[HN Gopher] Twitter starts testing 'Fleets,' its version of Stories
___________________________________________________________________
Twitter starts testing 'Fleets,' its version of Stories
Author : jbegley
Score : 49 points
Date : 2020-03-04 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| throwaway724 wrote:
| I really don't get it. Twitter has five thousand full-time
| employees. I have to assume at least 20% of them are in product
| development in some capacity. What exactly are these people doing
| all day? I can't point to a single notable product innovation
| they've had in years. And they continue to ignore the drumbeat of
| user asking for an edit button, and are completely unable to come
| up with any kind of reasonable solution to the abuse or bot
| problems.
|
| I don't know Kayvon personally, but what exactly is wrong with
| Twitter that it's so bad and slow at product development? This
| should be #5000 on their list of things to do.
| advaita wrote:
| Could it be that they're just bogged down in fire fighting and
| paying off the tech debt accumulated over years? (Genuine
| question, as someone who has never worked in >50 eng company, I
| always wonder how those companies tackle stuff like this.)
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > What exactly are these people doing all day?
|
| Maintaining the infrastructure needed to deliver ads that are
| targeted based on real-time event streams collected from users'
| interaction with the website and app. Stuff like that.
|
| That's my guess, anyway. It's the kind of thing that can keep a
| lot of developers very busy, but not something they'll be
| talking about much in public.
| chadlavi wrote:
| They're making tons of innovative new features for their
| customers, who are advertisers. People who write and read
| tweets aren't the customer, they're the product.
| ilamont wrote:
| They've done quite a bit on the product front, although it's
| fair to question the utility to average users:
|
| - Increased tweet length to 280 chars
|
| - Tweet threads
|
| - GIF integration
|
| - Multiple UI revisions of desktop and mobile apps
|
| There's also been a fair amount of work on ads and security,
| although these changes will be less apparent to most users.
| danShumway wrote:
| But is any of this really stuff that _should_ take 1000
| engineers to build? Tweet length? GIFs?
|
| I don't question that those engineers are working hard. I'm
| sure they're not sitting around twiddling their thumbs. And I
| don't question that there aren't some genuinely hard,
| complicated problems to solve at Twitter, particularly around
| scaling and security. But from a structural perspective, I do
| still kind of wonder if companies the size of Twitter and
| Facebook aren't just an extended, very public example of
| Brooks's Law.
|
| Anecdotally, I've been in large teams and small teams and I
| work equally hard in both environments. But even with the
| same amount of work, somehow, more stuff gets done and more
| products get shipped from the smaller teams.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Having made the same observation as you, I always preferred
| the formulation in
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringelmann_effect. Although
| the Wikipedia article lists "loss of motivation" as a
| cause, it originally focussed more on coordination problems
| growing with group size-sort of a reverse Metcalf'.
|
| In that sense it avoids the lazy cynicism of writing off
| whole groups of people as stupid or unmotivated (i. e. all
| of _Dilbert_ ). Instead, it's a starting point to consider
| how much we can still improve what's arguably humanity's
| claim to fame, the ability to cooperate.
| throwaway724 wrote:
| None of those things strike as 1) important or 2) indicative
| of a high-performing product development team given their
| size. But we can agree to disagree!
| baddox wrote:
| Ads and security are both extremely important to Twitter.
| It's hard to imagine any product concern being more
| important than those two, other than perhaps uptime.
| anticensor wrote:
| Editing tweets is against the core concept of Twitter.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| I would consider "stories" against the core concept of
| twitter as well.
| chanmad29 wrote:
| why not have a edit history but still show the most recent
| tweet at the time?
| dddbbb wrote:
| It doesn't mesh well with the retweet functionality if a
| user can retroactively change the content.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _What exactly are these people doing all day? I can 't point to
| a single notable product innovation they've had in years._
|
| Maybe Twitter is less caught up on the SV "gotta change/break
| something user-facing today to justify my job" treadmill than
| other tech companies. Or maybe the changes they make are on the
| back end. It's been a long time since I've seen a fail whale.
|
| Considering the global societal impact that Twitter has, I'm
| surprised it has _only_ 5,000 employees.
| bchillman wrote:
| A lot of features never make it past experimentation and never
| see the light of day. The lifecycle of these experiments can
| last months and multiple code paths on mobile clients have to
| be carefully maintained. Failure to catch regressions on
| experiments cause unclean data and prevent experiments from re-
| starting until the new client reaches app stores.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I don't understand why anyone wants an edit button. Delete the
| tweet if you made a typo.
