Twitter Is Finally Starting to Wake Up to Reality and Consider Selling Itself | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Is Finally Starting to Wake Up to Reality and Consider Selling Itself

thestreet.com

74 pointsedran69 comments

It seems that Twitter execs believe the magic of Twitter resides in the 140 character limit. I strongly disagree. To me the magic of Twitter resides in the ability to connect with people with whom I have a professional relationship or interest, but not necessarily a personal one. (Personal relationships belong on Facebook or perhaps Instagram.) The 140 character limit is an archaic relic that I believe is harmful to Twitter.

The 140 character limit arose in a world that doesn't exist anymore. In 2006, SMS was a sensible way to transmit data, phones were mostly dumb, blogs were the way to get your thoughts into the world (but experiencing a backlash, which helped bring Twitter to prominence), and most people interacted with the Internet via a desktop.

Facebook et al have shown that given a blank canvas the majority of people do not suddenly pen 10'000 word screeds. Lifting the 140 character limit will not suddenly lead to an explosion of novellas on Twitter, especially now that most people interact via a mobile (I went to my laptop to write this comment, having read the comments on my mobile.)

The 140 character limit is actively harmful to meaningful discussion, and I believe it fuels much of the anger and abuse that Twitter is known for generating.

Drop the 140 character limit and let me have meaningful conversations with the social network on Twitter. That is, to me, an extremely compelling proposition.

(1427 characters)

I don't want to go there to read peoples' blogs, though. Some sort of limit on content length feels like it is key to what defines Twitter (whether 140 char or something else).

This can easily solved at the UI level. Posts longer than a certain limit can have only the first few lines shown, with a "fold" like on blogs, or some other mechanism, to reveal the full content.

There won't be many long posts in any case.

That's exactly what people achieve with screenshots of text below their tweets.

I think there's an implicit benefit of the 140 character limit: people are forced to shorten their thoughts into bite-sized pieces. This, to me, is the biggest selling point of Twitter, it allows for an easily palatable feed of what's happening, all in small servings. This sword cuts both ways however, since it leads to short, emotional (oftentimes angry) tweets.

Overall though, the 140 limit I find is a better from a Twitter consumer point of view, but is far worse as a participant on Twitter.

The 140 char limit is precisely the reason you have the opportunity to "connect" with people to whom you have no professional relationship or interest. It is, roughly, the number of characters you need to make a salient point and gain a strangers attention.

I disagree. I believe the unidirectional links in the social graph + public by default are the key features.

Because Twitter is public by default I know everything I post should not be confidential. No details of my kids, for instance. So it tends towards people presenting their professional persona.

Because it's unidirectional, following someone does not imply any personal relationship (cf Facebook, where links are bidirectional and you only friends IRL friends). This means I can follow someone without fear of rejection, and likewise I can gain followers without opening myself up to all my followers' content.

With this I can read someone's posts for a while, and comment when I have a feel for them + have something interesting to say.

No doubt they're important factors but I don't think they're the game changer. The blogosphere (with comments + RSS) exhibited those traits long before Twitter arrived.

I'd really like to see it done git commit style.

You get 140 characters that will show up as someone scrolls through tweets normally.

Then you're free to type up as much as you want assuming someone's willing to click your tweet to see the full version.

Which is exactly how most comparable websites work, including the example: Facebook.

Know any that place an emphasis on extremely compact overviews without dangling comments, images, videos, and other detritus?

> To me the magic of Twitter resides in the ability to connect with people with whom I have a professional relationship or interest, but not necessarily a personal one.

You can do that with Fb pages, Medium, blogs, etc, etc.

> The 140 character limit is an archaic relic that I believe is harmful to Twitter.

You are wrong. Twitter was barely used with SMS.

The limit (now) is a product choice, not a technological one.

I agree with you. And like FB they can just show the top few lines and you can click to read more.

