
Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? - happy-go-lucky
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/05/496427956/as-buyers-circle-could-twitter-be-better-off-as-a-non-profit
======
kharms
This would be fantastic. Twitter's utility is in its open (inherently less
profitable) nature. As a data source for academic study it's unparalleled.

~~~
bunderbunder
It's unparalleled in that there is very little that's even similar out there.

I'm less convinced of its actual value. The Twitter-based papers I've read
seem to all have two things in common: First, they all use Twitter data.
Second, they all seem to desperately want to present observations about how
people interact on Twitter as being universal, even though nobody seems to be
able to come up with a theoretical or empirical reason why that should be the
case that's more compelling than, "We we have to pretend it is in order to get
published."

~~~
nostromo
Yes. It also bothers me that quality news sources, like NPR, have fallen into
the trap of presenting Twitter as representative of the general population.

They often report about how some group of people on Twitter are angry about
something -- as if that matters. Reddit has almost as many monthly active
users lately, yet no journalist makes the mistake of reporting on Reddit
comments as if it's generalizable to the larger population.

~~~
lvs
Twitter is a cheap way to get response quotes for an article without asking
anyone any questions. It's gotten so ridiculous that some news "content" is
just a series of embedded Tweets. Serious news organizations should band
together and restrain themselves from this silly practice. It violates one of
the most important rules of interviewing, which is to know _who_ the source is
and what her biases might be so that the quote can be presented appropriately.

~~~
ghaff
There's a lot of lazy journalism looking for a quote, any quote, because
they're required to have one in a story they're writing.

This isn't new. When I was an analyst, some reporters would call me for a
quote about something. There were times when I didn't have anything to say
because I didn't know anything about said thing. But some would pester me for
a quote anyway so they didn't have to give someone else a call.

Twitter does seem to have become a particular crutch though.

~~~
lvs
The BBC was one of the most egregious pioneers in soliciting meaningless
viewer responses in the pre-social media era. They would go so far as to kill
30+ seconds of airtime to soliciting/demanding "participatory" viewer
responses that were invariably inane. On the plus side, at least it led to
some good satire [1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQnd5ilKx2Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQnd5ilKx2Y)

~~~
dredmorbius
Auntie Beeb's insistence on such complete drivel has killed all the joy and
interest. I find it utterly unlistenable much the time.

------
sverige
I've never been able to understand Twitter's popularity. To me, it's like a
website's comment section without the attached content. And most of the stuff
I've seen on Twitter is only slightly better than YouTube comments, and often
worse. I know there are lots of Twitter users here -- seriously, I'm not
trying to be funny or sarcastic, I just don't get the appeal. What am I
missing?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
Twitter gives you the ability to curate yourself a feed from comments of
people you deem interesting enough to follow and keep up-to-date with, as far
as I know. I mostly use it for my literary pursuits, and being able to follow
editors, agents, and authors at the same time with minimal hassle has made
twitter very useful to the fiction scene.

Alternatively, in the tech world, it gives you live updates on various
developers that people look up to. technologies you want to keep up with, and
updates on exciting open source software.

~~~
Merad
The problem with Twitter, IMO, is that it's a fire hose. Let's say that I
decide to follow John Carmack. I'm interested in his thoughts on technical
topics and especially articles or posts that he may have written. Instead, I
get all of that plus* the inspirational quotes he posts every morning, his
political opinions, his thoughts on current events, etc. None of which I care
about, and none of which (AFAIK) Twitter gives me the ability to filter.

*I don't know if John Carmack actually posts anything of the sort, just a hypothetical.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Is there a comparable service that has a public/private feed? I guess Facebook
wall posts would be the closest, but you can't publicly follow people there.

------
dfeart3453465uf
Twitter is the odd one out. While others built walled gardens, twitter kept
the gate open.

We now have a general catalog of human discourse for the last decade. Record
of great tragedy, revolutions, elections past and future.

It would be shame if this was bought and locked up by some gardeners.

