Your prediction of Twitter’s future is wrong | Hacker News Reader

Your prediction of Twitter’s future is wrong

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24 pointskarangoeluw28 comments

> Twitter is the greatest social platform ever built. Period.

For you. Not necessarily everyone else. Just saying this because the post is titled that everyone is wrong, so I expected some facts, not just "cuz I said so"

> No other platform gives me a chance to talk to people like...

Tweeting at celebrities (and hoping they tweet back) is not really a conversation.

-- Don't get me wrong, I like Twitter, but not for these reasons.

Celebrities usually have PR teams handling their Twitter. Have fun with the illusion you are talking to the real person, not to a curated proxy...

They have and use accounts, but not under real names. As soon as they see any spike in followers, anything more than their few friends/employees which would suggest a leak, everything is deleted. If you are into cyberstalking then you can sometimes find these accounts by tracking a celebs movements against likely tweets. No doubt TMZ has people on this. Since the iPhone fiasco many young celebs have shunned email. Twitter can be a functional replacement, at least for all the inane chat.

Why don't they just set those accounts as protected?

Because they are lazy. These aren't hardened security pros. Celebs are generally very young, poorly educated[1] impatient and impulsive. By the nature of their work they are also fashion conscious and eager to follow online trends. Tech-specific security features aren't a priority, until they are crying in their lawyer's office desperately pleading for him to to get that picture removed from the internet.

[1] Really. Look into your favourite stars. Many did not graduate highschool, or got an "on set" education for a GED. Child stars and models have to really work at getting any notion of a proper education. Basic reading skills are often an issue on set. This sometimes comes up when applying for work permits, say to work on a film in Vancouver. Immigration officials sometimes baulk at the notion of an uneducated 20yo claiming a unique skill warranting a special visa.

Google "on location education services" for a view of what many celebs grow up with.

It's like a joke i heard awhile back: It's easy to talk to the dead, it's getting them to reply which is hard.

Celebrities and influencers are two very different groups. I like the ability to talk to the latter.

> 1. Twitter is the greatest social platform ever built. Period.

This is like saying "Imma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. because she had one of the best videos of all time. Period."

> 2. No other platform gives me a chance to talk to people like Marc Andreessen, Chris Sacca, Tim O'Reilly etc. Twitter empowers us all. Think about how much 1:1 time you can get with influencers on platforms like Facebook or Snapchat. These people won’t take the time out to send you a snap.

Welcome to 2016. This guy apparently hasn't used Snapchat before. I can already see a lot of celebrities using Snapchat Stories to interact with their fans in much more intimate ways than Twitter can ever facilitate.

3. Facebook is not a fair comparison. But I quit Facebook because it made me unhappy and dissatisfied. Twitter makes me smart.

The reason Twitter is having hard time is because of all the competing products that have surpassed it, not just Facebook. There are hard numbers that tell us Twitter is losing people's attention. One person's denial won't change that.

> This guy apparently hasn't used Snapchat before

I have, and I quit. For the same reason that I quit FB for. It wasn't adding anything meaningful to my life.

> There are hard numbers that tell us Twitter is losing people's attention

Can you point me to some, please?

> I have, and I quit. For the same reason that I quit FB for. It wasn't adding anything meaningful to my life.

What is the point of this comment? It doesn't add value to the thread. My point was that it's not just Twitter that lets celebrities interact with their fans anymore. Your opinion is really irrelevant here.

> Can you point me to some, please?

If you've been living under the rocks, there are now messaging apps with more active users than twitter, and some almost catching up. If you're curious just do some google search. 5 years ago "social" basically meant Twitter or Facebook. It is not true anymore.

"Celebrities use it" was the reason MySpace was here to stay too. If that's the reason why it's not going to fail, period, you might as well short their stock.

I assume this mini-rant only made it to the front page for comedy value.

I agree. Celebrities only look at these networks as nothing more than distribution channels, and they're the worst people to target when you're building a social app even though in the short term it may look as though you're succeeding

This doesn't really address the popular prediction - that Twitter is going to continue to struggle with monetization and that user growth will continue to remain flat.

Twitter may be the "greatest social platform ever built," but it wasn't built on a very strong financial foundation.

Have you heard of Uber?

Yes...what's the connection?

Facebook is not a fair comparison. But I quit Facebook because it made me unhappy and dissatisfied. Twitter makes me smart.