I don't agree with the other comments that 140 is some magic number. I also don't agree that forcing people to shorten their message is a good thing or adds anything. Lots of things can't be shortened to 140 characters. Lots of people post 3-9-12 tweets in a row to try to make their point or post pictures of text or whatever to get around the limit. If you knew you could write as much as you want but only the top 140 characters would appear "above the line" people would still try to give you enough info in that first 140 characters for you to decide if you want to click "more..."

There are many other sites that let people post long-form content and even offer social-like features to go with it.

Bite-sized tweets are a 'feature' for the company itself, because ideally, they can be surfaced out-of-context (like on an algorithmicially jumbled timeline or some aggregator page), and can be seamlessly intermixed with promoted content.

When it was brand-new, Twitter was unique and had a differentiating format. Today, Instagram is the closest analogue except the image and caption are flipped for maximum visual appeal, and that format has seriously infringed on the marketshare (and use-cases) of Twitter by attracting a certain type of content-producer; one that appeals to the coveted 18-30 crowd.

Why would twitter have to be more than it already is?

It has a fairly unique place in the whole social media constellation and has long term viability. So what if it didn't become the #1 go to place for everything and anything.

Concentrate on that core, make it work flawlessly and keep a good balance between commerce and utility. Better that than selling out to Facebook or Google, guard that independence.

Because they make no money!

That's why we can't have nice things - for longer than just a while, at least.

Perhaps we could, by adopting the way Firefox, Wikipedia, Internet Archive et al. operate.

Doesn't Firefox rely on search engine backing?

Yes, they do. They are struggling to reduce their dependence on it but have not seen much success.

Can't they charge for things like verified accounts, too big photos, etc.; organise paid talks/forums of very high-profile users and sell gear and pro-grade client software? I don't use Twitter but I guess many organisations, companies and celebs alike wouldn't care to pay for these. They could also start a cheap <handle>@twitter.io mail service.

They'd have to sell a heck of a lot of those to justify their valuation.

So don't. Just run it as a profitable business.

Well something is better than nothing.

"Wouldn't care to pay for these" means the same as "wouldn't like to pay for these": it means that they would not be interested in paying for them. I suspect you meant to use a phrase like "wouldn't mind paying for these". I hope this is helpful and doesn't come across as a pedantic correction. =)

> wouldn't mind

Yes that's what I meant. Thanks, it's helpful, "care" is a bit ambiguous indeed, sorry :)

EPS isn't far from zero. There are plenty of levers to pull to run Twitter as a profitable business given $2B rev/yr. You're seeing some of it already with them freeing up vacant office space, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did that because they're scaling back hiring.

Arguably, Twitter is worth more to someone (likely an old school media giant) as a strategic platform than it's worth as a business. Twitter has immense influence that it's unable to monetize. Yes, it generates revenue, but that's true of nearly business with that large of a user base; but the real influence of Twitter as a cross-connnect between all layers of society and as a tool for creating trends isn't really tapped into.

In your estimation, which old school media giant(s) could successfully increase Twitter's value? Could they do it without relying solely on old-school strategies copied from the radio, TV, and print advertising they already know how to do?

I admit such strategies have failed more often than succeeded. It's difficult to create "organic synergy" without alienating users (who tend to be suspicious of such mergers in the first place). But Twitter has unique power at news breaking and creating direct dialogue around events, and it's surely worth a premium above the bare financials. The value created is not by making Twitter better, but leveraging it's abilities to the benefit of the buyer. What's a company worth as a stand alone entity and what's it worth as part of a greater organization are two different things. I could totally see someone like Newscorp buying them.

> I could totally see someone like Newscorp buying them.

I do too, but I don't see any bright future for Twitter and its users in this case.

And due to almost-certain attrition it wouldn't necessarily result in higher revenues. Maybe per-user, but.

You may be correct, but you're talking about two billion dollars as if it's not a lot of money. I don't have a dog in this fight, but the twitter business model is actually quite impressive as long as you don't compare it to facebook.

I'm not dismissing the $2bn revenue at all - but the buyer will get that and the strategic leverage from the platform.

Every company with investors has to be more than it is.

