Why Twitter Is Failing to Grow - <AUTHOR> https://exponents.co/the-pulse-of-the-planet-flatlined/ <comment><USER5> Has anyone considered that one of the main reasons for Twitter's lack of growth is that the product in itself is opaque to most users? Unless you have a following, there's no such thing as a "friend network" on Twitter. The product is not social, contrary to what most people think. It's a boring, lonely existence on Twitter if you're not a somebody and don't have the time or personality to become one. It's a niche product, a niche that happens to be 300M MAUs (I think they should measure "monthly engaged users" and the number would actually look much worse) and no more. Unless they make the product inherently _social_ and appealing to a broader set of people, I don't see them growing this number, no matter how they slice and dice it.

The argument the writer makes is a valid one but just a hypothesis. You can't say for sure if that was the reason. Developers are not sprinting to build apps on Instagram and Snapchat but both are growing like wildfire. A social network needs to _be social_ , feel social, and make you feel like you have friends who want to listen to your drivel on it.

For all you know, Ev might have turned it into a "pulse of the planet" and it would've still failed to be social and/or make money. Also, we're talking of a 2009 meeting that talks of his ambition, that's |7| years ago - ample time for it to have gone astray in a different direction.

<comment><USER6> Curating your own newspaper and never even tweeting once yourself is a compelling, amazing and totally underrated use of Twitter. Any issue of particular interest to you, follow as many of the key players and observers who tweet and get all the important stories, not just one newspaper's. And all the reaction to those stories. It is only for adults who are capable of assessing a source. If that's you it's amazing. The brevity is it's strength.

<comment> aaron-lebo Just about any story about Twitter mixes people who don't get it and then people who rave about it.

Perhaps it's just a different way of getting news. If there's a topic that is interesting, it's much easier to find a niche subreddit to follow or go straight to the source. I don't know what experts or subject areas avoids the inevitable "now let's show how clever we are", "share our personal life incessantly", or "argue with some Internet idiot over something really dumb with 140 characters".

If one of those experts has something really interesting to say, it's not the Tweet, it's a blog post, it's a site, etc that will bubble up through other sources already curated and Twitter can be skipped. Again, it's very possible there are specific subjects where it's great, but personally have yet to find them. I've never seen a Tweet that had value by itself and the site adds nothing of value to my Internet experience. I hate it when people link to tweets because you wonder what can really be said in that medium which isn't just some witty retort.

Do people just consume the net differently?

<comment><USER7> It really depends on what you're looking for. For instance, twitter can be good for niche areas. There's no subreddit for local politics in most places; even places that have one don't have one that's very active (look at the NYC politics subreddit). But it's easy to follow a few local reporters, politicians, and activists on Twitter to get a sense of what's happening.

It's also quite useful for up to date information. If I'm trying to find updates about what's happening at an even - especially if I'm trying to find information from multiple sources - Twitter is often the best venue. If I'm trying to find a summary of what happened days later, yeah, a blog post or article would probably be better.

Of course, you can emulate some of the functionality of what Twitter does on other platforms. But the same can be said for most of the web. Blogs are a good example - I'd argue that it'd be much easier to use a personal web page from 1994 to emulate what a blog does than it would be to use a blog to emulate what Twitter does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess I just don't understand the premise of these articles questioning why something has stopped growing as though growth is the natural state of an already large market. Is it a forgone conclusion that the core product is so appealing it should just keep growing forever until everyone is consuming it? Is it possible that no matter who is or was running Twitter that there would only ever be so many people who want to communicate in hashtags and 180 characters? That a large part of Twitter's growth trajectory was from novelty and network effects of semi-engaged users? That user engagement from tweeting has a shelf life on the scale of months to years and that attrition is/was inevitable no matter how many third party APIs and pink bows you wrap a tweet up in? I'm asking in earnest because I just don't understand why the simpler explanation is that tweeting will only ever appeal to so many people and that there is a middle ground between failure and dominating the world. Somehow the talk of CEOs and corporate visions overshadows the product itself--one that has barely changed since its inception--which to me seems like the obvious place to start questioning.

<comment><USER9> It depends who you ask.

As an example of sane analysis: I played WOW and Blizzard at one point said something to the extent of: we have 12.5 m players, we captured the entire market.

Then, you have usually the pr/marketing types that go after: _every_ human being on this planet can be our user. Which is delusional.

Add to that the fact that most IPOs and VCs go after users and not much else (was it $20-$40 per user?), And you end up in the current state where everybody _hopes_ so hard that it obscures judgement.

So, your understanding is just fine. Things have limits and Twitter may be at it.

<comment><USER10> I'd like to add to this that it's incredibly sad/frustrating when a product like Twitter especially (Don't mean to pick on them but it's such a good example of this) is blown totally out of proportion in terms of what is should/could be a very straightforward, API heavy, (I think) nerd-centric product into some kind of bastardized Facebook with a character limit that is for some reason worked on by almost four thousand people.

If Twitter had stuck to reasonable goals, kept the product more or less where it started and stuck to a small team, they'd be printing money. Now we never know if they're going to make it out of the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Maybe it is failing to grow for the plain reason that it has already grew up, filling its niche? Why don't you question why BMW is 'failing to grow'? What's their mistake?

[http://www.nada.com/b2b/Portals/0/assets/web- images/Luxury%2...](http://www.nada.com/b2b/Portals/0/assets/web- images/Luxury%20Brand%20Performance%20BMW%20Blog%20II.jpg)

There is no mistake. There are only so many premium car buyers in the world.

By the IT measures, Twitter is a mature company. It does one thing and it does it well. It can't grow infinitely.

<comment><USER12> I use it everyday, its great, it also has 2 billion revenue (?).

I don't understand the hate for them.

<comment><USER13> There are lots of subtle and not-so-subtle design aspects that mean Twitter nudges people into arguments and bullying (not by accident per se, but rather as a result of optimising for "engagement" and not thinking about what that translates into). I don't mind there being sites out there on the Internet that are not for me, but twitter is contributing to the polarisation of society, especially when politicians start taking it seriously.

<comment><USER12> > twitter is contributing to the polarisation of society

seems a bit harsh, polarisation how ?

<comment><USER13> In the sense of politics shifting towards the extremes and people having less productive discussion but getting more polemical.

<comment><USER11> What could be a productive discussion in today's political situation? There is no 'common good' answer to conservative vs liberal choice. It depends - <USER2> for who? Conservative is good for passive majority (remember Luddites - <USER3> could laugh at them now, but they never recovered to pre-mechanisation living standards. it took 4 generations to do so, until post-WWI times). Liberal is good for active minority. There can't be agreement - it is either us, or them win. That's a polarization, and Twitter can't make it better, or much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe this has been said already, but one major problem with Twitter is that by default, the average person will publish and share content on it that's a complete waste of time and of no value to anybody.

The average unit of content shared by a user on Instagram or Snapchat is vastly more entertaining and relevant, and I think they achieve that by being more visual. Those platforms are image- and video-first, and they have all kinds of image and video filters. If we gave those tools to a monkey, it would produce something worth sharing.

The quality of their content is enforced inherently by the tools they provide you to share with.

Facebook achieves the same in a different way, by tightly integrating with your identity and social circles.

Twitter doesn't have any form of inherent quality control. Tweets are just words with little context. The people tweeting are usually strangers.

<comment><USER15> > Twitter doesn't have any form of inherent quality control.

I've always thought of the "Unfollow" button serving that purpose.

<comment><USER16> The trouble is that people are inconsistent and multi-faceted.

I might really really value a particular friend's opinion on tech, but constantly roll my eyes and sigh when he live-tweets his hot takes on Eurovision or football.

<comment><USER17> It would be cool if Twitter could do some sort of clever analysis on a persons tweet history and when you start following someone say: "Dave often tweets about US Politics, Baseball, Skiing and Programming. Which of these topics do you want to follow".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My favorite part of Twitter is that it's like a global public email. If you can find someone on it, it's likely you can reach out to them and have a brief conversation in public.

Because the conversation is public rather than private, you can also find existing relevant conversations that might answer your question. No need to always be the one doing the talking.

It can either be someone famous, like John Carmack, Elon Musk, Markus Persson. Or it can be someone obscure, say a person who made your favorite Chrome extension or an indie video game from 2000.

Also, it feels like the place to go if you want to connect with people around a real-time event. Imagine you think you felt an earthquake. You can quickly see if others felt it too.

These are all awesome uses of Twitter that anyone can benefit from without needing to have any followers.

They are also things I would miss if Twitter goes away, because I don't think there's anything equivalent that has these properties (not counting Twitter clones).

