from LeBron and DeMar and Kristaps in real-time,
because his feed will be showing him stuff from an hour ago that is "hot" or
that is sponsored or otherwise generates money for Twitter. Something with
autoplaying video from a "sponsored submitter". Something without clickable
links so it won't take you out of the Twitter sandbox.

There's a stench of death about Twitter. It's not dead, definitely not. But
its owners are clearly intent on killing it.

That aroma is real and it's only getting stronger.

------
grey-area
Twitter have a problem with trolls and noise for more popular users, but it's
still compelling enough for someone like Paul Graham to publish tweets like
this _and_ continue using the platform:
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/703705844614094848](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/703705844614094848)
and, as the article states, for the popular and the notable to use it as a
broadcast platform and others to use it as a way of consuming the zeitgeist.

I think the replies to that pg tweet are the perfect distillation of all that
is glorious and depressing about twitter - an open conversation with everyone
in the world leads to repeated questions from the crowd punctuated by spam and
trolls, and amidst the cacophony serendipitous discoveries and some
interesting responses, for there is in twitter all that life can afford.

------
BorisMelnik
The kids all use Insa and Snapchat, but the vast majority of people use
Twitter to disseminate / find information and written content. Snapchat and
Instagram are both more intended as "social networks" in its purest definition
while Twitter (and FB to a degree) is a social network more geared towards
written content and more in-depth conversations relating to this written
content.

------
mathattack
I sometimes feel like Twitter is morphing to where the PR flacks come to say
something. Which perhaps is good enough. I don't follow any of the a16z
partners on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

~~~
plaguuuuuu
Everyone knows it's true.

------
phantom_oracle
No matter how well-meaning or in how much sincerity this post was written,
these guys have a vested interest.

Once (or IF) Twitter goes 15-40% over it's original IPO price again, these
guys will cash out and forget what Twitter ever was.

~~~
0xffff2
At the moment I'm writing this, the very first line of the post is:

>So everyone around here knows I’m bullish on Twitter and we own a lot of
stock. So take all of this in that context please.

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xyzzy4
Twitter isn't going away. But will it make money in the same way that, for
example, buying $10 billion of real estate and renting it out would make
money?

