Recommended Reading: Twitter’s identity crisis

What Everyone’s Got Wrong About Twitter (Including Twitter)
Ian Schafer,
Recode

Twitter’s earnings dropped this week, followed by a number of theories on the future of the company. Deep Focus founder and chairman Ian Schafer posted an op-ed on the matter to discuss the social network’s identity crisis. Is it a media company? Is it a data company? Schafer makes the case that Twitter needs to decide soon, for it’s own good.

Twitter’s out-of-order timeline prompts TfL to narrow travel updates

Transport for London (TfL) runs a whole host of Twitter accounts designed to keep commuters up to date with travel disruptions. The organisation is now changing its approach, however, and reducing its overall tweet output for minor delays and incidents. Why? Well, because of “various changes” that Twitter has made to users’ timelines. The organisation doesn’t blame any specific features, mentioning instead how “selected content on Twitter is (now) shown out of sequence.” In response, certain accounts will soon be tweaked. The handles for the Underground lines, for instance (@bakerlooline, @circleline, etc.) will switch from real-time service updates to focused news and alerts for major disruptions.

In a blog post, TfL has documented some of Twitter’s major experiments and feature additions since 2009. These include the now abandoned Discover tab, the While You Were Away catchup service and Moments. Notably, the list ends with a line on the company’s new timeline option, introduced earlier this week, that promises to show a selection of highly ranked tweets at the top of your feed. The service is opt-in, but with its current approach TfL says it’s still worried only “high impact and important updates would be likely to reach customers.”

It’s true that Twitter has been experimenting with features that weigh heavily on curation and algorithms. These, it hopes, will surface the best of the social network for users that don’t want to be constantly refreshing their feed. The core Twitter experience remains the same though — it’s a list of tweets in chronological order that show you conversations and moments happening right now. As a result, TfL’s minute-to-minute travel updates should still be effective. If, however, it sees Twitter’s new timeline option as a problem (regardless of whether it poses one or not) that could indicate a larger perception problem for Jack Dorsey’s company.

Source: TfL Digital Blog

Twitter not attracting new users

Although Twitter made $710 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, it still isn’t profitable.

Twitter reports that the $710 million in revenue is a 48 percent year-over-year increase. But it still posted a loss of $90 million, though that is better than 2014’s loss of $125 million.

Twitter also reported that the number of monthly active users remained stagnant at 320 million. But if you exclude SMS users that don’t see ads, it looks even worse for Twitter. Worldwide, active users were down by about 2 million between the third and fourth quarters. In the third quarter, Twitter reported 307 million active users, compared with 305 million in the fourth. In the U.S., again excluding SMS users, there were about 66 million active users in the third quarter, while there were only about 65 million in the fourth.

Source: Twitter

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James Woods gets permission to sue his Twitter abuser

This week has already seen plenty of focus on Twitter’s sometimes toxic culture, and now another high-profile victim is speaking out. James Woods has reportedly been given the go-ahead to launch a $10 million anti-defamation lawsuit against an anonymous Twitter user that suggested the actor used drugs. The case was expected to be thrown out by Judge Mel Recana at a hearing on February 2nd, but chose not to at the last minute. The Hollywood Reporter is claiming to have seen court documents saying that the statement was sufficiently factual not to be dismissed as Twitter hyperbole.

The case will now continue, and it’s likely that the discovery process will force Twitter to reveal the identity of Abe List. Then again, Twitter has already opposed the move once before, saying that the actions of Woods’ lawyers flew in the face of the first amendment, and may look to do so again. It does, however, look as if this anonymous user will be compelled to turn up and argue if they had a basis for making the accusation. Woods, naturally, was pleased that he may yet get his day in court, saying that “Twitter users beware: you are not above the law.” Lisa Bloom, who is representing the currently-anonymous defendant, tweeted a statement saying that Abe List looks forward to “presenting the issues to the Court of Appeal.”

This is the updated reportage of my victory today in the SLAPP motion. My comments are included in this version. https://t.co/exdvRaXSQB

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 11, 2016

My statement re court’s decision today in James Woods’ $10 million lawsuit against my client John Doe for one tweet. pic.twitter.com/bzLz2KybAG

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) February 10, 2016

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Twitter should make harassment a priority, not algorithms

The rumors were true: Twitter confirmed today that it’s rolling out — horrors! — an algorithmic news feed. Essentially a version of its “While You Were Away feature,” the new timeline lets you see the “most important tweets” you’ve missed. Thankfully, as soon as you refresh the page, the standard chronological list of tweets will return and if you don’t like it, it’s pretty easy to deactivate in settings. Which is a good thing, considering it’s not a feature many users have asked for. In fact, many of Twitter’s recent endeavors have very little to do at all with what its users want.

You need only look at the #RIPTwitter outcry to see that users have had about enough with these changes. Many cried foul in response to the algorithmic timeline and several long-time users even threatened to leave the social network altogether. And for good reason. Twitter is not and should not be Facebook. While surfacing more “interesting” posts is acceptable on Facebook, the value of Twitter for me and many others is centered around real-time events. Twitter is for back-and-forth conversations and staying up to date with breaking news. It’s for tweet storms, earthquake tweets and beefs. If Facebook is for catching up with what your friends are up to, Twitter is for getting together in the internet equivalent of a watering hole.

