

Ex-Twitter Employee Didn’t Want to Work for an “Ad Company” - hariis
http://mashable.com/2010/06/03/alex-payne-twitter-interview/

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euroclydon
He's starting a new Bank, "Bank Simple"

From their FAQ:

 _Why do other banks make it such a pain to transfer money?

Many banks make transferring money from your account painful as they fear
losing your deposits. We figure if we make it easy to do the things you want
to do, you’ll be happier and less likely to leave. So, transfers are simple
with us._

I've always viewed the difficulty of transferring money out of my account as a
robust security feature.

~~~
axod
Basically it sounds like he's trying to create a non-US style bank, in the US.

Transferring money in the UK is a simple process - login, click transfer, put
in the amount and destination, and click [go]. It'll appear in the destination
account in an hour or 2 usually. There's nothing insecure about that (Login is
done using chip+pin card, pin, or one-time keychain generator thingy etc etc)

~~~
fshaun
Are keychain generators common outside the US? I'm curious why physical
measures like this aren't more common.

~~~
bittersweet
The situation in Holland is pretty good. Only 1 bank (Postbank) has a system
where you can login with a username and password (instead of using a physical
authenticator) but you still need to authorize payments etc via your mobile
phone (textmessages). All the other banks have authenticators where you insert
your debitcard and have to input your 4 digit code to login and make
transfers.

Transfers are usually instantaneously except to the aforementioned bank
Postbank :-)

~~~
warp
For completeness:

You can choose to receive Postbank authentication tokens either on your mobile
phone, or a sheet of paper delivered by regular mail.

(also, Postbank has been rebranded to ING Bank, "Postbank" as such no longer
exists).

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mikeryan
It seems a little naive to think this wasn't the direction twitter would go. I
guess Google would be out of his list of companies to work for?

~~~
raimondious
I don't think he's naïve, since he left. He has no illusion about where
Twitter will be soon. Edit: My point being that he worked for the company when
it was in the form he liked, and when that changed, he left.

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jayruy
i've never understood why some are so averse to ads as a business model in new
media... it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff
_i might actually want_ , which could be a great service in and of itself.

sure - the execution isn't quite there yet - but it seems we'll get there in
the next 5 years? i don't work in the industry so i could be misguided - will
the actuality be more akin to a bunch of spam in my twitter feed?

~~~
ben1040
> it seems as if facebook/twitter are in a real place to sell me stuff _i
> might actually want,_ which could be a great service in and of itself.

As a programmer working in data mining problems, I can certainly concede just
don't find the idea of working on an ad platform to be sexy enough to work on.

But when I put my consumer hat on, I think highly relevant ads are just fine
and I'm far, far more likely to click them and generate revenue for the person
showing them to me.

A few months ago I booked a trip to SF, and alongside the e-ticket
confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail context ad for zeppelin tours
of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures. I had absolutely no idea this was
available, but it seemed awesome, and immediately went to book a tour.

If you can show me an ad for something I might be interested in (a tour) at
the time I'm most likely to make a purchase (I already had my credit card out
from booking the airline reservation) then that's awesome. In fact I might
even perceive that as a service if the product is something I would have never
known about before.

~~~
orangecat
_alongside the e-ticket confirmation mail in my inbox there was a Gmail
context ad for zeppelin tours of Silicon Valley from Airship Ventures_

That is freaking awesome and the best argument for context-sensitive ads I've
seen. How was it?

~~~
ben1040
My scheduled zeppelin tour ended up getting rained out, but the next time I'm
in the bay area and have the time to spare, I'm totally going to give it
another try.

------
Semiapies
_"For a long time, the promise at Twitter was that we were going to look at
different ways of making money, and to some degree I feel that hasn’t
happened."_

In other words, all the hand-waving didn't lead to human-powered flight, so
Twitter is looking at the booooring aspect of actually sustaining their
business.

------
ecaradec
This is actually a good timing, there is many people upset by banks behaviour
today, that some may be considering moving.

I'm french and I use a bank that was a 2000 internet startup (boursorama ).
They didn't start as a bank but as a low cost solution for the money market.
So creating a bank as a startup is definitly possible.

It's a better bank than others I have used, but it's still a bank. Their
website is powerful but designed like crap though. However all of my money
isn't there, as I fear a little bit doing a move I didn't understand (because
of crappy design ) and loose everything.

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T_S_
Let's not be snobby about ads. Relevant ads actually help people. I l-l-l-like
the ads on google. There I said it.

Why was that so difficult? Simply because my opinion of ads is colored by mass
marketed ones that are not relevant the vast majority of the time. I see them,
more or less by accident, trapped in a passive moment.

Ads of the future will seem more like helpful suggestions as I go about my
day. Look at Kayak. It's essentially nothing but a marketing tool and I love
it.

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hariis
It's an interesting dilemma for every company that is pioneering, isn't it? To
Ad or Not to Ad to sustain and to see the idea through.

~~~
moolave
Looks like another iteration of Dorsey's "move" from Twitter to Square. Being
with the same pool of folks who run Twitter, you'd probably assimilate the
same notion too and innovate something similar.

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hariis
What else could Twitter do?

~~~
nfnaaron
Open Twitter, allow anyone to be a Twitter server, and sell their services to
Twitter providers who don't want to deal with Twitter nuts and bolts, as
Disqus does for comments and Google does for gapps.

Be an expert in Twitter and sell training to implementers and users, as GitHub
does for git.

Have free and paid levels, as GitHub, Disqus, Dropbox and countless others do.

Have all paid services, as old school businesses do.

There's probably more else that I haven't covered.

~~~
brown9-2
What type of paid services could Twitter conceivably sell?

What type of paid services would people conceivably want to buy from Twitter?

~~~
axod
Twitter T-Shirts, Twitter mugs. Twitter fail whale plush toy.

I'm joking by the way.

~~~
what
Why joke, merchandising is good business. Look at the Star Wars franchise,
over 30 years it's earned an estimated $22B of which $6.68B was generated at
the box office. The largest chunk comes from merchandise ($9B). [1]

Granted, kiddies might be less interested in a plush fail whale than a plastic
light saber.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/24/star-wars-revenues-tech-
cx_...](http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/24/star-wars-revenues-tech-
cx_ag_0524money.html)

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pvdm
I guess working for google would be out of the question.

