[HN Gopher] Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates ___________________________________________________________________ Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates Author : onpedrof Score : 159 points Date : 2022-02-10 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com) | whoisjuan wrote: | Honestly, Twitter is just a weird product. On the authoring side, | it has a tremendous product-market fit with particular outspoken | groups (investors, founders, politicians, journalists, activists, | etc) and a terrible product-market fit with everyone else. | | I believe their biggest bet on revenue has always been to grow | their passive audiences (people who just use the feed and don't | tweet) but their product lacks the immediate stickiness that | other feed products have. It's almost impossible to get the value | of Twitter out of the box if you don't have a clear idea of what | topics matter to you and who are the central figures in those | topics. | | News outlets have a better funnel to distill and distribute | information, so most people don't need to have Twitter to have a | general idea of what was said on Twitter. A large amount of news | nowadays is "X person tweeted Y". | | I'm convinced Twitter will never be able to grow into a | meaningful mainstream social media (+1B users) with their current | model, but I do believe there's a lot of unlocked value in what | they have created. | kleinsch wrote: | Yea, TikTok is playing in a similar place (big creators, lots | of passive people) but their algo + video being stickier has | led to massive wins. I think it's late for Twitter, but | interesting thought exercise on what could have been if they | had the TikTok discovery algo. | pseingatl wrote: | Maybe if they'd stop deplatforming people. | hitpointdrew wrote: | Shocker, a cesspool political platform that is banning users | every day isn't growing....you don't say. | 0000011111 wrote: | They may not make much money but I think they will outlast | Facebook - Meta. | acegopher wrote: | Could platforms like this be better served as non-profits? | riffic wrote: | Mastodon, perhaps, would be one non-profit to look at. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/shdmpq/mastodon_a... | fnord77 wrote: | or public utilities | asdswe wrote: | I don't understand why anyone would read Twitter regularly. The | short limit in messages makes any intelligent discussion | difficult, so nearly all tweets are either links elsewhere or | nonsense. Either way, Twitter is by far the easiest of all social | media giants to avoid. | sremani wrote: | I am willing to pay for no noise -- straight dope twitter just | like I do for YouTube premium. But, Twitter has to remind of some | fucking celebrity, some fucking political meltdown, so cultural | gossip bullshit and days outrage. There is no way, I could turn | this off this. Along with this, the garbage mumbling of the | tweets of people I follow based on popularity (as twitter claims) | instead of chronological or some other custom organization, I | feel works for me. | arthurz wrote: | It seems that every popular Social Media platform became an | extension of the liberal governments. I trust a proper sentiment | analysis would reveal this. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | Why not do that sentiment analysis? | rsoto wrote: | Twitter has been an absolute mess over the last few years. | Through the explore tab, they aggressively promote topics that I | have no interest in: k-pop, fashion, reality TV, telenovelas and | birthdays. And there's no way to tell them that I don't really | care about those topics, you can't even hide them. | | The trending topics used to be a very good way to know what's | happening. Being the pulse of the planet was achieved. Nowadays, | the trending topics are heavily abused. When a streamer or an | influencer does something, there's usually 6 or 7 trending topics | all related to that person. | | And then there are the spoilers. Every major movie release has | the name of the characters or actors right in your home page the | very same day of the premiere. I had to permanently hide them in | my browser, and I've been reducing the usage of Twitter in my | phone. I'm very tempted to uninstall it from it and use it only | in a PC, although I don't see myself closing my account. | | And even though they're alienating a big part of their user base | by promoting topics that clearly drive their numbers, they're | still not reaching their goals. I wonder what they'll do next. | floe wrote: | > you can't even hide them | | I changed my trends location to Tokyo on someone's | recommendation, and it's been a great workaround. I don't speak | Japanese, so it's the same as 'hiding' the trends to my brain. | | (I think the way to do this is 'Explore' -> gear icon, at least | on desktop.) | rsoto wrote: | I actually wrote a userscript in order to hide them. | jdrc wrote: | Burundi or Anguila are also good choices | imbnwa wrote: | Nah, TikTok is much, much worse since their algorithm and the | nature of the UX is so much better at it. We only think Twitter | is the king of this because we have so much experience with it | after 10+ years. | | You have to _aggresively_ curate your For You page constantly | to stop TikTok from throwing a bombastic opinion piece at you | vineyardmike wrote: | > You have to aggresively curate your For You page constantly | to stop TikTok from throwing a bombastic opinion piece at you | | As you regularly hear people say about TikTok.. "ive never | seen that on my FYP". I think honestly you react in a certain | way to the opinion pieces dude. Do you comment on them? Share | them? Linger? Just scroll on and leave it alone... | bradly wrote: | The biggest problem for me is showing me favorites/likes/hearts | of the people I follow in my feed with no way to hide them. Not | only does it make my feed into a hot mess, I now make sure not | like anything since I don't want that showing on my followers | feed. | rsoto wrote: | I haven't actually seen them in a long while, but I'm using | the chronological timeline, maybe you should try it. | bradly wrote: | Thanks! I had no idea that the three star icon is a button. | ProfessorLayton wrote: | uBlock: | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Relevant people"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Search and explore"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Footer"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Who to follow"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Discover new Lists"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label=" liked "] | | It won't stop your likes from showing on their feeds, | however. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I loathe how often BrooklynDad_Defiant!, DutyToWarn, | OccupyDemocrats, Palmer Report, Gravel Institute, Jeff | Tiedrich, and many others always end up being the top tweet of | whatever trending topic there happens to be. I refuse to | believe this is a coincidence or the result of organic | participation. Their appearance is far too consistent, | predictable, and durable. Politically motivated trends also | start appearing around a paltry 2,000 mentions, which seems | absurdly low. | | But also, in terms of non-politics, I am so tired of seeing | "JUST ANNOUNCED". | orhmeh09 wrote: | FWIW, BrooklynDad_Defiant! is a paid operative for the US | Democratic Party: | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us- | politic... | | If the Democratic Party is paying him to tweet really well, | can trending topics by him be the result of coincidence or | organic participation? | sydthrowaway wrote: | It beggars belief that people don't think the numbers from any of | these companies are completely fraudulent. | | Has anyone _been_ on Twitter? Bots, spam, etc. | aquamarine1 wrote: | how do we know you're not a bot? | xwdv wrote: | Aye, Twitter seems to be mostly a social network for bots and | people's scripts to talk to each other. Very few real humans | posting original thoughts. Maybe celebrity types use it as an | easy way to get a word out, but not the common man. | Fascinating. | asdff wrote: | I wouldn't be surprised if most celebrity tweets are just | written up in advance by their spokesperson and doled out | throughout the week with a script. | el-salvador wrote: | I think that even political speeches are written in a way | that they can easily be twitted. | samwillis wrote: | While there may be a flood of bots and sock puppet accounts, | it's worth noting that advertisers wouldn't be spending if they | couldn't see actual conversions from Twitter ads. So there are | at least enough real people on there for their advertising | business to work. | dylan604 wrote: | That's not necessarily totally true. The advertising world is | susceptible to FOMO just as much as other people. Companies | authorize their ad agencies to come up with a campaign and | agree on an ad spend for that year/campaign. That money gets | split up to cover as many markets as possible. If a | competitor is spending on Twitter, then you spend on Twitter | as well. You can't give the competitor the entire Twitter | market. | jorts wrote: | I use twitter daily and I believe most of the content I see is | real people? Perhaps that's just based on who I follow so I | don't have the same experience as you. | pyronik19 wrote: | I think it depends on the topic. I don't think you will find | many sockpuppet accounts when you are talking about some CS | programming framework... but you want to talk about politics? | Its where the culture war is being waged. | aeturnum wrote: | Sure - no one thinks Twitter (or anyone) knows the exact count | for real users, etc. But fraudulent activity and bot | development is also driven by the underlying success of the | website (scammers don't scam where there's no one to scam) so | there's reason to pay attention to relative changes (or lack of | change) in overall patterns. | adamsmith143 wrote: | If their numbers are completely fraudulent why would they | release fraudulent numbers indicating they missed their | targets? | [deleted] | zeruch wrote: | It's almost like Dorsey knew "when to get out"... | fullshark wrote: | Or he was forced out | robertlagrant wrote: | If you look at the graph of the share price since IPO it doesn't | exactly look as though Twitter is suddenly doing badly. | PKop wrote: | opportunity cost especially relative to other tech companies | gojomo wrote: | Correct, except for some brief delusional pumps, it's _always_ | done badly. | | In the same period that Twitter is -10.4% from its IPO, the | S&P500 is +150%. The NASDAQ composite is +260%. | | And the destruction wraught by Twitter Inc goes beyond what can | be measured in its shareholders' lost value. By purchasing | short-form video leader Vine, privileging it just enough to | undermine competitor Periscope, then fumbling Vine completely, | they destroyed two promising US-based short-form video | companies - allowing Chinese-owned TikTok to dominate. | | Twitter-like companies overseas have pioneered new e-commerce & | private-messaging features, while Twitter launches, then | ignores, half-thought-out features like polls, bookmarks, or | fleets. | | Twitter Inc is a corporate malignancy suppressing innovation on | an essential communications frontier. | todd8 wrote: | Since inception, Twitter is down 10.4%. | | Starting at the same time (Oct 3, 2013), S&P 500 is up 153.45% | and the NASDAQ is up 260.30% | madballster wrote: | It's only once you compare the performance of Twitter to other | tech shares and realize the last 12 years were the biggest tech | bull market in history. And Twitter shows zero return. | marcusverus wrote: | It's not just tech--the entire market has been on fire since | the Twitter IPO. The S&P has risen 150%. | azinman2 wrote: | Doesn't help their user base largely stopped growing in 2015 | while their competitors are in the billions. | oh_sigh wrote: | To put it in perspective, if you invested $10k in TWTR in | 2013, I invested $10k in GOOG, and Mary invested $10k in AMZN | - you'd have $9k, I'd have $55k, and Mary would have $90k | dragontamer wrote: | Those ratios are too close to Jesus's "Parable of the | Talents". (A "Talent" was a huge sum of silver in the | Biblical / Roman days). One investor brought back 10 | Talents, another