Slashdot Mirror
How Twitter Made the Tech World's Most Unlikely Comeback (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: Two years ago, people were writing eulogies for Twitter. Rudderless and without product direction, the company was losing users and advertisers, and seemed unable to contain a metastasizing trolling crisis that was destroying its credibility. Employees left by the dozens and then got laid off by the hundreds. It tried to sell, and failed at that too. The press, Wall Street, and the public were merciless. The New Yorker declared it "The End of Twitter." Analyst Michael Nathanson said that at $14 per share there was "no compelling reason to own the stock," and his counterparts applied "sell" ratings in bunches. Over a single weekend in February 2016, more than one million people tweeted "#RIPTwitter."
But then, even as those eulogies were being published, things started changing. Twitter began beating earnings expectations. Star ex-employees trickled back in, finding a new, more positive internal culture than the toxic one they'd left. Advertisers came back too, as did users. The company finally began addressing its trolling problem. And its stock, once unappealing to analysts like Nathanson at $14, is now trading above $46. It's still somewhat taboo to say it, but it's no longer possible to deny it: Twitter is making an unexpected, somewhat miraculous comeback. It is the first major consumer social company to lose users and start growing again in a meaningful way. The report mentions four major factors that led to Twitter's resurgence: "Its acceptance it would never be Facebook, leading to a decision to focus on news as Facebook pulled back. Its move to aggressively add premium live video to its service. Its CEO Jack Dorsey's directive to its product team to rethink everything. And a key component of many great comebacks: luck."
But then, even as those eulogies were being published, things started changing. Twitter began beating earnings expectations. Star ex-employees trickled back in, finding a new, more positive internal culture than the toxic one they'd left. Advertisers came back too, as did users. The company finally began addressing its trolling problem. And its stock, once unappealing to analysts like Nathanson at $14, is now trading above $46. It's still somewhat taboo to say it, but it's no longer possible to deny it: Twitter is making an unexpected, somewhat miraculous comeback. It is the first major consumer social company to lose users and start growing again in a meaningful way. The report mentions four major factors that led to Twitter's resurgence: "Its acceptance it would never be Facebook, leading to a decision to focus on news as Facebook pulled back. Its move to aggressively add premium live video to its service. Its CEO Jack Dorsey's directive to its product team to rethink everything. And a key component of many great comebacks: luck."
leading to a decision to focus on news as Facebook pulled back
I really don't use Twitter much, but where is the news on Twitter? Do I actively need to subscribe to news vendors?
All I ever see are posts by random tech-personalities telling me what kind of coffee they like and how their projects are travelling. Is that the 'news' they're referring to?
Twitter has been rudderless since day one. Monetization was never a viable play. They just depended on the early trendiness of social media to make their mark. Then, âwâ(TM), âoâ(TM) and trump come along, dragging massive polarization with them and suddenly twitter âseemsâ(TM) relevant.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Twitter is making over $2billion in revenue a year, which raises the question, how are they able to spend most of it running their little website.
In any case, I was going to blame Trump for this growth, but it seems that's not the case. Revenue has been mostly flat since 2015.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Celebrities need a platform to share their dumb opinions.
Twitter didn't get better. Facebook got worse. This is what really happened. With the privacy controversy surrounding Facebook, and no other real social media contender at a similar scale, investors switched their portfolios from Facebook to Twitter by default.
well, they spend a third of it running their website (!) and most of the rest goes to employee salaries, benefits and stock options, with a little profit left over.
Just say what you really want to call him: an orange n!gger.
No real UNIX/LINUX nerd would be caught dead saying "PS C:\Users\cdreimer> dir"
130 years ago they would have said "Your Slip is Showin, Ma'am."
I had Zero interest in Twitter, until that great President put it on the map.
Democrats: Al Gore Invented the Internet
Republicans: Donald Trump Resurrected Twitter.
Fact.
Glad I searched for Trump before posting nearly the same thing. However, "hundreds of millions..."...nah, Twitter was mostly used by the media already, all we needed to do was let them keep reading his meanderings. Personally, I haven't ever tweeted, nor will I "follow" these narcissists that feel the need to tell the world when they're on the shitter.