EVERYONE: What I like about @Twitter is how it’s nothing like Fa

TWITTER: We’re gonna make it like Facebook!

— Brendan Maclean (@macleanbrendan) February 6, 2016

This isn’t the first time Twitter has threatened to undo the very things that make Twitter Twitter. The company faced backlash earlier this year when it suggested it would expand its character limit of 140 to 10,000, with many saying that this defeats the very purpose of a tweet. Though the change from fave-stars to like-hearts didn’t ignite as big a firestorm, the reaction there was hardly enthusiastic either.

The collective backlash goes beyond stubborn users unwilling to accept change. It’s that fundamental changes like these make its long-time users feel unwelcome and discarded; that the passions and interests of loyal users are being set aside in the pursuit of new ones. Many users, for example, really just want an edit function. But what’s worse is that these changes don’t even address Twitter’s most troubling issue, and it’s one which I think drives plenty of people away from Twitter: its problem with harassment.

TWITTER: how can we be better
USERS: get rid of abusive assholes
T: longer tweets, done
U: no get rid of a-
T: ok, an algorithmic feed it is

— thomas the take engi (@dwdavison9318) February 6, 2016

Like an internet comments section gone wild, Twitter is a pretty toxic place for a lot of people. Feminist Frequency creator and host Anita Sarkeesian frequently gets hateful mentions, some of which have included rape and death threats. When comedian Alison Leiby tweeted a joke about having as much rights as a gun does, she too was met not just with insults, but rape threats. Separately, Gamergate critic and Canadian journalist Veerender Jubbal was advised by law enforcement to stay off Twitter following multiple threats against his life.

Twitter’s response to threats of this sort has so far been mostly reactionary. It’s up to you, the user, to block and report people who harass you. You can’t set up a filter or have it so that only people you follow can respond to your tweets. Worse, Twitter often doesn’t do anything when you do report abusers. Trusty Support, a parody Twitter account that’s critical of Twitter’s abuse policies, says that oftentimes all you get is a support email that Twitter is unable to take action because they “could not determine a clear violation” of the Twitter Rules. Sometimes, Twitter just tells you that the only way to avoid abuse is to make your account private.

Sharing anonymous stories of harassment on @Twitter & inaction by @Support. DM us to share. @Cartes @jack @safety pic.twitter.com/nrvAEMCNHy

— Trusty Support (@TrustySupport) February 10, 2016

To be fair, the company did announce a new safety council earlier this week. Among its members are GLAAD, the National Network to End Domestic Violence and, yes, Feminist Frequency. Sarkeesian recently visited Twitter to share her Twitter experience, both negative and positive, with employees. The idea behind the meeting and council is to see how the company can better address these safety and harassment concerns.

“It also enables us to provide Twitter with feedback on where their tools are meeting the challenges of addressing harassment and where they’re falling short,” Sarkeesian told Engadget.

Twitter’s harassment outcome is improving. I have documented, statistical proof it’s improving.

Engineering is TOTALLY DIFFERENT TEAM. 3/4

— Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) February 6, 2016

Additionally, game developer Brianna Wu has said that through her own work with Twitter, that the company’s harassment outcome is improving, and that it has very little to do with new features that Twitter is announcing.

Yet, it remains unclear exactly how the council will address the immediate harassment issues. It’s also generally not a good look when you’re introducing features that hardly anyone wants and yet you’re unable to resolve a very real and serious problem that has existed for years. It sounds as if the company is struggling to figure out what to do, when to many victims of abuse, even listening would be an improvement.

A couple of years ago, software engineer Danilo Campos made a few suggestions on what Twitter could do to combat the problem and they’re still relevant to this day. Twitter could make it so you can block accounts that are less than 30 days old, or to block accounts that have low follow counts, or to block users who have certain keywords in their @replies. Sure, these solutions aren’t perfect either, but they seem a lot better than the measures Twitter currently have in place.

.@twitter I would feel better about blocking abusive ppl if “block” meant my followers wouldn’t see their disgusting replies to my tweets.

— Lindsey (@CardsAgstHrsmt) February 8, 2016

Twitter, for its part, has said that it’s implementing these recent changes because it seems that users do seem to like them despite not saying so. For example, in the change from stars to hearts, Twitter’s SVP Kevin Weil has said that the platform now sees six percent more hearts than they saw with favorites. In recent tests with its algorithm feed, Twitter has told us that it has resulted in much higher engagement from users “across the board.”

Yet, in the chase for numbers and engagement metrics and user counts, it’s also important for Twitter to remember the people who got it to where it is today. In its most recent earnings release, Twitter reports that it actually lost users. Excluding SMS, the service looks to have lost two million users globally, with a one million user drop in the United States alone.

Twitter is attempting to rectify that. Going forward, the company has pledged to not only make Twitter easier to use, but also to make safety its top priority. For its sake, and for its users’ sake, I hope it succeeds.