brought back 5, and one brought back 1. | | Probably just a coincidence to to round numbers and such, | but it amuses me. | visarga wrote: | > Probably just a coincidence to to round numbers and | such, but it amuses me. | | Or is it? Maybe Jesus knew how Twitter would turn out in | 2022. /s | boplicity wrote: | I use Twitter occasionally -- but the real shift in the past year | is that all of my family (4 siblings, parents, in-laws, etc) have | switched to using Signal. A group Signal chat is a wonderful | social media platform, without any advertisements, algorithms, or | similar nonsense. Just updates and thoughts from people I care | about. It gives me hope that the destructive social media | platforms like Twitter and FB will eventually be small compared | to actually private communication channels like Signal. | nicbou wrote: | This is something I learned to love with Snapchat. Instead of | public posts, people just send stuff to you or the group. It's | private, personal, and as you say, ad-free. | [deleted] | lotsofpulp wrote: | Snapchat is all ads for me. I have no idea what any of the | buttons do except there is a 50% chance of seeing an ad with | women in bikinis. | inetknght wrote: | > _This is something I learned to love with Snapchat. It 's | private, personal, and as you say, ad-free._ | | It's not private if it's viewable by Snapchat. You can have | personal on any platform. And Snapchat is one of the most | advertisement-laden platforms ever. | tinyhouse wrote: | First, billions of people have been using WhatsApp for years | for 1:1 and small group communication. It's much bigger than | Twitter for years now. Second, it's not the same. On | WhatsApp/Signal you primarily communicate with people you know | well. On Twitter you primarily consume content or communicate | with people you don't know. | qwertyuiop_ wrote: | There aren't enough ex-USA Ad Dollars. Its a modern version of | the town crier there isn't much room to grow in terms of | features. So they are trying with 'clubhouse' aka Spaces which | has been a flop and other superficial UX gimmicks. I think it hit | its apex and something or someone will disrupt it so the cycle of | businesses continue. | rybosworld wrote: | I think Twitter is a victim of it's niche. | | It's hard to describe why some people love twitter and others | don't. But it seems fairly difficult to change it in such a way | that you gain new users and don't lose the current. | thewebcount wrote: | Really? I can describe pretty precisely why I hate it. I don't | have an account, so when I get a link to Twitter, I see one or | more of the following: | | - A reply to someone else that I can't see, so I now have no | context about what I'm looking at. It's like coming in in the | middle of a conversation. | | - A normal tweet followed by a set of replies that appear to be | incomplete. There are a bunch of buttons to press to "see | more". Often when you click on them there's only a single | additional response, not a very long thread, so it's unclear | why I had to click to "see more". Other times there are several | back-and-forth replies in a row shown, most of them | inconsequential. What decides whether I need to click to "see | more"? | | - Bots, crypto scams, misinformation, ads | | - The entire interface appears to be an overlay over something | else. Like it looks like you're reading a popup that you can | dismiss to see the actual content. But when you do that, it | shows you something unrelated. | | - Sometimes, but not always, I see the tweet I was intended to | see, but instead of seeing replies, there's a bunch of | completely unrelated tweets below that where the replies | normally are | | I'm old, so it's probably me, but I just can't parse a Twitter | page because it's so bizarrely laid out, and so much of the | expected content either isn't shown, or is hidden by default, | and so much unexpected content is shown. Call me crazy, but I | don't have time to figure it out just to read someone's hot | take on the latest trend. | rsync wrote: | After all of these decades ... | | After talk/ytalk, .plan files, sysop chat, fidonet, usenet, | livejournal/myspace/facebook ... | | I can't believe that the mass-adoption of threaded, text | discussions _looks like this_ ! | | What must non-technical, end user, always-online-generation think | of this ? | | It's confusing, barely-usable garbage. | demosito666 wrote: | Yep, every time I'm linked to twitter (I don't have mobile app) | I feel myself so old, because for the love of god I can't | figure why anyone would use this for communication. Maybe the | fact that I don't use it from mobile adds to this. | betwixthewires wrote: | I'd love to see a workgroup to discuss social UX ideas with the | goal of implementing a new type of social media experience. | Even the FOSS, decentralized and federated implementations of | social media are taking their queues from these terrible UX | designs. | anthk wrote: | Twitter is best used thru Bitlbee and an IRC client. | Jcowell wrote: | Honestly ? It great. Short consumable content that allows for | vertical discussion in two directions with different meanings , | per thread discussions that you can skip if you want. | | If you find it boring you can bail at anytime and if you find | it interesting you can bookmark tweets for later consumption. | The trending feature allows for multi-community discussion, | jokes, and memes. | | Twitter encompasses engaging text-based human interaction | perfectly. | mftb wrote: | Unfortunately having been through a similar evolution, I feel | the same, but when I talk to younger people, they think it's | great. | | I specifically agree with the part about barely-usable garbage. | Whenever I'm linked to a Twitter thread it's a dumpster fire. | Baffling. | ahmedfromtunis wrote: | I see they a huge loss of more than 500 million dollars on a | healthy 1.2 billion dollars (which is up 37% from last quarter). | | What did they spend that money on? Did they invest it in some new | stuff or spend it on marketing? | donio wrote: | Twitter is up by over 150% since 2016. | | Both are pretty useless statements without context. | IncRnd wrote: | The context is the original IPO share price of Twitter in 2013. | knorker wrote: | The context of "since IPO" for a company that's been public for | almost a decade, in the tech business. | | In fact, what other tech stock valued at double digit billions | has had such a flat valuation for its whole lifetime, yet still | survived? | | Yes, a range of ~14-77, but it's neither taken off nor crashed. | | Look at any other survivor and they'll be shaped more like | Oracle, Cisco, FB&NFLX (well, recent troubles aside) | | Look at them all over the last 9 years. Twitter stands out to | me. | | I dunno, maybe there are many big tech companies following the | same pattern. But none of them are this high profile, so | Twitter is the odd one out. | tinyhouse wrote: | Look at AMD before and after the new CEO... | ARandomerDude wrote: | It's been pretty much a straight line downward trend for 10 | years. There's probably not a whole lot that is redeemable by | more context. | austincheney wrote: | I have never understood Twitter as a product. The idea of | _following_ people seems bizarre to me. If I wanted to follow | some product or organization I would subscribe to an email, | mailer, RSS, or something of the sort specific to the thing I | wish to stay informed about. | | Over sharing, or the idea of broadcasting details about my life | to strangers on the internet is also something I completely don't | understand. | danlugo92 wrote: | "It's the UX stupid!" | charcircuit wrote: | Do you understand the concept of being a fan of someone? For | example you can follow a bunch of artists to see what they are | working on. You can follow your favorite content creators to | see what they are working on. You can follow your friends to | see what they are up to. | ProfessorLayton wrote: | As a heavy twitter user who mostly enjoys it (I'm very particular | of who I follow), I just don't understand what they've been doing | all this time. Their product has been incredibly stagnant for | _years_ save for the occasional feature here and there and some | styling. | | They've screwed over devs trying to build on their APIs and | eroded all trust along the way. New features have been rolled out | haphazardly, and they totally botched Vine and let TikTok | takeover. | | Despite all these issues, I like it, but it's increasingly | frustrating to use, and can't help but question what's going on | inside the company. | | Related: Here's how to hide all the crap they've been adding to | the timeline | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Relevant people"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Search and explore"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Footer"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Who to follow"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label="Discover new Lists"] | | twitter.com##[aria-label=" liked "] | znep wrote: | ...and almost every time I end up on a mobile link to a tweet | in a web browser I have to refresh the page to get anything but | an error. Which has been going on for years, or at least seems | like it. | tshaddox wrote: | What they've been doing is tons and tons and incomprehensibly | many tons of work on targeting and selling advertisements. | riffraff wrote: | Based on the ads I see in my timeline, they didn't do a great | job at that. I have used the service for many many years and | I have literally never seen any ad that I wanted to click. | | Maybe they do better for the US, but they seem to have done | far worse than their competitors in ad space. | cpeterso wrote: | I've used Twitter for almost 13 years (!!) and its ads are | barely relevant to me. An example of Twitter missing the | mark: my Twitter mute list includes a bunch of | cryptocurrency keywords and yet Twitter still shows me | cryptocurrency ads that include those muted words. I've | explicitly told Twitter that I'm not interested in | cryptocurrency, but they show the ads anyway. Perhaps | Twitter still considers me in the target audience because | I've proven that I what cryptocurrency is by muting those | keywords. | | In contrast, I joined Instagram just last year and use it | very little, but its ads are much more (sometimes almost | scarily) relevant to me. My wife is a big Instagram user, | so perhaps Instagram has a shadow profile for our home IP | address and I'm seeing ads personalized based on her | activity (and thus peripherally relevant to me). | YaBomm wrote: | kawsper wrote: | You also can't right click their trending widget to open in a | new tab. | pphysch wrote: | Twitter like all mass social media is competing for quantity of | user not quality of user. Because their product is the user: | behavioral analytics & advertising. | | If you're gonna use Twitter anyways, Twitter has zero incentive | to make it a more productive tool for you (in fact they want to | be slightly less productive so you spend more time on it). Due | to network effects, they are not worried about competitors | shipping a better product. | charcircuit wrote: | >Twitter like all mass social media is competing for quantity | of user not quality of user. | | Then why do they ban low quality users such as bots or users | who have broken their rules? | dageshi wrote: | Their advertiser don't want to advertise to bots and the | users who break the rules potentially cause a pile of bad | publicity for them so they're happy to get rid of them. | winternett wrote: | They've actually screwed up the very basis that made it useful | though, they reduced control over what users can elect to see, | they've completely wrecked real time timelines, and they are | covertly ratio-ing user accounts so that even their subscribers | see posts later than they are completed or even in many cases | not at all, and now they're marketing to users (main | contributors to all the platform's content) to pay in order to | boost their posts... The whole business model is like telling | people they can ride electricity generating stationary bikes in | order to charge up teslas for the wealthy. | | I've never seen any other tool as productive as it boched | terribly... Facebook was never really as useful for real time | news and events in nature (mind