Exactly! Which is IMO actually one of the reasons why Twitter is having such a hard time monetizing. I see them more like a router protocol where people are pointed towards consuming content outside of twitter instead of on the twitter platform.

My guess is that they will change exactly that sometime soon. First allowing you to write longer texts as attachments and first then might join FB and Apple in "killing the open web"

Getting content directly through Twitter and being linked to it through Twitter wouldn't change all that much from a monetisation standpoint. The value of Twitter is in the interest graph.

Is there no value also in how millions of people stare into its feed day and night? Or the vast amounts of content created for free by its huge amount of users who include both the influential and the aspiring?

Not really because they stare at the feed only to find something that then lives somewhere else.

It's like being that guy the girls hang out with because you are good friends with the handsome guy in school. You might get to hang out with them but in the end they go home with your friend.

People only stare at Google to find content that lives somewhere else. There is alot of value of linking users to content they are interested in.

Thats not at all how Google works.

Google works because it give you a selection of what you are looking for right now. It knows whats top of your mind and.

Twitter gives you things other people are interested in or find interesting.

They are in no way comparable.

One is letting you find things you are looking for, the other is mostly showing things you don't care about sometimes things that are interesting to you.

I'm only pointing out that you don't need to host content to provide value.

Yeah but you are using the wrong example since twitter is not a search engine.

Both Twitter and Google help you find information you're interested in. The internet is massive so sorting and serving useful content to a user is valuable.

Google finds this information based on keywords. Twitter finds this information by looking at conversations and people you are interested in.

Saying Google and Twitter are in no way comparable isn't helpful. They are comparable though certainly different!

Google has better information on your preferences and exactly what you're interested in. That doesn't mean Twitter doesn't have good information.

If you follow a ton of yoga instructors then Twitter can feature yoga ads in your feed. While not as targeted as Google ads they still provide value to the user and the advertiser.

I don't want to get into an argument, just wanted to explain where I was coming from.

No

Twitter lets you discover what happens in areas that you might be interested in if someone wrote about it. It's a newsfeed for that specific reason. It require a tweet to happen.

Google allow you to find exactly what you are looking for whether someone tweeted it or not in all the content they can get a hold of including twitter.

Your search term on twitter does not show you intent, search on google does.

You are comparing two completely different things here.

Furthermore EVERYONE who uses google search use it to find things they are looking for when they are most interested in it. Only some people use twitter search terms to figure out who on twitter has something to say, mostly about themselves.

People don't use twitter as a search engine but as a discovery engine the difference is hugely different for so many reasons I am not sure why you keep insisting on them being the same.

I haven't insisted that they are the same! And I agree with your descriptions of both companies. I didn't mention twitter search, I was actually only thinking about the Twitter feed.

All I'm saying is that at a high level both services let you find content you're interested in. That's it. It doesn't contrast with what you've said above. They do it in very different ways and for very different use cases.

You said and I quote:

"People only stare at Google to find content that lives somewhere else."

Thats not what people do. They search google and then stare as those results.

Thats a completely different concept from staring at a twitter feed with random things.

It's comparing apples and cars.

A twitter feed isn't random though. You choose who you follow on Twitter, if the links they provide are unhelpful you unfollow them. It is more random than Google but still tailored to your preferences.

I think you're hung up on the "stare at" wording. I interpreted the words to mean "use" - hope that clarifies my point.

People use twitter in many different ways. You are assuming people carefully select who they follow. Many people dont, they follow all sorts of people often based on one tweet. You have no way of knowing what other stuff they are going to write about because it's people. Furthermore a lot of people follow thousands or hundreds of people and are simply not able to follow everything thats going on in their feed.

Compared to a google search result it is completely in the opposite end

I am not hung up on anything. I am saying that your comparison is as wrong as comparing DuckDuckGo with an RSS feed. There is so much noise even with the things you carefully select.

Compared to a google search where I am going specifically for something and is showing my intent.

I don't go to google to see whats going on, I go there to find something very specific.

I feel as though we've gone off topic here.

You said that twitter doesnt provide value "because they stare at the feed only to find something that then lives somewhere else."

