On: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

[x1024]

Perhaps that is the lesson to be learned? That technology with limits... scales?

If you want to "do social", do it for small groups. Nobody really has 40 000 friends, so why bother with the use-case that is literally only used by advertising companies?

[petercooper → x1024]

I don't think the final question is realistic. I have 20K followers (not huge, but far beyond who I could realistically ever "know") and get huge value from it as an individual, not as a business. It would be so boring (to me) to only be able to talk to people one knows closely.

There are numerous non-company non-celebs-in-the-Hollywood-sense-of-the-word people who have huge followings on Twitter who get a lot of value from that and who their followers also appreciate: people like DHH, John Carmack, Marco, Sam Altman, Scoble..

There is a definite space between "people you know personally" and "blast ads to 2 million customers" in social and Twitter fills it really well.

[jalfresi → petercooper]

Soooo... RSS? Isn't that what you've just described? You could run that on a pretty small web server....

[petercooper → jalfresi]

Well, we did. I was a blogger for about 7 years before Twitter came along. Twitter pretty much killed it for me as the masses went there.

So you're not wrong, but the people went to Twitter. Even Google killed Reader. I go where my audience is.

[cookiecaper → jalfresi]

All "social media" services are fundamentally "RSS feeds for humans". It's the same concept, with an easier interfaces and discovery mechanisms, and within a walled garden.

[mnutt → jalfresi]

Scale RSS up to Twitter's size, interleave a user's subscribed feeds together, centralize it, and you have Twitter's scaling challenges.

[dllthomas → mnutt]

"centralize it"

So... don't?

[mapgrep → jalfresi]

RSS lacks one-click follow, recommendations, favorites, push of new updates, native replies, and uniformity of message size, and if you could sweep those things under the rug, Twitter wouldn't be as large as it is.

RSS is fine for plumbing and pros but has not evolved into anything resembling a user-friendly system.

[ljk → mapgrep]

> * RSS lacks one-click follow, recommendations, favorites, push of new updates, native replies, and uniformity of message size, and if you could sweep those things under the rug, Twitter wouldn't be as large as it is.*

Twitter has way more features than RSS, but do people really use "favorites" that often? The tweets I "fav'd" I don't really go back and check later, or maybe I'm not the targeted demographic

[sbarre → jalfresi]

That's ignoring the network effect and centralized environment that Twitter provides, without which GP might not have those 20k followers.

[mtw → petercooper]

For "friends", there is Facebook. You don't do " friends" on twitter, except if the friends are hackers or marketing types.

Twitter is more for information

[kelseydh → x1024]

Very few innovative startups have ever succeeded by declaring that "technology has its limits, we better work within them!"

To be successful, you usually have to do something outside the comfort limits of existing technology.

[x1024 → kelseydh]

WhatsApp innovated by smart use of technology within the limits of how real social interaction works.

Twitter innovated by redefining how social interaction works - and then proceeded to slowly grow bloated and cashless.

[aandrieiev → x1024]

Perhaps because providing ad companies with the tools like these is the way to monetize the service?

[x1024 → aandrieiev]

Well, it seems that idea has failed now. Why else would they be cutting costs?

[walshemj → x1024]

Because the ad companies with 40k are the one that will pay the bills