~~~
JonnieCache
>general catalog of human discourse

I would contest this. Twitter represents a very narrow sector of society.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
A good recent example is the Democratic Primary-Twitter massively magnified
Sanders' supporters, and a lot were genuinely surprised that Twitter does not
in fact represent the will of the Democratic Primary.

~~~
pessimizer
That's not a great example; because Sanders had far greater non-Democratic
Party support than the other primary candidate, Twitter was reflecting the
opinions of a more general population than the primary would. To say it
another way - Democratic primary voters reflect a narrower sector of society
than Twitter does.

~~~
adevine
I'd challenge that interpretation. Lots of Hillary's disproportionate support
came from people much less likely to use Twitter (e.g. older black voters),
while Sanders' strength with younger voters would be much more likely to show
up on Twitter.

~~~
pessimizer
I'd agree with both points, but only 32% of voters are registered Democrats.
Sanders polled far better than Clinton within the other 68%, although amongst
registered Democrats, Clinton stayed 15-25% ahead during the entire primary
IIRC. On Twitter, in addition to Democrats, there were also Republicans,
Independents, Argentinians, and others commenting on the primary. That's the
definition of a wider sample.

~~~
conanbatt
Argentinians? How did that make a dent :)

------
slackoverflower
Twitter's best bet is cut costs by bring employee count down to 100, 50 sales
related, 50 engineering and move their infrastructure to AWS/Google Cloud
which take the company to profitability. I think once they become profitable,
it opens a lot more opportunities to explore new markets. Right now they are
in a scramble to get users. Being profitable and focusing on one thing at a
time will do them wonders. Should start by shutting down Periscope and have a
new tab in the app for Live.

~~~
sambobeckingham
50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?

~~~
sputknick
Serious question (because I've never worked on a site that large) does the
size of the site mean anything as to how many engineers are needed to maintain
it? I would think it would be more a function of complexity?

~~~
adventured
There is a loose correlation, yes.

Security, abuse / harassment, fraud, community interaction, developer
relations, 24/7 maintenance & ops, APIs, marketing & PR, legal, advertising,
physical security / cleaning etc (whether outsourced or not it's a cost),
secretarial, accounting, human resources & recruiting, sales, engineering,
various management and so on.

The notion that you could run a $2.5 to $3 billion sales business with 100
people is a _very_ bad joke. To deliver on that kind of sales level, you need
more than a hundred people working in your sales organization alone. There are
only a few types of businesses that can operate that thin at that size of
sales, most of which are in the financial world.

Twitter doesn't need to cut down to 100 people to become nicely profitable,
they need to cut down to 1,000 - 1,500 (while reducing infrastructure costs).
Facebook delivers $1.5 million in sales per employee. Twitter's overall
business is less complex and easier to operate than Facebook, they could
deliver a higher ratio.

------
luhn
The article sites Mozilla as a "precedent in tech for a nonprofit spin out,"
but that's really not relevant at all. The Mozilla Foundation took over the
Navigator codebase that Netscape open-sourced, the Mozilla Foundation having
been created for that sole purpose. What happens with Twitter's software is
moot because Twitter's value comes from its community.

------
imh
It seems weird to say that twitter discussion was so significant in furthering
different causes. From the outside (I don't use it), I've still heard plenty
about those events. From the inside, I'd bet it seems like they were the
original source for the events, or at least the cause of it getting so big. On
reddit/imgur/9gag/4chan/etc, there seems to be an idea that whichever one you
are on is the source of whichever meme is getting popular. I think it's the
same kind of thing. Maybe the discussion grows "organically" and that causes
it to grow on each of these platforms, instead of the platform causing the
growth.

