Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkarapetyan | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this cycle a few times now. Just give it a merciful death (vine and twitter). Some things are meant to be ephemeral. I think vine and twitter are in that category. Just like a forest needs fires to be a healthy ecosystem. People should be more willing to let go of business ideas that see explosive growth but lack the business fundamentals to be sustainable.

Instead what's gonna happen is that it is going to be a slow and steady march of attrition until only the husk is left and people just feel sad every time either twitter and vine are mentioned.

View on HN

As a Twitter user I wouldn't like to see that happen. What other platform do you suggest I use instead?

I don't know. I think RSS aggregation with some extra bells and whistles is a perfectly good alternative but then again I don't think I'm the target demographic of twitter.

Most power users who command an engaged audience ('influencers' or 'VIPs' or 'celebrities' or 'streamers' or insert-your-noun-here) already cross-post on every single service. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, Twitch...

Staying exclusive to a particular platform only pays if the platform literally pays you for your content. Otherwise you want to reach as wide of an audience as possible.

Well I think you've hit on something there: since certain types of content are cross-posted to every platform, maybe that particular type of content is not why people value Twitter, specifically.

In other words, maybe you don't actually understand why people like Twitter. Which is fine--not everyone needs to like Twitter--but if that's true, you're probably not the best person to point Twitter fans toward good alternatives.

I'm certainly not a power user. I mainly use Twitter to keep up with friends and acquaintances in the tech community. None of the other platforms seem appropriate for that.

Tumblr is another blog/social hybrid, but in your particular case you're subject to network effect (or the lack thereof) in your community of interest. Also, Tumblr is similarly faltering in engagement and owned by a corporate parent that is trying to leverage it as part of a wider strategy to turn its fortunes around.

At some point the numbers of remaining dedicated users simply do not justify keeping the service up, even if there's no alternative. It's a game of numbers (number of users and number of dollars).

I may be out of the loop of some drama, but to be it seems like Twitter has been so successful, and it seems like its here to stay. It's got advertisement in between tweets which will be viewed by tons of people. It's the preferred social network for well known people. My twitter feed is also much less of a toxic junkyard than Facebook is right now.

Vine on the other hand I agree with, the business model is doomed to fail. Instagram already has a huge userbase, and all it has to do is implement a video feature to kill Vine.

In particular reference to Twitter, I wonder if they tried to make a product out of what probably should have been a protocol.

I don't know. I think if they had souped up RSS they would have been in a much better position and maybe it would have been more sustainable but a long series of missteps has led them to this point. I think the biggest mistake they made was shutting down the developer ecosystem. They never recovered after that.

I feel like this is the fate of all the social networks whose main purpose is to feed into people's vanity. Surely 20 year companies can't be built off of people's desire to show off how much better their lives are to ours?

Both true and false. Don't forget that even now there are real-life VIP clubs the entrance to which costs the members pretty penny just so they can drink overpriced wine and convince each other they are special snowflakes, all the while crowding together underground in a place I wouldn't go in even if I am paid to. (And this phenomenon has been going on probably since the early medieval ages.)

Maybe a virtual variant of that can be profitable but IMO it's doubtful. Elitism works best with real-life meetings. Same with snobism.

...Then again, I heard there are people sinking thousands of dollars each month into the dying game named e.Republic just so they can be shown in top-50 charts.

TL;DR: Humans love to pay so they can feel special. Go figure.

Are you talking about all bars with a cover charge, or is there some cutoff above which drinking and dancing with friends is snobism?

I am talking about the so-called VIP clubs, so neither.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com