|
| I'd really prefer I not retweet a funny joke and an hour later
| discover it's been edited into a neo-Nazi recruitment link or
| something.
| strictnein wrote:
| An edit button should only be allowed if it removed all
| Likes/Retweets/Comments a tweet had. And at that point,
| what's the point
| sli wrote:
| I wouldn't mind if editing was only available for maybe 5
| minutes or something. I pretty much only delete/rewrite to
| fix typos.
| slouch wrote:
| It would be a valuable experience for you and the health of
| Twitter, though.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Could you elaborate?
| TLLtchvL8KZ wrote:
| I think all 5000 of them are busy "moderating" complaints. My
| account was suspended for 7 days for telling a youtuber (one
| I'd spoken with back and forth many times) that she had some
| clothes fluff in her armpit on pic she posted. Apparently that
| falls under harassment of a sexual nature and my appeal was
| denied within 15 minutes.
| vcoelho wrote:
| Without the context, I can see that remark being made by a
| creep
| Reedx wrote:
| Hanging out on the roof or in meetings, waiting for the day to
| end.
| kaffeemitsahne wrote:
| Advertising
| mdszy wrote:
| This sounds almost like they're trying to replicate "Stories"
| from other social networks.
|
| - Shows up at the top of one's feed, more prominent.
|
| - Expires after a certain time.
| stevekemp wrote:
| Expiring tweets seem interesting, and it would be interesting
| to see how they handle that alongside their recent change to
| "remind" people about things they've missed.
|
| I've just deleted my account because their notifications keep
| spamming me with reminders "Have you seen this tweet: ...".
| Those fake notifications are not things I care about, and are
| impossible to disable, the most you can do is say "Show me less
| of these" which never seems to actually result in a change.
| dddbbb wrote:
| Well that is the first line of the article... But yes, I wonder
| how it will fit into the Twitter ecosystem. The two most
| successful implementations of this are Snapchat and Instagram:
| Snapchat was only a communication platform before stories, and
| Instagram profiles tend to be very deliberate and curated.
| Neither of these really apply to Twitter.
| dang wrote:
| That's in the article title. The problem was that it's longer
| than HN's 80 char limit. The submitted title was "Twitter
| starts testing 'Fleets,' which disappear after 24 hours", which
| is a perfectly good way to shorten it to fit the limit. But
| maybe mentioning Stories is more important than mentioning 24
| hours, so I've adjusted it for the time being.
| shanev wrote:
| This will be popular, and might even replace regular usage, as
| Stories have in Instagram. It'll enable people to be more
| authentic, transparent, and casual. It will help counter Twitter
| getting increasingly LinkedIn-like.
|
| I made an app called Blink that did exactly this a few years ago:
| https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/blink. Build it and they
| will come, not :)
| ptero wrote:
| > It'll enable people to be more authentic, transparent, and
| casual.
|
| Which will, I suspect, drive analytics enhancements to help get
| under one's skin and/or sell users more junk. The tweet
| disappearing from the user-facing view will not prevent its
| being dissected and its information stored. And the point will
| be likely missed by most users...
| gsich wrote:
| Twitter is on a constant downhill ever since they restricted
| their API to force people to use their own a) shitty app or b)
| shitty website with c) shitty defaults.
| allovernow wrote:
| I think the modern stock market has a structural problem with
| unrealistic pursuit of growth, which essentially forces public
| organizations into scope creep, intimately leading to the decline
| of product quality across the board as successful products make
| unnecessary changes.
| Traster wrote:
| This seems very likely to be an emergency reaction to the
| activist investors that have just started making noises[1]. Over
| the last 5 years facebook is up 150% in value and twitter is down
| 22% and that's a pretty consistent trend. Dorsey isn't even full
| time at Twitter, their development track record has been trash
| and Dorsey's planning on going to Africa for 3 months. This looks
| very much like a defensive move, but given how lame this feature
| is I think this is going to be way too little too late. The time
| to release this feature was July 9th 2011 - the day after
| Snapchat launched. Not a decade later.
|
| [1]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitters-jack-dorsey-
| faces...
| mxstbr wrote:
| I started using Instagram stories quite heavily a couple weeks
| ago. For reference, I have ~32k followers on Twitter and ~700 on
| Instagram.
|
| Way more people have come up to me in real life and talked about
| a story of mine in the last month than people have ever come up
| to me to talk about a tweet.
|
| YMMV of course but I am bullish on the format and cannot wait for
| Fleets!