Just another day in Paradise
I have yet to use twitter and have no desire too
And so, by slashdot logic, no one else uses it either, right?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
it is just full of twats.
L'Idiot
The one thing Twitter has not done is reorganized itself and made a public move to fair and equitable enforcement of its policies. It takes a very serious violation of Twitter's rules to get anyone on the left banned from Twitter. You can unequivocally call for someone to be raped and murdered and stand a good chance of keeping your account if Twitter's "community standards enforcers" and "Trust and Safety Council" consider you an ally. Heck, a reporter from CNN got caught putting crosshairs on the President or something like that and Twitter did not lift a finger to punish him or CNN.
(Note that this is why people on the right have started giving zero fucks when seemingly civil liberals whine about "right wing violence." I have liberal friends on Facebooks that, lacking any irony, were whining about right wing violence not long after a Bernie Bro tried to gun down dozens of republican congressmen and nearly killed Scalise. These are the same class off people who call mask-clad rioters and people who mob individuals at their homes and restaurants "protesters")
They spend the remainder on worrying if the staff is diverse enough and all 77 genders are represented. Personally I now identify as a wine cork.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Celebs, politicians and other low life types, think they are hot & trendy because of how many likes, tweets, followers and what not. Not to mention mis-information gets put out on twitter, then, once corrected, no one believes the correction because they've already marched, burned, or protested the original tweet.
Clinton and Obama were what gave us Trump. Without them, he never would have been elected*. That the right is now playing the same game as the left and they don't like it is largely irrelevant. It was Clinton who back in 2008 only conceded when the DNC promised her the nomination after Obama. It was Obama who allowed the likes of Lois Lerner to smother the political opposition with the power of the tax man. It was Obama who attempted to gaslight the illegal arms numbers with Fast and Furious, only to be brought down by the death of a border agent with one of the guns in question. It was Clinton who used a corrupt FBI to cover for her ass when she got caught using a server in her bathroom to communicate with people, including the president, while in technically sophisticated countries. It was Obama who called the right "bitter clingers" while Clinton chose "deplorables". Goose gander motherfucker.
*One of course should not discount the MSM who gave him tens to hundreds of millions worth of free non-negative publicity to Trump during the Primaries or the GOPe who was moronic enough to back Jeb fucking Bush.
They spend the remainder on worrying if the staff is diverse enough and all 77 genders are represented. Personally I now identify as a wine cork.
In the last few months I have started seeing forms with fields like "Gender Assigned at Birth". This is likely both an attempt to be somewhat "politically correct" while at the same time allowing them to move on with business as usual and not having to try to keep up with the insanity.
A president is president of the entire country. This behaviour, that of trying to stoke hatred and rage is not the sign of a leader, unless your talking the leader of some rabid cult.
Coming from a likely Democrat that is just so rich. Stoking racial divide and general victimhood is the hallmark of the Democratic party and Obama & Clinton are masters of the art.
Nah, they're amateurs, Trump took them to school. Of course, maybe that supports your argument, since he was a Democrat for nearly all of his life, until it became clear that the Republican party was easier to hack.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This indicates to me that more than one million people turned to Twitter to demonstrate that Twitter is on the decline. What more could one do to put forward a self evident falsehood?
Disclaimer: I don't use Twitter.
Requiem for the American Dream
Is there some way to auto-tag any post referring to politics?
I'd very much like to filter them out.
Requiem for the American Dream
Just old people in Korea.
Trump Happened.
Coincidence that Twitter became relevant again ?
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
"hackers" are people who hack systems.
"crackers", on the other hand, are southern rednecks.
learn the difference. Few crackers are hackers, and few hackers are crackers.
...but certainly newspapers quote twitter a lot. And not just the tweeter-in-chief's
Given that a certain high-profile tweeter is tweeting tweets that regularly make headlines-- and thus giving Twitter effectively free advertising almost every day-- I think it's no surprise that Twitter is making a rally.