Twitter isn’t attracting enough new users

Twitter’s had a busy fourth quarter. It’s been dropping new features like Moments and today’s best tweets announcement. Also it’s Jack Dorsey’s first full quarter as CEO. So how did it do? Well it made $710 million in total revenue a 48-percent year-over-year increase. But it’s still not profitable. It had a loss of $90 million which is still better than last year’s loss of $125 million. The company also noted that monthly active users remained flat 320 million. Not a good sign when it’s trying to gain new users with new features like Moments.

While the user numbers look flat, if you exclude SMS users that don’t see ads, it gets a bit more grim. Excluding SMS, the company reported it had 305 million monthly active users down from 307 million in Q3. In the United States, it lost 1 million monthly active users (from 66 million to 65 million) between this quarter and the last. Amazingly, it still made more money off the users that continue to send 140 character updates.

During a periscope of the earnings, Dorsey said the company will “focus now on what Twitter does best: Live.” He noted that the company wants to build the planet’s largest connected audience. To do that Twitter will focus on its core service, investing in being a leader in live streaming video, giving creators the best tools, making Twitter safer and supporting developers.

One way it may be working to make the timeline easier for people to understand is fixing the @reply and @name system. During the call he said, “we have some really weird rules in particular in replies and we just need to fix those things.”

Dorsey reiterated the company’s desire to make the timeline easier to use and get more users engaged with it. He noted that the feature announced today increased tweeting and retweeting during testing. He also talked about Moments saying that with a moment is in a tweet, it has higher-than-average click through.

As for the new timeline option, Dorsey said that its the fastest way to “get back to live without missing any of those tweets you really want to see.”

“Our job is to connect the audiences,” he continued.

Twitter is going to ‘fix’ how you @

Earlier today, Twitter announced that it would be implementing an optional algorithmic feed that would put the most “important” tweets that you missed at the top of your timeline. Now it seems there are more changes in the works. According to Twitter’s Q4 and Fiscal 2015 letter to its shareholders, it is now going to fix how its @name and @reply syntax works. This @reply mechanism, Twitter says, is confusing and is known to “inhibit usage and drive people away.”

While that seems a little odd at first, it does make some sense. @replies take up valuable space in that 140-character limit and plenty of people often @reply to the wrong person because of misspellings, typos or simply a misunderstanding of how Twitter works (I know I get a lot of misdirected @nicole tweets, for example). It remains to be seen how Twitter plans to fix this issue, but it does seem like the company is being more aggressive than ever in attempting to refine its product. In the same shareholder letter, Twitter also says it plans to “improve onboarding flows” so that you can find your contacts easier, and to make tweeting faster with both text and visual media.

Source: Twitter

Machine turns your Twitter posts into tasty cocktails

Ever wondered what your tweets would taste like if you could distill them into a drink? Probably not, but there’s now a way to find out. Clément Gault and Koi Koi Design have whipped up Data Cocktail, an Arduino-powered machine that creates a drink based on Twitter updates. In its current incarnation, it looks for the five latest tweets mentioning keywords linked to ingredients, and fills the glass accordingly. The result is an original, spur-of-the-moment mix — it’ll even print out the ‘recipe’ (really, a ratio of the keywords) and thank the users who unwittingly contributed to the beverage.

There aren’t any known plans to let you buy Data Cocktail or make one of your own, but it could easily stick around. The creators note that they can easily change the keywords, ingredients and proportions to suit specific events. You may well see this robotic bartender producing drinks based on election coverage, award show buzz and even the trending Twitter topics du jour.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/154328950?color=fb9600&byline=0

Via: The Creators Project

Source: Data Cocktail

Twitter starts beta testing new timeline with entire user base

Twitter said they were not going to mess with the traditional chronological timeline their platform is famous for despite some earlier rumors that a new algorithm was set to be deployed. A new post on their blog today seems to indicate both reports are true. Twitter announced they are making a new curated timeline available as an option for now, but they plan to turn it on for all users over the next few weeks forcing users who do not want it to dive into their settings to turn it off.

For the initial rollout, Twitter is making the new feature an opt-in selection. Users will have to go in to the timeline section of their settings and select “Show me the best Tweets first” to turn on the new timeline option. The new timeline appears to be built using algorithms similar to what Twitter uses for their “while you were away” function. Once turned on, Twitter will curate Tweets posted while you were not on the service and “Tweets you’re most likely to care about will appear at the top of your timeline – still recent and in reverse chronological order.” The regular, reverse chronological tweets will then follow below those initial tweets.

Twitter claims that users who have tried the new feature in testing retweet and tweet more. However, some users have reported the new algorithm will sometimes split up conversations.

In their announcement, Twitter says they will turn on the feature for all users “in coming weeks” and will provide a notification in users’ timelines when that happens. Once the feature is turned on by default, users will have to then go in to their settings to turn it off if they do not want to use the new algorithm.

source: Twitter
via: The Verge

Come comment on this article: Twitter starts beta testing new timeline with entire user base