Mr. Jones used to be the chief executive of Myspace, the once-giant social network, but he rejected any comparison between Twitter and that now vastly diminished network.
“For me and for lots of people, Twitter has actual utility to it, and for those people, that’s what will keep it around,” he said.
So instead of figuring an unorthodox way to take it private or set up a donation scheme ala Wikipedia, why not just charge the superusers with tens of thousands of followers, like Mr. Jones, who really do get some tangible benefit from the service?
I also take issue with the author's opening assessment of Twitter:
Twitter is the world’s most important social network.
That might sound like the ravings of an addict, but look at the headlines in every morning’s newspaper and the obsessions of every evening’s cable news broadcast. Just about anything you encounter in the news media these days has some foot in the controversies and conversations occurring on the 140-character network.
We live in a hyperconnected world where every tiny little twitter controversy gets blown massively out of proportion, draining people's time and energy on things that really don't matter in the face of much larger and more important problems. At the end of the day, Twitter is used mainly for entertainment purposes. The author can keep pointing to the Arab Spring, #blacklivesmatter, etc. but the fact remains that revolutions and social movements occurred long before Twitter existed, long before cell phones and computers existed, and that Twitter is not some be-all-end-all enabler that we need to rescue for the betterment of humanity.
If it's really worth $5bn, someone will figure out how to get the service there. If it's really worth $100bn, someone will get it there. Let the market settle things with Twitter.
"If it's really worth $5bn, someone will figure out how to get the service there. If it's really worth $100bn, someone will get it there. Let the market settle things with Twitter."
I don't agree with this kind of market-determinism. If a small-message broadcast-based social media service is "really worth $5bn" or "really worth $100bn" is a different question from if Twitter will be that service. Sometimes in order to discover their true utility, services need to change in fundamental ways. I think Facebook is a good example of that; Facebook in 2016 is a different beast than Facebook in 2006. That takes deliberate innovation. But sometimes, when trying to do that, the transformed version has less utility, and the service dies. That's the risk here.
Perhaps you're saying that Twitter should not change at all, and it should continue on its current path?
In 2006, on Facebook, you'd create a profile and list what residence you lived in and what sections of what classes you took. Literally everything on your profile was basically a select query that let you see who else lived there, and who else was in that section. It was awesome. But it also had the potential to have a much larger creep factor, and obviously didn't scale because not everybody was in college.
You're mostly right. There is a lot more sophistication now, but most of the advances facebook has made are in two areas:
-Mobile. Making messaging a central strength of the platform. Figuring this out is a big piece of why the stock is doing so well.
-Conversations. Facebook has become the default place for people to discuss (or, more accurately, shout about) media/news. I mean both news from external sources and personal life events.
Everything else is reorganizations of existing features in new ways, like the shift from the wall to the timeline. It was a new feature that better fit an existing goal, not an expansion in the scope of the service.
They effectively destroyed Facebook when they got rid of all of the college class info -- all of the curated content that had to be done on a school-by-school basis. When they got rid of groups (before later re-adding them). The newsfeed.
There was a time somewhere in 2006-2007 where Facebook was an utter shell of its former self, looked weird, and wasn't particularly useful.
And the amazing thing was, they were right. They did what they needed to do to pivot from what it was (a college information source) into a global social network superpower. It sort of reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote where if you don't cannibalize your own products, someone else will.
>> Is Facebook 2016 really that different to Facebook 2006?
My students talk of a much greater "creep factor" in that they now assume everything done via facebook is being examined by men in black suits behind concrete walls, or fat men in basements wearing sweatpants. It's no longer considered an appropriate place for candid conversation.
And don't make the mistake of thinking Snapchat is just about nude pics. It is mostly used for saying things you want to disappear rather than have everyone reread in the morning.
As soon as people like me know, they move on. The day that professors (me) cops (old people) and parents (very old people) start noticing a platform it's time to switch. Some of my students are using services more popular in Asia. But many, particularly females, simply aren't sharing information about themselves as they might have 5-10 years ago. The novelty is gone.
In 2006 Facebook was all about college. I remember you could even list your classes right on your profile and get grouped with people taking your same classes.
But you're right, "blogging for normal people, restricted to friends and family" sounds like it will always be Facebook's core offering.
Sure but Livejournal could do that. What Facebook is good for is event planning, it very quickly becomes part of your "real life". Google screwed up massively by not integrating G+ and their calendar offering from day 1.
For much the same reason many of Google's other attempts to integrate^Wintrude on people's personal lives have fared poorly. Social integration isn't a coding problem.
If I remember correctly, 2006 was before the "news feed" switch. That was a huge shift that changed how people interacted with Facebook, and communicated with each other on it.
> That takes deliberate innovation. But sometimes, when trying to do that, the transformed version has less utility, and the service dies. That's the risk here.
Without deliberate innovation the service dies.
They're not sitting on their hands here: they spent $800M on R&D last year... and a $500M loss.
> why not just charge the superusers with tens of thousands of followers, like Mr. Jones, who really do get some tangible benefit from the service?
The big users with lots of followers are the ones who create the large audience for Twitter to reach. Right now those people create content for free, if you start charging them they are likely to leave.
If Twitter could create a model like Youtube where big content creators with lots of followers shared revenue, that would straighten out the incentives. There's a model here, it just may not be as big as Twitter thought it was a few years ago.