How did this even get to the front page? HN needs some better quality control.

Lately been seeing a lot of mediocre medium articles get on the front page.

Can somebody tell me why Twitter, Instagram and all the other big social media sites do not offer something like hats (TF2) or weapon skins (CS:GO)?

I am pretty sure there are millions of people who would be totally happy to increase their social credibility with a platinum-twitter-supporter-star in their profile. Make people think that they are not a true Instagram professional without a diamond Instragram supporter badge on their profile.

A basic silver supporter start costs 5$ a year and the exlusive diamond ones go for 100$ a year.

There is not much effort in implementing this and if done right you have a constant stream of revenue.

The main reason that sort of model works for valve so well is threefold.

Valve is at best, a medium sized company so its more worthwhile for them to bother from a profit per employee perspective (hats make them a lot of money in a relative sense, but it wouldn't be a notable blip on facebook or twitters radar)

because...

Valves market is almost 100% heavily committed and "entrenched" customers, people that have steam accounts worth $100s/$1000s, there is a good chance that they are already capturing most of the value in the "games hat market" dispite being only a fraction of the total game market.

because...

Valve is an extremely well liked and trusted company by their customers, likely because other players in the gaming space have been exploitative and abusive to truely mustache twirling comicbook villan levels. People have less worry sinking a lot of money into their platform because they both like them, and are generally of the opinion that even if they screw up, they usually make things right. How many people love facebook or twitter as a company the way people love valve? not many id warrent.

It should be noted, hats started off as a thing at valve BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE COMPLAINING THERE WAS NO EASY WAY TO GIVE VALVE MORE MONEY. How many people are lining up to shower zuckerberg with more money?

Its just not in the DNA of a company like facebook to engender that sort of rabbid fanboyism, maybe it was for twitter once upon a time, but they have burned community goodwill by the railcar-full.

I think you are right, thx for the input!

One exception I see is Instagram and the whole fitness model industry. These are people who are mostly just famous because they look beautiful amd sporty. Some of them earn money as a personal coach or by offering custom fitness programs. But none of them are truly "professional". I think if Instagram would offer some sort of Diamond-Instagram-supporter-badges those people would invest in this to look more professional. All their fame is based on Instagram so why not show their support? And if one fitness guy starts with it the other have to follow because they'd look "unprofessional" without such a badge.

Also there are tons of rich people on Instagram flaunting their money and for them a Diamond-encrusted-Instagram-Supporter badge would just enhance their prestige. They could easily price the highest tier at something ridicously high like 500 $/year and those people would buy it just to enhance their prestige compared to their peers.

I think the market still feels like selling stuff isn't sexy. Worry about grabbing users and worry about monetization later.

And there is real truth in that. But its a decade past their founding. Their growth is slowing.

Another problem is that the "how to monetize" method is still just a slight variation on how Google and Facebook do it.

I fear we are about to find out that all these companies hoping to monetize like Google and Facebook are going to find out they are all competing for the same pool of advertising spends.

Wall street and VC's may start valuing users and user-engagement less and less.

Twitter is in trouble if they are on a path to competing with Facebook. They are fine if they manage to reflect on what made them successful in the first place: information constraint and a small(ish) but passionate community.

The culprit is diluting the product to chase after growth. This is a losing strategy. They should instead think of catering to their core users and monetizing. They will disappear overnight should the core exit.

Nobody is denying that Twitter is a great tool for a lot of people, the author included. But this pool of people is too small for Twitter's investors. And the way Twitter works currently, the pool looks difficult to grow. Hence all the handwringing about how to make Twitter appeal to a larger audience without losing the power users it already has.

The problem is market expectations (which is Twitter's fault). Twitter cannot be Facebook scale. I mean nothing can be Facebook scale at this point.

This appears to be an argument that Twitter is unique among the mainstream social networks, which is irrelevant to my predictions of their future. Which of these statements addresses why they're going to stay afloat without being profitable, as users move on, or as advertising's efficacy stales?

What if two people make opposite predictions about Twitter's future? Would they both be wrong?

I don't see how Twitter makes him smart but Facebook doesn't. I get just as much thoughtful conversation and content from FB as Twitter. This is just one random, insignificant dude's rant.

If he thinks twitter is cool, wait til he hears about email!

If there is a subreddit for your community, chances are you'll get a chance to engage directly with leading figures in it.

Just sayin'.

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