When you search Google you're finding things that live somewhere else. I'm simply pointing out that you don't need to host the content the user is looking for to provide value.

I'm not saying the companies are the same. I'm not saying Twitter can be successful the same way Google has. I'm agreeing with all your points besides the fact that you need to host content to provide value.

No I said their problem with monetization for twitter was that people don't spend enough time on twitter but instead on the places that tweets lead to.

In other words they provide plenty of value they are just not able to make a living from it.

Instead they should get more people to stay on their own platform by allowing more content to be created there just like Facebook is.

I agree getting more content on twitter is an good option for montetization. It might even be the best one.

I brought up Google because time spent on a site doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot more ad revenue. What matters is serving up useful ads that provide value to the user and advertisers. Google is great at that - Twitter isn't because of many reasons you've stated.

So maybe twitter should be trying to improve their ad program to serve better ads. If they can't do that well (no way they could do it as well as Google) then perhaps increasing time users spend on Twitter is their best option.

I only wanted to point out that the solution is not self evident. Just because people are using a service to find content hosted elsewhere does not mean it can't make money. The problem might be that Twitter is bad at finding ads people want to see.

You brough up google because you claimed that google was making money on what twitter wasn't able to and thats simply wrong.

Ok

  > Not really because they stare at the feed only to find something that then lives somewhere else.

Maybe not. When I want to jump in to @fat's stream of thought and humor for a while i read his twitter log, scrolling thru dozens of tweets.

For me, twitter is for a few things: connecting with folks in a cold-call way; learning of trends and new ideas in my areas of interest; getting to know someone.

You spend way more time reading an article outside of twitter than you do reading @fats stream of thought.

Many many many people don't use it like you do but almost everyone use it as a way to find new content and so thats where twitters opportunity is.

In other words, you are a perfect vector for advertising. If another guy wants to reach those girls, he might want to pay you his whole allowance.

Edit: to clarify my point, I say that Twitter not only is friends with the attractive guy, but is also funny and charming and interesting in his own right, and that this is a major value.

It doesn't matter what I am. The point is that twitter doesn't monetize properly right now and the primary reason for that is that people don't consume the content twitter links to on twitter but somewhere else.

I don't know what the primary reason is.

Facebook has directed huge amounts of traffic to external sites for years and that doesn't seem to have been a major problem.

You consume way more content ON Facebook than you are aware of. Thats the big difference. And a lot of content is being written ON FB. The discussion is ON FB and they allow them to be long which keeps people there too.

Just the ability to do a preview of on article is such a big eyeball keeper that it leaves twitter in the dust. Or to write a comment to the article which make people then react to what someone wrote about the article without maybe even reading it.

It's like with checkins. People think FourSquare and Swarm is big but it's dwarfed by FBs checkins it's just not a major focus for them and so we don't think about it as a place a lot of people check in. But it's a numbers game.

I believe you are mistaken. In fact having more content on twitter and users consuming more content on twitter would allow them to actually get value of the interest graph which they don't have now.

It would completely change because suddenly you are consuming your content on twitter not someone elses page and so twitter would have much better ability to do advertising.

It doesn't seem like Twitter has a hard time monetizing. They have a much harder time growing their user base.

I'd agree with that.

It's not that there is no value in Twitter nor in the amount of data on things people like and talk about on the service, but more it's more difficult for new users to intuitively jump in and start than it is with facebook or snapchat (Twitter strikes me more as a platform to listen to lots of others than as a platform to have a broad audience unless you, the content producer, are bringing fame from elsewhere).

They have both problems.

Google web search has exactly the same behavior. They are able to massively extract value from that flow.

No.

When I search on google I am getting the results I am looking for and I am only there because I am looking for something. Google uses their knowledge of my intent to give me highly targeted results. It cannot be highlighted enough how big a difference that is from twitter. I am not passively looking at random search results streaming in.

On twitter I am served with a combination of things most of them not really interesting to me and always depending on someone having tweeted them.

The big difference is that google knows your intent at the very moment you are using it. Twitter don't.

They are as different as day and night.