<comment><USER19> >These are all awesome uses of Twitter that anyone can benefit from without needing to have any followers.

fyi accounts with low or no follower counts are now auto-blocked using the new safety features by most important people so this is no longer true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Twitter isn't growing because it is a _bad_ _product_. Everyone using it has to train in a host of workarounds. Posting pictures of text to get around the character limit. Tweetstorms to get around the character limit. ".@mention" to get around the reply behavior preventing users from composing text naturally. Lousy feed grooming. (I love <some tech> but I hate <some sport>. Too bad! <some luminary in that tech> loves <that sport>!)

Twitter has some great aspects. It's really lightweight and doesn't enforce mutuality, making it possible to _form_ communities on events on topics, or to learn in realtime what's going on somewhere. But as a product it is complete and utter garbage.

And twitter can't improve, because it's hardcore base is super convinced that its critical flaws are _features_.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is the first "why the Dick Costolo move was the problem" take I've ever read that made any sense to me. This is excellent.

(And it should go without saying that Dick did his job, as assigned, unbelievably well. It just seems to me he was assigned the wrong job at the wrong time and this makes sense of why in a way that makes sense to me finally).

<comment><AUTHOR> +1000%. Dick did what he was brought in to do. The way it panned out is another strong datapoint for the argument that consumer internet companies should be led by product/visionary types while detail/implementation types run the operation of the business.

Like Zuckerberg/Sandberg or Jobs/Cook or...

<comment><USER21> I think Dick is actually a pretty good CEO and told a good story and had a good vision for Twitter as a business. It was just a vision for "Twitter as it exists right now" which is what a hired gun CEO is going to have a vision for. I can imagine Dick being a great founder/CEO.

But yes - surrounding Jack (pre-Evan switch) with a STRONG #2 was the move. When that didn't happen, can't blame them for not seeing it at the time!, Dick was probably the best they could do. Still, it's sad. Evan's vision for Twitter was correct and more obvious now than ever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Twitter's problem is not failure to grow. It's failure to achieve profitability. That's inexcusable for a company that pays nothing for content and operates a relatively simple service. What on earth do they need 3500 employees for?

<comment><USER23> The focus for Twitter, its investors, and the press have always been on growth, as if getting bigger would magically turn Twitter profitable. Sure there's the economy of scale, but they already claim to have more than 300 million users.

Even with only a 100 million users it would seem that an 11 year old company would have found its footing and started to make a profit, regardless of how small. The people managing Twitter are thinking in those terms, nor are its investors. They seem looked in a dotcom era mindset, where growth most come at any cost. They aren't going to be content with Twitter being a niche product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The fundamental product with Twitter is that its product doesn't appeal to _everyone_ [1] the way that Google and Facebook do. This may be the problem with Snapchat as well, although that hasn't been conclusively determined. If Twitter were a truly mass-market product, none of the rest of its problems would matter. But it's not, and that's a conundrum, since you can't monetize a social network through means other than advertising: [https://stratechery.com/2014/ello-consumer-friendly- business...](https://stratechery.com/2014/ello-consumer-friendly-business- models/)

[1] Yes, "everyone" is a slight exaggeration. If you exclusively use DuckDuckGo and Gnu Social, you're the odd one out, I'm sorry to say.

<comment><USER25> This is it. Everything else is just a convoluted red herring.

For nearly everyone, Facebook is just better in every single way for the things that they actually want something "social" to do - which seems (from looking over people's shoulders, since I'm no longer a Facebook user) to be having group chats in real-time, posting baby pictures, sharing and commenting on crappy Buzzfeed material, and organising events. Twitter doesn't do any of those very well. From a really simple perspective, Facebook already has a mechanism for posting status updates, which is the main thing people understand that Twitter does... and if everyone you know is already on Facebook (which has been the case probably for almost the entirety of Twitter's existence), why would you post your updates on Twitter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Twitter's prime flaw is that it is fundamentally narcissistic in a way that, say Facebook, isn't.

Of course you can be narcissistic on Facebook, but you can just add your friends and react on their shit, and occasionally post a photo of your weekend.

On Twitter, if you're not capital I interesting or flailing for attention, you'll just get ignored. Hence the other comments that Twitter isn't social at all.

Twitter is great if you like to sell yourself (and are at least mildly good at it). Otherwise it's a stymied feed reader for random thoughts.

<comment><USER15> > On Twitter, if you're not capital I interesting or flailing for attention, > you'll just get ignored.

So? Twitter is as much a platform for consumption as it is for broadcasting.

Also, I find that statement to be pretty untrue. For example, my own account only contains very few "original programming". Most of the time, I just scroll through my timeline and push "retweet" on the most interesting stuff. That has been enough to earn me nearly 150 followers.

<comment><USER27> How many of those followers are bots?

<comment><USER28> Indeed. In my own case, I haven't tweeted in years, but I have not lost any followers (about 180-190, which is incredible considering I'm a non-famous misanthrope) and last time I scanned my followers list they were almost all friends or acquaintances who themselves have not tweeted in years, marketing types who follow 1000000 people hoping for a follow back, and obvious bots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> TLDR; the reason per article is that Twitter killed their developer APIs. This in turn was caused by the event when board removed the visionary founder Ev Williams and instead put in place a guy who saw Twitter as pure media company and had a job to turn it in to ad revenue platform. This meant no other properties can compete with Twitters own properties. Williams instead had envisioned Twitter as massive real time data collection system which can be monetized for insights which required welcoming all 3rd party apps it can. So bottom line is re-occurring story of board ejecting founder and his/her long term vision and replace with someone who is specialized in milking the product for quick profits.

<comment><USER30> Can you blame them for wanting to make money? In some sense they're victims of the VC funding cycle. "Spend billions and figure out how to make money later" has never been solid ground to build a company on, even if a couple of unicorns have pulled it off.

Is there a way to get the adoption necessary as a bootstrapped product that knows how it's going to make money from day one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's a bit overwrought, but it makes sense. Firing @ev was an act of fearful stupidity. No matter how many fail whales flew, installing a square like Costolo was a complete overreaction. We know this because as TFA observes he killed the company in his first year, and still the zombie trudges on. Whatever crazy shit @ev was going to do, it would have taken years to destroy twitter, and might well have actually produced a business model. "Pulse of the planet" was probably not in the cards, but it was conceivable.

Whatever might have happened, the obvious way to profits capable of reviving the zombie we see now isn't actually that far from the "media company in ads" model that TFA derides. Twitter is a broadcast platform. It is most valuable to those broadcasters who reach and monetize a large audience. Charge them for that audience without chasing the audience away, and now you have a business.

</comment><comment><USER32> For me, it's very simple: visually and UX-wise, Twitter is a toxic hellstew. I'm no fan of Facebook (and I've since given up entirely on it), but at least I can pretty much figure out what's going on in most of my friends' lives today by scrolling down. With Twitter, I no longer scroll. I open it and give up almost immediately. There's no coherent thread through anything, it's just an unrelenting wash of unrelated complaints, marketing messages, ads, and racist/sexist nightmare fuel.

Twitter (and Facebook, for that matter) is a net loss for humanity, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's an old and predictable rant, but for me Twitter is useless and unusable. 140 char limit is artificial and doesn't serve a point except to mimic sms, and interface is cluttered and horrible. Whenever I stumble across someones twitter is is completely unclear who writes messages and who responds to whom. All messages are littered with some visual garbage like tags that are for some reason inside of messages. It is just a UI mess.

<comment><USER34> >140 char limit is artificial and doesn't serve a point except to mimic sms

...And to actively encourage witty, retweetable "hot takes" instead of in- depth discussions on issues. If someone espouses a "political opinion" in a 140-character tweet, whether or not said opinion actually stands up to scrutiny doesn't matter as long as it's emotionally resonant.

This is why Twitter has any value at all, to be honest. It's a highly efficient means of propagating memes (actual sense of the word) from famous people to non-famous people with short attention spans (nearly everyone). The non-famous-people then spread the brief, succinct memes to their non-famous friends, etc. etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> All the discussions about Twitter's problems seem to lack the perspective of what it feels like to use the service if you're not already a public figure. For this purpose, a magazine author qualifies. Anyone with enough clout to be taken seriously on the subject is already part of the problem.

Twitter's great at marketing, PR, and sales. It's also a fun way to make a quip, if that's the only thing you do. However, it's pretty lousy as a means to have a discussion. Anything over a full round trip exchange gets lost in the noise so quickly as to be useless.

To the article's credit, it was no surprise for me to read that the current CEO made it his top priority to make the platform interesting to advertisers. Job well done, I say. He has succeeded spectacularly. But at what cost?

Unless you have thousands of followers you're invisible. This encourages caustic hyperbole in order to illicit responses. Why is anyone surprised that spam, negativity, and the friction of trying to communicate with actual friends isn't interesting after the novelty wears off? I agree that they shot themselves in the foot with killing the API, but I think that only sped up the inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Facebook's strategy of becoming an integral part of other company's products > was key to them becoming a utility. Twitter was on that same path prior to > their limiting developer API access.