you). | meerita wrote: | What killed me it was Twitter killing developers apis: no more | interesting apps than theirs. It sucks big time. They're also | screwing the chronology, sometimes you get the latest tweets | (most interesting) and sometimes they switch you to | Recommended, which, normally, it sucks. Let me browse | chronologically as it was in the old days. | charcircuit wrote: | Chronological is worse since you will see a bunch meaningless | tweets from people. It's better if twitter can show me the | important tweets that I've missed since I last used it. | atorodius wrote: | I recently wondered about this, from another angle. In a way | it was "weird" that they had an API, given our times. I.e., | it was different: imagine if FB/Instagram/WhatsApp had an | API. (I think it would be awesome, but it puts into | perspective that it was weird that they had one imo) | mschuster91 wrote: | Facebook actually had APIs which got closed down after a | couple of data-mining scandals (first these "quiz" apps and | games, then Cambridge Analytica as the final nail in the | coffin), and their messenger used to support federation via | XMPP. IIRC that got shut down because of spam and scams. | winternett wrote: | Now devs and social engineers are using FaceBook groups | to covertly gather intel... I joined a local development | (to my home) group and found out after answering | development questions people posted that I was suddenly | getting a lot of recruiter calls out of nowhere. Facebook | apparently exposes contact info in the process, or | perhaps the engineers cross-reference other sites as | well. It makes the job easy for scammers too. | | The convoluted ways in which people are gathering info on | individuals is rampant in many Facebutt groups... There | is way too much unsolicited spam and it grows every time | I use an app or social site. | | Makes me not want to log in at all a lot. | ceejayoz wrote: | Facebook still has APIs, there's just a bunch of | attestations and app reviews before you get access to | them now. Some of them have been neutered, like friends' | lists and whatnot, but there's a lot they still do. | ximeng wrote: | WhatsApp has an API for $$: | | https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api | nradov wrote: | Is it viable for advertising supported services to have a | fully functional API? Some third-party developer will build | an alternative client app with no ads and eliminate the | revenue stream. | vkou wrote: | And they'll get their API keys revoked. | | Just because you have an API doesn't mean you're going to | allow anyone and everyone to use it how they want. | riffraff wrote: | It wasn't our times, it was a time when every service | provided APIs, and many services provided parsable html to | be scraped. The era of "mash ups". | | It's incredible how things changed since the 00s. | masswerk wrote: | Back then, free APIs and mashups based on them were _the_ | hot thing. (Free geolocation resolvers, Google hat a free | search API, Bing as well, FB had one, too, free weather | forecasts APIs, etc., etc.) You couldn 't be a trendy | start-up without providing one. Things have changed a lot | since. | | PS: I keep a few selected apps from this era on my phone. | Once a year I open them and admire them in their data-less | beauty. (Favourite one: Partly Clouded) Let's call it | software shinto. | wongarsu wrote: | Instagram has an API [1][2], Facebook used to have a decent | API back in the days, Reddit still has an excellent API. | | But somehow Youtube and Twitter are the only services where | I prefer 3rd party clients. | | 1: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-api | | 2: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic- | display... | jrochkind1 wrote: | Facebook used to have an API (that was useable to do | interesting things). | winternett wrote: | Chronological posts were the one thing making tools like | twitter useful. The ideal that you could follow someone and | see their minute-to-minute thoughts was refreshing. | | In the age of bots and schedules posts, fake accounts and | marginal content/reposts are rampant. Twitter to me now feels | like a "dead body" repost zone where the only thing that | grabs attention are snuff clips and pr0n. | | Their overhead from all the volume is probably stratospheric, | and they're scrambling to stop the hemorrhage of expenses | over innovating now, so it's probably gonna take an entirely | different platform to recapture the classic dynamic that | Twitter once had. | mdns33 wrote: | deepsun wrote: | Do they need to do anything? The product just works, pays their | bills, why should everyone jump off pants trying to squeeze as | much money from their product as possible? | atlantas wrote: | Thanks, that's useful. | | What I don't get about twitter as a company: Why do they have | so many employees? If they scaled back they could have a nice | business as it is. | tshaddox wrote: | The goto answer for this is that they have the number of | employees they have because they deemed each new employee to | provide more value than they cost to employee. That's their | goal. Their goal is not to have the minimal number of people | required to run some very simplistic description of their | company. They would employee a thousand milk delivery people | if they thought each one would provide more value than their | cost to employee. | 8note wrote: | Alternatively, the cost of hiring the employee is lower | than the cost of letting a competitor hire them | [deleted] | ARandomerDude wrote: | > I just don't understand what they've been doing all this | time. | | There was that one time in 2017 when they increased the | character limit. | elcapitan wrote: | Do these ublock rules still work? At least in my web ui, most | css classes and IDs seem to be randomized now.. | delecti wrote: | I'm amused at you questioning what they've been doing all this | time, and then giving instructions to avoid seeing what they've | been doing all this time. | | I don't like those things in my timeline either, but that's | your answer. Also those annoying voice chatrooms and their lame | attempt at stories. | lordnacho wrote: | One could argue they filled out their niche. Took the VC money, | made the thing global, does what it says on the tin. The world | now has a broadcast-short-messages service that can be used by | people to reach their audience. | | Unfortunately that's not enough, since these tech firms tend to | be priced to eat the whole planet, thus requiring a lot more | than going global with a little thing that works. | reaperducer wrote: | _One could argue they filled out their niche_ | | Between this and Facebook's recent woes, I wish this was a | sign of a global tiring of social media in general. | | I'm frequently wrong about these things, but one can hope. | doublepg23 wrote: | Wouldn't TikToks rise be in opposition to that idea? | shakezula wrote: | It's not the end of social media, just nearing the end of | its first gods. | Traubenfuchs wrote: | TikTok can be considered at least 3rd generation, if FB | and Twitter were second and first is MySpace. I am sure | one could argue there are more generations. Twitter is | not among the first social media god generation. | mywittyname wrote: | Adding to this: it's really hard for Do One Thing Well | companies to pivot. | beebmam wrote: | They're not even remotely priced at the magnitude to eat the | whole planet. And yet, their market _IS_ eating the entire | world (except China, due to insular political reasons). That | points to me like they 're significantly undervalued. | underwater wrote: | What is Twitter's market? They seem increasingly like just | another online community. Most of my feed is the same few | Twitter influencers with high follower counts. The drama, | conventions, and memes all make it feel insular and hostile | to outsiders. Feels more like Tumblr than some global, | open, platform. | Barrin92 wrote: | just because you reach the whole world doesn't necessarily | mean there's a good way to monetize it, at least without | losing what makes the service attractive. | | Sure they could start slapping ads on everything, even | paywall the site but at the end of the day there'd be | significant competition eroding profits. | | Twitter almost makes more sense as an open protocol than a | commercial service, which is basically what Mastodon is. | It's even what Dorsey wanted to do at one point with | Bluesky, not sure if that's still alive. | ericmay wrote: | When you say they are you referring to Twitter specifically | or social media/US tech companies in general? | | If you mean Twitter specifically I'd be interested in | reading your thoughts on the "bull case" for this takeover. | I like Twitter and use it to shout into the void from time | to time. I wonder if it's just like.. a company and not a | growth company? Like what if we just had Twitter with some | monetization and then it just paid out dividends to | shareholders? Why is that such a bad thing? | riffic wrote: | > world now has a broadcast-short-messages service | | Twitter is a company that has a track record of both user and | developer hostility. They shouldn't be this for the world, | and they don't need to be either. | | I like to say if you're skating where the puck is going to | be, you should be skating towards running your own software | that speaks ActivityPub. | | By _you_ , I don't mean you per se. I mean organizations with | budgets who would typically be assigning email accounts and | that keep an LDAP directory. | | Twitter could even sell a white-labeled version of this and | manage it on your behalf on their own servers. | | Some of the target organizations may not want to be subject | to rules applicable to American corporations. They're free to | operate something like this outside those bounds and use an | interoperable protocol. | tootie wrote: | I honestly don't get it. My company gets a lot of traffic from | Twitter apparently so I signed up to get some perspective. I | mostly follow journalists and publications as well as some | business and tech folks I like. I see so many context-free | messages of people arguing about topics I'm out of the loop on | or posting links to news I already saw in a better aggregator. | Maybe once or twice a week do I see an interesting bit of | insight but it's drowning in an ocean of gibberish. And as far | as I can tell that's the entire premise of the platform. | oonerspism wrote: | It's a version of the same problem that Facebook has. | | Once you've had your term of ruling the world, there are only so | many directions you can go from there. And by definition, the | majority are downwards. | AniseAbyss wrote: | Guess Trump needs to come back. | powera wrote: | The Hacker News zeitgeist appears to be strongly anti-Twitter. | I'm not entirely sure why. | | As far as "is the stock fairly priced" - it is only 5% of the | market cap of Facebook. | | As far as "is Twitter a good product" - apart from complaints | that people talk about politics on the app, I don't see anything | substantial in the complaints here. | rvz wrote: | > As far as "is the stock fairly priced" - it is only 5% of the | market cap of Facebook. | | Twitter looks under-priced if you count its recent acquisitions | from Quill, Sphere, Revue and it's intention to focus on the | so-called 'web3'. Lots of ways to grow in those areas if they | are smart enough. | agentultra wrote: | It's the only social I use really but I've been looking into | alternatives. Ever since Twitter decided to open up a crypto/web3 | team and introduced NFT profile pics I'm out and won't support | it... but as the only social I have to keep in touch with other | open source contributors and projects I work on/follow it's going | to take some time before I totally close my account. | | That being said, good recommendations are welcome! | digianarchist wrote: | I honestly thought this stuff was going to disappear with the | change of leadership but it looks like they've doubled down. | | NFT profile pictures? Who wants this? | betwixthewires wrote: | I'd suggest as an initial migratory step (or just for having | that extra reach) start using a Mastodon server for | microblogging. That appears to be where this twitter-like | social UX paradigm is headed. | riffic wrote: | run a blog and connect with the Indieweb community. | | Someone