You can't buy that kind of advertising.
"But surely some who calls her opponents "deplorables" isn't trying to stoke hatred now are they?"
Clinton said that once in a private meeting. Trump insults Democrats on a daily bases on Twitter.
"Obama made his entire political career on seeding racial tension. "
By being black? He talked about race at times the issue came up, but not excessive.
Guess who has control of the presidency and both houses of congress and is failing to reform immigration though the House as we speak?
No. But if he had a son it would have looked like Trayvon.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
All you can do with 140 characters is tweak the reader's autobiographical memory to construct an emotionally laden simulacrum. This is basic information theory. The densest compression possible requires the receiving side to have a detailed model of the message space (descriptive world) in which the communication is embedded.
Twitter is a lot like a quarterback calling an audible at the line of scrimmage. "17 cobra 56 blue 88 hut hut." To some degree the QB can fashion entirely unique plays: "cobra" might be a direction to the wide receiver, "blue" might be a direction to the running backs, "88" might be a blocking pattern for the offensive line. But every one of these elements is previously rehearsed.
Twitter is also a lot like Mr Potato Head, where you also work with a fixed palette, but (to some degree) obtain novel permutations and combinations.
The other half of Twitter is to inject some wit at the seams—clever ideas, like listing out multiple Potato Head mustache codes to reference John R. Bolton, while arranging those codes to resemble some other snide cliche. Har har.
And the cherry on top is timing. First is good. Waiting to pounce on the obvious har har is also good. Immediately one-upping the counter-punch is also good. You know, all that stuff, all that stuff that was the real subject of grade eight, while we all got Cs and Bs is actual English class. (Turns out, a lot of people pine for the glory days of their high-school varsity trophies.) We just all need to know who's got the drop, or we couldn't possibly sort ourselves into a cohesive snideathon.
In theory, Twitter could rise to the level of poetry, and I'm sure it sometimes does. But the cherry-chasers will barely notice, and surely won't invest the mental energy required to unpack real poetry, so again, Twitter probably trades in simulacrum poetry—pseudo-poetry that potently reminds you of the real thing, but without demanding actual work.
But the raindrops, you say, they form a pattern. Illumination by eternal storm watching. I've looked at clouds from both sides now ... Nice gig.
My gig is inherent calibration: long-form messages from which one can adduce the author's competence and validity entirely on internal grounds (as a first term). This is, of course, a complete waste of time ... until you get further along, building taller towers.
Water finds its own level. Distinguishing one droplet from another makes little difference at the end of the day.
Twitter people are water folk; it's a kind of dolphin-circus Mermaid culture for people who hate stairs. TheRealNewton: if I have seen farther than others, it's because I have stood on the nose of a breaching Humpback whale.
Followed by a giant spray of a billion tiny drops.
I tried Twitter out several years ago, but it sure feels like I'm trying to drink from a firehose.
I work on a computer all day long, so I'm not too interested in spending any more time than necessary using them during my down time. I'm definitely not one of these people walking around staring at their phones or constantly checking for updates during the day.
Those of you who do use Twitter, how do you deal with the deluge of messages and improve the signal to noise ratio?
Does this include promoting GNU/Linux and bashing "M$"? And whatever happened to DeadZero anyway?
A good manual filter would be to ignore any post that contains "Trump" in the subject. That filter will have lots of false negatives, but very few false positives.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I never saw the point in using Twitter, other than reading peoples and celebrities rants and other meaningless social attitudes like Instagram. I'm pretty fine without it, for the last 3 and half years.
>Clinton said that once in a private meeting. It was a campaign fundraising event. >Trump insults Democrats on a daily bases on Twitter. When has he anything disparaging about 1/2 American citizens who voted for her? Trumps tweets are about fake news media (dems and repubs) and the Democrats in government. >Guess who has control of the presidency and both houses of congress and is failing to reform immigration though the House as we speak? Guess who had control of all of congress and the presidency from 2009-2010 and didn't fix anything immigration related? Wake up dayum.