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.