No, not really on the same path. If Facebook was strictly a status update website, then the comparison would be proper. But Facebook's platform was rich with content and varied features. That's what let its API system become such an enhancement: Other sites would integrate Facebook into their own platform for a feature or two, but people would return to Facebook proper because it allowed them to see those features _among other features_. In the end, regardless of their intent, websites consuming the Facebook API were essentially being integrated into Facebook, and not the other way around.

Twitter, on the other hand, _is_ pretty much a status update website. And if it kept its API open, it would have been a much different story than Facebook. No one would have a reason to return to Twitter, they would simply continue to visit the sites/apps that integrated the tweets. Whatever ads Twitter had would score even less clicks than they do now. It would, perhaps, integrate Twitter into the ecosystem more than at present, but I doubt it would open up much opportunities for revenue.

All that is, of course, conjecture. Still, I have a hard time seeing the Twitter API leading to something more.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm a on/off twitter user -I go through bursts of using it, and then I ignore it for months.

When there's a news event I'm interested in, I tend to search twitter for keywords, or the relevant #hashtag - as a news consumption service, using it in this manner works quite well. However as others have said, unless you are in the 1% that have millions of followers, you are basically tweeting into a vacuum; it's effectively an _anti_ -social network.

My main problem is how to organise it all. I don't have time to endlessly scroll through a mixed bag of tweets in one stream - I tried tweetdeck, but my preferred usage model would have resulted in 100s of columns, which isn't right either.

Am I missing a feature here? i.e. is there a way to create filtered 'lists' that I haven't found, or do I need a specialist client?

<comment><USER38> You can create a list of people and then view just their tweets. Twitter keeps this fairly hidden away for whatever reason. So you could have a "News" list or whatever. I think that's what you mean anyway.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for that. I finally found the 'lists' option. However, compared to Facebook it's a ballache to add users to lists. Also there's no filtering option so retweets (something I dislike about twitter) can't be filtered out :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong This article raises some interesting points but I think ultimately misses the mark.

Twitter's problem is that it does and always has lacked discipline. It spends an enormous amount of money on product and engineering and has almost no velocity to show for it. If they could have reigned it in and taken a careful approach from the get-go, things would have been very different for them.

2012 was way too late to actually right the ship. Costolo was chosen to try to bring meagre profitability to the money fire. Whatever decisions they made at that point were nearly immaterial. If instead Twitter had exercised careful hiring and engineering discipline, it could have greatly cut costs, which would have given it significantly more leverage and more options by the time 2012 came around.

<comment><USER29> I don't think Twitters large engineering teams are just sitting around doing nothing. The article is essentially saying that most of the Twitters resources are being spent on making it an ad platform as opposed to making it "pulse of the planet" system. So much of the Twitters engineering efforts is invisible to outside world but probably very useful for ad buyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When 3/4 of the "users" are bots, and you hit a point where your personal firehose is too much to read in a day... you don't use it as much. They try to be "smarter" but the fact is bots don't click on ads, and trying to promote popular/sponsored crap is something we already get from Facebook, and frankly, they're better at it.

It's pretty nice when you want to follow a handful of celebrities... when you're in tech, for instance, you wind up with a few hundred people you're interested in seeing stuff from, but it winds up too much, and then drowns out any people you may know personally. Add to that the follow-spam crap that just floods the experience, and there's not much that can be done imho.

</comment><comment><USER40> Most of my experience on it was just endless hard to read lists of people linking things that I already knew about, since I learned of their twitter through their blog. Followers also made no sense since so many were either bots or people using botlike tactics.

I think most of its goodwill was from being first in its niche, but as I grow older, I notice that increasingly many of the older net is becoming less fun to use. Netflix is just becoming a cable network when I loved it being a rental place, Amazon is a place where you consume streaming stuff and less a storefront you can trust, Facebook is a place to learn about the latest memes your grandmother likes, etc.

I wonder if we won't start to see a lot more failures to grow in coming years,

</comment><comment><USER41> Dick Costolo's company FeedBurner (which was acquired by Google) seems to have been pretty heavy on the API side (based on the Wikipedia article). So it's a bit quick to label it as a media and advertising company and to portray Costolo as not understanding the potential of APIs and developer ecosystems.

People love to point finger at individuals but maybe the real underlying problem is that users just don't care about Twitter enough in a world where Facebook exists. I never understood Twitter. It never made sense to me as a normal person. It's a tool for celebrities, not for regular people - It's a niche market - Niche is not compatible with free.

</comment><comment><USER42> Displaying metrics has been a great move, but I'm not sure it can counter the negative impact of recent censorship / banning of accounts.

1\. Keep metrics.

2\. Make as a platform for free speech, except when breaking laws.

3\. Open up API / limits.

</comment><comment><USER43> Twitter doesn't work predictably. Period.

The mobile web app is a disaster. There are two back buttons (one in the browser and one in the app), and if I click on a "retweet with comment" to go into the original tweet, and then try either back button, it doesn't take me back to the "retweet with comment".

"Hatching Twitter" claimed they smoke a lot of dope in the offices there. I'm inclined to believe it.

Zuck was 100% apropos: it's a clown car that fell into a gold mine and now doesn't know what to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER44> I support the hyphotesis of having the worst and most horrible developer support. When Twitter became popular there were dozens of apps, now you have to rely on the official ones, very buggy. The integration with other apps is not transparent, too many fights between Instagram and Twitter led the last one to lose many opportunities and, features, Twitter lost the train with the chance of photography and video, they did it great with Vine but I still don't understand why they close it.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's much more important to sustain than to grow.

A better metric would be 'longest active using user base', and sustanance of it.

All things that grow can fall, it's endurance that's key.

</comment><comment><USER46> "It did this despite the tremendous odds against any company that sets out to change the world"

That's a pretty bold claim. I mean, everyone sets out to change things in some way --I think this thought was an afterthought that formed later on, not at genesis.

I also don't believe they are the only ones who can effect a kind of public megaphone or rather police radio everyone could broadcast in or listen into. There is an intersect of that, but for the most part it serves commercial interests and that is the main reason anyone cares about "numbers". If it were a public service, the press and all the activists and all the commercial interests would not care about "lack of growth"

That said, some ideas about handling the negativity for end users would be to enable a few features which would further frustrate growth but give users more control:

Don't ban users but do classify them be it automatic classification or crowd- classified. Allow users to allow comms from these classes or not.

So for example, if I only want to receive tweets from "clean" accounts, that's all I can ever get. If I want more mature streams, allow those too, if I want to allow "offensive" then allow those in too. Basically, I'm a fan of Flickr and the control they give users and mods to moderate content. It's a pretty useful approach, but it sort of undermines the "social network viral growth" requirement.

That said, social has come, but it will go as people settle down on how to interact with on-line social networks.

</comment><comment><USER47> They could maybe spiff up the interface for what it's currently used for a lot...It's a defacto complaint box for a lot of brands.

I don't know the brand's side of that is as clunky as the complainers side. But the complainers side is clunky. You can't tell if it's a company that will respond, if they do, the average wait, if you have to follow prior to a DM, what info they need, etc.

It sounds boring, but would lead to something they could upsell to the brands.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, I've never really gotten this. Companies have this impulse to treat social media pages as expedited call centers. That's bad for everyone; it's annoying to have to air your problem publicly and deal with a social media manager, and it reflects badly on brands to see complaint after complaint. This behavior only could've emerged because they indulged it. I'm not sure what PR training course advised doing this instead of sending a message that support requests go through channel X and then deleting the complaint/message/request.

<comment><USER47> Job expansion/preservation from the social media people at the brand.

On Twitter's end, basically forcing brands to interact, since you can't delete complaints (you can't can you?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Interesting thesis.

It was a similar situation during the Terry Semel days at Yahoo! Too much focus on becoming a media company and selling ads.

</comment><comment><USER49> tl/dr Twitter shouldn't have fired Ev, who was trying to build a billion peroson 'pulse of the planet' app and installed Costello, who wanted to turn it into a media company.

God mode articles that start with the word 'why' are usually suspect, this one is no exception

</comment><comment><USER50> Around 2010 I stopped using Twitter. It never really appealed much to me. Once it came out that it was going to be a marketing tool, I saw no real reason to use it. Why use something that's sole purpose is to put ads in front of me? I see enough ads all the time.

</comment><comment><USER51> It's just there are better ways to discover and consume news than over-crowded micro-blogging platform saturated with info-noise. It has it's number of addicts already, much in the same way the number of weed-smokers does not grow exponentially no more.

</comment><comment><USER52> Must everything grow to be considered worthy?

<comment><USER53> Twitter must grow, because it is unprofitable. It is alive only because they have enough investor cash available to use as rocket thrusters to keep from hitting the ground.

