Narrative: Twitter is Stuck
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Twitter might build a paid subscription service for power users – The Verge (Mar 23, 2017)
I’m in two minds about this report. On the one hand, I’ve thought for a while that some kind of premium subscription service would be a great way to allow the heaviest users of Twitter to pay for the value they get out of it (while potentially avoiding ads), and serve as a useful additional revenue stream at a time when Twitter’s ad revenue has been stagnating. On the other hand, the news that this will effectively be an enhanced version of Tweetdeck is less appealing. Tweetdeck is for a particular type of Twitter user – one who wants lots of tabs open at once with various different feeds – but that’s not all power users by any stretch. And as an app Tweetdeck has a somewhat miserable reputation for reliability – the only times I ever see it mentioned on Twitter itself are when it’s crashing on people. I’ve used it occasionally in the past, but not for some time now, not least because it’s been neglected as a native app on macOS since 2015. If this new option really is limited to and centered on Tweetdeck, it’ll have appeal mostly limited to a certain kind of power user (mostly companies, brands, and professional social media managers), but if it’s instead aimed at power users broadly and supports other endpoints too, then it’s more interesting. We’ll probably have to wait until Twitter concludes its testing to know one way or the other, though.
via The Verge
Twitter Adds Top Commentary Tab to Live Video Experience – Mashable (Mar 1, 2017)
It looks like Twitter debuted a new Top Commentary tab in its live video screen last night for President Trump’s address to Congress. This should have been there from the beginning – the uncurated selection of tweets that has been shown against most live video since it launched on Twitter has been an unusable mess, and this new tab is a huge improvement. For the first time, this actually demonstrates the value of a curated stream of top tweets for a real-time event, something most active users of Twitter likely already grasp, but new users tuning in for a live video event don’t. Showing them the value – and power – of watching a well selected stream of tweets in real time is critical to converting them to active users of the platform. But of course Twitter should be doing this kind of real-time curation constantly for major topics across the site, especially given that it appears the feature is algorithm-driven, which means it’s much more scalable than something curated by human beings.
via Mashable
Twitter Provides Three More Enhancements to Dealing with Abuse and Harassment (Mar 1, 2017)
I’ve been very critical of Twitter over its poor response to abuse and harassment on the platform, so I don’t think they should get a free pass now just because they’ve finally decided to do something about it. However, kudos to them for finally acting on these issues after the years of bizarre prevarication on this point – they’ve now moving quickly, as promised (here are two other steps taken in the last few weeks). These latest changes are actually some of the best they’ve announced during this period, because they actually remove content proactively from your feed based on algorithms. This has always seemed like it would have to be a big part of the answer – human curation was never going to be able to deal with the volumes involved here. But another positive change is more feedback on abuse reports users submit, which has been largely missing from the app itself so far. There’s still a risk of false positives and Twitter definitely needs mechanisms for appeal and reinstatement where those occur, but it does finally feel like Twitter is making meaningful progress here.
via Twitter
Twitter Is Now Temporarily Throttling Reach Of Abusive Accounts – BuzzFeed (Feb 16, 2017)
Unlike last week’s changes, which were mostly about changes in the user interface of non-abusive users, this change is directed specifically at limiting the reach of abusive users, which feels like a more important and urgent priority. The limits are only temporary – no-one is getting kicked off the platform for this abusive behavior, merely having their reach limited for 12 hours or so in the cases so far. I wonder if – by analogy to an iPhone lock screen – the lockout period will be longer after each offense until eventually the user is banned; that’s something Twitter doesn’t seem to have commented on yet publicly. But it’s also not clear that there’s an appeal mechanism, which is a bit worrying because Facebook, Twitter, and others have sometimes blocked innocuous users either by mistake or through mis-application (or over-zealous application) of policy. I’m all for Twitter cracking down on abuse – it should be a key priority – but it needs to happen in a way that’s transparent and appealable. So there’s definitely progress here, but we still need more.
via BuzzFeed
Twitter Reports Q4 2016 Earnings Which Miss Badly on Revenue (Feb 9, 2017)
Twitter’s results this morning were a great illustration of the quandary Twitter presents: on the one hand, it’s never been more important or relevant in the world, and on the other it just doesn’t seem to be able to turn that into meaningful user growth, revenue growth, or profitability. Revenues were actually down year on year, especially in the US, while losses also increased due partly to restructuring costs. Monthly user growth was anemic again, while daily user growth accelerated, though Twitter bafflingly continues to refuse to provide actual DAU numbers (it’s likely that they’re well under half of its MAU number of 319 million, so around 150 million). Meanwhile, Twitter is still talking about exactly the same shortcomings in its ad product around measurement, targeting, delivering ROI, and creative capabilities that it’s been talking about for ages now. And it sounds like it’s rethinking a number of its direct response ad formats and may kill off some that are actually delivering revenue because they’re too resource-intensive. At this point in Twitter’s history (almost 11 years in) and Jack Dorsey’s second tenure (a year and a half in), the company really shouldn’t be about to undergo yet another major reset in its strategy. In the meantime, Twitter management is asking investors to take it on trust that they can convince advertisers that the underlying growth in DAUs and impressions means they should spend more money on Twitter. We’re certainly due for at least one more really shaky quarter, but there’s a good chance we won’t see meaningful financial progress in 2017 at all. I’ve done a slightly more in-depth take at Beyond Devices here.