else mentioned Mastodon. If you don't want to run your | own Mastodon server, but you have a WordPress site, use an | ActivityPub plugin to connect with the wider network. | champagnois wrote: | Twitters design makes it kind of a weird one way communication | tool. | | Elon Musk can tweet something and a million people will reply. | What percentage if those replies are bots, shills, or people | trying to get money out of some offer of employment? Likely an | absurdly high %. | | Then there are the hacker groups and their influence campaigns... | All over twitter. | | I feel like twitter might be useful on a self hosted intranet | with your close family and friends -- but as a global product it | is grotesque. | zack-m wrote: | I've always thought of it as that. More generally, idea could | be applied to YouTube, podcasting, etc. One person has ability | to broadcast to millions, while the millions can't broadcast | back equally. | 1024core wrote: | Jack saw this coming and hightailed it outta there as fast as he | could! | [deleted] | Victerius wrote: | Throwing a subscription wall over reply chains doesn't entice me | to create an account. | FalconSensei wrote: | They failed to get revenue from ads, just started a paid version | that doesn't offer anything attractive for most people (I would | be willing to pay a bit for a good experience), and by focusing | SO MUCH on engagement without a way to opt-out, they make people | hate the tool and their timelines. Tik Tok at least has two tabs: | Following and For You. On following I only see content from users | I follow. But Twitter refuses to let this happen, and clutter my | timeline with things I don't wanna see. | | And even if I create lists for people I want to see posts from | (suggestion from another post from earlier this week), I still | can't make my likes not be 'advertised' to everyone that follows | me. So basically sometimes I can't even give a like to a tweet if | it's risque for example, because some followers might not like | seeing that and then unfollow me. | rlewkov wrote: | Buy more, it's on sale | brokencode wrote: | That's what people say when a normally healthy and growing | company has a dip. But when a company does nothing but lose | value for almost a decade, the phrase is totally inapplicable. | rlewkov wrote: | Was trying to be a bit glib and sound like a cold calling | stock broker "if you liked it at $10 you should love it at | $5" :-) | rvz wrote: | Then we better hope it becomes oversold at $19, since when | that happens it becomes a very strong buy signal. | yumraj wrote: | Like a gallon of milk nearing its sell by date? | hackerlytest wrote: | > Buy more, it's on sale | | Only works when you have money lying around | pumaontheprowl wrote: | Are you sure about that Reuters? Twitter's stock is up 5% over | the last five days. It seems to me that they met the market's | expectation for growth. Not many people buy more of a stock after | it underperforms their expectations. | | This headline is at best misleading -- intended to give the | impression that Twitter is performing worse than they are by | ignoring the metrics in which they are excelling -- or | potentially even just outright wrong. | ziggus wrote: | Remember, this is Wall Street you're talking about, so both | things can be true: Twitter can miss analyst's expectations, | and the stock can go up because other analysts see an | opportunity based on different expectations. | | If you're expecting much of what Wall Street (or journalists | covering the markets) does to make sense, you're going to have | a bad time. | curiousllama wrote: | Estimates are analyst estimates, not market expectation. The | market can (and often does) expect a company to miss estimates. | If they missed by less than expected, the stock usually goes | up. | [deleted] | conradfr wrote: | Like Instagram and others they have gotten quite hostile to | visitors without an account. I guess tracking and monetizing your | users earns a lot more than displaying ads for everyone. | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | Well with France making it illegal to use Google analytics, I | expect many more websites to move forward with forcing you to | login. They force you to have an account, which makes you agree | to them tracking you, and they'll use you being logged in to | track that. When they can use third party analytics it's not as | important, but still obviously a plus to them to have people | have an account. | Vosporos wrote: | *making it illegal to use Google Analytics because GA moves | identifying data to the US. Tracking with an account doesn't | solve this. Let's not be reductive. | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | In other comments they mention that user consent would be | enough to allow this. | | Unfortunately I'm not going to read another country's laws | to see if this is actually the case. | ProAm wrote: | > I guess tracking and monetizing your users earns a lot more | than displaying ads for everyone. | | During a gold rush, sell shovels. | DixieDev wrote: | Yeah, if you click too many links without an account it'll | bring up a sign-up pop-up that takes you to the previous page | when you close it. You can get around it by opening the link in | a new tab, or save yourself constant hassle by disabling | cookies on twitter altogether. | | While we're here, take another pro-tip: Set yourself up with an | RSS/Atom reader and "Follow" accounts you are interested in | through Nitter. No account, no random "We thought you might | like", and no ads, just posts and retweets from the accounts | you're interested in. | BitwiseFool wrote: | Twitter is also hellbent on associating accounts with phone | numbers. This is a dealbreaker for me. I will look into | Nitter. | thejohnconway wrote: | Maybe there just aren't enough people in the world that want to | be a part of something like Twitter. It's an aggressively public | platform, which many people understandably don't want. one in | twenty people in the world using your platform aught be enough | for anybody, but the whole financial system we've set up around | these companies is insane. | charcircuit wrote: | >It's an aggressively public platform | | You can easily make a private account. | ynac wrote: | I feel so naive / out-of-touch when Twitter comes up. How is it | we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. Like we do for | email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did Unix for that | matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great things, but why | don't we move from innovation to standardized protocols to | enhance the user experience of the internet. Is it just great | marketing driven by profits. As I said, I'm probably just naive, | but it sure seems like a trivial protocol to write and then we | can all jump on the task of building clients. | scarface74 wrote: | Do we really want any new technology to be "like email"? Email | is basically useless now with all of the spam. | peterhunt wrote: | We do and no one uses it. | | There is some truth to the classic HN post that "Twitter can be | built in a weekend". A service / protocol that can distribute | 280 character messages isn't really where the value is for a | service like Twitter. It's 20% engineering, 80% recruiting the | right users, retaining them, and getting them to engage on the | platform. | | Additionally, open protocols are way harder to evolve and are | therefore less competitive with closed services. The only | reason why email has stuck around as long as it has is because | it locked everyone in with its network effect before commercial | players figured out how to compete. | | Additionally, email isn't really an open protocol in practice. | Sure, it's spec'd, but in order to actually participate in the | network you need to navigate a really complicated system of | anti-spam reputation systems. This is why people just end up | paying companies like Twilio to send email instead of running | their own servers. | | Overall, I don't think we should be looking to learn any | lessons from email. It achieved market dominance in a time that | doesn't look anything like the modern era, and is much more | complex than most people realize. | woodruffw wrote: | I believe we do: it's called ActivityPub[1], and it's what | Mastodon and others use. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub | djbusby wrote: | Surprisingly difficult for Joe Public to get on - how to | solve that problem? | sumtechguy wrote: | The problem is number of users they want to see on that | platform. If you want to follow/read/interact with someone | you will be there. If not you do not care about it. It is | surprisingly hard to make a network of people if your | network has no people in it. I had to teach this lesson to | several managers over the years 'setup a page where our | users can interact'. That turned out to be the easy part. | The hard part was getting anyone to actually post anything. | Much less interact with each other. That happens a decent | amount when you try to move into a space that already has | established players. | woodruffw wrote: | Mastodon is about as easy to create an account on as | Twitter (if not easier; Twitter's human verification | process is pretty cumbersome). | | You can sign up here: https://mastodon.social/about | | (Solving the "critical mass of users" problem is left as an | exercise to the user.) | riffic wrote: | Running your own email server is pretty difficult but | getting an email address somewhere doesn't seem to be a | problem with the public anymore. | | To answer "How to solve that problem?", I'd say don't worry | a damn thing about Joe Public. | iratewizard wrote: | Open source creates a superior product, technically and | morally. Silicon valley creates a more addicting product. | hedgehog wrote: | Technology isn't the hard part, for example Mastodon exists and | works fine. Funding a sustained product delivery effort is | expensive, developing a value prop big enough to overcome | network effects is really hard, etc. | tablespoon wrote: | > How is it we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. | Like we do for email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did | Unix for that matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great | things, but why don't we move from innovation to standardized | protocols to enhance the user experience of the internet. | | I read an interesting point somewhere: empirically, platforms | can change an innovate far faster than protocols. The example | given was encryption: email doesn't have it, even though people | have been talking about it for literally decades, but WhatsApp | added it in a relatively short time (a year? less?). | | It makes sense. With a protocol, once it gets popular, change | becomes really hard. It's like herding cats to get everyone to | update, so things stagnate at the lowest common denominator for | interoperability reasons. When all the software and installs | are controlled by one entity, that entity can make a decision | to change and just execute it, no herding needed. | alangibson wrote: | I'm one of the suckers buying Twitter stock. My theory is that | they're the last untapped value in social networking. In order to | tap that value, they need to get someone that can run a business | in the top spot. Time will tell if they ever find them. | edmcnulty101 wrote: | I got a new political debate with three other people on Twitter | and at some point they revealed to me that all three of them were | the same person. | | That's what I decided to quit using Twitter. | hunterb123 wrote: | michaelmcdonald wrote: | Sure you can! Michigan has a ban on smoking indoors and | business grew for just about every bar and restaurant! Just | gotta ban the right people. From what I can tell Twitter is | doing that; but their business model is terrible and the | platform is clunky. Their lack of growth has nothing to do with | banning people. | rexreed wrote: | The revenue model for ads would be akin to the restaurants | giving away the food and charging others to promote stuff to | you while you're eating. When you're paying for the product, | it's all different. | ribosometronome wrote: | As far as I can tell, people are still allowed on Twitter. | thawaya3113 wrote: | A distinction without a difference. | | If you repeatedly smoked in a restaurant even after being | told no, the next time you won't be allowed in. | | That's exactly what Twitter does. If you keep breaking | their rules they ban you. | hunterb123 wrote: | > Their lack of growth has nothing to do with banning people. | | Doesn't seem like that as their competitors that have sprung | up are solely from conservatives being banned. | | Banning smoking !