~~~
pessimizer
4chan and reddit have undoubtedly been the source of an enormous number of
ideas and trends, though.

~~~
vkou
Which are largely storms in a teapot, with little effect on the world. They
are, at their best, slacktivism.

------
zymhan
I only heard the jab on air, I didn't realize they were actually being serious

"In the second quarter it lost more than $100 million — so perhaps it already
is a nonprofit."

------
laurencei
I'm not going to pretend you can run Twitter on an DigitalOcean box for $40pm
with one guy.

But when I see things like $100m in losses - I can't help but feel there is a
real opportunity for Twitter to streamline its engineering and operational
costs?

Is there a breakdown available of where/how they spend their money?

~~~
chatterbeak
We routinely run 5MM simultaneous TCP/IP connections on a single 12-core box
(with Erlang!).

There's no reason for Twitter to need all those employees and all that
hardware. If someone can get it at a fire sale price, and reduce it to 100
employees, they can have a nice business.

~~~
ghaff
As a point of reference, even the Wikimedia Foundation had almost 300 staff
and contractors as of 2015. This is admittedly a lot fewer than Twitter
employs today. However, I suspect that even a minimalist Twitter without
sales, etc. needs more employees and would have more of other types of costs
than Wikimedia.

~~~
revelation
And frankly, much of the same criticism applies to them. A tiny tiny sliver of
their constantly multiplying budget is spent on actually hosting the
Wikipedia.

~~~
ghaff
That's somewhat fair. It's certainly true that Wikimedia has a fair number of
active projects that haven't had much of an impact. Apparently there have been
at least some discussions of streamlining their work although organizations
universally find it hard to avoid scope creep.

I'd point out though that, according to Wikipedia :-), the Internet Archive
has a staff of about 200 so a few hundred employees/contractors doesn't seem
out out of line as the baseline for a non-profit information infrastructure
project.

------
M_Grey
It would be better for everyone who uses Twitter, better for people who use it
for social sciences, but probably not better for Twitter itself as a company.

------
Raed667
I can't forgive Twitter for what it has done with TweetDeck after buying it.

They have taken a great tool and striped it so that it fits their blurry
vision of what the service should look like.

~~~
err4nt
Are you talking about
[https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/) or a desktop
or mobile app? I think tweetdeck.twitter.com is my preferred Twitter UI
because it allows me to keep on top of keyword searches as well.

Staying on top of current conversations and trends in a niche area of web
design is a big chunk of Twitter's value to me and it's very time consuming to
do that in their mobile app or regular Twitter.com

------
jv22222
Yup. I suggested this in 2012.

[http://justinvincent.com/page/1972/its-time-for-an-open-
twit...](http://justinvincent.com/page/1972/its-time-for-an-open-twitter)

------
mathattack
Hard to imagine Twitter working as a non-profit when so much compensation is
tied to equity.

~~~
nowarninglabel
Exactly. Most people who work for non-profits do so out of passion for the
company and mission because the salaries often are going to be about 80% of
market rate. With no equity to compensate with either, you are left mostly
with the believers (or the less optimal workers).

I'm not sure I see Twitter's mission being strong enough to attract the
developers it needs if it were to become a non-profit. Further, while there
are large media grants out there, I don't really see a huge pool of capital
willing to cover Twitter's operational costs with donations.

~~~
losteverything
<see Twitter's mission

I was going to ask What is it's Mission but then the more important question
is Why Is it used?

A straw into someone's brain not knowing if they drew acid, water, colored
water or truth serum first into the straw before discharging and reading.

------
h4nkoslo
"Nonprofits", especially when they have associated revenue streams beyond pure
donations (eg government contracts), have really odd organizational
incentives.

In the context of something like Twitter where selective censorship /
megaphone promotion is becoming a core part of their operations, it looks like
reorganizing as a nonprofit is just a tax-advantaged way for the board to act
how they want without being even theoretically obliged to operate for the
benefit of the people that supplied them with the capital to build up their
service.

They've been extremely aggressive in purging high-value users on extremely
flimsy pretences in what cannot possibly be a revenue-optimal way (unless
somehow you think celebrities fighting amongst themselves is bad for user
engagement), but if they have a purported goal of something vague like
"improving communication" that becomes a non-issue.