Grow, or SPLAT!

<comment><USER54> Twitter must _make money_ , because it is unprofitable. Adding more users or even keeping existing users doesn't necessarily translate to that. They probably need to more fundamentally rethink what they're doing rather than just make more people willing to install the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Perhaps the question is not 'why is it failing to grow' but 'why should it grow?' I ask this as someone who does not have a twitter account. What I see of Twitter is filtered through second-hand sources. From where I sit, I wonder, what value is using this going to add to my life? And the answer seems to be, none. If they're going to grow, they need to prove a value proposition to people who aren't already using it, and I think that's going to be hard.

</comment><comment><USER56> The real reason: everybody that wants Twitter already has Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've come across so many otherwise intelligent people who just reflexively go "oh I don't _get_ Twitter at all". It reminds me of the people who are all "I hate / don't understand / can't do math" without giving it a chance. What I'm pondering here is maybe there's a mental hurdle here at play, in addition to the UX issues cited in these other comments.

</comment><comment><USER58> > They range from a lack of clear vision coming from the top

This.

> to the rampant, flagrant, unchecked abuse unleashed on prominent minorities, > women, and ...

No, this is the audience. This is the open and free internet and trying to blame it for business failures is part of the previous fault. Belief in this as a fault, is the result of this gullible and simple minded audience affected by a sensationalist media (who are only slightly more sophisticated).

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm surprised more commenters aren't noting the racism/sexism/anti-semitism component. By far that's one of the worst parts of twitter - if you follow any prominent women/minorities, you'll notice the kind of daily maintenance they need to do just to be able to use the service properly.

</comment><comment><USER60> No website wants to support Twitter login because Twitter refuses to share its user's email address.

</comment><comment><USER61> Not a very good article. Almost clickbait. There is no way Twitter would've replaced Bloomberg (though the comparison is a good insight although stretched). Monetizing Twitter is not what hurt twitter, Facebook is certainly monetizing. Though moving out a product CEO for an Ad CEO could've hurt it. It's unlikely getting rid of third-party clients hurt Twitter...not having them never hurt Facebook. Twitter is certainly not a utility to most people the way Facebook is, that's fair enough...maybe it is around being "the pulse of planet" but in Twitter really is that as it's cited ridiculously often for reactions and really the pulse of the globe...regardless a more product- focused CEO could potentially transform Twitter into something more like a utility service, but the author doesn't really tell us how or why or know what that would be.

</comment><comment><USER62> Because everyone who sees value in a twitter account already has a twitter account?

<comment><USER63> Pretty much. You can't grow double-digit percentages every year without running out of customers at some point. At that point you'd better be making money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Thing to keep in mind about Twitter is that it started out as a SMS "broadcast" service.

the web accessible log was virtually an afterthought that only in hindsight became their main feature.

</comment><comment><USER65> Do they really need nearly 4,000 employees and san francisco office space? those two variables could be tweaked for profitability.

</comment><comment><USER66> So, too late to open up the API?

</comment><comment><USER67> Because it's already big, but it's not a standard and it's proprietary?

</comment><comment><USER68> Perhaps Twitter is big enough? It grew to the propper size and there it can stay...

</comment><comment><USER69> I just keep waiting for Twitter to show some fucking adaptability.

</comment><comment><USER70> The guy that runs the blog has really good copy writing skills.

</comment><comment><USER71> Twitter... SAD! :P

</comment><comment><USER72> No one has suggested duration yet. Some activities have a fixed length of life. Take for example CB radio which also peaked around 1/10th of all cars, interesting how twitter similarly peaked around 1/10th of internet users.

Perhaps twitter is exactly like Fondue pots. Until it exists demand accumulates for decades perhaps. It bursts on the scene and for awhile the stockpiled demand results in exponential fad like growth until virtually all weddings in the 70s received at least one fondue pot as a wedding gift. Eventually the centuries of stockpiled demand for crusty bread and delicious hot cheesy sauce subside to normal business as usual demand levels, in other words use of fondue pots dropped from absolutely everyone because they were the hot new gadget to perhaps less than 1%. Most of the demand for fondue went into the nacho sector, arguably modern loaded nachos are a superior form of cheez sauce delivery over fondue. Or perhaps the loaded baked potatoe is the descendant of the 70s fondue. Or what little 2010s fondue exists today is the descendant of 1970s fondue.

The point being that nothing existed like Fondue, I mean twitter, before, so its going to burn the underbrush of society like a forest fire very brightly for a short amount of time before declining back into normal obscurity much like telephone modem BBSes of the 80s, perhaps.

I'd postulate that "Television" is a long term bubble. The viewership numbers are horrible looks like newspapers. Everyone over 65 watches like 16 hours per day and no one under 20 watches TV. My kids don't watch TV other than streaming a couple series they learned about online or from friends. Its kind of funny that when I was a little younger it was a holiness signalling fad to declare my kids will not watch TV all day like me and my parents generation and we're gonna not own a TV blah blah blah like most social signalling no one did it or believed it but just enjoyed basking in the hype. However now that I have kids, kids don't watch TV anymore once they get past babysitter era stuff like animated PBS stuff. I can't get my kids to watch TV so I can get the social status from claiming to cut them off, LOL.

Social media is dead now except for middle aged women sharing pix of cats if they're left wing or kids if they're right wing. We live today in the era of interruption where being interrupted by your phone and watch proves you're important and well informed. The content interrupting you is unimportant, what matters is being seen in public being very active online, constantly being interrupted and posting stuff. VLM's law is all social media interaction eventually devolves to Tamagotchi.

Twitter is more than a fad in that a fad has nothing to perpetuate it beyond social signalling. But its less than a major change in society like "cars" or "suburbs" or "industrialization".

</comment><comment><USER73> why does it need to grow?

it is big already

</comment><comment><USER74> I don't really like censored social networks in general but:

Anybody who thinks its our economy and mindset is sick? Why is something deemed as "failing" when its not growing. Twitter has millions of people on it. If its userbase stays exactly like it is I don't consider this "failing".

<comment><USER23> I think you're absolutely right. The impression you walk away with is that Twitters problem is the lack of new users. While it certainly would be nice, for Twitter, to have even more users, I would say that the main issue is their inability to make money on their existing users.

The mindset is that growth will somehow fix the broken business model. Well if that's true, then give us the number of users that will make Twitter profitable. I mean would Twitter be better of with 500 million users, perhaps a billion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> About two years ago, and +2,000 followers I deleted my twitter account. Why pray tell?

Because they wanted my cell phone number, and my personal Identification, not unlike paypal.

Twitter was anonymous, and now its not; I think its not growing just like gmail.com, before when it was all anonymous many people were joining, now going in people know they have no anonymity, thus many simply don't complete the registration process once they know that twitter is collecting everything about them, and knows exactly who there are, & where they are ( cell phone tracking device ).

Game over for anonymity, and that marked the end of growth for social networking.

About two years ago for twitter.

</comment><comment><USER76> Twitter is a global chatroom for "journalists" and others interested in any kind of global/regional/local event.

It is focused on moments, topics and the "discussions" around them. The UI limits discussions, by design or accidental design. But it works, just hammers everything down.

You want to witness news as they are being digested by the media and turned into "real news"? Use Twitter.

There are only so many news junkies, but for those, nothing beats Twitter.

It is the breaking news ticker bar on the bottom of the TV, amplified - <USER4> the ability to yell at it.

I love it, and I hate it.

</comment><comment><USER77> Yet another "ads are bad, third party clients are good" post. Seen it at least a dozen times and still yet to see any evidence of an alternate strategy that has actually been thought through.

FourSquare made a data business work because location data is valuable from the largest to the smallest business. Twitter data isn't and so the comparison is tenuous at best. And Bloomberg, really ? The idea that Twitter could be an alternative completely misreads the industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Disruption (REAL disruption) happens when janky, poorly-featured products come along and do one key, valuable thing much better than their established, mature, full-featured competitors.

The janky upstart uses that small edge (and its much lower costs, price points, or other efficincies) to get a foothold, then steadily builds out a complete solution that is more compelling than the status quo...which then finds itself disrupted.

With that context in mind, here's the opening line of Bloomberg's Terminal Info page:

"The Bloomberg Terminal brings together real-time data on every market, unparalleled news and research, powerful analytics, communications tools and world-class execution capabilities — in one fully integrated solution."

I'd like to draw your attention to that first two parts: "real time data on every market, unparalleled news.."

To gather and process that data and unparalleled news, Bloomberg employs an army of human news gatherers. The company is private, so I don't know their financials, but I'd be willing to wager that its news gathering organization is one of the top contributors to Bloomberg's COGS.

Meanwhile, how many trades (and how much $$$) in equities, currencies, and commodities happen every day based on information about something that just happened in the world?