Seems like if they opened up their API it would help. Wasn't that when everything started going downhill, when they started closing down third party apps?

It was. Kinda like the opposite of Ballmers "Developers, developers, developers!" The people that helped them become big got shafted and now no longer trust Twitter management. What a surprise...

I'm not sure I buy this. The API meant they effectively outsourced product development instead of developing that competency internally. It's no surprise that the company struggled to develop compelling features or products for years (both before and after closing the API).

Opening their API also introduced a lot of noise into timelines. Especially tools/apps that allowed users to automate/schedule their tweets like Buffer and Hootsuite. When you see that 9 out of 10 tweets are just automated link sharing, you stop paying attention to your timeline.

Instead of no longer paying attention, just manage your timeline better. Stop following people who automate tweets, it's mostly garbage and it comes with extra baggage like more click-tracking and redirects. I've found that most of the items people share on Buffer are things I already read here on HN or saw someone else share earlier.

Not following too many people is great, because the people you follow will curate the interesting stuff for you and re-tweet it. Stop following all media accounts for instance, maybe follow a couple reporters instead and you'll still catch all the interesting stories.

If un-following is socially awkward for whatever reason, mute people you follow or at least toggle off re-tweets for those that do too many.

I read my whole timeline most every day and it's great. It does take regular pruning though, like a plant in your garden.

This is not just a personal anecdote but a remark on why Twitter as a whole is becoming unpopular. All this curating and pruning is work.

Twitter should be making the experience valuable with as least work as possible from its users.

Has Twitter considered a micropayment service for publishers, given the outsize value of the platform to journalists and creators for marketing, real-time signals and discussion? Flattr [1], Brave [2], Blendle [3] and Patreon [4] are trying different approaches, but Twitter already has the scale (identity namespace), behavioral signals and traffic.

Since Twitter does not seem to be highly successful at existing advertising models, perhaps some resources could be dedicated to a small team that can move quickly and launch a new service by Jan 2017, so that a payment experiment can run for a couple of quarters before D-Day arrives in July 2017? If any innovative revenue-generating projects are planned, please involve the diehard users who would be lost if Twitter went away. They have much to offer, despite painful memories of API/developer changes and other missteps. There are loyal users who want Twitter to succeed as an independent entity, one that can chart an independent model for social media.

[1] Flattr: favoriting tweets to allocate funds, https://blog.flattr.net/2013/04/twitter-is-forcing-us-to-dro...

[2] Brave: browser metrics to allocate Bitcoin funds, https://brave.com/blogpost_3.html

[3] Blendle: pay-per-article with instant refunds, http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/03/testing-its-pay-per-article...

[4] Patreon, recurring subscriptions to crowdfund creators, http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6502119/patreon-t...

... I would totally use a twitter micropayment tip platform. I follow dozens of independent artists and writers on twitter who live on gratuities and patreon, a tipping engine built into twitter would be fantastic. I hate the patreon model because I don't want to commit to a monthly contribution for artists who fall in and out of my tastes.

They should buy flattr and build it in.

It could also work for tipping app developers who struggle to earn revenue on Apple/Google platforms. Some developers respond quickly to support and enhancement requests on Twitter. It would be convenient to tip developers for either their assistance or to sponsor a new software feature, from the Twitter app where you are already "chatting" with the developer. In China, WeChat incorporates payments and much more, http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/

"... while Facebook and WhatsApp measure growth by the number of daily and monthly active users on their networks, WeChat cares more about how relevant and central WeChat is in addressing the daily, even hourly needs of its users. Instead of focusing on building the largest social network in the world, WeChat has focused on building a mobile lifestyle — its goal is to address every aspect of its users’ lives, including non-social ones. The way it achieves this goal is through one of the most unsurfaced aspects of WeChat: the pioneering model of “apps within an app”. Millions (note, not just thousands) of lightweight apps live inside WeChat, much like webpages live on the internet. This makes WeChat more like a browser for mobile websites, or, arguably, a mobile operating system — complete with its own proprietary app store. Not what we’d expect from a messaging app.."

