[inthewoods]

I keep wondering if this is going to be like Marissa Mayer joining Yahoo - much fanfare, some movement, but at the end of the day she's been unable to significantly move the needle. I just wonder if Twitter fundamentally isn't as scalable an idea/product as Facebook et al. It's obviously Jack's job to make it that - but what if the basic form of Twitter just isn't as compelling, no matter how you change it or dress it up?

[killwhitey]

Then his job is find something else for Twitter to make. Facebook has launched a lot of experimental apps like Paper, Rooms, Slingshot, Messenger. And they bought Instagram which is very successful. Under Costolo Twitter bought vine and periscope, but they haven't tried to experiment with new app ideas internally.

[hockley]

If they went back to their roots as a messaging API for other apps, they would not have to build new apps. Become the messaging backbone for the Internet. That's plenty of scale to go after.

[untog]

> Become the messaging backbone for the Internet. That's plenty of scale to go after.

Where's the money in that, though?

[sjg007]

In the data. Advertising, etc..

[scrollaway]

I hope they don't. The last thing we need is a proprietary solution for "the messaging backbone for the internet". =/

[nailer]

Pretty sure that's the basis of removing the 140 char limit for DMs. Some people are way more likely to use Twitter than an 'SMS' type messenger that wants phone numbers that they don't know.

[hkmurakami]

Precisely the reason why LINE is so popular in Asia particularly between people who just met.

[SandB0x]

Don't forget WhatsApp!

[ethanbond]

In what world is Paper, Rooms, or Slingshot even remotely successful?

And obviously the messaging service attached to an already massive social network would be compelling, that's not really an "experimental app" by any definition.

[giarc]

I don't think the commenter implied, or meant to imply they were successful.

[ethanbond]

Ah, my loose reading. I read it as "he must find something Twitter can be successful with, as Facebook... etc"

I see now that I was wrong there!

[rufb]

In that case, we'll give you: News Feed, Pages, Groups, Messenger, Events, the Platform, and Connect, which have all been pivotal to Facebook's success (I guess more than one of these has been the first time email was dethroned as unquestionable medium for doing some thing or another).

[meatysnapper]

Almost certainly. Twitter's user base is not growing, and their product basically hasn't changed in 5 years. They have a valuable brand, but they need to figure out how to fundamentally improve the ease of use of the whole thing and make a decent value proposition. Photos, messages, videos, search... make the app not suck.

Snapchat and Instagram are very quickly taking over the celebrity/new/sports one-to-many angle from Twitter. Once celebrities depart, Twitter will have only news, and that's not enough most likely.

[code4tee]

One of the big challenges is that Twitter is largely geared towards people looking to engage on topical issues in a public forum. If you're an expert in a particular area and consistently engage with other experts in a public forum where the occasional random user chimes in then Twitter has a value proposition for you. I mean it's right there in the platform... people "follow" you, they're not your "friend" or "linked" to you. You need to say something that people are interested in following.

The problem is that most Internet users don't fit into this bucket. They have things to discuss and share with a small group of family/friends but beyond that don't have much to say, to the broader world. These are the users that flock to Facebook, Snapchat, et al.

Until Twitter finds a way to engage the everyday average Internet user then they'll struggle to grow or create a meaningful value proposition (the $$$ is in advertising to the masses, not the engaged thought leaders).

The data on users indicates Twitter has likely peaked in terms of attracting these engaged users (data also indicates a lot of these "active accounts" are fake / bots / spam). Until that changes Twitter will be in trouble as it has no viable long term business model.

[jonwachob91]

Last I checked; thought leaders don't convey their thoughts in 140 characters or less.

Nothing of really value is that short. Sorry.

Unless you figure out the Theory of Everything... That'll be of value ;)

[rsync]

  # wc -m

  Last I checked; thought leaders don't convey their thoughts in 140 characters or less.
  Nothing of really value is that short. Sorry.

  133

[jonwachob91]

I didn't really provide any value. Just being a clown ;p

[raii]

-m?

[marchelzo]

It counts characters rather than bytes. Maybe it's a GNU thing?

EDIT: It appears to be part of POSIX wc.

[duaneb]

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

[phantarch]

I understand the significance of the poem, but if I'm going into Stride Rite to buy some new shoes for a baby, chances are I'm not going to want them to have been worn before.

[duaneb]

Babies go through shoes extremely quickly. You can save a lot of money by re-using them. Obviously there are sanitation and wear concerns, but dress shoes (for instance) are going to be easy to find used, cheap, and in good shape.