How much of an advantage does having that information first confer to the person who gets it?

Is it not conceivable that, had Twitter had focused 100% on turning the one billion-plus everyday humans with smartphones into news gatherers and leveraged a mix of software and professional analysis to turn it into data and info that traders would love to pay for...that it could have beaten Bloomberg at the "real time data and unparalleled news" game with a MUCH lower cost structure?

And then...

<comment><USER78> > Is it not conceivable that, had Twitter had focused 100% on turning the one > billion-plus everyday humans with smartphones into news gatherers and > leveraged a mix of software and professional analysis to turn it into data > and info that traders would love to pay for...

People are posting pictures of their food and calendar quotes; it's not that Twitter cannot utilize the information ... there's just not much to work with in the first place.</comment></comment></comment>


A co founder (PHP/SQL web developer) needed for a social networking startup - rush-tea

We are currently looking to start a social networking site that has potentials to excel in a market where Facebook dominates, and would like a technical co founder to join this effort.
We already have a step-by-step plan to launch this site.  What we need is someone who is strong in web engineering to help us in technical areas and take it to the next level while we are helping with everything else such as user experience testing, development of the site from business point of view, business development, funding, user base, marketing, and opportunities.
We are looking for help from the following candidate
- Can-do attitude, never give up, and love to solve problems (there is always a solution to every problem) - You will be one of the co founder, we are partners. We move forward, fall backward and work together to achieve great things. - software development experience as an web/internet engineer and experience in building back end web engine. - Strong knowledge and proven hands-on experience with PHP, MySQL, Javascript, AJAX, CSS - Developed a production worthy SaaS application - Experience building large scale applications is desired - Strong desire to work in a startup, prior experience gets bonus points - Knowledge of software development processes (Agile, Scrum) is desired but not a deal breaker - Desire and ability to learn, excel, and 100% commitment to success. - Must be located in Bay Area (or willingness to relocate) as we will work together day and night to make it happen
All in all, we are looking for a passionate and genius web developer who likes social interaction, build sites, and is always challenged to make something better for the world.  When we combine your coding prowess with the vision on where we are going, we can only move forward.
A little bit about us.
One is a second time entreprenuer, worked at a fortune 50 company prior to this. His educational background is MSc in Electrical Engineering.  Expert in creating the best user experience, user interaction, and user values. Understand the market and eyeballing opportunities. Passionate about UI, startups, technology. Several years of experience in the wireless engineering and product management domain in wireless and mobile space. He loves to solve problems, creates opportunities, and love challenges.
One is recent Cal graduate currently working at a startup company.  His educational background is BSc in Chemical Engineering.
You <insert your profile> :)
Why diving in social networking market with Facebook domination? Because we believe that the social networking site has a lot of potential to grow because as of now, it has only Facebook in it, and the market will give us the chance the grow (considering what Google+ has achieve in its first month of its launch, there will be huge growth to make).  It's a great task and huge challenge ahead, but hey, if we are looking forward to it, then you must be too (no die attitude).
If you are interested in joining us and build a social networking site that offers values, please email us your resume at
email@example.com
We are looking forward to great success together. <comment> rush-tea ops, sorry, was meant to submit this on the jobs section. How do I do that?

Thanks.

Rus

<comment><AUTHOR> That section is a perk YC only offers to their portfolio and alumni. There should be a "who's hiring" thread tomorrow, though (and the first of every month).

<comment> rush-tea thank you. Yes, I noticed that on the July link.

We were too late to submit on the YC program for this summer, and we can't wait until YC Winter program to get this started, So we are going to start it now and then apply for the program with a demo (hopefully).

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


What Have We Learned from the PDP-11? - <AUTHOR> https://dave.cheney.net/2017/12/04/what-have-we-learned-from-the-pdp-11 <comment><USER2> The assembly language that I learned in class was PDP-11. It is an interesting architecture as the machine language is human understandable (to a point) such as the only difference between an add instruction and a subtract instruction is that one bit is 0 (for add) and 1 (for subtract).

Most of the unique pointer math of C happened because they mapped directly into PDP-11 assembly language, such as var++ or *var++ or --var etc.</comment>


Ballmer gives another $325k to campaign to defeat WA tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/10/ballmer-gives-another-325k-to-campaign.html

<comment><USER2> God forbid Ballmer, Mhyrvold, etc... pay a little more in taxes to pay for education and health in the state, which will benefit many Microsoft employees and ultimately Microsoft's bottom line.

Where does Ballmer think the money came from that payed for many of his employees K-12 education? It probably would have been far more difficult for him to find employees if a decent K-12 education hadn't been provided to them.

<comment><USER3> God for bid that people who pop out kids should pay for their children's education out of pocket.</comment></comment>


Stack Overflow is 10 - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/09/27/stack-overflow-is-10/ <comment><USER2> I remember when SO came out, it completely destroyed expertsexchange.com in a matter of months.

Is there today any equivalent to expertsexchange that could similarly be "disrupted"?

<comment><USER3> It took me a few takes to realize the website was experts-exchange.com, not expert-sex-change.com (Chalk it up to me being a child).

To your question, so much of the value of certain websites are in the community, such that a better UX/UI/Functionality doesn't solve any pain points. A lot of companies have tried disrupting Craigslist.org without too much success. Reddit.com is another website that is seemingly poorly designed, but extremely hard to disrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like them, saves me lots of time to have the answer in one spot instead of having to search through lots of pages. Show them some love!

I wonder why people here dislike them so much, is a mystery to me. I also try to answer old questions when the answer in stackoverflow was no good (this way I don't have to fear the mighty editors)

</comment><comment><USER5> Stack Overflow helped me a lot. It's so great.

P.S. I also wish Stack Overflow spending more time designing the UI. The blog looks much prettier. I want the site to be prettier and clean too. I would nearly visit the site everyday.</comment>


Inside ISIS: Quietly preparing for the loss of the 'caliphate' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-isis-quietly-preparing-for-the-loss-of-the-caliphate/2016/07/12/9a1a8a02-454b-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html <comment><USER2> So they're preparing to pivot from their unsuccessful venture in governing to their core competence in terrorism.

</comment><comment><USER3> No paywall: [http://archive.is/t4H4T](http://archive.is/t4H4T)

<comment><USER4> Thank you. I'm an older programmer with health issues living below the poverty line so there's not way I can afford the subscription. I hope Jeff Bezos does't mind if I take a peek for free.

<comment><USER5> :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interactive map [http://isis.liveuamap.com/](http://isis.liveuamap.com/)

Latest map of Shirqat (near Mosul) where there is heavy fighting right now [https://i.imgur.com/dxb7BHM.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/dxb7BHM.jpg) Still months of fighting at least until ISIS loses their Iraq 'caliphate' look at all those towns/cities they still control like Hawijah.

<comment><USER7> Here's an interactive map that lets you see the progress of the fight over time: [https://www.cartercenter.org/syria-conflict- map/](https://www.cartercenter.org/syria-conflict-map/)

ISIS' doom seems as imminent as the coming quagmire between the "victorious" factions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Im not that surprised. I'm sure the fact that ISIS commanders are boiling their own soldiers in acid[1] because they refuse to fight is not helping moral.

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3598477/ISIS- execute...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3598477/ISIS- execute-25-people-lowering-NITRIC-ACID-Iraqi-spies-tied-rope-dropped-vat- public-warning-others.html)

<comment><USER9> The double edged sword of ISIS expansion has been the destruction of capital through looting. In this situation an organization has to keep expanding or they will collapse.

From a strategic perspective a weak ISIS makes other places, such as Europe, more dangerous. Another alternative may see a much more destabilized Middle East if continued weak oil unravels the Saudi welfare state. One point of view is that the multi-decade US warmongering (Bush, Obama, Clinton) could result in a region where Israel is surrounded by failed nation states - the worst case scenario for all parties. When considered, the rebalance in favor of Iran may have been viewed as a pro-Israel move.

<comment> norea-armozel If only we can get Iran and Israel to play ball because from everything I've read most of the trouble is between Saudi Arabia and Iran trying to get a friendly govt in Iraq.

<comment><USER9> From a covert historical standpoint there has been cooperation between Israel and Iran, e.g. Marc Rich. I'm not sure what is currently occurring and likely few public parties know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I believe I read somewhere that if the caliphate falls it means that they never truly had the mandate of heaven. How could their followers justify continued obedience?

<comment><USER11> I don't think that's the way radical groups like this work. Promises are edited from the record, "facts" go unchecked, and followers are already so emotionly invested they are incapable of changing their minds any more.

<comment><USER12> Scary how if you replace "radical groups" with "US elections", most of the statement still stands.

<comment><USER13> I read Animal Farm and see world was always same. It is just (social?) media amplification that makes certain cause just or unjust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Instead of presenting ISIS as a grassroots political movement, it is presented as a military group led by a small number of ideologues.