== banning dissenters, your analogy has a | false equivalency for multiple reasons, I wouldn't use them | for debates if I were you, just teaching. | | - edit because of post limit - | | @cheriot: Enough users for you to know about them. | Competition starts somewhere. But yes I agree Twitter has a | monopoly right now, my point is that monopoly is cracking due | to censorship. | | @ketzo: So you know of their future competitors? That's a | start. Maybe Twitter's monopoly will be dethroned one day. | Conservatives make up nearly half of the US, I'd say it's a | good guess. | | @ribosometronome: HN and Twitter are two different entities. | Twitter is used as the defacto communication medium to | interact w/ official government accounts, corporations, etc. | It's supposed to be for all. Hacker News is a small news | aggregator and discussion community. | | @shrimp_emoji: har har har JS is bad amirite guys?! | | @JaimeThompson: guess conservatives are mad for no reason I | guess, they are imagining being banned. Maybe if Twitter had | open mod logs we'd know for sure, but there's plenty of | prominent people that were banned. | ribosometronome wrote: | Do you think HackerNews would be a friendly place for the | type of behavior that has resulted in folk being banned | from Twitter? | ketzo wrote: | Are we calling Gab/Parler "competition" now? Do they even | have _revenue_ , let alone profit? | | Seems like a big reach, bordering on disingenuous, to | attribute Twitter user growth/revenue slowdown to | conservatives mad about being "unfairly censored". Twitter | JaimeThompson wrote: | >Conservatives make up nearly half of the US, I'd say it's | a good guess. | | Lots and lots of conservatives on Twitter so can you give | examples of those who got banned simply for being | conservative? | cheriot wrote: | How many active users do Gab and Parlor have? | shrimp_emoji wrote: | The only thing that offends me here is the !==. | dgellow wrote: | I don't understand why platforms like Twitter don't make money | the easy way: let people pay for visual customizations, like a | different profile shape (octogonal instead of a circle), or a | special banner or label, or any other cosmetics. That has been | very successful for multiplayer games since more than a decade, | people love to pay to show their cool new cosmetic. Let people | pay for cool set of emotes. Or different colors, etc. | | That doesn't require ads, is optional, and works well in a social | context. | dematz wrote: | It should be increasingly expensive and time consuming to add | more sides to your profile shape, eg pentagon->hexagon is a | step up. Adding enough sides to be a circle, or | indistinguishable from one on a pixelated screen, would be very | prestigious. Of course, this dimension might be disrupted by | block... | TylerE wrote: | So, I guess it turns out that buying user engagement isn't really | worthwhile if you have no monetization strategy (that doesn't | make all those users angry)? | Dma54rhs wrote: | They have ads but not even nearly is the tech on par with | Facebook or Google. Difficult to understand how they are doing | so poor when the media and politicians are the ones holding | this simple platform on float like a baby. | mrweasel wrote: | There aren't many companies with a need to target journalist | and politicians for a profit... well there is but Twitter ads | are a little to obvious. | | Twitter has a pretty large userbase, but I think it's the | wrong demographics for consumer ads. | cheriot wrote: | I wonder if Jack's new company will see a similar stagnation. | Square is getting beat by Clover while the CEO is focused on | blockchain. | murat124 wrote: | Not related to said beating but I opened https://www.clover.com | and umatrix icon showed the number 258. This many requests to | 3rd party resources at start usually mean there is too much | tracking. A good reason to just close the tab. By the way, | Square had only 2. | qwertyuiop_ wrote: | The nail in the coffin you are looking for ... | | https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/apple-unveils-contact... | Androider wrote: | Apple and Stripe are also set to commoditize the small business | Point of Sale that is Square's bread and butter. iPhones were | just announced to soon accept contactless payments directly, | and probably also the next iPad will include the required NFC | hardware. | cheriot wrote: | The hardware is less important than the merchant account. The | risk of charge backs means a small business accepting a | credit card is effectively taking out a loan. Apple isn't | going into that part of the value chain (so far). | Androider wrote: | Right, Apple is only providing the hardware and it requires | to use a (partnered) processor, like Stripe, which was the | example they used in their recent announcement. Stripe | coincidentally sells chargeback protection as a service | https://stripe.com/radar/chargeback-protection if that is a | concern. | zht wrote: | in what way is square being beat by clover? was square in some | way doing better than cover at one point and is no longer doing | so? | cheriot wrote: | That's my understanding, yes. Square was first but now Clover | is signing up more merchants. | arnvald wrote: | > Twitter also announced a new $4 billion share repurchase | program, which replaces a $2 billion program from 2020. | | So they're a growth stock, but really they're a dividend stock? | lbriner wrote: | I think there used to be an adage that if you can get enough | members, you can monetize it. Twitter haven't exactly made no | money but I can't imagine that there is any real trick here other | than adverts - the same as most other "free" services. | | Maybe they should try something more person like where people pay | a certain amount of money to get exclusive content from the | people they follow. Can't think of any other way I would pay for | micro-blogging. | xnx wrote: | Vine:Tiktok::Myspace:Facebook | tootahe45 wrote: | I wonder if they count crypto scammers as real users. Hell , i | can't even tweet at Amazon support without multiple automated | scambots messaging me. | barbazoo wrote: | Well, if they let me sign up without a phone number... | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | Maybe they shouldn't have banned _that_ user, after all. | zeruch wrote: | Nah, they should have...and sooner. | BitwiseFool wrote: | As an American, it feels strange to me that the CEO of | Twitter has control over how The President is able to | communicate. | lotsofpulp wrote: | The CEO of Twitter has control over how the President is | able to communicate on Twitter. As an American, this makes | sense because Twitter is private property. | BitwiseFool wrote: | It's one of those things where in theory and in the rule | of law the CEO can do so. It does make me feel | uncomfortable, though. As time goes on I am less and less | supportive of the notion that private companies can do as | they please on the basis that they are private companies. | | I don't know what 'the solution' is, but I do sense a | precedent being established that I am weary of. Twitter | is simultaneously a public sphere where politicians are | prohibited from blocking users, but also a private | platform where they can be ejected at-will. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > Twitter is simultaneously a public sphere where | politicians are prohibited from blocking users | | I do not know what public sphere means, but I doubt | Twitter stops specific accounts from blocking other | accounts. I do not see why that is relevant either. | | The president of the United States, of all people, has | the capability to put an RSS feed on Whitehouse.gov or | the president's personal website anytime they want. | BitwiseFool wrote: | Sure, but you'll have a hard time convincing people that | is an effective alternative. How many people do you know | who visit the official website of the White House to read | press releases and memos? Does the average person know | that the president used to give a weekly radio address? | The medium of the message is just as important as the | message itself. | | I also believe AOC would be a nobody if she didn't have a | Twitter account. She'd be the same as the other 435 | Representatives who release statements on their house.gov | website that no one realizes exists. | | Edit: >"I doubt Twitter stops specific accounts from | blocking other accounts." | | This was actually a court ruling. I have no clue if | Twitter actually coded this requirement on | @realDonaldTrump after the fact. | https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/trump-can-t-block-users- | his... | lotsofpulp wrote: | That is a court order due to the President's status as a | particular type of government employee, not a Twitter | policy. | BitwiseFool wrote: | Okay. The whole situation still makes me uncomfortable. I | don't particularly think that being a "private company" | on the size and scale of Twitter justifies their ability | to censor the president. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Twitter is [...] a public sphere where politicians are | prohibited from blocking users | | No, it's not. | | _When_ a public official _uses_ their Twitter account as | an official channel, _that account_ becomes a limited | public forum from which users cannot be blocked for | reasons that they could not be excluded from official | government fora more generally (e.g., viewpoint | discrimination is not permitted.) This is not a | restriction _on Twitter_ , but on the conduct of | government business by public officials that applies | wherever and whenever they conduct such business. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I'm saying it's a de-facto public sphere rather than de- | jure one. | krapp wrote: | >As time goes on I am less and less supportive of the | notion that private companies can do as they please on | the basis that they are private companies. | | There is no such notion - private companies have to obey | the laws of the land like anyone else. | | Platforms like Twitter have the right to ban politicians | on the basis of the rights of private property and | freedom of speech and association. The same rights that | allow restaurants to eject people for "no shoes, no | shirt, no service" and allow radio stations and | newspapers to choose what and what not to publish, and me | to tell Jehovah's Witnesses off. I don't know why this | suddenly makes people feel uncomfortable, when these | rights, and the ability of private enterprise to exercise | them, have been part of the basis of Western liberal | democracies for hundreds of years. | | The inverse of this would be to give carte-blanche | ownership and rights over all property to politicians - | including social media platforms, that supersede the | rights and desires of the platform owners. That it would | be illegal to ban any politician from any private | property under any circumstances. | | I believe it's a _good thing_ that the President of the | United States has no more right to act the fool on | Twitter than you or I should. Twitter is not, and should | not be, the sole nexus for all global political and | cultural communication. It 's a microblogging platform, | ffs, the only reason it "matters" at all is because one | specific paranoiac President didn't trust his own media | apparatus. | | It's a convenience. It's certainly useful, but it isn't | necessary. | BitwiseFool wrote: | >"The inverse of this would be to give carte-blanche | ownership and rights over all property to politicians" | | Why would the alternative be carte-blanche over _all_ | forms of property? The government already forces | telephone companies not to discriminate based on speech. | Broadcasters must follow restrictions and allow | government messages to be played under certain | circumstances. The Net Neutrality folks are fighting so | that Comcast cannot determine which parts of the internet | I am