Twitter announced that Dick Costolo had resigned as CEO, effective July 1. Jack Dorsey, a Twitter co-founder, has been appointed by the board as his replacement. (Tweet version here). Dorsey is also CEO of Square, which provides front-end devices and back-end systems for processing mobile payments.
While Costolo is reportedly popular with employees, investors were impatient with the company's growth in revenue and earnings, which has trailed expectations. One fund manager, Chris Sacca, wrote an essay to fellow shareholders (linked by the TechCrunch piece) explaining his disappointment, and ideas for a different direction for the company:
Twitter can be indispensable, engaging, and fun for everyone on the planet, and make even more money in the process. So why isn't that happening?
- For most people, Twitter is too hard to use.
- For most people, Tweeting is scary.
- For most people, Twitter feels lonely.
None of this is a surprise, as Twitter was mostly built by and for its power users.
Costolo insists the exit was in the works for awhile, and he wasn't pushed. For now, we can expect plenty of witty tweets.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:03AM
If Twitter is too hard for you to use then you should put your computers, tablets & phones in a drawer and study the guide for your TV remote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:33AM
Ppl still use twitter?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:56AM
One of the purposes of Twitter is to ruin whatever language skills you have left.
The other purposes are to gather info on subjects. No info is bad. Everything is welcome. The time a message is sent is also important. All this is used to profile users, to know their weaknesses, what they care about, and so on.
It used to be difficult (and still is to some extent) to make sense of long passages (think blogs), so they gave the masses a small textbox. And using that textbox tell them all you know... in short sentences, so their programs will find it easier to profile you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:07AM
He forgot the most important bullet-point.
For most people, Twitter is pointless.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:18AM
And that is who uses it for the most part.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:18AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:16PM
MySpace? Really?
For reporting electrical outages, use the electric company's web page. It is probably the same one you go to for paying the bill.
For neighborhood/local town news, you might try patch.com [patch.com] if you are lucky enough to have one for your community.
For your neighbor's bunny, try the pot on my stove. Rabbit stew is YUMMY!
Social media as a whole, in my opinion, is something of a scourge on society. While it performs some functions that are good (allowing far flung friends and relatives to see what happens in your life without having to call or send photos to each one), it has changed the fabric of society to one that is less personal and to one where people share WAY too much information. It has cost America some valuable skills. I got an email at work from a customer written in "twit speak". I was shocked that anyone would do that in a business communication.
In the end, I believe that it has made a very large contribution to the dumbing down of America.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:55PM
tl;dr - just do what I do. Why would anyone ever do anything different?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday June 13 2015, @07:49PM
For reporting electrical outages, use the electric company's web page. It is probably the same one you go to for paying the bill.
That's what I did first. What the company's web page doesn't show you is other people's reports and the company's responses to the outage.
For your neighbor's bunny, try the pot on my stove. Rabbit stew is YUMMY!
Tee hee hawdle haw. Anyway, let's put the moonshine away. Reuniting loved ones is a lot easier when the individuals are all contributing.
For neighborhood/local town news, you might try patch.com if you are lucky enough to have one for your community.
They have one for my community and the surrounding ones and what it doesn't do is actually tell me what's going on at any given time, including why there's a mass of police activity half a mile over. There are communities all over Twitter where people report on what's actually going on. That sort of news is immensely helpful since traditional local news sites (including Patch) don't go into explaining why a police helicopters is orbiting overhead. In fact the 'local news' I'm getting from Patch is celebrity gossip, which I wouldn't mind except the celebrity in question doesn't live anywhere near here.
In the end, I believe that it has made a very large contribution to the dumbing down of America.
What is the connection between lack of intelligence and twit-speak?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:32AM
this is why one should not take a company public.
I'm not saying that one should not seek investment rather I am saying that one should not seek investment with the intention of an IPO.
If your company is public, and I buy your stock, I have no particular loyalty to your company; I might not even have a clue what line of business you're in.
It is quite common for stock to be bought and sold in milliconds; I've wrote some of the software that does that.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:40AM
WTF does that have to do with anything?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:33AM
I know this type.