------
ghaff
As a non-profit, it would still need to breakeven. So far, it hasn't
demonstrated this ability, so arguing that its problems stem from pressure by
investors to make outsized returns seems weak. (And the article even admits
that Twitter's problems aren't all about investor pressure.)

~~~
mrtksn
Right, but in that case could adopt the Wikipedia model. So, donations.

~~~
ghaff
Which would require a very different cost structure from the Twitter of today.
Not impossible perhaps but certainly a fundamental change. <$100m annual
expenses for Wikimedia vs. $2b, so about 25x. Of course, some of those
expenses are cost of sales and others could be cut in a more streamlined non-
profit but it's a big difference today.

------
zitterbewegung
I think a better question is could you make a nonprofit serve the purpose of
twitter and GNU social has been successful in this regard.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social)

------
andy_ppp
No. Twitter would be better off using machine learning to segment their users
(the way Hello is trying to do manually). For example they should know I love
Nike trainers, Arsenal football club, I'm a developer, I'm thinking about
buying a house etc. and surface this information when I'm writing a tweet such
that it knows if I'm talking about Arsenal or my trip around Japan and gives a
richer UI based on this. Making my stream more interesting i.e. when a game is
on and I'm writing about it there should be way to message only Arsenal
people...

All of this should be automatically added/tagged up and while you can remove
the metadata it'll be right most of the time. The advertising potential is
incredible.

~~~
egypturnash
"The advertising potential is incredible."

Maybe some things don't need to have advertising crammed into every possible
corner. Maybe some things don't need to be monetized to the maximum extent
possible.

------
dominotw
This seems like the only way to end censorship on twitter.

------
ilaksh
See the #1 HN article today about returning the web (or the internet) to its
decentralized origins.

The existence of Twitter and many other technolpolies that dominate with what
could basically be a shared protocol is what's holding back decentralization.

Actually I think all of the giants will eventually fall hard because of
(re)-decentralization. That includes Twitter, Facebook, Google, Microsoft,
Amazon, the United States, etc.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think we are seeing a (vastly accelerated) version of turn of the century
industrial politics.

The ultimate (good) destiny if Google, Facebook and Twitter is as public
utilities. This valuable data open to all and their connective abilities as
useful and common to all as the road network.

Should it be a non-profit. No it should be a utility

~~~
Scarblac
I'm confused, do you mean the Dot-com bubble turn of the century or something
that happened around the turn of the 19th/20th century?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Oh yeah, we have had another. Fin-de-siecle 19/20th century.

Basically oil barons went bat shit crazy and owned everything and everyone,
railways, oil etc. Whilst less pronounced in the US, most "modern" nations
brought energy supply into strongly regulated industries, often price
controlled

I hope / assume / fear that the (personally identifying) data industry will go
the same way

~~~
dredmorbius
What specific examples of nationally-controlled or regulated oil industries do
you have in mind?

As of 1900, the major oil extractors were the United States, Russia, Romania,
Austria-Hungary (Bóbrka field), the Dutch East Indies, and Peru. Canada had
some operations.

 _Not_ on that list: Persia (1908), Venezuela (1914), Mexico (1901), Iraq
(1927), Saudi Arabia (1938), Brazil (1930), Kuwait (1938).

Unless you're talking about subsequent development of national oil companies,
largely in the 1950s: Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, etc. See
generally Yergin's _The Prize_.

------
bogomipz
I am curious what the mechanics of this would be - take thee company private
and then apply for classification as a 501(c)(3)?

Looking at the guidelines I'm guessing the type would they be a "private
operating foundation"?

[https://www.501c3.org/what-is-a-501c3/](https://www.501c3.org/what-
is-a-501c3/)

Just as one example 501c's are heavily regulated where politics are concerned.
Given that Twitter is utilized heavily by politicians as well as political
campaigns, would this even be a viable option for them?

