In some ways I'm happy Twitter hasn't changed. By keeping with its core product roots it has avoided a lot of bloat the some other side have incurred (Im looking at you Facebook).
Primarily because of fleets, I wound up unfollowing everyone on Twitter and moving exclusively to lists. Now I no longer have any fleets appearing in the top of my app, though there is a large blank space still anxiously awaiting some content.
The other benefit of lists is that the algorithmic ordering is garbage compared to a regular timeline and it's full of bugs, at least on Android, so I wind up using the app less. And for certain lists I actually feel like I'm "caught up" on the people I care about. Triple win in my book!
Enjoyable read, as always. Just one thing to note (mainly to Raj's comment in the end): their business model is actually incredibly sucessful. Last quarter they made almost a billion (!) in revenue, 800m of which from their ad products.
I'd argue that the...undereported... success story of the past years is how they managed to grow their revenue, in 'social ads', with stagnant if not declining growth. That's actually an incredible achievement and might explain the lacking consumer product experience - I'd imagine all their product/eng efforts are focused on that 'unsexy' part of their platform. Ad products take a lot of time and resources to perfect and all happens on the background and unless you're really into adtech, you rearely hear about what comes out of those product teams.
In the end...it could be a lack of incencentive to really experiment with their consumer product. They have this money printing ad business (which indeed lacks any major effort to capitalise on what makes twitter unique) and still have plenty to play catch up over (see stories, audio,...newsletters? etc). Good luck on the PMs there trying to persuade this publicly traded company, with less risk appetite than Walmart, to invest resources in non revenue generating consumer facing features/products. Might as well join facebook
In some ways I'm happy Twitter hasn't changed. By keeping with its core product roots it has avoided a lot of bloat the some other side have incurred (Im looking at you Facebook).
In some ways I'm happy Twitter hasn't changed. By keeping with its core product roots it has avoided a lot of bloat the some other side have incurred (Im looking at you Facebook).
Primarily because of fleets, I wound up unfollowing everyone on Twitter and moving exclusively to lists. Now I no longer have any fleets appearing in the top of my app, though there is a large blank space still anxiously awaiting some content.
The other benefit of lists is that the algorithmic ordering is garbage compared to a regular timeline and it's full of bugs, at least on Android, so I wind up using the app less. And for certain lists I actually feel like I'm "caught up" on the people I care about. Triple win in my book!
Enjoyable read, as always. Just one thing to note (mainly to Raj's comment in the end): their business model is actually incredibly sucessful. Last quarter they made almost a billion (!) in revenue, 800m of which from their ad products.
I'd argue that the...undereported... success story of the past years is how they managed to grow their revenue, in 'social ads', with stagnant if not declining growth. That's actually an incredible achievement and might explain the lacking consumer product experience - I'd imagine all their product/eng efforts are focused on that 'unsexy' part of their platform. Ad products take a lot of time and resources to perfect and all happens on the background and unless you're really into adtech, you rearely hear about what comes out of those product teams.
In the end...it could be a lack of incencentive to really experiment with their consumer product. They have this money printing ad business (which indeed lacks any major effort to capitalise on what makes twitter unique) and still have plenty to play catch up over (see stories, audio,...newsletters? etc). Good luck on the PMs there trying to persuade this publicly traded company, with less risk appetite than Walmart, to invest resources in non revenue generating consumer facing features/products. Might as well join facebook
In some ways I'm happy Twitter hasn't changed. By keeping with its core product roots it has avoided a lot of bloat the some other side have incurred (Im looking at you Facebook).