via Twitter (PDF)
Twitter says it’s going to start pushing more abusive tweets out of sight – Recode (Feb 7, 2017)
This is one of those times when the word “finally” seems the apt response. Twitter has denied and stalled its way around the abuse issue, and never seems to have taken it nearly seriously enough, but the promise last week that it was finally ready to start moving faster seems to be bearing at least some fruit. And as I said last week, it’s presumably not a coincidence that Twitter’s Q4 results are out on Thursday – I’m sure the company would like to defuse the abuse issue a little and focus on other things on its earnings call. The changes announced today are positive, but I see at least two flaws: firstly, there’s no real transparency over the rules used to designate tweets or replies as either unsafe or “less relevant”. I understand the desire not to spell out exactly what filters are used to avoid malefactors gaming the system, but this is likely to trigger lots of complaining when an opaque algorithm gets things wrong. Secondly, and in a bigger picture sense, this is all still about presentation and not about actually policing the platform for true abuse – so many reports of abuse and harassment have gone entirely unheeded by Twitter, and none of this will address that fundamental issue.
via Recode (Twitter’s own blog post here)
Twitter To Roll Out Anti-Harassment “Fixes” This Week – BuzzFeed (Jan 31, 2017)
One of the most baffling aspects of Twitter’s inertia over the past couple of years has been its refusal to take the issue of abuse and harassment on the platform seriously. This late-night tweet storm by the company’s VP of Engineering suddenly revealed that Twitter had decided to take the issue much more seriously and move much more quickly to resolve it (“days and hours not weeks and months”). When essentially everyone outside Twitter HQ has recognized that this was an issue that needed swift resolution for years now, why did it take Twitter so long, and what has changed now? One answer is that Twitter’s earnings are coming up next week, and making a strong statement about this now helps neutralize awkward questions about it then, even if Twitter hasn’t announced anything more concrete. Another is that Twitter is responding to the thorny questions about President Trump’s usage of Twitter and calls for him to be booted off the service by dealing with abuse more broadly. And perhaps some people at Twitter that have wanted to move faster on this issue but been blocked by Jack Dorsey or others finally managed to break through whatever barriers existed. Regardless, it’s good news assuming some meaningful change does come out of all this, but it still says nothing good about Twitter’s internal culture that it took this long to get to this point.
via BuzzFeed
Twitter replaces the Moments tab with Explore – The Verge (Jan 26, 2017)
After lots of Facebook news, it’s finally Twitter’s turn to announce a new feature, in this case an Explore tab which replaces but also subsumes Moments. This will allow trending topics and other content discovery features to sit alongside Moments in the interface, which makes a lot of sense. Moments have done fairly well at Twitter, but I suspect there have also been lots of users who never used it and were frustrated that it took up a tab in the interface, and often had an annoying little blue dot indicating there was unviewed content too. That’s not to say all those users will instantly use the Explore tab – I never look at Trending topics on Twitter, and imagine many other users are the same. But for new users or those that haven’t spent the time finding the right mix of accounts to follow, the feature can be a useful starting point for finding interesting content. Now, Twitter just needs to do a better job with the on boarding process, which is still too account centric and not topic-focused enough. It’s also worth noting, as this Mashable post does, that live video will be prominently featured at the top of the Explore tab when available.
via The Verge (official blog post here)
The Trump bump: Twitter is getting a second look from brands – Digiday (Jan 25, 2017)
I’ve had lots of calls from reporters ever since the election about whether Donald Trump was going to be the thing that finally turned Twitter around, and I’ve said no every time, for several reasons. Firstly, he’s far from the most followed account on Twitter – the first time I was asked this question, he was only number 100 on the list of accounts with the most followers, and though he’s risen the ranks since then, there are still many above him. Secondly, Twitter’s biggest challenge is that even when it’s in the news, most people who see the news won’t see it on Twitter but on TV, on news sites, or even in the newspaper, meaning that Twitter doesn’t monetize the vast majority of the attention it receives. Thirdly, lots of advertisers have decidedly mixed feelings about wanting to associate their brand with a Trump-led resurgence in interest in Twitter, and Twitter employees have had similar reservations. This article covers some of that, but suggests that interest in Twitter (though not spending) among advertisers has risen since the election. I’m still very skeptical that we’re going to see any kind of meaningful bump for Twitter off the back of all this.
via Digiday
Alphabet’s Google Buys Mobile App Tool Fabric From Twitter – Bloomberg (Jan 18, 2017)
Twitter canceled its annual developer conference, Flight, back in October, and I posited at the time that this would send a strong message to developers working with Twitter, though I got pushback from some people at Twitter. Now, Twitter is selling its developer tools (collectively known as Fabric) to Google, rather validating my initial take on the Flight cancelation (no pun intended). This is certainly a result of Twitter’s narrower focus going forward on user-facing, live content including video, but it reinforces the sense that Twitter has really messed around with developers over its history. Developers will still be able to create and run apps for Twitter, but Fabric was a big part of Twitter’s developer toolset and a major focus of those Flight conferences in the past. Lots of those tools, though, had little to do with the core Twitter product, so there’s definitely some logic in selling it a company – Google – which is committed to providing a broad set of generic tools to developers.
via Alphabet’s Google Buys Mobile App Tool Fabric From Twitter – Bloomberg (more on Techmeme)