Reddit basically has the exact same behavior -- with deeply engaged user bases around each external link talking about it and forming rather cohesive "communities" around each topic...

Yet they have a tough time monetizing that.

Why hasn't a twitter or a reddit sought to get rev share from the traffic they drive from the resultant pages? (I don't know enough about adrev/rev-share to know if this would work) -- but reddit and twitter know exactly how many people click on each link.

One thing I would like to know is the diff in % of users that click into a comments session without ever clicking on the actual link. I know that I do this as amajority of the way I read reddit and HN even. I get the gist from the title, some additional details from the comments and sometimes other, better links from users as well as commentary, corrections or what not.

I also upvote an extremely few number of posts and stories. How many times have I clicked a link or read comments about a post without ever upvoting or down voting it? Probably about 90%

> Why hasn't a twitter or a reddit sought to get rev share from the traffic they drive from the resultant pages?

Why would I, as a site owner, ever pay Twitter or Reddit? There's only two ways they can motivate me:

* Prevent linking to my site if I don't pay. This has obvious (and terrible) side effects on what those sites are and how they work.

* Provide some sort of advantage to payers. For something like Reddit, this would be possible through rank boosting or "sticky" posts, likely on posts that I the payer create myself. Twitter could maybe have tweets distributed to random users, regardless of whether they follow the originator. (I believe Facebook does something similar to this.)

Content and relevance is meant to be controlled by the users in these platforms. Both these options begin to abuse that implicit trust by placing the ability to pay on equal footing with the ability of users to naturally boost content. This will work for a while, until the users' trust is sufficiently eroded that they begin to leave.

I agree with you.

All I was saying that monetizing link aggregation with commentary, twitter and reddit, is pretty hard. Vs google who is actually providing the conduit for people that are actually searching for something where suppliers will incentivize google (pay) to be a top result.

sites like reddit, even moreso than twitter, have a user base who HATE the idea of a content provider paying to be a top of the frontpage or anything "sponsored"

my suggestion is equally flawed in that you cant then expect reddit to have a yelp-like model where they extort money from content providers for traffic...

But that was essentially what I mentioned, I guess.

Maybe the real model is a super low cost fee for advanced customization features?

Like i'd happily pay reddit $1.99 a month for more control over my experience -- even though we get that also from RES.

Not sure Twitter agrees with you, since they're collaborating with Google* et al on the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project - which can be thought of as an open, web-based alternative to Instant Articles.

*my employer

I am not talking about just articles. I am talking about content. (essays, discussions, comments, videos, promotional posts.

I'd say that google search is a router protocol as well--you go there to go someplace else.

Seems to have worked pretty well for them.

Does Twitter load other web content through a built-in web browser in the app? That seems to be the big "white-washing" problem with the various reader apps (Facebook, Flipboard, etc), that they're unifying the interaction experience.

> Does Twitter load other web content through a built-in web browser in the app?

On iOS, yes, it has a built-in browser. You can go to Safari if you like.

They're not packaging up web content as if it's not web content, though. It's just to access sites quickly.

Facebook also shows what should/could be the whole page, but I'm not sure we know what all they strip out in the name of making things faster or more pleasant. I'd wager the same is true for any built-in browser that overrides the default action of sending a web link to the actual mobile browser.

And I've gotta say, I'm really bothered by the way Facebook handles browsing. I have to copy the link, exit Facebook, open Safari, then paste and navigate to the link whenever I want to have a page I found on a Facebook post in my bookmarks, reading list, etc. Super frustrating.

Is this on iOS? I've had the option to open a link in Safari for quite some time now (as long as I can remember, at least).

If I open a link in Facebook, tap "Share", I see "Share in New Post", "Send in Messenger", "Copy Link", "Open in Safari", and "Save Link".

I mean when I click the link in a post, or click a link post. If there's a hidden option somewhere that's something, I guess. But I'm going to bet most folks aren't going to go hunting for the hidden option...

You can make it automatically open links in an external browser (on android at least?). Hit the little hamburger icon on the right, scroll all the way down to app settings, then turn on 'Links open externally'

Yeah, the debate is on the forcing functions these companies and apps are deploying, I think. Though it's good that that's an option.