1) Person signs up on forum
2) Person starts adding messages, some useful most not
3) Person adds messages recounting his alleged life events/experiences, with most/all messages adding no value
4) Person does not reply to topics he is really there for
5) Person adds message about a light topic joking: "I'm a Jew, you insensitive clod", etc
6) Everyone in the forum now knows this "neighbour" of theirs, this "friend", this "harmless person", and using the name used by that account thinking: "How could this friendly 'username' be someone bad? He has given generous contributions to topics, has made me laugh multiple times, I can relate to what he said, I would like him to be my friend" etc. Now this reader has been brain-washed into thinking this "account" is a real person and a friendly, harmless person at that without an agenda.
I've seen this type before. All forums on the internet have user accounts like these. None of them are real persons. They are personas created for that forum specifically. So that when needed they can "demand" help and play the victim one more time, all the while laughing at the idiots that read those spammy messages and even took them seriously. These personas are not difficult to spot.
I am not saying this particular person is not real... you just need to be careful with this type. Because it reeks of propaganda.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:50AM
All forums on the internet have user accounts like these. None of them are real persons. They are personas created for that forum specifically.
I met Michael in California a few years back. He's a real person.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:07AM
And who might you be?
Multiple accounts sometimes work in cohesion to agree with each other. "Meeting" each other in another life etc.
One must remember that a person cannot care about every single damn thing on the planet, and that too, multiple times in the span of a few minutes/hours, adding no value. It is important to spot these and beware of them because the world is a bad place, and the internet saves these propagandists quite a bit of effort. They are people with real propaganda and they want to hurt you. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. They want to appear friendly but they are deadly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:15AM
And who might you be?
Karl Hallowell. I work out of Yellowstone National Park at present. Bean counting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:42AM
What do you think of this guy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paulides [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osQyD_mIqxU [youtube.com]
Good campfire stories?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 13 2015, @09:15AM
eaten by wildcats.
Tragic yes but a completely rational explanation.
My sister was studying to be a park ranger when she set her chainsaw on a rattlesnake during her internship. She decided to stick with her work as a librarian.`
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:05PM
The point Paulides makes over and over again in his book is that large pieces of these stories do not make sense. How do people go missing so quickly? Why do people who go missing move in difficult ways and go into harder to walk areas? Why do shoes go missing? Why are there so many simple details that overlap between cases? Why is it that people who are out berry picking have a higher rate of going missing?
The thing is, it's damned easy to get lost in wilderness. If you look at the questions, they have obvious answers. How do people go missing so quickly? Why should it take a while to go missing? Why do people who go missing move in difficult ways and go into harder to walk areas? Because they get lost, don't know where they're going, and take longer to get through harder to walk areas.
Why are there so many simple details that overlap between cases? Why wouldn't there be for common events with considerable default similarities? Why do shoes go missing? Maybe people chose to go barefoot or took off poorly fitting shoes and then got lost. Why is it that people who are out berry picking have a higher rate of going missing? Berry picking is a casual day activity and one where the person is more likely to not be paying attention to their surroundings. I'd say that sort of person is less likely to be prepared for wilderness and keeping from getting lost.
The thing is, national parks and wilderness are near universally dangerous. An increased rate of disappearances is to be expected.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:30PM
The thing is, national parks and wilderness are near universally dangerous. An increased rate of disappearances is to be expected.
And hopefully they will never give in to the temptation to disneyfy everything and change this.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:28PM
- picking.
He was lucky only to lose his glasses; if you're stung by enough bees all at the same time they can kill you.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @08:55PM
I'd like to see a histogram these times. I assume "going missing" means when someone notices you aren't there and can't find you, so it could be related to that if its a few minutes. But if there are a bunch of people who went missing in under a minute that would be odd.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2015, @09:19PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @10:12PM
Well, anyway I like to put the audio of that youtube video on when we're driving out to camp.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 13 2015, @07:56AM
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:37PM
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:34PM
I have a close friend who never leaves her house; she is so shy she has never even applied for a job. She did manage to attend a community college about fifteen years after graduating high school.
twitter works well for her because she her extended family likes to all stick together, so they tweet at each other all day and all night. I'd still be lonely but that does work for her.
Now consider such a shut-in who either has no friends at all, or at least none that are already on twitter. they don't have any natural followers and they aren't insightful or creative enough to attract any.