If Twitter can create a revenue channel for creators and developers, then (re)open the platform to third-party developers, they can unlock dormant economic potential in both the platform and customer base. The advertising ("own the user experience") experiment has run its course, it's time to try business models which build on Twitter's unique identity platform.

I don't think it would work. Tweets don't really classify as 'content'. Also you can never rely on donations - People only pay money when they have no other choice.

Donations are only one of many possible micro-payment transactions. Creators/vendors can also provide digital entitlements to their customer/users, in exchange for revenue. Artists can sell digital swag. WeChat offers one example of incorporating transactional workflows into a chat/conversation interface. For some abstract ideas about currency, data signals, identity and trust, see the MetaCurrency project, https://medium.com/metacurrency-project/beyond-jobs-32f65369... & http://metacurrency.org.

Tweets often contain links to content.

Why would anybody think that Google would buy Twitter, if they think that Google is number one in the same space that Twitter is number two at? If you are number one in something, usually you don't buy number two.

If you want to grab part of a market you are pretty much not part of or modernize your century old empire you will consider buying number two.

No 2 is already quite expensive. And if you are already the market leader grabbing more does not yield a value that corresponds with the price. And in the end making some return on your investment is always quite a big factor.

These buys aren't straight revenue buys. For Google, it would be buying an enormous database of personal information, and only Google could tell you if that would be valuable to them or not.

I don't understand why Google keeps getting brought up as a possible purchaser of Twitter. I just don't see it as either a synergistic or a defensive purchase.

- Google already has two-and-a-half social networks (Youtube, Google+, Blogger) if you don't count their ever-relaunching chat apps (Hangouts, Allo, Duo)

- they don't need Twitter to innovate, they don't need them to stay relevant, and they don't need Twitter's presence on phones because they (Google) are likely also present on mobile devices

- they are still the leader in display ads, Twitter is distant third behind Facebook [1], and Facebook has absorbed most of the growth in the last year, but now that AOL and Yahoo have merged (both now owned by Verizon), it's possible that Twitter is fourth behind them (I'll try to confirm with sources)

On a defensive purchase:

- Facebook, Amazon (Twitch), Microsoft, and Verizon are Google's largest threats in the social/ads/attention space; Google dwarfs them all except Facebook. As I've said above, Verizon is the up-and-coming ad network and they stand the most to gain by (approximately) doubling their share, but even if they do so they still won't be a meaningful threat to Google in the near future.

- Snapchat, despite being a serious threat to Facebook (mostly to their subsidiary Instagram), isn't actually a threat to Google -- it infringes on next to no capability that one could enjoyable do with Google's services. This remains unchanged even with Google's new phone-number-bootstrapped chat and video apps, Allo and Duo, which exist primarily to compete with iMessage/Facetime and WhatsApp

- Someone with the most to gain from buying Twitter would be a relative outsider who wants to enter the social space, or get access to influencers and their valuable ad draws. In my opinion, these are Verizon, Amazon, and Yandex. I've posted about this before, here [2][3].

[1] (2015) http://www.dmnews.com/digital-marketing/facebook-twitter-to-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083561#12083975

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11913828#11914620

> Someone with the most to gain from buying Twitter would be a relative outsider who wants to enter the social space, or get access to influencers and their valuable ad draws. In my opinion, these are Verizon, Amazon, and Yandex.

I think you are spot on on this Verizon, Amazon, Newscorp or even Sony, but why would Yandex buy it?

My speculation is that Yandex wishes to gain a foothold in the US/Europe/ANZ market for display ads; they already command a significant share in cyrillic countries and Turkey; Turkey is incidentally a large Twitter market.

The primary cyrillic social network is vKontakte whose popularity in those regions is to the detriment of Facebook. Meanwhile Google is a serious threat to Yandex' search share (and therefore, ad money), so expanding beyond their home base would be a good hedge against Google.