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| I've noticed something similar between Instagram and Facebook.
| However, I get much more engagement on Instagram stories (300
| followers) than Facebook stories (1.8k followers). Like,
| consistency 10x more views and engagement. So there's more to
| it than just the format, I think.
| ausbah wrote:
| what I would to see from twitter is something for "blog" tweets -
| a "single" tweet spread across 3-30 individual tweets. the
| structure of individual tweets makes them terribly hard to read,
| but I feel like I've seen enough of them to say it's something in
| their interest to support
| pergadad wrote:
| Even series-tweets are more information dense than your average
| blog post. I think that's their main appeal really. Putting a
| blogging function on twitter which then ends up as long posts
| appearing between regular tweets might make it much less
| possible to quickly 'parse' Twitter for a dopamine hit.
|
| I'm sure there are ways to counter my concern, but honestly why
| do it of things work well for them?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I wonder how much research went into the name "Fleets". To a lot
| of people, the first thing that comes to mind after "Fleets" is
| "enema" as in "Fleets enema".
|
| I am not sure Twitter wants to evoke that image.
|
| Then again, maybe this is Twitter acknowledging the toxic nature
| of Tweets and why they should be flushed out of the system
| quickly.
| whymauri wrote:
| I just can't imagine it translating well to non-English
| speakers.
| klingonopera wrote:
| ...am I the only one who's picturing the Navy?
| KarlKemp wrote:
| I've studied in the US, binged every Sorkin series, scored a
| 700 on the verbal SAT, and work almost exclusively in an
| English-language environment. And yet I've never heard of
| Fleets enema". It's strange what cultural blind spots remain.
|
| That being said, "Fleets" strikes my non-native ears as an
| above-average naming choice with its double entendre of "Group
| of something" as well as "fleeting".
|
| (It's also an ongoing pet peeve of mine how risk-averse people
| are in regards to naming. "CockroachDB" or "Plan B" (the
| morning-after pill) strike me as hilarious and instant classics
| of the genre, both evoking a rich set of emotions that fit
| pretty well with their respective products. I guess it's
| Keynesian-Beauty-Contest sort of fallacy, where everyone
| believes all the others are into Playboy models, even though
| they themselves prefer the Girl-next-door type)
| Traster wrote:
| Actually I think you've pointed out a potential confusion. My
| understanding was they're "Fleets" because they're ephemeral
| - they get deleted after 24 hours. So they're "Fleeting"
| definition -lasting for a very short time. Not "Fleet" as in
| group of boats sailing together. So the name potentially
| implies they're something they're absolutely not.
| karatestomp wrote:
| Native (US) English speaker here. Semi-old, too. Never heard
| of a "fleets enema".
| Zenst wrote:
| Interesting, will be interesting how they are received and
| utilised. Whilst they don't allow reshares, it is common for
| people to screenshot a tweet and share that screenshot - this
| won't prevent that and wonder how Twitter will police that.
|
| Also wonder if they will allow customisable expiration (up to a
| point), say 36 hours etc. Or allow shorter duration posts, say an
| hour for spot promotions - which would be a great use for this.
| sleepychu wrote:
| Snapchat has all these problems and people still enjoy the
| ephemeral nature of them.
| lostgame wrote:
| Well, since Snapchat is a glorified nude-sharing app, it
| makes sense for the use case.
| cmauniada wrote:
| ok boomer
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Don't do this here, please. It's not even relevant to the
| comment you're replying to.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| It _is_ relevant, it 's a totally appropriate response to
| the GP comment. Snapchat hasn't been primarily a nude-
| sharing app for a _long_ time, and the fact that some
| people seem to go out of their way to remain ignorant
| about that and keep treating it as such is the exact kind
| of intentional smug ignorance that the "ok boomer" meme
| is mocking.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Fine, I concede that although Snapchat does monetize porn
| content with premium accounts, it's not its main purpose;
| the meme is relevant.
|
| Still, please don't reply with memes. Before you know it,
| people will start replying with threads of lyrics here
| too.
| cmauniada wrote:
| I understand, but my reply was meant to allude to both
| how out of touch the older generation is and also how
| they look down at snapchat. I have snapchat and I use it
| everyday pretty much, its so much more than just sending
| nudes, so it irks me a bit when someone calls it just a
| nude sharing app. Thus my reply.