~~~
nowarninglabel
Sure they could still do it as long as the company itself remains non-
partisan, but they just couldn't take money from politicians or political
campaigns. They would have to find some other sort of donor capital to sustain
their operations.

~~~
bogomipz
I would think that the donor capital would also be needed to purchase all
outstanding shares. So I guess with something like the Knight Foundation or
the Kroc Foundation or something with a similar sized endowment could
conceivably accomplish this.

------
Zigurd
No, because you would not build it that way. You could say the same about
Facebook. Diaspora already exists, as well as some other distributed social
networks. If any of these alternatives prospers it may be because the _idea_
of Twitter should be implemented as something other than an investor-owned
venture.

------
olivermarks
There's no reason a craigslist style nonprofit version of a service similar to
Twitter couldn't launch. The open Facebook alternatives never took off though
- very hard to get traction against deep pocketed and connected rivals.

Doesn't look as though anyone is going to buy Twitter which is embarrassing
for them

~~~
eropple
_> There's no reason a craigslist style nonprofit version of a service similar
to Twitter couldn't launch._

Launch, sure. Scale? That's a much harder problem in terms of user acquisition
(and if you can do that, you can deal with the technical side of things even
as a nonprofit, maybe). I think there's only room for one Twitter. If you
don't have 99% of the people interested in that sort of service, you might as
well have nobody.

And I don't think the arguments towards federation and distribution help--you
can have a thousand federated hosts, and if you have no users, you will get no
users. It's a really hard problem.

~~~
pessimizer
Existing and being architecturally scalable while Twitter is failing or as it
fails should be enough to get users.

~~~
eropple
Does that follow? "Existing" doesn't strike me as a sufficient prerequisite.
Building something that scales is easy. I do it all the time. It's all the
non-technical stuff that matters, and open-source/decentralized services don't
seem to really be good at that.

------
meira
Twitter betrayed all developers that relied on their API, and also helped
overthrow legitimate governments and put middle east and ukraine in chaos.
Their failure is well deserved and should help other startups to not fuck with
everybody while pretending to help (Google and Facebook, are you the next?)

~~~
stale2002
Allowing people to organize themselves is "helping them overthrow legitimate
governments"???

What, do you think twitter should start censoring everything that governments
disagree with?

An open, non-profit twitter would probably allow people to do even MORE things
like "overthrowing governments".

------
Scuds
At the very least twitter should have never gone public. The stresses of a
public company don't jive with the needs of a platform like Twitter. Thousands
of employees looking to monetize our tweets aren't what Twitter needs, in any
case.

------
Iv
I see nothing in this article indicating why it would? Shareholders want
profits. Why would they allow twitter to go non-profit?

If you want a non-profit twitter, make a non-profit alternative and hope for
Twitter to die.

------
seany
It would only be better if they unbanned everyone and stopped trying to bend
the messages sent over the platform. At the moment it seems like it might be
better for it to just burn down, so something more open can replace it.

~~~
eropple
Do you think they should unban people who threaten to rape and kill people
because they disagree about video games? If so, why?

~~~
CoryG89
I don't necessarily hold this view, but I can see the merit in it. I tend to
lean toward purist as far as free speech goes. Slippery slope arguments and
what not.

Personally, I like the concept of outsourcing the policing/moderation of a
community to the community itself. I think what online forums do by promoting
moderators from the long time, trusted user base is a step in the right
direction. The upvote/downvote system on HN, where the downvoted stuff gets
increasingly more difficult read, is even better.

~~~
eropple
Great freedoms come with great responsibilities. I tend to think that free
speech works only when the consequences of using that free
speech...y'know...exist. In a universe of pseudonymity and anonymity, those
consequences don't exist. Even when you are literally _committing the crime of
assault_ (friendly reminder: assault is the threat of violence, battery is the
violence) against somebody because they have the temerity to be a woman who
makes video games or a black man who criticizes the police on the Internet.

To that end, showing people the door seems eminently reasonable. You aren't
going to actually be able to visit upon them the prosecution (again, for
literal and extant _crimes_ ) that they have earned for themselves, but you
can, and IMO should, cut them out of the social universe that you undertake to
create and protect.

~~~
stale2002
But there WOULD be consequences. The consequences is that you would end up on
a lot of people's ban lists.

That way you don't have to interact with people you don't want to.

