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by sanderjd 1469 days ago
Ok but going back to the grandparent's point: what is the incentive to do that? It's really hard to be better than Twitter. I know Twitter kind of sucks and everyone here thinks they have too many employees, but the truth is that all of those employees are doing stuff, that despite it kind of sucking, it remains incredibly hard and extremely expensive to actually make something better. I just don't see how these platforms can compete with the primary incentive structure being altruism. It's way too much to ask.
1 comments
cmg 1469 days ago
> It's really hard to be better than Twitter.

It is, but right now people don't care as much about privacy as features and community. It's not what people who focus on openness or privacy want, but it's the reality. Where are the celebrities and brands? Where are the conversations happening? Where are my friends? This is the challenge.

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sanderjd 1469 days ago
Yes ... but that's never going to change, so what's the proposal here?
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winternett 1469 days ago
The key in my perspective is to not scale too far.

Twitter, Reddit, and many other mega-platforms began the process of sucking (exactly) when their user bases got too big. operational costs also soared as they over scaled to stay dominant, while they began to fear changes in functionality because of a circular cycle of fearing user backlash.

No one platform can service massive levels and disciplines of users well, yet everyone keeps getting greedy, and always loses sight of that fact. Costs of competition at monopoly level create a paralyzing fear of losing a grip on users... That fear makes those platforms resort to corrupt methods to retain and addict their users to their product, and makes execs and investors unable to see outside of the vapor cloud they create...

Also, never go IPO if you want to keep your product's soul... Cash out early like Tom from Myspace, and let someone else crash and burn the idea as a CEO... :P

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jlledo 1469 days ago
How exactly do you think they started to suck? Also, what’s stopping platforms from servicing large numbers of users? Honest questions, I’m just curious.
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