| pid_0 wrote:
| It's really not...
| delecti wrote:
| Just because it is used for that does not by any stretch
| mean that it is used _primarily_ for that.
| lostgame wrote:
| Speak for yourself. :P
| jedberg wrote:
| Snapchat at least warns you that someone screenshotted it.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Snapchat sends a notification to the sender when someone
| screenshots their content, will be interesting to see if
| Twitter does the same.
| cronix wrote:
| Only when using the native screen shot app, which you can
| use many on Android.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Twitter can't. Lots of people use third-party clients or
| the website, where detecting a screenshot simply isn't
| possible.
| ihuman wrote:
| This feature might not be available in 3rd-party clients,
| like polls and cards.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If it's not on the website it'll be DOA.
| [deleted]
| badfrog wrote:
| Facebook usage is > 80% mobile, and they often don't
| bother adding features to the website. Do you have reason
| to believe that Twitter is different?
| OedipusRex wrote:
| You cannot prevent that and it cannot be policed.
| kevinstubbs wrote:
| Why can't it be prevented? Doesn't seem like they should have
| much difficulty recognizing that it was a screenshot of a
| "fleet", but other commenters make it sound like it's too
| difficult. So I'm wondering what others are taking into
| account that I'm missing.
| Zenst wrote:
| I concur about preventing, though T&C's could enable
| policing. Also a nice (c) notice would enable self-policing
| upon such infractions to some extent.
|
| But certainly it will not be a fluid process currently. Let's
| see if they update T&C's to accommodate that aspect.
| baddox wrote:
| Why would they _want_ to police it? Surely Twitter is
| perfectly fine with you posting screenshots of things of
| interest (obviously within obscenity and legal
| restrictions).
| Jagat wrote:
| Because if users posting screenshots of fleets becomes a
| common thing, users would be averse to post fleets?
| luckylion wrote:
| Copyrighting tweets? I love the idea as a demonstration of
| the absurd extent of copyright, but I'd expect virtually no
| tweets to be considered copyrightable.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| IANAL, but I feel like an original tweet to @bbcmicrobot
| should be copyrightable. Maybe adding a little (c) at the
| end to signal original authorship?
| OedipusRex wrote:
| T&Cs stop at Twitter's border.
| aeturnum wrote:
| It seems pretty trivial (though perhaps not scalable) to do
| some kind of image recognition that looks for the Fleet
| format and flag it for review / policing.
| abnry wrote:
| The advantage is that the tweet still doesn't show up in
| search.
| darkstar999 wrote:
| I always see Stories as an engagement ploy. Come back every
| day... or else FOMO.
| KenanSulayman wrote:
| Those 'guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers' redirects on
| TechCrunch articles when you have an ad-blocker really make me go
| ballistic.
|
| Is this only for EU users? I can't believe that this would be
| happening for long if it wasn't...
| https://i.imgur.com/uQp1yVD.png
| tyfon wrote:
| There are several pages that does this, another one is
| huffington post. I just don't visit them as I assume what
| they're doing is hostile to the users.
|
| I'm in the EEA (almost EU) for reference. GDPR is valid here as
| well.
| duhballs wrote:
| That's a great name for them.
| rasz wrote:
| 'Farts' seems more appropriate.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| tl;dr: Twitter doesn't give a flying f..k about their users.
|
| Users: Twitter, ban the Nazis please, and let us edit tweets.
|
| Twitter: Here, we take the stars and replace them with hearts.
|
| Users: Twitter, please ban the Nazis, and let us edit tweets.
|
| Twitter: Here's a totally messed up "redesign" filled with bugs
| that is mandatory except if you pretend to be an older browser
| (hint: extension GoodTwitter does that).
|
| Users: Seriously, just please ban the Nazis and give us an edit
| option
|
| Twitter: Hey, we're introducing AI to penalize sex workers, and
| giving the Nazis a tool to report tweets that has no real
| recourse for you, and if you appeal a ban you can't do anything,
| not even DM, for _weeks_ until we may or may not look at the
| "offending" tweet because we are understaffed and our moderation
| slaves only speak your language roughly and don't get cultural
| context!
|
| Usrrs: ... WTF man
|
| Twitter: Hey, we're rolling out a feature we saw on Snapchat
| first and then was copied by Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram
| and it mostly utterly sucks there!
|
| Seriously, how utterly detached is their product development team
| from the user base? And when are they finally going to offer a
| real API again?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-03-04 23:00 UTC)