I disagree. I do not think Kanye/Reuters/Trump/Chipotle/Intel would bat an eye to pay for the privilege to get a message out to millions of users.
These individuals and companies are not looking for direct ad revenue from their tweets, as most Youtubers are from their content. Twitter power users are looking for indirect returns on their fame/infamy in the form of increased brand awareness and the ability to have highly visible, public conversations. In the case of the large corporations, they are also able to provide better customer feedback and support.
Reuters perhaps is looking to drive traffic to its website, but it will have to spend on Twitter if it wants to compete w/ other news outlets.
Twitter has the ecosystem, and now the ecosystem is as big as it will ever get with no added users over the last quarter. Charge the influencers and brand managers for the privilege of using the communication channel, just as a TV network charges companies for ad slots.
There are many cases where a social site shot itself on the foot and committed suicide by taking one bad move, such as Digg. What you're suggesting sounds like it will set a new record for a bad decision. Let's say Twitter does make that mistake and actually starts charging high end users. It is extremely naive to think most of these people will stick around and pay. Some will start leaving. Some new services will arise that claim to provide the service for free. Some of these "celebrities" will join forces to create a new "free" network (because that's what Web is supposed to be). Overall their userbase will decrease. And just as it grew exponentially after it reached critical mass, the reverse also applies, and at some point it will die at an exponential pace. It will probably end up looking something like MySpace.
Maybe let existing users continue like today and charge only for new users?
Personally I think twitters problem is much simpler: it is just a media/subset of biz/subset of tech thing.
The only thing twitter has over other services is brand recognition and a certain community.
On all other areas they are owned by both Facebook and even Google+
I remember being exited about twitter years ago: I saw lots of possibilities like "event streams" for automated processing, I thought they'd come up with a way to mark certain messages as mostly relevant for certain groups of followers etc.
What they did instead was focusing on painting themselves into the 140 revolutionary characters corner and keeping the paint wet from time to time by messing with the API etc.
> I disagree. I do not think Kanye/Reuters/Trump/Chipotle/Intel would bat an eye to pay for the privilege to get a message out to millions of users.
Maybe, but it's not like substitutes don't exist. All of the big brands you mentioned maintain Facebook and Instagram pages (some have Snapchat as well) in addition to Twitter, and both of those have more users and a bigger audience than Twitter does.
If Kanye or Beyonce or whoever deactivated their Twitter, it wouldn't be long before others followed suit, which could create a snowballing impact of regular users abandoning Twitter to follow people to "where the action is", so to speak.
I'm not a twitter user, but do/could they have a "advanced features for power-users" setup where they charge? Basically, if you have > 10,000 followers, you get a set of features that not everyone has if you pay up? That would incentives them not to leave, while also asking them to pay up
> When he asked a Twitter sales rep who had been in contact with him how to go about it, she replied that the only paths to verification are if an account has had impersonation issues or is an advertiser who's spent at least $15,000 over three months.
> That might sound like the ravings of an addict, but look at the headlines in every morning’s newspaper and the obsessions of every evening’s cable news broadcast.
The reason for that is simple. Twitter is a tremendous resource for (hate to use this phrase) lazy journalists. It gives them content and material and does their work for them. What's there not to like? It's important for journalists, bloggers, tv newspeople really anyone in the media. Of course they like it and see it as essential.
Again, directly charging popular users is detrimental to the service and ensures that only commercial users can safely become popular. Charging horse_ebooks for having 200k followers ruins the fun.
I'm still a fan of "payment, but optional and decoupled from account holdership" (like reddit gold that users are encouraged to buy for others) and "payment for the privilege of having abuse complaints investigated by a real human".
>>> why not just charge the superusers with tens of thousands of followers, like Mr. Jones, who really do get some tangible benefit from the service?
I'd go the other way. I don't think the concept of charging people for being successful on a social media platform has legs. I'd instead attach micropayments to all the fish who want to follow various celebs and such. Say 1c/month to follow Lady Gaga. Then we'll see exactly how much use these feeds are to consumers. Or this could be done through a premium concept, such as delaying tweets to/from non-premium subscribers by a few minutes.
“For me and for lots of people, Twitter has actual utility to it, and for those people, that’s what will keep it around,” he said.
So instead of figuring an unorthodox way to take it private or set up a donation scheme ala Wikipedia, why not just charge the superusers with tens of thousands of followers, like Mr. Jones, who really do get some tangible benefit from the service?
I also take issue with the author's opening assessment of Twitter:
Twitter is the world’s most important social network.
That might sound like the ravings of an addict, but look at the headlines in every morning’s newspaper and the obsessions of every evening’s cable news broadcast. Just about anything you encounter in the news media these days has some foot in the controversies and conversations occurring on the 140-character network.
We live in a hyperconnected world where every tiny little twitter controversy gets blown massively out of proportion, draining people's time and energy on things that really don't matter in the face of much larger and more important problems. At the end of the day, Twitter is used mainly for entertainment purposes. The author can keep pointing to the Arab Spring, #blacklivesmatter, etc. but the fact remains that revolutions and social movements occurred long before Twitter existed, long before cell phones and computers existed, and that Twitter is not some be-all-end-all enabler that we need to rescue for the betterment of humanity.
If it's really worth $5bn, someone will figure out how to get the service there. If it's really worth $100bn, someone will get it there. Let the market settle things with Twitter.