~~~
eropple
The consequence for these _crimes_ when they do not occur on the Internet is
jail time. What, exactly, does a ban list mean by comparison?

~~~
CoryG89
Not true. I can mail anyone a letter, anonymously to their house. I can even
drop it in a public mailbox w/ no return address and it will be delivered to
you. Unless I mess this up some how there will be no jail time. This doesn't
mean everyone wants the government to go through all of the letters and filter
out the bad ones. Same goes on the internet.

~~~
vkou
Except Twitter is not mailing a letter - it's like renting up a billboard in
front of Christie's house, that says that you're going to kill her and rape
her.

Doing that will absolutely land you in a criminal court. 'She doesn't have to
look at it' won't be a great defense, either.

Words have consequences, and centuries of precedent and legislature have
established them.

------
peatmoss
It's worth mentioning that the more principled alternative is GNU Social:
[https://gnu.io/](https://gnu.io/)

~~~
darkengine
I like the idea of GNU Social, but the Twitter-like frontend, Qvitter, is slow
and feels clunky. And last time I checked, it still hadn't solved its
"spooling problem": offline nodes won't receive updates and won't catch up
when they're back online. A post you delete from your timeline might end up
still visible on a node if it was offline when you deleted it.

I'm sort of tempted to try writing a UUCP- or NNTP-based GNU Social clone now.

~~~
peatmoss
I understand that Twitter is an impressive piece of engineering given the
scale and instantaneousness at which it operates. On the other hand, it does
kind of boggle my mind that microblogging should be as difficult as it is.

UUCP or NNTP are really interesting suggestions. They are protocols of the old
net that seemed to scale very well and long ago solved many of the kinds of
issues I'd expect to see with something like a federated Twitter clone. Maybe
I'm overestimating the scale of newsgroups during their heyday?

~~~
dredmorbius
Keep in mind that the Old Net, particularly in its heyday (pre-1993) was
_small_. A few thousand nodes. A few million users perhaps. Usenet at the time
was ~50-500k users according to a guestimate from Gene Spafford. Microsoft
conducted measurements in the early 2000s suggesting a few millions of users
IIRC. Marc A. Smith and others:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/publication/picturi...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/publication/picturing-usenet-mapping-computer-mediated-collective-
action/)

------
intended
Yes, Reddit too.

These websites are more like gardens than amusement parks. A collective shared
space, which is hard to monetize.

~~~
notyourwork
And when they die a new one comes to fruition and the herd moves along. Its a
repeat problem.

------
idlemind
As a useful public resource, it could be. Along the lines of ICANN?

~~~
dredmorbius
Poe's law?

Don't mention this to Karl Auerbach....

------
Rustydave
How about charging users?. Like monthly plans etc.

~~~
echelon
Wasn't there some "Twitter alternative" launched by someone who used HN? Its
entire business model was to bill users. I can't remember the name of it, or
the founder, but I think the service failed to gain traction.

 _edit:_ The service was/is App.net, and it was founded by Dalton Caldwell. It
used to make the rounds on HN all the time.

~~~
Klibarchu
It was a good idea, but the execution was ridiculous.

------
uptownhr
should adopt a decentralized system. should put them back on top and give
another reason people should use it again.

------
shmerl
Diaspora* is surely better off that way.

------
spikels
Twitter should be replaced with a protocol like email or TCP/IP.

------
malloreon
same with facebook please

------
_audakel
"In the second quarter it lost more than $100 million — so perhaps it already
is a nonprofit."

------
puppetmaster3
Good point. Apple is a non-profit: it does not give dividends.

~~~
mcescalante
Apple is not a non-profit, and it has been issuing dividends since 2012
([http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm](http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm))

------
zxcvvcxz
It already is, is it not?

------
meerita
Twitter needs to be acquired by Google.

