
Steve Ballmer on Microsoft, his Twitter investment, and sports tech - morisy
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-talks-microsoft-twitter-clippers-2016-2
======
marktangotango
>> "No, I'll make a bigger contribution in this phase of my life by being able
to pick and choose, not being so manic, having time to step back, a little
more time for what I'll call discernment rather than just activity."

The last, and most telling quote in the article, in my estimation.

------
dcole2929
I really dig the idea of what he's doing in analyzing the role of government.
Regardless of where you land on the political spectrum I'd say most people, at
least here in the US, would agree that the government is pretty inefficient.
While obviously governments are different than companies in some very
fundamental ways I'd think something like a dashboard for government would be
both really cool and useful. Despite being a democracy we're not very
transparent. There has to be so many ways we can aggregate data in a useful
manner both for public use and information and to help officials make better
more representative decisions. As an aside I'd also love to see more people
pursuing politics with a tech background.

~~~
tn13
I do agree with your view that government in USA is pretty inefficient.
Another problem with US government is that it is simply too large and has
immense resources to waste on needless things.

I don't remember who said it but the quote was "when government officials have
to pick between two work they chose the least productive one (because it is
easier)". I am a libertarian and I see that a lot of people make fun of Bernie
Sander's free college but go to think of it US government has spend around
$15B on war on drugs and around $74B on running prions a lot of this money can
indeed go in into supporting education if it can not be returned to tax
payers.

------
criddell
On Twitter:

> I look at that and say, "Hey, that's an exciting thing to get behind!"
> Because they can improve that product.

I'm starting to wonder how they could improve the product. People that don't
use it, seem to think it should be Facebook Jr. People that do use it
generally are happy with it the way it is.

I'm in the latter group and have a hard time thinking of ways that it can be
greatly improved. If it were up to me, I'd go the platform route and re-open
the API and commit to keeping it open.

How has Twitter improved over the past, say, 3 years? I wish Ballmer had said
more about it.

~~~
Uhhrrr
RT'ing and quoting work better. That's about it.

Things Twitter _could_ be doing, besides your excellent suggestion of
reopening the API:

-Self-deleting tweets, for the Snapchat kids.

-Better threading on conversations. Anything more than 2 people and it's a mess.

-Thumbnails for any URL. Right now if you plop the URL of an image in, it just shows as a line of text.

-Twitter is often used as RSS, so why not have a Google Reader-type viewer?

-More transparency on bans and deverification.

-Fix search. Sometimes its performance is embarrassing.

~~~
criddell
Those are all good ideas.

The expiring tweets suggestion is an interesting one. I wouldn't have thought
of that because frankly I don't _get_ Snapchat.

------
reality_czech
There's a better interview here: [http://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-
goldmine/steve-ballmer-...](http://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-
goldmine/steve-ballmer-questions/)

------
timrpeterson
I like Ballmer, fascinating guy. He cares.

~~~
JTon
I normally stand back, emotionally unaffected by executives and their
pursuits. But that "Developers, Developers, Developers" video of Ballmer and
the all the pointing and laughing makes me feel very sad. I get pangs every
time I watch it :s. So to your comment, yes it's clear he cares

~~~
scholia
He was also extremely successful in some respects, ie he tripled Microsoft's
turnover and doubled profits while clearing up the anti-trust mess _and_
operating under the supervision of the US DoJ for a decade.

He also started all the things that are happening now, including Azure, Office
365, Surface, and apps on iOS and Android. Yes, even putting stuff into open
source.

You could also write a long list of things Ballmer got wrong. However, that's
true of all tech CEOs, including the various CEOs of IBM, HP, Dell and Sun,
among others.

~~~
Maro
Agree, in business it's enough to be right some of the time:

[http://bytepawn.com/heisengames-
business.html](http://bytepawn.com/heisengames-business.html)