<comment><USER15> Those ideologues are also insecure in their own beliefs:

> A series of communiques issued in the Islamic State's Syrian enclave last > month closed down Internet cafes in one province and ordered the destruction > of TVs and satellite dishes in another. The orders, billed as an effort to > eliminate a tool for "disseminating infidel beliefs," effectively cut off > access to news from the outside world.

Tyrants everywhere know their position will not withstand debate.

This is something the tech community can help with: provide uncensorable, unblockable, and anonymous comm channels to keep the world talking.

<comment><USER16> Often on HN, you read the argument on here that "polls only show people support X because the mainstream media brainwashes them to believe it." I don't think that's true, but if it is, isn't it rational to want to keep your people from being exposed to that content?

<comment><USER17> >isn't it rational to want to keep your people from being exposed to that content?

Absolutely. That's why control of the media is crucial to those that have an agenda and power/control complex. Look at NK, Russia, ISIS.

<comment><USER18> All governments have an agenda, and a power complex. See: FBI involvement in domestic politics, the NSA, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Highly recommend Fareed Zakaria's "Why they hate us", which explores the motives and evolution of ISIS:

[http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/08/opinions/why-they-hate-us- zaka...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/08/opinions/why-they-hate-us-zakaria/)

<comment><USER20> TBH the article is pretty shallow and has quite a few factual inaccuracies especially around the treatment of Jews and Christians in the Ottoman empire which wasn't particularly good during any period past the rule of Mehmed the 2nd, under Murat IV the treatment of Jews specifically became quite poor, they've already lost their place at the court for 150+ years, but under Murat they were pretty much exiled to the fringes of the Ottoman Empire.

During the 18th and 19th century there were no shortage of pogroms against Jews in Ottoman Empire the the middle east at large, they intensified in the levant following the conquests of Muhammad Ali (pretty much every city that was "liberated" by his forces had a pogrom after party especially Safed and Hebron).

The conclusion that it's all about that it's all about geopolitics and economics is also pretty much a "no-brainer", yes it's a major part of it, but it's not the only one there are plenty of countries around the world which have it as bad or worse than the average person living in the middle east and while there is quite a bit of violence in many of those parts it tends to take quite a different shape, form, and intensity.

Boiling everything to economics simply doesn't explains everything (or nothing depending on how you look at it). Economics do not explain Osama Bin Laden which was born into one of the richest families on the planet, economics do not explain why 2nd and 3rd generations Muslims and converts from Europe drop from their degree programmes and join ISIS, and economics do not explain Syria which while had a household and average income considerably lower than anything one would expect in the west was still better off than India, Pakistan, Peru and was comparable (or higher) than countries like Moldova and Macedonia which are both EU accession candidates.

The fight is not as much of a fight against Islam as a religion, but as it is against Islam as a political ideology so what we need is not as much of a reform as an almost complete decoupling and restructuring of the society and the religion itself, and that unfortunately is a task that will require a considerable amount of time and bloodshed to accomplish.

EDIT:Just to make clear this isn't a poke at Fareed himself, while some of his editorials (especially outside of CNN) aren't that bad, the article in question is. It is the essence of the usual shallow article one can expect from CNN these days, it's the last news outlet that still does its best to try and not "offend" anyone but it does mean it employees fairness for fairness sake which usually means you get a very shallow and watered down content without any actual opinions that while it would be upto you to agree or disagree with would at least make you think.

<comment><USER21> " During the 18th and 19th century there were no shortage of pogroms against Jews in Ottoman Empire the the middle east at large, they intensified in the levant following the conquests of Muhammad Ali (pretty much every city that was "liberated" by his forces had a pogrom after party especially Safed and Hebron). "

Mind that such pogroms was by levantine and peninsular arab locals, not by the court. Ottoman jews weren't first class citizens, but not second class either. For centuries they were the biggest actors in trade in the empire, until the _varlık vergisi_ of the turkish republic. Even in the worst of imperial times they're better of than european jews who were rogued for jewry.

" The fight is not as much of a fight against Islam as a religion, but as it is against Islam as a political ideology so what we need is not as much of a reform as an almost complete decoupling and restructuring of the society and the religion itself, and that unfortunately is a task that will require a considerable amount of time and bloodshed to accomplish. "

Nobody has a right to fight against anything but extremist terror. Christianity as a political ideology is present everywhere in Europe, in some countries the ruling party is called "christian democrats". Islamic rule is a right of a people that demand it, and as long as they aren't bothering anyone else, nobody but they have a say. And in Turkey, where I am, islam penetrates the laic state just like christianity does in christian-majority countries. That's what religion does, and is for.

Today's islamic extremism is a direct result of european expansionism in the territory that actively continued untill WWII. The national state model was imposed on a territory that's under imperial control for millennia, and the states did not represent the populations. Most of these states were and some still are dictatorships or monarchies, and this adds to it as well. Only Turkey was well off as here we have a sound --although wrong-- turkish national ideidentity

P.s. my intention was to counter your points, not to defend the article.

<comment><USER20> It really depends on how you define "2nd class citizen". During the 13-15 century the Jews in the Ottoman empire enjoyed quite a bit of freedom, since then it went downhill from silly things like Jews were forbidden to wear silk cloths, to them being forbidden to own land in certain places, to excessive taxation, it really wasn't all peachy.

And while I don't want to get into an argument about the role religion does or should play in a democracy, but I'll just say that I think Kemal Ataturk had the right idea. I also completely disagree with you about the source of Islamic Extremism and the cause of it, it's really not a clear cut case as you make it.

It's also laughable to claim that only Turkey has a national identity, while it's true for some parts of the middle east (at large) claiming that Iran or Egypt for example do not have a national identity is absurd, and like it or not over the past nearly 100 years quite a few of them formed. You are looking at the middle east as some unique case it is not, many of the nations of Europe was as "young" as most of the middle eastern countries today when WW2 broke out. The German Empire was only founded in 1871. Turkey came out OK because it's mostly came out whole from WW1, and Kamel Ataturk built it into a modern nation, for the longest time it was kept in check by its army and by one of the only functional supreme court's in the region (well at least until recently, some of the things Erdogan did kinda put it now at odds), it also was lucky enough to join NATO which while being "western/european expansionism" really helped to stabilize it.

<comment><USER21> " It's also laughable to claim that only Turkey has a national identity, ... "

I meant among the muslim majority countries that spun off after the fall of the empire. Iran has continuously been home to some local sovereign state since 3200 bc.

Saying things are not clear cut is sort of a way to divide guilt and avoid it. Nations didn't have time to naturally form in middle east. Almost all states have been formed top to bottom, after WWI, whereas in europe some of the current nations' quest to be a nation stretch at least to the 17th century.

Turkey has been established top to bottom and via forced, fascistic westernisation and nationalistic unification, via assimilation and bloodshed, and the people's quest for a real, honourable identity is what the ilk of Erdoğan use to get votes today. I'd love to live in the state Atatürk wanted, but what he did ultimately lead to what we have today, a mess.

" [Turkey] also was lucky enough to join NATO which while being "western/european expansionism" really helped to stabilize it. "

Just as we cannot call a civilisation/nation cruel and savage for one mistake, we cannot say that it's perfect and all innocent because it got one thing right.

<comment><USER20> I'm not saying it's perfect and at all innocent, the "west" (as in modern social democracies) is a far cry from being perfect or innocent, but it's a sure of a lot better than anything else we got right now, or tried before.

For the most part it was rare for nations to form naturally, most of them including those in Europe have evolved through quite a bit of mess, and the middle east now is actually "older" than some European countries not that it was pretty either but it was quite different than what the middle east going through.

And if we are talking about religious terrorist then it's new even in the scale of the middle east, if you look at early Palestinian/Arab terrorist groups they were socialists/communist, the PLO PLFP AMAL and the likes in the 60-70's had nothing to do with religion.

The 1st real religious transformation were the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan they were not only made religious but effectively converted because Islam in Afghanistan at the time wasn't really a religion especially not outside the cities, the literacy rates were extremely low and even now you won't find minarets in the tribal regions.

Saudi Wahhabism was introduced into Afghanistan and from that things like AQ grew which started the "global jihad" movements across the middle east, asia and africa. From the Shia side you had the iranian revolution and after the iran-iraq war has ended the IRGC went to work constructing various proxies across the middle east primarily in the form of Hezbollah which now evolved from a fairly small military organization in the early 80's to effectively a nation state within Lebanon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand why they'd quote the word 'caliphate' in the title without saying what it means in the intro.