allowed to visit using their service. | | What would the harm be in making a law along the lines of | "A digital service used primarily for communication with | over twenty million members must allow sitting members of | congress, the supreme court, the president, and members | of the cabinet to disseminate any communication they so | desire during their tenure." | | The government controls what citizens can do with their | private property all the time, and in just about every | facet of our lives. I see no harm in making laws | depending on the scale of the company. | krapp wrote: | >Why would the alternative be carte-blanche over all | forms of property? | | Because the rights of property, free speech and | association that apply to social media platforms apply | everywhere, so altering those rights for social media | platforms also alters them everywhere. | | >The government already forces telephone companies not to | discriminate based on speech. Broadcasters must follow | restrictions and allow government messages to be played | under certain circumstances. | | Social media platforms are not common carriers. They | don't have monopoly over free speech or the dissemination | of information, nor has any platform ever claimed to act | neutrally. The entire business model of social media is | curation and algorithmic recommendation of content - the | exact opposite of what a common carrier does. | | Also, broadcasters are regulated because broadcast | spectrum space is a limited resource. Cable broadcasters, | for instance, aren't subject to the same regulations. | | >What would the harm be in making a law along the lines | of "A digital service used primarily for communication | with over twenty million members must allow sitting | members of congress, the supreme court, the president, | and members of the cabinet to disseminate any | communication they so desire during their tenure." | | The harm is that the First Amendment prevents the | government from abridging the people's freedom of speech, | and a fundamental part of freedom of speech is freedom | from _compelled_ speech. Forcing all social media | platforms which meet some arbitrary (and arbitrarily | changeable) limit on membership to carry speech by the | government is compelled speech, and an abridgement on | freedom of speech, and thus voids, or at least weakens, | the First Amendment. Which is a bad thing. | | Governments already have their own media infrastructure. | Members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the President | of the US have Twitter accounts (remember, what was | banned was Trump's personal account, @POTUS is still | perfectly fine.) The solution here is for the government | to either comply with the rules set by social media | platforms like everyone else, or else create their own | platform. | carapace wrote: | I think the root problem is that a single private | platform has become a _de facto_ public sphere, like, _at | all_. Is there any precedent for this? I also don 't know | what a solution might look like, I mean, what are you | going to do? Nationalize Twitter? | | It's a general problem too (IMO): Microsoft/Github | mediates FOSS development, Facebook (I'm never going to | call them "Meta", I think the rename was a huge dick move | by Zuckerberg that pollutes our language and culture. | Nyah.) Facebook is Easy-Bake oven Internet for normies | and they love it. Smart phones are malls. | rvz wrote: | You mean @realDonaldTrump? Gee, I wonder why everyone cannot | stop talking, reporting about that person given that they have | been _' deplatformed'_ for over year. | johndfsgdgdfg wrote: | FB deservedly gets a lot of criticism. I personally feel Twitter | doesn't get its fair share of blame. IME Twitter is the most | toxic social media platform out there. Twitter deserves a fair | share of blame for the divisive political culture we live in | right now. I hope these companies go bankrupt and it'd be nothing | but a blessing for humanity. | stevofolife wrote: | But how can you blame Twitter for the divisive political | culture when "we" are the ones generating the content? | | I'm not sure if I understand how Twitter is systematically | dividing the culture. | | I really don't think Twitter is the root cause of this. But I | may be wrong. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Twitter optimises for engagement. That's not optimising for | controversy, but it's close. Shiri's scissor statements[0] | aren't the fault of the people writing the training data; | they're the fault of the people making them. | | Twitter doesn't synthesise things, but it fosters an | environment where people are driven to write more | controversial, outrageous, engaging things by tight-loop- | feedback classical conditioning. It's not magic - the people | posting such things are partly to blame - but Twitter | wouldn't have half as many problems if it just showed | _random_ tweets to people. Instead, it shows people what it | thinks will keep people on Twitter; short term, that works, | but long-term it destroys Twitter 's value (and value of | everything Twitter touches, as a side effect). | | [0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by- | controversial/ | lariati wrote: | I mean Marshall McLuhan's entire career is practically about | this. | | A medium of communication is not neutral. A book is not just | word of mouth stories written down. There is a feedback loop | in there that a book becomes something entirely different. | | I mean if we take things to extremes and make a platform that | we can only communicate with 4 letter words, what words do | you think are going to dominate engagement and take over the | platform? | zeepzeep wrote: | The problem is that these sites have optimized their | algorithms to show you content which provoke a reaction, they | don't care if positive or toxic. At least that's what FB | does, dunno about Twitter tbh. | invisible wrote: | Whenever this topic comes up, I think a lot of people | assume this is some elaborate ML algorithm, but I believe | it's really just "trending things go up, _sometimes_ | categorized and targeted." | | It's a really basic algorithm that captures the equivalent | of groupthink. | el-salvador wrote: | > The problem is that these sites have optimized their | algorithms to show you content which provoke a reaction, | they don't care if positive or toxic. | | Twitter should learn from Tiktok and Spotify. Their | algorithms work very differently. | | Spotify has allowed me to discover some great songs just by | creating a Song Radio from a song I liked. And it has also | broadened the genres I listed. And spending 5 minutes on | Tiktok's For You Page can help me feel better after a | stressful day. | | On the other hand 5 minutes on Twitter can easily lead to | more stress in my case. | scarface74 wrote: | But FB doesn't randomly put "toxic" content in my feed. | It's because I'm either following "toxic" news originations | or someone showed your crazy uncle how to get on line and | you accepted his friend request. My feed has pictures of | family, dumb non political memes, people talking about | sports or "uplifting sayings and scripture verses" (I | usually unfollow people who post too much of the latter) | gurkendoktor wrote: | It's hard to prove any of this, but I feel that I see a lot | more astroturfing on Twitter than on FB. | BitwiseFool wrote: | >"divisive political culture when "we" are the ones | generating the content" | | I feel like this "we" is misplaced. In a broad sense, yes, | these acerbic tweets are indeed being made by our fellow | citizens. That being said, Twitter tends to amplify the | messaging of a small and vocal segment of it's vast userbase. | It's a vicious cycle because exposure begets exposure and | anger begets engagement. | danielvaughn wrote: | It really is absurd. I don't get why the focus is all on FB. I | honestly only keep FB around because my family is on it, and | sometimes I use FB messenger with my friends. It has zero | impact on my life. | | On the other hand, a single glance into twitter can lead to 2-3 | hours of a sustained state of mild rage, and you just feel | _bad_ when you finally exit the app. | umeshunni wrote: | The focus is on FB because they are the ones taking ad | revenue away from news publishers and traditional media. That | gives the media more incentive to publish negative articles | about them. | | When in doubt, follow the money. | bduerst wrote: | This is poisoning the well because there are legitimate | reasons being reported to dislike FB's smarmy practices; | it's not all sour grapes from media. | el-salvador wrote: | > On the other hand, a single glance into twitter can lead to | 2-3 hours of a sustained state of mild rage, and you just | feel bad when you finally exit the app. | | Definitely. It's really one of the few sites I block using my | hosts file when I get a new computer. | lariati wrote: | Same here. I really feel like I should curate a twitter | profile but it is just bad for my mental health. | | To me, it feels like a small library of really cool books but | the library happens to be housed randomly inside of a giant | lunatic asylum. | zeepzeep wrote: | idk, it's pretty civil in my bubble, though obviously there is | some drama every now and then like now (Jonathan Scott ^^) | bobiny wrote: | It's easy to mute accounts you don't want to see on Twitter, | even ones shown as ads. | twitterhell wrote: | If you mute the account, the conversation still happens. So | awesome if you dont like a point of view. Terrible if you're | gay, female, muslim, or any other hated minority subgroup | that gets stalked and slandered on Twitter. If someone is | posting slanderous material on Twitter, and you mute it, it | isnt a solution. Even if you block it, it barely helps. | bobiny wrote: | I don't understand. If you don't want to see what someone | says, you can mute or block them. What do you mean by | conversation still happens? | mrweasel wrote: | The most damage Twitter does isn't even Twitters fault. | Journalist f-ing love Twitter and believe that everything | important is on Twitter, and everything on Twitter is | important. News media is becoming the weird echo chamber of | journalist talking to journalists, press people and analysts on | Twitter and reporting on their Twitter conversations. | | Some stories are completely missed, due to not being Twitter | friendly (to many words, hard to boil down to a tweet). Other | non-stories are blow out of proportions because it was big on | Twitter, even if no one outside Twitter cares. | screye wrote: | Twitter aggressively censors anyone without institutional | approval. Twitters scratch the elites' backs, so the elites | scratch back. | | Trump was banned from Twitter first. Any one with mildly right | wing opinion is insta-banned from twitter. Blue checkmarks are | strongly tied to institutional approval and fringe | institutional voices are given a megaphone. | | Twitter perpetuates the current class system. So those in power | have no qualms with it. | scarface74 wrote: | Since when wasn't someone who is supposedly a billionaire not | part of the "elite"? | screye wrote: | The cultural elite is completely different from having | money. It is the same reason that Trump was ridiculed for | putting ketchup on steak or why journalists/post-docs are | willing to make pennies on jobs that grand them access the | cultural elite. I give the example of Trump because he the | clearest contrast that differentiates wealth from the | elite. | | Phrases like 'Nouveau Riche' or 'Paise aaye, par aukaad | nahi aaye' (money without class) have existed in different | cultures for centuries. This is not a new concept. | scarface74 wrote: | Someone who owns private airplanes and golf courses | aren't part of the "cultural elite"? Before Trump's | conversion to a populist in 2016, he was very much part | of the cultural elite and spent most of his time hanging | out with celebrities and Democrats. | AniseAbyss wrote: | Trump is part of the elite just not the elite Twitter is part | of. | | You think the elite all think the same? No they have their | political differences. But you don't have to cry for him the | GOP has its own media empire. | scarface74 wrote: | If your FB newsfeed is toxic, it's because you have toxic | friends. | samwillis wrote: | I think the difference is that the toxicity on Twitter is much | more visible, it overflows onto everyones timelines, trending | topics and in reply's to celebrities and politicians. On | Facebook it's all "behind closed doors" in groups and on pages. | | They are both bad, but in very different ways. | scotty79 wrote: | As a person who never understood why twitter existed, let alone | what purpose it might serve this information validates my | feelings. | pcmoney wrote: | It exists so you can know what everyone is talking about 5 | weeks before they do. Follow the right people and it will | change your life. | stevenwliao wrote: | Any recommendations? | throwaway4good wrote: | They are not making money, are they? | samwillis wrote: | Yes they are, they have just announced a $4B stock buyback. | | They are a "dividend" stock without proper dividends. Not | everything needs to be a growth stock. Having said that 10% | down in 10 years isn't great, especially with where the rest of | tech has gone in that time. | PKop wrote: | >isn't great | | It's terrible | xmprt wrote: | If their main way distributing profits to investors is | through stock buybacks then that would mean that their stock | should have grown right? 