They did that for some time but that isn't the case anymore these days, at least on Android.

> Half of Twitter is links to other websites

...via URL shortners, which is very unfortunate.

> ...via URL shortners, which is very unfortunate.

This is true for some tweets, yes. But most links are via Twitter's own shortener, which means shortened link rot is impossible, and the actual URL is shown to the user.

What is wrong with URL shorteners? (Sincere question)

It introduces a dependency on the shortening service, if the service vanishes the link breaks.

It allows the shortening service to track clicks on the link.

It obfuscates the target of the link.

I'd add that they allows evil persons (read SEO/Marketers) to hijack traffic by changing the target URLs.

I'm surprised that we haven't seen this yet.

The second a popular link shortening service goes belly up I'm sure someone somewhere will buy the domain and setup a program to redirect all the shortened links to an ad-ridden search page.

It happens all the time with small url shortener services. Also the owners sometimes uses cloaking to make the search engine bots get different redirection than normal users (for SEO reason).

It also creates unnecessary traffic, of course.

Not necessarily. Link shorteners can act like referrer guards, which is useful from a privacy standpoint.

No, they just shift the party that can see the referrer to whoever runs the link shortener.

Do CDNs use link shorteners to cache content in specific regions? Let's say A often shortens links and users B and C read them most of the times. So once user A shortens a new link the CDN (who would need to own the link shortener) could cache the content close to users B and C.

They hides the real location of the links and allows third parties (the url shortener owner and their partners) to track peoples.

Edit: like maxerickson said.

Twitter still bugs you to create an account to access their content. (Try to see someone's list of followers when you're not logged in, even when that information is public.) Compare with Wikimedia where you don't even need an account to edit content.

Further Twitter is still promoting a model where to talk to people you have to create an account on a centralized platform first. ("Want to get support from a company? Chat with them on Twitter. You need a Twitter account for that.") Compare with email where you can email from any provider to any provider.

Twitter might be more open than Facebook, but they're certainly not the champions of openness.

More than half. Twitter is basically a commenting system for web links.

This is obvious if you look at tools such as http://svven.com or http://nuzzel.com.

These projects are pretty interesting: "News from people like you." It seems like these kinds of apps further the isolation people develop from reading mostly articles recommended by like-minded friends.

I wonder if anyone is building an app that recommends articles that provide a variety of perspectives different from your own. "News from people who think differently than you do", or something like that.

But I think that's what newspapers are supposed to be.

>I wonder if anyone is building an app that recommends articles that provide a variety of perspectives different from your own.

When building Recent News (https://recent.io/) we considered adding the options of seeing news from perspectives both similar to and different from your own, at least as we understand them based on your usage.

We didn't do that. It turns out in early testing that users liked seeing a broad range of articles. For instance, a pro-2A voter might want to read a Salon.com article talking about how firearms should be banned--just to share it to argue how wrong it is! Or an anti-2A voter might be interested in a Fox News article talking about repealing anti-gun laws, if only because it reinforces how nutty those conservatives can be. (It also added more complexity when our goal was an MVP.)

The current version of our iOS+Android app includes a personal tab that is unique to you based on what we believe your interests to be, and a Hot News tab that is not unique to you. Neither filters by perspective, and not one person has requested that feature in the weeks since we launched--the feature requests have included things like dark theme, offline mode, text resizing, etc. instead.

Recent News is quite interesting. How is it different from Prismatic?

Thanks for your interest! Prismatic made a beautiful app but took a very different approach toward recommendation. They tried to build, as I understand it, their own social commenting layer on top of news--an effective competitor to Twitter and Facebook--and encouraged linking with social networks. We experimented with the latter in an early version of Recent News but discarded it in favor of a user-focused approach that doesn't require social linking (and isn't as prone to bad recommendations if your friends' interests are different from yours).

In any case Prismatic is no longer updating or supporting its iOS and Android apps. Techcrunch reported in July that Prismatic pivoted to B2B and is trying to make money like Dataminr by selling access to its APIs.

