Comment by dubswithus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dubswithus | Hacker News Reader

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The problem with Twitter isn't that it isn't efficient enough or the features aren't configured correctly. It's not that exciting to the average person and never will become popular like Facebook or TikTok.

Twitter could be described as:

1) Following influencers like on Instagram -- but no cool, sexy, beautiful pictures and very boring.

2) Infinite scrolling like TikTok -- but it's boring three word text replies instead of in your face video.

3) It has leading news stories featured at the top of the feed like Facebook -- but none of your friends are on Twitter and you can't engage them negatively or positively.

Only a certain type of person is going to spend a lot of time on Twitter. That person is a minority.

The word I'm seeing repeated here is "boring," but that also brings up a point about where Twitter works well: niche audiences.

Especially ones that aren't necessarily interested in photos or short videos you look at once then forget. Or in the amount of work it takes to make said photos and videos as an entry fee to be visible on a platform.

Journalism comes to mind, and with it, politics (of any persuasion).

The writer's side of Twitter is also very active, maybe like you'd expect - writers, of course, gravitate to the written word.

Twitter does have its audiences that other platforms don't cater to very effectively.

The phrase “niche audience” is not something any investor wants to hear.

Evidence?

Twitter still seems pretty popular without all that extra flashy trash...

Evidence? They aren't profitable and most Americans don't use Twitter.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/24/twitter-doesnt-reflect-how-mos...

> About 22 percent of Americans use Twitter. And roughly 10 percent of those users are responsible for 80 percent of tweets

That was a study of ~3000 people. They also excluded products, institutions and international (obviously) users. Not really representative of Twitter considering a decent part of its interactions are businesses and institutions engaging with the public...

And ~70 million US users is not exactly nothing.

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