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Comment by owenwil | Hacker News Reader

Google acquiring Twitter is actually the best end result here. Salesforce is probably the worst. Lots of people hate the idea of a Google acquisition, but I think it's well suited because:

- Google learnt from its mistakes with Google+ and is eager to not repeat them

- The company is a very different one now from years ago

- Google doesn't want to mess up identity again, so that wouldn't be an issue

- Google mostly just wants a social graph

- Twitter is a bad public company that makes irrational decisions

- Merging Google engineering/leadership with Twitter might actually give direction and ease the financial pressure that seems to drive the company's poor engineering decisions

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> Google learnt from its mistakes with Google+ and is eager to not repeat them

Google has learned nothing from their mistakes.

As evidence their real name policy is still active. Contrast with Twitter where a lot of users have fake names. And yes, you can find hateful users on Twitter and I know of some folks that have been harassed, but the community I'm active in is very professional and civilized and the conversations have a much higher quality than what I've seen on Google+ or YouTube, even with their real names. Guess some people are assholes no matter what.

Also the Google+ API is still read-only. Which means you can only use Google's official tools for posting content. There's no way for example to cross-post on both Twitter and Google+. Apps like TweetDeck aren't possible for Google+.

Oh and Google Reader is still dead.

> Google doesn't want to mess up identity again, so that wouldn't be an issue

I'm sure they don't want to mess it up, but given that they are continuously messing up identity, I'm also sure that it will be an issue.

> Also the Google+ API is still read-only. Which means you can only use Google's official tools for posting content. There's no way for example to cross-post on both Twitter and Google+. Apps like TweetDeck aren't possible for Google+.

Is this true? Buffer allows you to cross-post to Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

I don't know what Buffer is, but if they can post to Google+ it only means they have a private deal with Google.

The Google+ API is read-only, it says so in their own docs: https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/

And if you want a service that has integration with everything except for Google+, there's IFTTT.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think buffer can also post to Instagram

It could be doing the reverse of scraping no? Faking app requests

Google+ has a significantly more powerful API for its trusted partners, such as Hootsuite. And maybe Buffer, unless they are doing some headless browsing hacks. Their public API is read only for strategic reasons. Unless you have a clear business case or plan on how to monetize APIs, opening them up can actually backfire very easily. The biggest example of this is Twitter itself, which has been trying to lock down its APIs since they are basically losing both money and direct access to users through them. But closing them now is causing further hurt, on user trust and goodwill.

> As evidence their real name policy is still active. Contrast with Twitter where a lot of users have fake names.

Now contrast Twitter's earnings per share with Facebook's, which does have a real name policy. This policy is 1 percent about harassment, and 99 percent about building an advertising market to sustain the thing once built.

Same logic applies to the read-only APIs. Unless you know a way to embed ads into the APIs, apps like Tweetdeck directly reduce income. This is why Twitter tried to lock down and revoke API access.

If anyone has been making mistakes here, it's been Twitter, who is now in such a poor financial position that, despite laying off a huge number of engineers, their best hope of avoiding Google Reader's fate is to be acquired.

Facebook's revenue has nothing to do with their real names policy. Unless you use those real names to tie them to a bank account or some other database, their value is zero. And I don't think Facebook is doing it, or sharing those names with advertisers, because they have other much more valuable signals and ads platforms in general don't actually want to share their data with advertisers, because that's their secret sauce, preferring to do the targeting by themselves.

I've worked on an advertising platform. This idea that those real names have value is basically a myth.

And speaking of Twitter's API, trying to revoke access is one of those decisions that irrevocably hurt them. The big reason for why Facebook succeeded while Google+ miserably failed is that Facebook is a platform.

>Google has learned nothing from their mistakes. As evidence their real name policy is still active.

No it's not. There's no requirement to use your real name in Google+ or YouTube. And if you don't like Google+ you can even delete it from your account.

>Also the Google+ API is still read-only. Which means you can only use Google's official tools for posting content.

So what? There's a good reason it's read only and that's to avoid the flood of spam that would flow in.

>Oh and Google Reader is still dead.

Yeah, like you ever used Google Reader. It was a seldomly used service that has now become the poster child for people looking to criticize all Google product announcements.

> As evidence their real name policy is still active.

The real name policy was revoked a couple of years ago. [1] I can only find some help pages on how often one can change the name and what to do if one wants to use a "first name" alone (the answer is to use a "." in the last name field and it won't be shown anywhere). Where does Google or Google+ require real names and since when? Do you have links to a re-reversal of that policy? I searched again, but couldn't find any.

[1]: https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/V5XkYQYYJqy

Given what they've done with YouTube in the last few years or so, it doesn't seem quite like they've learned from their mistakes. I'm already seeing jokes about YouTube 'advertiser friendly' guidelines and 'YouTube Heroes' as we speak.

Really, the one thing that keeps YouTube going is how expensive it is to compete with it. Twitter doesn't exactly have that luxury.

Youtube comments changes were the last dying breath of the Real Names policy. As of ~2015, it's been dead as a parrot.

> Twitter doesn't exactly have that luxury.

Twitter's luxury is its existing userbase. Same for eBay, Paypal, and other near-monopolies.

Twitter's software is absolutely nothing special. You could have 95% of the core functionality in two weeks as a solo project. (Granted, it probably won't scale to 320m users right out of the gate ...)

The problem is that nobody's going to go and use your new Twitter-like service that has zero users. So if I built a Twitter clone, I'd probably get, at best, 100 very inactive users, no matter how great the service was.