Thank you for the insight!

I'm very interested because (as I mentioned several times here already so sorry for the plug again) I'm building http://svven.com. It's also about recommendation but instead of AI I'm betting on the intelligence of the people - a social approach to relevance.

I will sure try Recent News to compare the results.

Thanks! Good luck with Svven. It's an interesting approach and different than the path we've taken with Recent News.

I just went to the site and was about to try it but saw Svven wanted permission to: "Post Tweets for you."

Is it possible to use Svven without granting you permission to post on my Twitter timeline? I have a policy of not granting apps or services such permission, so I stopped without testing it. :(

If there's a way to tweak the permissions I'll give it a shot!

Oh yes sure, Svven doesn't post tweets for you or anything like that.

Thanks for pointing this out, I'm thinking about changing the Twitter app settings to read-only. All it does is parse your home timeline to get the tweets so read-only is enough for Svven.

I use Twitter this way, to some extent. I consciously try to follow people with different perspectives than me and with opinions counter to my own. Sometimes I end up unfollowing those people if the signal:noise ratio is too high, but over time it serves as a way of introducing me to new ideas and ways of looking at things that I hadn't considered before. And, because of retweets, I'm then introduced to more people with similar perspectives. Once you "seed" your timeline with a few people with different perspectives/opinions than your own, this works really well.

All that to say you can use at least Twitter to intentionally break out of that intellectual isolation that can otherwise be difficult to escape.

Ok good idea, I just followed you on Twitter ;)

But if you're interested in different perspectives from your own, isn't this part of your, well, interests? Do you still need to break out of that?

Personally I see the "filter bubble" as a non-issue. Partly because people will go with their interests no matter what. Forcing them to see everything else reminds me of this image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)#/med...

I teach high school, and I feel like I see pretty direct effects of the filter bubble. My students who are inside the bubble and unaware of that fact are more closed minded, racist, sexist, and hostile toward individuals and groups with views different than their own. Students who get their "news" from a variety of perspectives (through more consistent academic engagement, for example) are more open minded and tolerant.

Breaking out of the bubble is not about "forcing them to see everything else". It's about curating a variety of perspectives, rather than curating a slice of similar perspectives.

I get the point, but as I mentioned it all comes down to how the system works.

Svven for example puts together people tweeting same links. Tweeting, not liking. Two tweets containing same link can have very different and often contradictory messages.

To give a practical example, some of you probably noticed PG's controversial tweet about unions (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104), and also the reply that took double the likes of that (https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/663495439069614080). Because the reply contained the link to PG's tweet, in Svven you can see all sides of this story around the same link.

> Two tweets containing same link can have very different and often contradictory messages.

That sounds really interesting! I like how that might impact people's bubbles.

I'm currently teaching a class where students are learning to build simple apps, and ask critical questions about the apps we use. Would you be interested in doing a skype session with my class (~12 students) about how you and your team are approaching this issue, from a social and technical perspective? They'd love it, and you might get some good insights into how high school students think about these issues in deciding which apps to use.

Wow I'm really flattered!

And also a little worried given your description of some of your students :P But sure, it should be interesting, also because Svven is built in Python and I see this is what you teach.

I just followed you on Twitter, I'm @ducu, let's DM there.

Disclaimer: I'm building http://svven.com

Your concern is the so called "filter bubble". I think it all comes down to how this kind of system is implemented. Svven in particular encourages you to navigate further from your fellows and it immediately adapts to however your interests (ie. tweets) are changing. A new tweet gives you a new perspective.

My only use for twitter is literally to complain to companies if I want a refund quicker. Works wonders. Other than that, it's just full of noise, don't understand it personally.

The experience people have on each platform is almost completely a result of who they put in their network.

Me too! A while back a friend of mine came up with a specific app for that called Owner Listens.

And all those links go through their redirect gateway first. Open? Sure, just let me check those papers first...

What I didn't like about twitter is that they uploaded my contact info on smart phone app without my consent. To date, they still have NOT erased those information and I still get email asking me if I know someone who just happen to be in my address book a few years ago.