If you look at Yandex's portfolio of services you'll notice they're missing a general-purpose social network, and their coverage looks similar to that of Yahoo, with elements of content production (like Verizon/AOL/Yahoo) sprinkled in. But unlike Yahoo which was cash-strapped and couldn't figure out how to monetize Tumblr, Yandex has cash on hand and Twitter would be an expensive, but very strategic purchase.

>For Google, it would be buying an enormous database of personal information,

For armchair quarterbacks like us, it's hard for us to mindread Larry Page's ultimate plans. That said, Chris Sacca has an interesting theory on why Larry wouldn't be that interested in Twitter.[1] Chris isn't just a random talking head. He worked at Google to buy datacenters for Larry Page during its explosve growth stage and is also one of Twitter's biggest outside shareholders. He's now a billionaire angel investor.

His comments are from 2012 but I believe it's still relevant 4 years later. The tl;dw: Twitter isn't an interesting "science problem" for Google to solve.

I haven't studied the list of Google's acquisitions extensively but it doesn't seem like they have a pattern of acquiring companies for the databases of user accounts.

[1] relevant excerpt is 4m45ss - 10m51s : https://youtu.be/SK4ezQrTqFw?t=4m45s

[2] https://www.cbinsights.com/research-google-acquisitions

Agreed. Having other reasons Google may buy Twitter. But not because they are number one at something at which Twitter is number two.

I have come to this conclusion :

Personal/Family/Friends: Facebook

Professional/Business: Linkedin

Celebrity/Gossip/Politics: Twitter

I have a twitter account but who cares what I tweet. No one really unless I am a celebrity or a famous politician.

Facebook is where I quarantine family and people whose interests diverged from my own over time, but are still good to keep in touch with. I don't use Linkedin.

Twitter is where friends/personal stuff happens. You should find a community beyond the stuff they push at sign up. There's so much there beyond celebrities, gossip, and politics.

LinkedIn for professional? I don't know what industry or field you are in, but you can't really have discussions on LinkedIn can you? I'm in computer science and a lot of things are announced or organised over Twitter.

As much as I hate LinkedIn, I've seen a lot of corporates using it for discussions & posting long form articles & case studies. Typically in legal, manufacturing & Fortune 500 marketing. LinkedIn has a lot of Facebook-esque features now.

But if you're not excited by conversations about legal implications of safety harness design or improvements to cardboard box manufacturing processes, then you probably wouldn't enjoy LinkedIn....

I just hope they sell to someone who respects that people can have a need for multiple unlinked identities without nefarious purposes. Facebook's "real name" policy is bogus. They haven't imposed it on their acquisitions so far, but how long will that last?

Seems like a good time to start building that Twitter alternative you've been dreaming of..

As a side note, I have been thinking of Yishan-style CEOs for a while now, with board of directors tweeting often too. Twitter itself would probably be a good candidate for such a public company.

Sell to whom? They're already publicly held. Selling means someone has to buy up all the stock, which requires about $15 billion in cash.

Not necessarily in cash.

With a leveraged buyout, you can go as low as 20% in cash and finance the rest with loans you put on Twitter's balance after the acquisition.

Or the acquiring company can issuing new shares and using those to pay Twitter shareholders.

Twitter doesn't have the balance sheet for a leveraged buyout. No hard assets and money-losing.

Google or Facebook could buy Twitter for cash, but it's not clear it would be a good investment. It would be better to wait for Twitter to fail and then pick up the pieces at a huge discount.

Twitter is the gossip rag of social media. I haven't logged in to my twitter account in years.

Twitter's turnaround could come through acquisitions. If Yahoo were willing to sell Tumblr to Twitter, and if Twitter were able to pick up Gawker Media it could form a real powerhouse.

I can't use a service that limits me to 140 characters. Sorry.

That's a defining characteristic of Twitter. If it doesn't work for you, there are lots of other places for you posts. For me, the brevity is the what I like about Twitter.

I think complaining about message length on Twitter is like complaining that you can't place video calls on Instagram.

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