Suppose this latter shut in tweets day after day after day with no response.
I'd rather not even try to talk to anyone at all, than attempt contact with others yet meet no response at all. That actually happened to me just now; I thought the guy was distracted then concluded he was purposely ignoring me.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 13 2015, @09:11AM
Google Groups will turn up many of my usenet posts. Until just a few years ago I used "Mike Crawford" or "Michael D. Crawford". I started using my full name in hopes of displacing Michael Patrick Dumble-Smythe from the top hit at Google. While I was born with the name, he changed his for the stage.
My first email was at the caltech astronomy department in 1983 however that was on an isolated net. I had a ucscb.ucsc.edu account starting in 1985 but I don't think I ever mailed anyone outside of Santa Cruz.
I was a sysadmin for Octel Communications in 1989 - Octel invented voice mail, perhaps you've heard of it. I started posting to usenet from octel.com via UUCP.
My compuserve ID was 72377,623.
I was escher@apple.com starting in 1990 or so, causing no end of confusion with Apple's Christopher Escher.
I used crawford@na47sun05.cern.ch during the summer of 1993, then after returning to Santa Cruz, crawford@scipp.ucsc.edu as well as crawford@physics.ucsc.edu.
I used AppleLink at Working Software, but later got a working.com email.
crawford@scruznet.com was my first ISP account.
My accounts at slashdot, advogato and kuro5hin were at first GoingWare then later MichaelCrawford. At Kuro5hin I now use "Repeatible Hairstyle".
My personal homepage is http://www.warplife.com/mdc/ [warplife.com]
Thanks for letting me clear all that up.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:30AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Touché) by DeKO on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:38PM
For a concrete example of this, just see the crazy shit investors say at Nintendo's Annual Meeting of Stockholders (they post a full transcript of the Q&A online). There are always morons expressing how they want Nintendo to close shop and sell all their assets, for a quick cash-in.
Some of the questions tend to show up in the news. Little gems like:
Or this, from a stockholder giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal [wsj.com]:
It looks like investors are as much of a threat tot he company as competitors.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:26PM
after peace came in the war that ensued after the fall of communism, all the state businesses were sold to private investors. It was expected that they would build profitable enterprises - which did happen elsewhere, as in the Russian Federation - but in the former Yugoslavia, the "investors" sold off the assets for quite a lot more than they paid to acquire them.
Mostly stuff like tools. The communists were not quite as impoverished as most westerners think. If you're going to defend yourself against the west, you need some metalworking tools.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:47AM
When will investors wise up? Site after site gets run into the ground so they can fuck over the users - the stockholders demand it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:57PM
Only #9? They should hire me for SEO. I can get them at the top of Google!
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:49AM
Here is one of the things changing [dailytimes.com.pk] over at Twitter.... They are updating the direct message from 140 characters to 10,000 characters.
I do not know if this is good or bad, but one of the things I thought Twitter did right was force people to get to the point right away.
With advertisers already monitoring Iphone app use [recode.net], no telling when they expand their techniques to other platforms, gather all contacts I work with, store this data on insecure servers, ( which get hacked ), then I end up on the receiving end of a helluva lotta finely honed spearphishing attacks.
If it was some tome they wanted to send me... email.
I do not like getting personalized 10,000 word essays. Once I get one, I know its just a matter of time before the sender contacts me and wants to discuss it. Often, I simply do not want to take the time to read the damn thing and simply want to say TL;DR.
I should not be complaining much because I never signed onto Twitter, albeit I was planning to open accounts for some of my Arduino devices.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:09AM
Try again in 140 or fewer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @09:29AM
Twitter did this so advertisers can send more info to you and data traders can associate more data to your profile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:24PM
The 140-character limit is a huge feature, not a bug. Tweets are easy for people to scan and browse. On the send side, posters can react to news events without having to sit down and think. But if they want to they can compose something funny or thoughtful.
They stick with what got them there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @10:40AM
I've never much use for Twitter, but ...
The Maine Legislature live tweets the message boards on both chambers. A little cryptic, but useful if one wants up to the second information on a particular piece of legislation.
https://twitter.com/ME_House [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/ME_Senate [twitter.com]