Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

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Dorsey joins a long list of founders who were ousted (effectively or actually) or it simply became too uncomfortable to stay [1] who then go on to criticize their former empire.

9 times out of 10 I find such criticism to be completely self-serving (eg to promote their new venture or agenda), a product of bitterness at the exit, a chance to take a swipe at the powers-that-be or a combination thereof.

Twitter's developer API followed a typical pattern: do anything you can to get traction for your platform. This includes being "open" to encourage developers to build stuff on your platform. Then, when you don't need them anymore, ditch them. From a purely business point of view, he wasn't wrong for doing it. It just surprises me that anyone is still shocked when this happens again (and again... and again...).

Those who are still bitter at getting locked out will champion this quote of course.

Take this quote:

> “IN THE BEGINNING, TWITTER WAS SO OPEN THAT MANY SAW THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME A DECENTRALIZED INTERNET STANDARD, SUCH AS THE SMTP (EMAIL SENDING) PROTOCOL. FOR A WHOLE HOST OF REASONS, ALL REASONABLE AT THE TIME, WE TOOK A DIFFERENT PATH AND WE INCREASINGLY CENTRALIZE TWITTER. BUT A LOT HAS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS”.

Put another way: they chose to be a business. No business chooses to create a federated system, at least no successful business (to date). There's simply no reason to. The problems with spam and abuse of the phone networks, email, texting, etc are largely a result of predictably bad actors in an "open" federated system.

The people who call for open standards either aren't a business or they're losing to the industry leader and they want "open standards" to not die.

[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/11/twitter-did-jack-dor...

> Twitter's developer API followed a typical pattern: do anything you can to get traction for your platform. This includes being "open" to encourage developers to build stuff on your platform. Then, when you don't need them anymore, ditch them.

From my recollections.. Twitter was a company that had a user base, but no plans or strategy to become actually profitable off that base. They, like many companies at the time, seemed to assume that if you just build the big "next generation open platform" that money would just start falling from the sky... somehow.

Ultimately, the red line meets the black line, and you have to turn to VCs who push you into the most obvious solution: Shut down all the "open platform" dead weight and start pushing advertising.

I don't think these are intentional moves but rather the natural consequence of certain types of silicon valley business "plans."

Isn't that that MO of most big tech companies that don't sell things. Get as many eye balls and sell ads.

> TWITTER WAS SO OPEN THAT MANY SAW THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME A DECENTRALIZED INTERNET STANDARD, SUCH AS THE SMTP (EMAIL SENDING) PROTOCOL. FOR A WHOLE HOST OF REASONS, ALL REASONABLE AT THE TIME,

Given that there was exactly one proprietary twitter 'network', I would not say that none of those reasons were 'reasonable' at the time. They were just wishful thinking in bed with corporate marketing.

I don't think a lot of tech people quite understand what a public good looks like, but Twitter was never it. From day one, it was built as a walled garden, and any access you have to it is through the benevolence of its operators.

You're right that somebody who made billions from a problematic system comes across as hypocritical when he turns around to burn it.

That said, there's something pure and genuine in him. Real regret, it doesn't come across as an act. And let's face it, Twitter has never really grown up. It's not really a functioning business.

Let's be clear about what has happened here though - Dorsey saved Twitter when he first returned, but he completely failed to run it as a business. No monetization, anemic growth and a complete failure to become a real competitor in the sector. Every other comparable tech company grew massively over the last 6 years and Twitter is basically the same value it was when he came back as CEO. And also let's remember why he is stepping down - this only came after investors came in and said "Hey, you've done a bad job, we need someone new"- and not for nothing, the 6 years of lack of value matched 6 years of failure to innovate. His criticism might be genuine, but at the same time, he was in charge. It's difficult to beleive him when suddenly the week after he lost responsibilty, he gained a vision for how to fix twitter.

anemic growth

Twitter may primarily be a text-based medium and for that reason it appeals to people who are more textually and informationally oriented. This idea isn't original to me: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2018/5/21/invisible-asymptote..., https://alexdanco.com/2019/10/17/the-audio-revolution/.

Maybe there's much more growth in it: or maybe that's the nature of the company and product.

Facebook did not just stay in it's little FB lane. In response to not performing well, they figured out mobile, they accquired IG, Occulus, WhatsApp and Messenger and made them key business items to expand their relevance to great effect and make gabs of money as a result.

What has twitter done to go beyond their core product? Not much other than a recent clubhouse clone and a failed snapchat story clone.

Hey, don't forget how Twitter acquired video microblogging service Vine, used their platform power to kill comeptitor Periscope, then let the product languish into death... leaving that medium wide-open for China's TikTok to take over.

Yahoo was the Web 1.0 company that killed a ton of great Web 2.0 projects with destructive acquisitions & fumbled post-acquisition product development.

Twitter's been the Web 2.0 Yahoo, killing a bunch of promising Web 3.0 concepts with their API rugpulls, botched acquisitions, & lethargic product development.

You're right that he's a terrible CEO, but perhaps that is exactly why he's believable, or at least has my benefit of the doubt. Years before stepping down he was already distracted by his side projects and interests.

> Dorsey saved Twitter when he first returned

I'm pretty sure Donald Trump saved Twitter. Super controversial president chooses your attention economy platform as primary means of communication? Cha-ching!

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