Ask HN: How should Twitter win back Wall Street - erjjones
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tcsf
Let users pay for the service.

I'd happily pay $10/month for a 'pro' level or whatever they want to call it.
I use Twitter constantly, but have always preferred third party apps -
Tweetbot is by far the best.

If the pro level killed ads, increased data privacy somehow, and fully opened
up every API to third party clients that would be more than worth it IMO. For
example, I'm tired of Tweetbot kicking me to the mobile site to view moments.

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erjjones
Would you foresee the "pro" level to add in controls to minimize the "abuse"
issue that Wall Street often points at?

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tcsf
I think that's tricky. If Twitter is perceived to be charging users to not be
abused, that's obviously crappy. Paid accounts or not I think there should be
better first-party options for controlling who you see and who sees you.

At the same time, if the APIs are fully open, third party clients would be
able to build more powerful filtering features. In effect that would allow
anyone to build entire sub communities on top of Twitter. This is starting to
sound more and more like app.net...

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erjjones
So in essence you end up with the #channels being filtered by third parties?
How would those third parties get noticed. Would Twitter offer them some kind
of sub domain or special alias?

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tcsf
We would have Twitter the API, and Twitter the umbrella network. You might
want to promote a sub group into the larger network, or you may not - similar
to reddit in a way.

I imagine invite only groups, time-limited groups for
concerts/conferences/sporting events, location-locked groups that you
dynamically join and leave as you move around.

I may just be describing iMessage or Slack at this point.

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erjjones
I would definitely like the idea of being able to add a private channel
whenever I wanted one. Something like #{myusername}-private-{whatever} and
then I could approve or add users to the channel

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bsvalley
Video blogging (vlogging). People don't want to type anymore, it's all about
video updates. A lot of companies failed trying to offer a platform for video
updates years ago (wrong timing). Thanks to Youtube, in 2017 it's the perfect
year for that, look at instagram/snapchat stories. They shutdown vine which I
think was the future of twitter. They should have replaced the 140 characters
by a 15s video.

Twitter, if you're looking to hire someone to drive this switch, contact me.

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tcsf
Twitter already does video really well IMO. I use video in tweets all the
time, and I watch videos from my timeline all the time. Why can't they
continue both?

Yes they shut down Vine, but Periscope is making some interesting moves to
mimic youtube and facebook live, but with the benefit of first-party blessing
in the official apps and on the web.

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bsvalley
I'm not a big believer in live video. Viewers and content creators have to be
online at the same time on the same platform. You get less traffic and zero
flexibility. People end up looking at replays of a live events. This is not
where the money is...

By switching %100 to videos Twitter will avoid bulling and anonymous
messages/accounts. Users will have to put their faces out there. Plus it's the
hottest topic in 2017... video updates. That might piss off a lot of users at
first but will bring in a bunch of new sign ups. Twitter needs a real face
lift.

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throwaway420
a) 5-6 years ago, devs loved them and were building all kinds of creative
software on top of their platform. Twitter got too greedy and wanted to have
it all and squashed that. Don't know if they can somehow get devs to trust
them again, but that was an ideal situation for them IMO that they ruined.

b) Run Twitter like a business. Focus on making profit and piss off with the
social justice warrior crap. Have a system in place to report abuse? Sure,
that's great and necessary. But stop blocking random accounts just because of
political correctness, throttling accounts, etc. All of the engineering and
design effort Twitter places on this endless virtue signaling could be dropped
and their workforce could shrink and they can actually try and make money. Run
it like a business, because that's what it is.

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spaceboy
They really need to make their promoted tweets cheaper. I attached a credit
card with $100.00 to spend on ADs and Twitter burned through it in a week for
a few paltry 'promoted tweets' that had very little engagement or views.

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savethefuture
Let free speech be free?

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MrZongle2
Too difficult. That means competing ideas must be compared on their merits.

Far easier to ban or throttle them. The extra time can then be spent
congratulating oneself on being a platform of expression.

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savethefuture
Too difficult? You literally don't do anything to achieve it.

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MrZongle2
I was being sarcastic.

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erjjones
What about adding some kind of market place on their platform?