[aianus]

Why? Small children have no concept of social signalling by having nice new things, it's wasted on them.

[tajano]

> they need to figure out how to fundamentally improve the ease of use of the whole thing

I've frequently heard this theory, that Twitter's problem is that it's too complicated. I don't buy it. It has a simpler UI than Facebook or Snapchat, and it's not significantly more complicated than Instagram or Vine or Periscope or any other media sharing platform.

If you personally enjoy Twitter and derive value from it, it's easy to believe that people who don't get into Twitter just don't understand it it. My experience is that many people sign up, send their first tweet, and then say, "OK, I get it, and I have no use for this." I've helped my friends follow news sources and celebrities they like, but then they look at the wall of Tweets and say, "OK, I get it, but I don't want to read things in this format." It's not about ease-of-use for them, it's about the basic value proposition of tweeting and the Twitter feed.

[jpeg_hero]

I feel like it took me a few years to get my "Following" list to where I really liked my stream. Took a lot of patience of adding people every week for what seemed like forever.

when people say "ease of use" that's what i think about

[xeromal]

Reddit has a list of default subs to get people started. A lot just keep the main list, but some continue to add and subtract as their tastes change. Is that what you are proposing?

[meatysnapper]

Here's the problem. Twitter has to decide whether it is A) algorithmic (facebook style, they show you content they think you'll like an optimize it by the time you are engaged with it), B) curated - someone else decides what you may like and it is suggested C) you organize it yourself.

Lots of people at Twitter are all about (C), and have ideas how to improve it. However, management has never really been hot on it, and prefers (A) because it is easier to "measure" and optimize for. If (C) was done well, and allowed users a good way to find content they though was interesting, it would be super helpful.

Another problem is that Twitter still sucks for media. Michael Sippey, then head of product, was against anything but text. He was out within a year. Text is hard to create (well), but photos are very easy- snap, apply a filter and bam, billions of food photos on Instagram. One of the appeals of Snapchat and Instagram are that they allow you to broadcast photos/video very easily. In essence, they are a better Twitter for 99% of the population.

[shampine]

I think that was more common to hear as people didn't seem to understand @messages and #hashtags. So when they saw:

> .@jack #awesome

They didn't know what that meant. Now that hashtags and @ style messaging are just about everywhere, I don't think it is a valid theory.

[dnr]

As a non-twitter-using software engineer, when I land on a twitter page, I still find it fairly intimidating and requiring special knowledge. For example, why is there a dot before the @ in your example? (I actually know the answer to that because I looked it up once, but it's totally not obvious.) What's with all the slashes in numbered lists?

Because of the character limit, people use a lot of abbreviations and shorthand that I can usually figure out with some puzzling, but I shouldn't have to do that.

I still see url-shortener urls all over on twitter, when I should just see regular urls.

These may be minor points, but it adds up to giving off the feeling that there's an in-crowd and I'm not invited. It is much better than it was a few years ago, though, so maybe it'll get there.

(I'm not even getting into the difficulty of actually following a conversation on twitter! Reverse-chronological order plus the lack of linking replies to their parent messages make it nearly impossible, but that's a well-known issue.)

[jay_kyburz]

I agree that the @ at the beginning or the @ in the middle is a problem.

here is my opinion Jack if you are reading.

Every tweet needs some extra field when you are creating them.

  * to: field like email. A list of people or "everybody"
  * body: 140 characters.
  * tags: relevant tags so that your tween can be found by non followers interested in a specific topic. 
  * url: seperate url so as not to use up your 140 chars. Nobody wants to use a link shortener.

[alexschleber]

More fields... less compliance...

[pratyushag]

If you're an active twitter user, you likely know how it works. But otherwise, the @ mentions etc. are not very simple w/o somebody teaching you. And even after that, it can seem difficult.

[abalone]

Realtime news and straight-from-the-horse's mouth access to celebrities is fundamentally a good opportunity that no one does better than Twitter right now. The question is whether they'll have the decisiveness to make it a better experience for a broader audience without alienating the core that generates the best content.

[jay_kyburz]

I think this is key.

On Media Watch (Australia) last week they discussed how savvy politicians now use social to speak directly to the public, cutting the middle man out of the equation. The middle man being traditional news media.

I think facebook is less appropriate for this kind of celebrity broadcast.

I find it frustrating to watch twitter flail around because I can see this epic opportunity hanging right in front of them. I really hope they can take that small step and make twitter something truly epic.