I've been hearing this -- "Twitter is just not inventive enough, they know what everyone is doing in the world" and so on.
Yet billions of dollars later and nobody there realised it? I can't imagine people there are so stupid and that they'd come read HN, smack they hand on their heads and say "Oh, we never knew, thanks HN commenters for saving us. We'll make a great profit and share it with you!".
But not to miss out, and join HN armchair analysts group, I for one, don't believe Twitter is that useful or valuable. Does it know what my neighbors are thinking? My boss? My grandma? Me? No, because I am not on Twitter, they are not.
I see a lot of garbage on Twitter usually. Silly status lines "mmm, yummy green salad!" or "what is the meaning of life..". Developers would do something like "Compiling takes too long, we need a new compiler!". And so on. Then of course it is the quintessential platform for spats and misunderstandings. It is hard to express ideas in 140 character lines so everything feels short, mean and snippy and people get into lengthy back and forths that are mostly stupid and pointless.
Is it impossible to monitise what they do? No, but I think it is not as clear-cut as it may seem.
I think it depends on who you are following... I don't check or even try to keep up with twitter.. I tend to check recents a few times a week.. but every time I see at least something interesting... most of my follows are in tech though.. yeah, there's a lot of random stuff... but there's some gems in there too.
I'm actually more inclined to tweet when I find something interesting... partly because looking at my own history works better than browser bookmarks at this point.. and partly because someone else might also find it interesting.
Yet billions of dollars later and nobody there realised it? I can't imagine people there are so stupid and that they'd come read HN, smack they hand on their heads and say "Oh, we never knew, thanks HN commenters for saving us. We'll make a great profit and share it with you!".
But not to miss out, and join HN armchair analysts group, I for one, don't believe Twitter is that useful or valuable. Does it know what my neighbors are thinking? My boss? My grandma? Me? No, because I am not on Twitter, they are not.
I see a lot of garbage on Twitter usually. Silly status lines "mmm, yummy green salad!" or "what is the meaning of life..". Developers would do something like "Compiling takes too long, we need a new compiler!". And so on. Then of course it is the quintessential platform for spats and misunderstandings. It is hard to express ideas in 140 character lines so everything feels short, mean and snippy and people get into lengthy back and forths that are mostly stupid and pointless.
Is it impossible to monitise what they do? No, but I think it is not as clear-cut as it may seem.