Where's the money in that, though?
And obviously the messaging service attached to an already massive social network would be compelling, that's not really an "experimental app" by any definition.
I see now that I was wrong there!
Snapchat and Instagram are very quickly taking over the celebrity/new/sports one-to-many angle from Twitter. Once celebrities depart, Twitter will have only news, and that's not enough most likely.
The problem is that most Internet users don't fit into this bucket. They have things to discuss and share with a small group of family/friends but beyond that don't have much to say, to the broader world. These are the users that flock to Facebook, Snapchat, et al.
Until Twitter finds a way to engage the everyday average Internet user then they'll struggle to grow or create a meaningful value proposition (the $$$ is in advertising to the masses, not the engaged thought leaders).
The data on users indicates Twitter has likely peaked in terms of attracting these engaged users (data also indicates a lot of these "active accounts" are fake / bots / spam). Until that changes Twitter will be in trouble as it has no viable long term business model.
Nothing of really value is that short. Sorry.
Unless you figure out the Theory of Everything... That'll be of value ;)
# wc -m
Last I checked; thought leaders don't convey their thoughts in 140 characters or less.
Nothing of really value is that short. Sorry.
133EDIT: It appears to be part of POSIX wc.
I've frequently heard this theory, that Twitter's problem is that it's too complicated. I don't buy it. It has a simpler UI than Facebook or Snapchat, and it's not significantly more complicated than Instagram or Vine or Periscope or any other media sharing platform.
If you personally enjoy Twitter and derive value from it, it's easy to believe that people who don't get into Twitter just don't understand it it. My experience is that many people sign up, send their first tweet, and then say, "OK, I get it, and I have no use for this." I've helped my friends follow news sources and celebrities they like, but then they look at the wall of Tweets and say, "OK, I get it, but I don't want to read things in this format." It's not about ease-of-use for them, it's about the basic value proposition of tweeting and the Twitter feed.
when people say "ease of use" that's what i think about
Lots of people at Twitter are all about (C), and have ideas how to improve it. However, management has never really been hot on it, and prefers (A) because it is easier to "measure" and optimize for. If (C) was done well, and allowed users a good way to find content they though was interesting, it would be super helpful.
Another problem is that Twitter still sucks for media. Michael Sippey, then head of product, was against anything but text. He was out within a year. Text is hard to create (well), but photos are very easy- snap, apply a filter and bam, billions of food photos on Instagram. One of the appeals of Snapchat and Instagram are that they allow you to broadcast photos/video very easily. In essence, they are a better Twitter for 99% of the population.
> .@jack #awesome
They didn't know what that meant. Now that hashtags and @ style messaging are just about everywhere, I don't think it is a valid theory.
Because of the character limit, people use a lot of abbreviations and shorthand that I can usually figure out with some puzzling, but I shouldn't have to do that.
I still see url-shortener urls all over on twitter, when I should just see regular urls.
These may be minor points, but it adds up to giving off the feeling that there's an in-crowd and I'm not invited. It is much better than it was a few years ago, though, so maybe it'll get there.
(I'm not even getting into the difficulty of actually following a conversation on twitter! Reverse-chronological order plus the lack of linking replies to their parent messages make it nearly impossible, but that's a well-known issue.)
here is my opinion Jack if you are reading.
Every tweet needs some extra field when you are creating them.
* to: field like email. A list of people or "everybody"
* body: 140 characters.
* tags: relevant tags so that your tween can be found by non followers interested in a specific topic.
* url: seperate url so as not to use up your 140 chars. Nobody wants to use a link shortener.On Media Watch (Australia) last week they discussed how savvy politicians now use social to speak directly to the public, cutting the middle man out of the equation. The middle man being traditional news media.
I think facebook is less appropriate for this kind of celebrity broadcast.
I find it frustrating to watch twitter flail around because I can see this epic opportunity hanging right in front of them. I really hope they can take that small step and make twitter something truly epic.