
The Future of Twitter: Q&A with Jack Dorsey - bko
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-jack-dorsey-twitter-interview/
======
mgo
No question about censorship on the platform. Extremely disappointing. Twitter
is being wielded as a political censorship weapon.

~~~
dogecoinbase
What, your inalienable right to be provided with a platform by a private
company is being infringed?

~~~
TrevorJ
That's a fair point, they are under no legal obligation to provide a platform
for free speech. That doesn't mean it isn't a valid thing to desire from your
social media service of choice.

~~~
mgo
Correct. Facebook censors certain topics, but at least they're honest about
it. Twitter claims it isn't happening at all, which is a clear lie.

~~~
wturner
I haven't read Facebook or Twitters complete terms of service but I'm sure
they allow for censorship. So as long as users agree to the TOS then it
doesn't matter what words come out of the founders mouths. They simply
leverage hypocrisy to their advantage with no shame.

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cpr
They didn't ask him about censorship. He most definitely lied about it when
interviewed on the Today show. Too many libertarian/conservative voices being
un-verified, etc.

~~~
Rusky
And removing a blue checkmark next to someone's username is censorship... how?

~~~
Grue3
What about removing trending hashtags like #WhichHillary?

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iambateman
I remember when Twitter first started and there were tons of interesting
people talking to each other.

I got freelance jobs through Twitter and internships and friends. One time I
told my parents I was going to meet my company who I had been working for for
4 months while only knowing the people through Twitter. They were concerned.

But today, it seems like most everyone who follows me is a brand of some kind.

Twitter is still, imho, the greatest social network. But it could be so much
better.

~~~
bliti
You nailed a pretty important point. It's now about branding, personal or not.
Which really stinks because I used to love bouncing one liners with random
people a while back. Twitter allowed you to poke somebody in a friendly way
and get a similar response. Now it's just about brandind.

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jacquesm
It's frustrating, because it is the only social network that I'm using but I
don't actually think twitter has much of a future at all in the longer term.

If they levied a $1 charge on tweets by people with more than 1K followers I'm
sure that would go a long way towards making ends meet. On top of that open up
the firehose and the api and it might just fly.

But with the current six-different-directions-at-once strategy I don't see it
going anywhere at all.

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ihuman
Jack Dorsey did not mention anything about an API, developers, or the phrase
"3rd-party." I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

~~~
wslh
Happily Prashant, Developer Relations at Twitter, answered all the questions a
few days ago in HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11298688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11298688)
(irony)

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AndrewKemendo
I guess I don't understand why Twitter is considered in decline. More simply
put, what exactly were people expecting from Twitter that it hasn't achieved?

They have:

\- 100+ Million daily active users

\- 1.3 Billion registered users

\- Growing revenue: 710M Q4 2015 (+230M YTD)

\- //EDIT:$11B Market Cap (-3B/21% since IPO)

\- Active and engaged community

What am I missing here?

[1][http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-
num...](http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/march-2013-by-the-numbers-a-
few-amazing-twitter-stats/)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/twitters-user-growth-
goes-n...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/twitters-user-growth-goes-nowhere-
as-it-meets-revenue-expectations-of-710m/)

[3]
[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:TWTR](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:TWTR)

//EDIT: I read the graph incorrectly from their IPO document. In that case it
makes more sense that people would be worried

~~~
jperras
To start, perhaps a positive earnings per share?

[http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/revenue-
eps](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/revenue-eps)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Ok, that's a start, but it's clearly trending better YOY. With their revenue
growth, that would seem to match other high growth companies.

As an example TSLA EPS is abysmal in comparison and worsening based on actual
reporting - yet nobody is calling their death or wringing hands.

So it's gotta be something else.

[1][http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/eps-
forecast](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/eps-forecast)

~~~
erikpukinskis
> As an example TSLA ... nobody is calling their death or wringing hands.

No way... lots of people talk about how Tesla's earnings are a problem and
people regularly prophesy their death:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+earnings+overvalued](https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+earnings+overvalued)

Tesla is a classic gamble right now. Their market cap is unjustifiable at
their current scale. If they can continue their growth curve the bulls will
make money. If they don't, the bears will.