<comment><USER23> they just assume you haven't been living under a rock for the past two years

<comment><USER24> Or the millennia before that.</comment></comment></comment>


The Stack Is An Implementation Detail - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2009/04/27/the-stack-is-an-implementation-detail.aspx

<comment><USER2> «Leaving performance considerations aside, what possible difference does it make to the developer whether the CLR's jitter happens to allocate memory for a particular local variable by adding some integer to the pointer that we call "the stack pointer" or adding the same integer to the pointer that we call "the top of the GC heap"?»

I'm all for avoiding premature optimizations, and giving priority to short and comprehensible code over faster code. But "leaving performance considerations aside" is like discussing dictatorship and "leaving human rights issues aside".

Good programmers have good hunches about performance, better programmers pick the shortest code anyway, the best programmers measure and then maybe optimize.

<comment><USER3> The best programmers also know to think about performance when designing a system--if you completely abide by the strategy of "don't prematurely optimize", you end up with a system which _wasn't designed with performance in mind_ , and often is very difficult to optimize later because of this. Sometimes the entire structure of the program has to be redesigned because the original method just was not suitable for performance.

A great programmer is able to think about performance at every point in designing something without obsessing about it to the point where it decreases reliability, readability, or extensibility.

<comment><USER2> I think you are correct, but your scenario is a good example of something else: Prototyping and "planning to throw one away" (Fred Brooks / The Mythical Man Month).

Having written one lousy implementation in X months does not mean that the good implementation, when starting over, will take X more months.

I have never seen a functional specification reaching more than 50% accuracy on details (most are not even close). When implementing you always discover more about the problem.

What stops you from starting over tends to be that the customers have integrated with your system according to published specs, or large roll-outs have been made already.

<comment><USER3> _I think you are correct, but your scenario is a good example of something else: Prototyping and "planning to throw one away" (Fred Brooks / The Mythical Man Month)._

Of course, but one is not always implementing a totally new system that justifies "throwing one away". Often one is implementing something whose design is well-known enough that one should expect to be able to do it right the first time.

 _Having written one lousy implementation in X months does not mean that the good implementation, when starting over, will take X more months._

Sure, but it still takes Y more totally unnecessary months, even if Y is less than X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The stack is a great huge implementation detail, and doesn't necessarily work the way you want it to.

With porting an operating system across processors or when performing significant changes and upgrades to an operating system and its interfaces, the details of the data and call stack and the thread stacks and register- passing and register spillage and all the other related ugliness can be (and often is) exceedingly platform-specific.

Adding applications dependencies on these details means your code can be somewhere between faster and less portable, or faster and non-portable.

Or your applications can pin the vendor in a corner by depending on a design statement that the vendor might now regret having made. Whether that might provide or prevent a thread stack, or changes to the call frames, or stack randomization or otherwise.

I'm working in several areas where the vendors spend far, far, far too much time describing the internal details of their implementations. Which is bad on several levels. It can pin the vendor to the design; into choosing compatibility or choosing to break applications. And it tends to obscure the information presented to application programmers with details that are less than relevant.

There's more here than strictly performance; there's also compatibility and maintainability, and stability and sustainability, and extensibility.

Absent specific reasons and whenever in doubt, the decision should be to present an opaque interface. "The stack is an implementation detail."

</comment><comment><USER5> I've recently come to appreciate a mathematical approach, which I see as _declaring constraints_. The power of this (for me) is that you can separate constraints in any way you like, and combine them however you like. This is important when you need to simplify a problem into parts, in order to be able to understand it one bit at a time (it's still an art to know _how_ to divide up the problem, but maths gives you options).

It's very appealing (and obvious) step to then execute these declared constraints - that is, to code directly in terms of the mathematics.

But here's the problem: the maths doesn't tell you _the_ answer; it just tells you its constraints. The answer you want is somewhere in that space. Of course, it's possible to write a language that will always give you _an_ from within that space. The most well-known way for this issue to show up is in efficiency: the solution given by the language does fall within the constraints, but it takes too long. If we had a way to declare the efficiency as a constraint, this might change... but apparently that's a hard one. Other constraints are things like: usability, understandability (to coders of average ability, average education and average deadlines), interoperability with standards (which are never ideal, but which exist and which work), portability, modularity and many others that I haven't encountered or imagined.

Partly the difficulty is in specifying a soft, human constraint in formal terms; the other part is solving for that constraint, which appears to require strong AI or bump up against the halting problem - or else we could just declare the constraint: "fastest possible solution".

<comment><USER6> I've recently started taking the exact same constraint approach. I find it helps to give me a much more concise mental model of the problem I'm trying to solve. I guess this is because of the declarative nature of the constraints, and the fact that aren't trying to keep all the implementation details in your head. Instead you just ensure that whiles you are programming, you respect the constraints at all times. I find it particularly useful when the problem requires maintaining lots of different data structures that interact with each other.

<comment><USER5> Yes. I actually find it really difficult to stop thinking about the implementation (and the usability) of what I'm creating. These are good things to be concerned about, but not when the problem is already too complex.

On another aspect of it: the last couple of days, I've found it very effective to think of a model as just the nouns, not verbs; data structures, not algorithms (as in the Brooks quote). Guess this is implicit in the idea of a constraint, but it's helping.

The other thing is that the model doesn't have to be _precisely_ correct. It only needs to be correct in the important ways (if I don't already know what the important aspects are, a complicated model probably won't enlighten me). This gives me conceptual framework to _think_ in, rather than to be an authoritative definitive description, perfectly correct in every minor details (they can be corrected early or late, if they really are minor). I find it helps to give me a vantage point, to see further. My mind is very fertile with finding solutions - provided I can _see_ where I am.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, you could enumerate all its characteristics and such to try and give the programmer an idea of how it will behave. Or you can just say "it's allocated on the stack" and much of that will be obvious. Seems like quite a good shorthand to me if nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER8> An interesting point, but using the stack is not always transparent. You can ignore how it works for the most part, but eventually you're going to notice differences in performance or get a stack overflow exception.</comment>


7tag Open Source Google Tag Manager Alternative Deleted from GitHub - <AUTHOR> Yep - all the original code's gone and been replaced with a "buy the new product" page...
Anyone know where I can get a copy and/or is this even allowed? I thought this defeated the purpose of the open source spirit!
Original Github URL: https://github.com/seventag/seventag <comment><USER2> Mirror: [https://github.com/tsteur/open-source-tag- manager](https://github.com/tsteur/open-source-tag-manager) and [https://github.com/lindsaymacvean/seventag](https://github.com/lindsaymacvean/seventag)

<comment><USER3> Cheers, made it more decentralized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.softwareheritage.org/](https://www.softwareheritage.org/) [https://www.githubarchive.org/](https://www.githubarchive.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> From a legal standpoint, what is required to "un-open source" a codebase? Would all of the contributors need to agree?

<comment><USER6> It depends. If you give someone code which has a LICENSE file containing the BSD 3-clause license -- you've given them a license to use that code under the specified terms in the license, i.e. without charge etc.

In order to revoke access to the code from that user, you would have to get them to legally agree (i.e. sign something) that says they agree to having their license of that code revoked / that they will not use the code.

That is just for that one user -- at that one revision of code. If you wanted it such that _nobody_ could use your old codebase -- you'd have to get anyone who is using that code under said license to legally agree not to use it.

For new revisions of code, assuming a non-copyleft license like BSD, MIT, etc., you could simply state "we were the original owners of the code, therefore we no longer license the code under the open source license" and there is no need for you to distribute that code ever again.

In fact, this is why people can legally sell open-source software made by someone else -- even if that is ethically wrong to do.

IANAL, and some of the above is light on the details, so take it with a grain of salt / try not to be too nit-picky at me =)

<comment><USER7> > "In fact, this is why people can legally sell open-source software made by > someone else -- even if that is ethically wrong to do."

Why/how is it ethically wrong?

If the license permits commercial sale (GPL, for example), then as long as the seller abides by the license (by making available a free download to the source code in the case of GPL, for example), then it is ethically valid because they aren't violating the license.

If you develop open source software with a license that allows commercial use, you can't possibly get angry at users who fully abide by the license and commercialize the software, let alone call them "unethical."

Either you don't distribute your software with a license that explicitly allows commercial use, or you can't possibly call a commercial user "unethical."

That's the whole point of a license -- to definitively spell out in an unambiguous way the legal terms of usage. With GPL, it's not even close to being a "loophole," that license explicitly allows commercial use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like they are calling it Piwik PRO Tag Manager, and the team doing this is the gang trying to provide professional services around the Piwik open source web analytics tool.

I can't help but wonder if this is a shot across the bow to gauge reception of taking Piwik out of open source by moving all improvements they create to a commercial license. I presume this is easier or harder depending on the license chosen, but IANAL.

<comment><USER9> Just to clarify: Piwik is and will remain open source. Piwik PRO is a separate company and has no direct ties with Piwik anymore.