For Google to buy Twitter would be a reversal of a very entrenched strategy that can be summed up as "No niches!". That's why they scrapped Google Reader. There are very few exceptions to this strategy (Google apps for work and some cloud offerings)

Twitter is not for everybody and never will be. Twitter is for those who publish information and for those who are interested in shaping their own information consumption beyond the daily headlines plus family and friends spam.

If Google buys Twitter in the hope of creating a realtime Google for everybody they will fail.

I hope they decide to reverse their "no niches" strategy, because that strategy has been very damaging indeed.

Twitter is not as big as Facebook, but it is not a niche service in the sense that Reader was. Twitter has 300M worldwide users and can count as users most global celebrities, politicians, artists, and journalists. People that make news. Reader is not a good comparison at all.

Whether you define a niche as 0.5% of the population or as 5% of the population is not important. Google doesn't do 0.5% and it doesn't do 5%. It only does stuff that is potentially useful for almost everybody (with a few exceptions that are targeted at IT professionals).

I don't know exactly what the potential of Reader might have been. Maybe something between 1% and 3%? It's the same ballpark as Twitter in my view, but that is admittedly rather speculative. It's also not the point I was trying to make.

A product whose primary appeal is to people who make and consume news is, ultimately, a niche product. The majority of people who Twitter might ever reach have seen it and realized it's not for them.

Twitter could absolutely be a valuable property, but it's never going to have the scale/reach of Google Search or Facebook.

Google learned from Google+? Where is the evidence?

Also, Twitter is unprofitable, but my understanding was that they were heavily trusted by the public.

There's copious evidence that's public, look for how it's talked about externally.

I think you're substituting a particular group of Twitter users for the public - the general perception is Twitter is full of hateful trolls and management can't be bothered to control them.

I would have said that the de-integration of Google+ from YouTube was a good example of them learning from their mistakes, except fucking Allo shows that they're still rather clueless about a lot of things related to people communicating online.

I still get prompted to "upgrade" to Google+ every time I launch a game on my phone.

I actually just don't see much news about twitter. I see a ton of quotes from twitter, though. It is still far more reliable for news like things than facebook.

Curious if you have any particular stories in mind.

> the general perception is Twitter is full of hateful trolls and management can't be bothered to control them.

Do you have some respectable polling data to support this claim? I also visit some of the biased websites that constantly beat that drum, but that doesn't mean this opinion is held by the general public.

I don't use Twitter much[1], but I see the opposite. They selectively censor to push their type of politics. They hide trending tags they don't like. I don't trust them at all.

It'd be great if Google bought them for one reason: see what they do with the censorship part. Will they continue picking off tags they don't like and open up the idea that Google is deliberately biasing things? Or will Twitter users suddenly see popular trends they never saw before?

1: The website is hostile to consuming content. If you scroll down a few pages of tweets then click an image or something, you lose your spot. Pressing back brings you to the bottom of the first "page" of tweets, not however far you had scrolled. Add in the slowness and wow, it's really quite a bad experience.

Trying to acquire a social network with flat or declining user growth while competitors continue to grow is certainly a sign that perhaps the wrong lessons were learned.

Frankly, I think there are some "lessons learned" that are critical and are relevant, but looking backwards only accurately tells you how to successfully create something in the past.

I agree that Twitter is in decline, but I think that is because of poor leadership and management at the company. Google might reasonably believe that they can turn that around.

I think FB acquiring Twitter is actually the best end result. Facebook has patience knows how to give independence and allow for the product to evolve. Instagram and WhatsApp are the best examples.

Those were growing when they were acquired. Twitter is stagnant at best and probably in the decline. Why would Zuck even bother with Twitter, he's clearly won this battle.

Google on the other hand has demonstrated that they have no idea how to compete in social. Buying Twitter gives them a property to play with at a discount.

Aren't self driving cars the next big thing anyway? Who cares what's on Twitter when you can sell ads in the car while I go from point a to point b.

Zuck offered Twitter a lot back in the day, Twitter leadership at time severely disagreed w/ Mark's vision of the merge. Particularly how he wanted to use Twitter to complement FB's goal of logging personal matters and in some cases over-stepping ethical and privacy boundaries. I commend twitter for not giving in at that time

Good list, one thing you left off: Google is already showing realtime results from Twitter. They're well positioned in the deal because they know how many people click through

To be honest, I would much rather Microsoft buy Twitter than Google. Microsoft actually is showing they have learned from their mistakes...while Google quietly continues to make theirs.

Though to me it would make more sense if Twitter were a joint venture between various media outlets, sort of like how Hulu was funded initially. News Corp, Viacom, Disney, etc all buying large stakes in the company and taking it private to me is the best possible outcome.

>The company is a very different one now from years ago

In what ways?

Milo Yiannopoulos' recent 'RIP Twitter' talk covers this https://youtu.be/JoLs61YwuSM?t=1986

Google has developed a brand problem, similar that Microsoft. I'm positive that many would stop using Twitter if they bought it.

Google has 7 different products with over 1 billion users [1]. This "brand problem" you speak of, if it exists at all, doesn't seem to have slowed them down much.

[1] http://www.popsci.com/google-has-7-products-with-1-billion-u...

And all of them weren't launched in last 3 years.

Right because if you don't launch a product that reaches over 1/6th of the human population every 3 years your irrelevant.

Google Photos (launched in May 2015) reportedly had 200M 30DA a year after its official launch [1]. Sure, it's not a billion, but how many products do you know that reached 1B 30DA in their first 3 years? I can't think of a single one.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11685424/google-photos-upd...

And many people would start using Twitter if it was well integrated into some of Google's services.

"Google has developed a brand problem"

  You're spending too much time in the HN/Startup echo chamber. Google has no brand problem with public at large.

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