10% down without real dividends is | terrible. | dktp wrote: | In what way are they a dividend stock? | | They don't pay dividends and despite share buyback stock is | down since IPO | nradov wrote: | From an investor standpoint, dividends and stock buybacks | are roughly equivalent. Both are ways of returning cash to | investors. Buybacks can be more tax efficient for investors | using taxable accounts. | PKop wrote: | I don't think the confusion is around the concept, but | the characterization of "them" as an instance of one, | given the stock has performed terribly. | | They are simply in no way that matters a "dividend stock" | literally or figuratively. | | Many are familiar with the concept of buybacks, but | Twitter seems to be a "growth" stock that hasn't grown. | todd8 wrote: | Even flat for 10 years isn't great. | gpapilion wrote: | It's more about growth. Twitter isn't growing as it should be. | | If they were able to show strong user growth, revenue would | follow as would the stock price. There are folks who love | twitter, and those who prefer images. The larger segment is | those who prefer images. | 1270018080 wrote: | They have had positive net income in a handful of quarters in | their existence, but not recently. | j4yav wrote: | I actually still get a pretty decent experience out of Twitter. | The only topic I really engage with is remote work.. I don't | follow very many people (only humans who post real content) and | unfollow anyone who goes "off topic". Which is too bad, but it | keeps my feed simple and sane. | | I feel like Twitter would be way better if people had different | topics you could subscribe (or not) to. | skinkestek wrote: | > I feel like Twitter would be way better if people had | different topics you could subscribe (or not) to. | | All services would be better if they were more like Google+ | (but didn't share name with a despised effort to crush | pseudonyms and wasn't owned by a company that buried it as soon | as they had been forced to iron out the wrinkles ;-) | robryan wrote: | I suspect that the complexity tradeoff isn't worth it for | them. As in it would solve the problem but probably send | overall engagement down. | | Opt in would be nice, I am sure high follower people would | rather go to the effort of categorising their tweets rather | than losing followers when they decide to Tweet about their | local sports. | jabroni_salad wrote: | That's kind of the rub with twitter, it puts individuals front | and center... and individuals presumably have more than one | interest that they might want to talk about. I mainly use | twitter to surface fanart and some communities are very | organized with using the right #tags, and when I check those | tags I have a 100% hit rate on finding something new that I | want to see. But anything else on that site is a crapshoot. | It's kind of twitter's normal culture to be disorganized, but | I'm pretty sure I and everyone I interact with on twitter are | actually tumblr refugees and we're very diligent with tagging. | | You're really better off with traditional thread-based forums | to have conversation topics. Muting somebody's entire existence | just because they occasionally dirty the general feed with | 'offtopic' just doesn't seem like a sustainable way to use | social media. | j4yav wrote: | It has worked well for many years, at least for me. More | people than you might expect really do focus an account on | one topic. Some people have multiple accounts to separate | work/personal life as well. | | It's nothing personal for me not to follow someone, so I | don't really see it as muting their whole existence. | cronix wrote: | So I never created a Twitter account. Over the years, there are a | few people that I liked to read their thoughts on Twitter, so I'd | manually go to their wall and read occasionally. They're all | verified. | | Over time, it became cumbersome to continue doing this and I | thought I'd give in and create an account (on the website) so | that these people were all easy to access from a single point. So | I did, and went and immediately followed the 4 or 5 people. On | the last one, my account locked up and said there was "suspicious | activity" and if I wanted to continue I needed to supply my phone | number. What? I haven't even tweeted anything yet and only | followed verified checkmarked users. And why do I have to supply | a phone number to use a web site? So, I just left the account in | limbo and went back to what I was doing before - just manually | going to individuals walls to read because they're bookmarked. | | So then a few months ago, Twitter started putting up an overlay | up prompting you to log in or create an account to continue after | viewing x tweets. Annoying, but not a huge issue as you could | just dismiss the modal and continue. | | As of a few weeks ago, they got rid of the ability to dismiss the | modal. The page just locks and you can't scroll unless you sign | in. | | And that was the last day I used or visited Twitter. I now see 0 | ads, will never give up a phone number to join a website, and | have nothing but disdain for that company. | | I have never encountered a more hostile website, or company for | that matter, towards innocuous behavior. The juice just ain't | worth the squeeze. At least I was seeing your ads before. | judge2020 wrote: | > The juice just ain't worth the squeeze. | | Thus triggering the headline "missed user growth estimates". | RoddaWallPro wrote: | This is also how I use Twitter. FYI, it still works for me in | incognito mode. | | If anyone reading this works at Twitter: WHY are you guys | making these changes? I'm far more likely to just never use the | service again out of outrage then make an account. | saagarjha wrote: | It might be difficult to measure this. | stronglikedan wrote: | > I have never encountered a more hostile website, or company | for that matter, towards innocuous behavior. | | Instagram pulled that same crap a couple of years back, and I | haven't visited since. | bogomipz wrote: | I had this exact same usage pattern and the exact same | experience as what you describe. Although I refused to give | them my phone number, my resolution and conclusion were also | exactly the same as yours. | onedognight wrote: | Same experience except I discovered that, at least on iOS, | browsing in a private window still works to go to an individual | user's feed. It's just a matter of time before they close that | loophole and I too go away. FWIW, I do pay many of the people I | manually follow on Twitter, but through substack or PayPal. | programmarchy wrote: | Yep, same here. It's infuriating. I've been using nitter to get | around the modal, but who knows how long that will continue | working. | PegasusProject wrote: | I really can recommend Nitter[0], which also creates RSS feeds | so you can just add them to your RSS reader of choice. | | [0] https://nitter.net/ | [deleted] | DyslexicAtheist wrote: | > Twitter started putting up an overlay up prompting you to log | in or create an account to continue after viewing x tweets. | Annoying, but not a huge issue as you could just dismiss the | modal and continue. | | you can no longer dismiss the modal, or in any other way bypass | this as of a few days ago. (at least on mobile) | anthk wrote: | Replace twitter.com from the URL with nitter.kavin.rocks or | nitter.fdn.fr . | kec wrote: | copying the URL into a new tab usually seems to work. | asadlionpk wrote: | Sadly, your outcome is an outlier. The conversion funnel using | those hostile tactics is significantly higher than churn in | short term, and that's all that matters for someone's promo | packet. | teddyh wrote: | > _my account locked up and said there was "suspicious | activity" and if I wanted to continue I needed to supply my | phone number._ | | I have repeatedly heard it said that Twitter does this _for | every single new account_ as a matter of course. Twitter wants | your phone number, but don't want you to bounce right at | registration. | shmatt wrote: | I would guess it started as a reaction to the many botnets | used by companies and countries trying to maximize certain | opinions | | On top of the phone number, they also go through purges | seemingly once a year, getting rid of up to a million | accounts a day. That also doesn't fair well with giving the | stock market raw numbers | teddyh wrote: | > _reaction to the many botnets_ | | Makes no sense. If they wanted to require a phone number to | keep out bots, they would simply ask for a phone number at | registration. Delaying it like this, claiming "suspicious | activity" is hard to see any other way than how I described | it. | jazzyjackson wrote: | bots can get phone numbers cheap, a cost of doing | business. Speculation: Twitter wants your phone number so | they can correlate you with existing marketing data so | they can target you more effectively. | onesafari wrote: | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: | > I have never encountered a more hostile website | | I think Instagram and/or Pintrest often require you to log in | before letting you see even the first picture you click on. | captn3m0 wrote: | Quora as well. | bogomipz wrote: | I don't believe Quora does this any more. They used to blur | the entire page without a login but they relaxed that a | couple of years ago now. I do notice that sometimes | extended threads still seem to be behind a login wall but | it's seems somewhat sporadic and inconsistent. | robryan wrote: | The Reddit mobile website might be the worst. Every aspect of | it is geared to making it as annoying as possible to use so | that you are forced to download their app (or go find a | better 3rd party one). | patentatt wrote: | old.reddit.com still works, and the day they disable it is | the last day I am a Reddit user (which I have been since | the YC days, as an original disaffected digg user) | Nitrolo wrote: | On mobile i.reddit.com is probably a better fit. | sneak wrote: | In addition, even when fully logged in, having given a phone | number, they censor the search function on the site. Not just | the tweets you can post - the search - the tweets that they | allow to be posted but you are not allowed to read. | | This is abhorrent to me and led to me deleting my account after | a dozen years of use and double digit thousands of followers. | | If you won't let me read it, don't let it be posted. | | I will no longer donate my writing and attention to censorship | platforms. | andrew_ wrote: | verified account status these days is meaningless. most of the | truly interesting, unique thoughts come from accounts that are | not. this is of course my own take after having been on the | platform since 2010. | kilroy123 wrote: | Honestly? It's because their ads are trash. I know lots of | marketing people and they all stay away from using them. | | Say what you will about Facebook and Instagram, their ads are | better overall. There's been several times an Instagram ad showed | up in my feed, and I said shut up and take my money. | | Nothing like that has ever happened on Twitter for me. | adamrezich wrote: | when they (and other platforms) started having sponsored posts | that, themselves, have a pre-roll ad that plays before the user | is granted the privilege of viewing them, it reeked of | desperation. years later now this is the norm--crazy. | mgh2 wrote: | Very effective for free influencer marketing or crypto scamming | though | [deleted] | mateus1 wrote: | As an advertiser yes. This is definitely part of the answer. | | Google Ads is an amazing piece of tech with usually great ROI | but requires lots of setup. Facebook is easy to use, worse in | terms of ROI but it has the amazing feature of optimizing for | spending 100% of your budget all the time. | | Twitter and LinkedIn don't do either. | z3ugma wrote: | Weird. All the B2B services I've bought in the last year are | because of advertising were based on LinkedIn ads | xmprt wrote: | Another big part of it for me is that they make their ads | appear almost like tweets so now when I scroll, my brain has | learned to tune them out as useless filler. I don't think | making them easier to distinguish would be better because I | would tune them out even faster but they need to change how | they display ads to actually make them effective. | jakub_g wrote: | I've been thinking about this because it's true from my | observation, and I wonder what's the main reason: | | - Is it because they are "not evil enough" compared to FB in | tracking people? | | - Is it because they can't track people in the same way (FB | pixel is _everywhere_ on the net, Twitter's code is also | widespread but probably less?) | | - Is it because publisher tools are not as good as FB's? (in FB | from what I know you can target various demographics really | well with campaigns, based on criteria such as location, age, | interests, approximated wealth etc) | elorant wrote: | Twitter is not set up to know things about people in the | first place. Your profile doesn't contain any personal | information. Most of the interaction on Twitter is between | users, while on FB it can be both users and companies with | either ads or corporate posts making it into the feed. You | click a post from a clothing company, Facebook will show you | a relevant ad a week later. On Twitter on the other hand | seems like companies never really bother advertising. | [deleted] | ghaff wrote: | At least for B2B, LinkedIn (and paid search) is mostly where | it's at. | ChildOfChaos wrote: | User growth? Why does it need user growth? It's twitter, it's | been around a long time, everyone that wants to use a service | like that knows what it is. | | So much opposition with everything having to be bigger and | bigger. | fumar wrote: | Should HN have ads and become a revenue generating part of Y | Combinator? Twitter and Reddit fall in a similar camp. Should | they take the ad tech approach to sustain themselves? | sam1r wrote: | Has anyone messed with their developer apis recently? | | Curious if anything has gotten better on that front. | joseloyaio wrote: | Twitter it's actually on a better path for generating revenue | nowadays: | | - Spaces have successfully siphoned users out of Clubhouse - | Audio ads could be next - The crypto integration they've done is | just the tip of the iceberg | YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: | The funny thing about all these articles about missed growth is | that all the mission statements are just arbitrary numbers. | Spotify, Twitter, Facebook none of them said anything about | building something new or trying to be the best at something, | nope. "Our Mission is XXX with YYY growth trajectory." | throwaway4good wrote: | I think social media for political shit posting will be the first | to splinter. In other words, Twitter will split into multiple | smaller Twitters each targeting a specific political group. | throwaway4good wrote: | Ie. Gettr: | | https://gettr.com | | Really just Twitter but for right-wing people. | marcusverus wrote: | I wish Twitter would give Jack Dorsey's idea a chance--just | make the censorship optional. If you want Twitter to be the | wild west--you've got it! Just disable the little 'safe-space' | toggle and anything goes. You'll have to mentally filter out | the fake news, racism, and [foo]-phobia. If you want Twitter to | be a safe space--you've got it! Just enable that 'safe-space' | toggle, and Big Brother Jack will make all the nasty people go | away. | throwaway4good wrote: | Yes. I think he understood that censorship beyond what is | strictly required by law would be the end of Twitter as an | omnibus-platform, and thus the end of Twitter. | | In the same way that we have newspapers split by political | observation, we will end up with social media split. In a way | it is natural. | stewx wrote: | YouTube and TikTok pay people who have popular videos, which | gives "creators" an incentive to put a lot of work into what they | do. | | You can argue that the payouts are a pittance for the large | number of views those YouTubers get, but in comparison, the only | thing Twitter has done to reward its users is provide a virtual | tip jar. | | Not only that, you can't pay to remove ads on Twitter. | RspecMAuthortah wrote: | Live by the wokism, die by the wokism. | | Remember that weird time in 2020 when they were slapping | "offensive content" to all tweets from supporters of one specific | party while still allowing porn clips without any filter. Yeah, I | quit twitter around that time. | spoonjim wrote: | Twitter is the best professional networking tool I've ever used | and should be making the kind of money that LinkedIn is. | fnord77 wrote: | This chart doesn't take into account inflation. | | Anyway, someone described twitter as a "honeypot for assholes". | If your platform is dominated by trolls or other malicious | people, I can't see it having a good valuation no matter how many | users you have. | gnicholas wrote: | Is this at all related to Apple's privacy change? The article | mentions FB's recent miss, which was attributed to this issue, | but doesn't say whether it was at play here as well. | | I realize iOS users are not the majority, but it's likely that | they are more valuable for advertisers and therefore could | generate more revenue. | | edit: as noted below, this was in the article -- I had done a | search for "FB" and didn't see there was another reference to | Apple that was upstream from where I landed. | vngzs wrote: | It's addressed in the article, though absent specific numbers: | | > The company said the impact from privacy changes by Apple Inc | (AAPL.O) remained modest. Last year, Apple began requiring apps | to receive permission from iOS users to track their activity on | apps and websites owned by other companies. | | > The Apple changes could impact Twitter in the future as it | grows its performance advertising business, Segal said, | referring to ads that seek to drive sales or other consumer | actions. He said Twitter is working to mitigate future negative | impacts from Apple's changes. | mrweasel wrote: | Is there some reason articles like this doesn't include profits? | Revenue is specified along with a number of other key metrics, | but not profit. | | The overall conclusion seems to be the same as with Meta last | week: It's going well, but not as well as predicted. The slower | than expected growth is only a problem, because the stock market | likes predictability and will punish any company unable to | correctly foresee the future. | oh_sigh wrote: | Profit isn't very meaningful without a lot of context. A | growing business could plow all of their would-be profits back | into growing their business, making it look like they are | losing money. Or a failing business could cannibalize itself to | get a couple quarters of profits at the cost of destroying its | long term prospects for success. Revenue is a much more | concrete figure that sort of tells its own story, unlike | profit. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > Revenue is a much more concrete figure that sort of tells | its own story, unlike profit. | | No single number tells any story on its own. You can have $1T | revenue tomorrow. Just sell $10 bills for $1. | [deleted] | rdtwo wrote: | So like most tech unicorns | scarface74 wrote: | So how well does revenue tell a story if you have negative | unit costs? | | If you keep losing money, you eventually run out. | djbusby wrote: | Nope. Cause you have growth, which gets new investors who | bring in Money - if you can convince them your Growth | numbers are good. | scarface74 wrote: | It's called a Ponzi scheme. It works until it doesn't. | See Robinhood and Peleton. | | All five of the Big Tech companies were profitable before | they went public. Even Amazon had positive margins and | they were plowing money back in to the business. Most of | the former unicorns don't have positive margins. | | "Growth" is okay if your funneling profits back into your | business. But see DoorDash. How do you not money | delivering food when everyone is afraid to leave their | house like in 2020? | | It's not about growth, it's about attrition. Every VC is | hoping that they can pawn their money losing investments | off to a gullible public. | AniseAbyss wrote: | The money doesn't run out for as long as your investors | have faith. | typon wrote: | In the good old days having a successful business meant | making money. Now it seems old-fashioned. | foobarian wrote: | This was exactly the feeling in the air around year 2000. | Irrational exuberance is what they termed it. Be | interesting to see how the current climate evolves. | dmitriid wrote: | > Revenue is a much more concrete figure that sort of tells | its own story, unlike profit. | | But if you look at a company that is always in the red with | no plan to become profitable, the question becomes: | | - how is this a business? | | - where is money coming from? | | - why is money still coming? | | Twitter seems to be mostly profitable in the past few years. | mrweasel wrote: | That's is an interesting take, because the company I work for | is the exact opposite. Revenue is useless, because you can | just create all the revenue you want. | | Among other things, we resell hardware and software. The | basic idea is that customers can get a Dell, or Oracle server | and a license for an Oracle database from us, when buying | hosting. This saves them the trouble of dealing with multiple | suppliers. The hardware and software business is just sort of | a side thing, but we can generate crazy amounts of revenue by | losing money on hardware. The idea is that we make the money | back longterm on hosting. We never use revenue as a | meaningful KPI, because we know that some years it will be | inflated like crazy by hardware or software sales (which | aren't profitable). | | So I don't really see revenue as useful figure either, not | without also knowing if you're profitable. | djbusby wrote: | Your company has a different model than Twitter. Some | companies need to measure Revenue, some Profit and some | Growth - and many will switch which is the important one as | they grow (or shrink). | cheriot wrote: | > punish any company unable to correctly foresee the future | | If you're calculating the present value of future profits and | the rate of increase in profits declines then the present value | can swing wildly. That's not "punishment". It's the market self | correcting. | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | The companies don't have to foresee the future, there is no law | requiring them to make estimates about future | earnings/expenses/profits. | j4yav wrote: | TWTR investors seem unfazed, at least so far. Stock is | essentially flat on the news. | blihp wrote: | Because profit doesn't matter as much for a growth story, | growth does. They do it to themselves... in the face of this | 'miss' the CEO continues to pitch the growth story: | https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/10/22925114/twitter-earnings... | So it should be no surprise when the financial reporters and | markets flog them when they miss. | judge2020 wrote: | For reference, Amazon would have had $1.8 billion in losses | had it not been for AWS's insane profit [0]. | | https://www.geekwire.com/2022/amazon-would-have- | posted-1-8-b... | newaccount2021 wrote: | pl0x wrote: | Maybe Meta buys Twitter. The world would be better off with out | these two toxic platforms. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-10 23:00 UTC)