Edit: FAQ Item: [http://piwik.org/faq/new-to- piwik/#faq_21984](http://piwik.org/faq/new-to-piwik/#faq_21984)

<comment><USER10> Don't the piwik team have a copyright on the name? Surely they can prevent them using the name if they have.

<comment><USER9> They have a trademark on "Piwik", not on "Piwik PRO".

Have a look at [http://piwik.org/faq/new-to- piwik/#faq_21984](http://piwik.org/faq/new-to-piwik/#faq_21984) for a more detailed explanation.

<comment><USER11> They would usually have it (you cannot add a word to circumvent trademarks), but they sold a license to Piwik Pro. So there was no intention to avoid the naming issue, rather the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks like Piwik has bought or in some other way acquired it and shut it down. Bit of an odd move for an open source company..

Edit: Had this thread open in a tab and forgot to refresh before commenting - Apparently Piwik and Piwik PRO are different companies, despite piwik.org linking to them a lot and them having the exact same logo with a "[pro]" stamp on it. I always figured PRO was the commercial arm of Piwik.

<comment><USER13> Piwik (open source project & community) and Piwik PRO (one polish company) used to be related somehow to each other (part of the Piwik core team was working at Piwik PRO) but this changed drastically in 2016 after some internal disagreements. As of 2016 there is no Piwik PRO employee working on Piwik or having commit access, no website access, etc. Piwik the open source project & team members became fully independant from Piwik PRO. The company is still buying ads on the homepage and other pages, which can be confusing, but it helps the Piwik project to sustain operations. More details in [http://piwik.org/faq/new-to-piwik/faq_21984/](http://piwik.org/faq/new-to- piwik/faq_21984/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fork it, fork it all.</comment>


Yahoo Mail down? - <AUTHOR> https://mail.yahoo.com/

<comment><USER2> It's always done it seems! Better off posting when Yahoo Mail is up!</comment>


Ask HN: Selling Delusions vs Selling Reality? - <AUTHOR>

For every good thing I see that exist to make the world a better place (e.g. Kahn Academy), there's an ever bigger set that prevents that.
There's a large segment of the population who are delusional on something.  They believe in something that is absolutely crazy and they are willing to spend money on that their delusions.
So which ends up making more money in the long run?  Which is easier to design for?  A place where people spend time on real problems solving real things trying to change the world for the better or a site which caters specifically to people's delusional beliefs and a place for them to find others who share in those beliefs? <comment><USER2> Reading this I think you're letting your ego get in the way of seeing things clear. People get comfort and enjoyment from different things.Ultimately you need to find what subset of it all you would like to feed with your energy. If you do something you don't really believe in with the assumption that there is some payday lurking at the end of the road, you might be right. But I don't see why the odds of a pay off working in a direction you enjoy (within limits and assuming you're self-aware enough not to BS yourself) wouldn't be just as good/bad. The only difference is the long term moral of the latter seems more sustainable.</comment>


Road Map for Financial Recovery: Radical Transparency Now (XBRL) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_reboot?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> I don't think that this article is really telling the whole story. The implication seems to be that things just need to be reported in XBRL and that all the information people doing analysis need is there (just not in a consumable format).

My side project is an SEC search site (<http://edgarest.com>) so I've spent a huge amount of time looking through what is available. The disclosure is just not there -- I'm pretty confident that you couldn't have seen the Bear collapse from the filings they made. You can look at a huge proportion of the filings here: [http://edgarest.com/company/name/777001/BEAR_STEARNS_COMPANI...](http://edgarest.com/company/name/777001/BEAR_STEARNS_COMPANIES_INC) for Bear itself and <http://edgarest.com/search?q=bear+stearns> for associated entities. Too much of the trading they do and the assets they hold are still opaque to SEC reporting. Along with getting people to file using XBRL we'd have to force companies to increase disclosure (and you'd get a huge amount of pushback on that).

<comment><USER3> I am not an expert on financials or the SEC, but from reading that story it is clear to me that there is more at play than the story directly states. Doing your SEC disclosures in XML is a good start but there's definitely the suggestion that much, much more should be available; for instance, it sounded an awful lot like they think securities should have some sort of scheme for indicating exactly what they contain, which, presumably, should then be something that could easily be looked up.

I don't know what's in the specific XML format (and I'm not looking it up right now), but I bet it's URI based, where the URI could back to a real document that further specifies the nature of that security. Then, the problem of determining exactly what is in a security reduces from today's effectively unsolvable problem (!) to, quite likely, a junior or senior level college homework problem. This seems like a valuable idea.

So I think there's more to this proposal than just annotating SEC disclosures; I believe the proposal is to convert the entire financial system to using publicly-available XML formats for pretty much everything they do.

I like it. I don't think it solves all problems, but it solves enough to be worthwhile. I also think we've got the technology to do it. There are many nuances I can think of (which would blow this message out too far), but I think it's a fundamentally sound idea.

Let's see if Obama's administration is half as tech savvy as they've been advertised as, and sees the merit of this proposal. It'll take time, but it should be done.

(My only criticism is that this really isn't the road to financial recovery, it's a road to make the next financial crisis of this nature that much harder to happen. If a magical switch could be flipped and this was suddenly implemented today, it would be just as likely to instantly crash the economy as the full truth comes out. As much as I don't like it, given our current situation, a bit of hobbling along may be necessary... although the risk of that approach is extremely high too, really. No easy way out. But, once we've opened up, staying open should be superior to returning to a closed economy.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Today, public companies and financial institutions disclose their activities in endless documents stuffed with figures and stats. Instead, they should be forced to file using universal tags that make the data easy to explore._

Semantic web to the rescue.</comment>


A Parlor Game at Rebekah Mercer's Has No Get Out of Jail Free Card - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/a-parlor-game-at-rebekah-mercers-has-no-get-out-of-jail-free-card <comment><USER2> I tried to find out more about this game but evidently it is a private game rather than something one can acquire. I wonder if some player leaked a photo of the "rules of play" or whatever. It almost reads like it could be satire but perhaps there are cabals of game developers catering to the whims of the ultra-rich. Just interesting to see how games can be used by those in power not to pretend to have power when they have none but to enjoy gaming out ways to wield it.

<comment><USER3> _" those in power not to pretend to have power when they have none"_

That doesn't describe the Mercers at all (billionaires who arguably played a large role in 2016 US election results, Brexit by being primary backers of Cambridge Analytica and Breitbart).

edit: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180626/11162540111/i-hel...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180626/11162540111/i-helped- design-election-simulation-parlor-game-rebekah-mercer-got-not-what-you- think.shtml), via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17404582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17404582)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't tell if this is parody or not. Does anyone with more familiarity with the New Yorker's regular features know?

It seems insane they would be arrogant and indiscreet enough to have this produced.

<comment><USER4> Usually Andy Borowitz is their satirist, and those articles are clearly marked as satire. [https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz- report](https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That title is awful. It's a game that isn't Monopoly, so of course it doesn't have a get out of jail free card?

As it turns out, that's not the original title anyway. "This article appears in the print edition of the July 2, 2018, issue, with the headline "Rules of Play.""

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The game even features YC!

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess "House of Cards" was taken... there's no get out of jail free because they are too big to jail. And even if, there's a presidential pardon.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, a mix of _Diplomacy_ , _Coup_ , _Twilight Struggle_ , _Secret Hitler_ , _Twilight Imperium_ , and arrogance.

Edit: In lieu of above, it sounds like a reskinned copy of Steve Jackson's _Illuminati_.

</comment><comment><USER8> What a weird story. So Mercer plays some home-brewed game based on politics. Who cares?

<comment><USER9> I care, it's useful to gain insights into the lives of the extremely powerful and politically inclined and see where their thoughts are going; for example seeing that "predictive policing" is a theme they felt important enough to include in their politics larping is something I found interesting.

</comment></comment><comment> noir-york I'd love to get a copy of this game. Google turned up nothing.

</comment><comment><USER10> sounds like a fun roleplay, a bit contrived although I could see myself doing the same thing

you'd be surprised about what kind of art people commission in private

</comment><comment><USER11> Ew.</comment>


How to convince people that drugs need to be legalized - <AUTHOR> https://hilaryagro.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/how-to-convince-people-that-drugs-need-to-be-legalized-a-guide-for-getting-normies-on-board/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article, much of which I agree with. Would be better without the swearing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm definitely for decriminalization of all drugs, not sure yet how I feel about full legalization. Regardless, thought this was an interesting article.</comment>


Guy Kawasaki: The Top Mistakes of Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHjgK6p4nrw

<comment><USER2> I like Guy Kawasaki - he has a nice personality and I like his politics, but I have never found his "entrepreneurial" advice all that useful. He is really a "corporate entrepreneur" \- never really had to bootstrap his own startup, and by his own admission he has not been all that successful in investing in startups. What he has been colossally successful at, however, it "branding" himself with the "entrepreneur" name.</comment>