Reports: Twitter chainsaw massacre redux on the cards Twitter is going from “troubled” to “beleaguered”, with reports that after it failed to flog itself it's going to cut loose as many as 300 staff. Its ongoing inability to translate user loyalty into a successful and growing platform to attract advertiser dollars – and its persistent abuse problem – left Twitter's sale to …
The same can be said for a lot of companies... and really, it's an messaging company not design and manufacturing or even writing software. Most of the software ought to be done by now. Sales? Marketing? Censors looking for inappropriate tweets?
I doubt these 4000 are hand-sorting messages nor do they all work in a data center. I think this is one of the surprises that just happens...managers start empire building on the slimmest of excuses and head count snowballs from there. Yet, if you ask them, each manager will tell you that the absolutely need all those bodies in the room.
I've always thought Twitter is mostly pointless. It's generally been a write-only medium, with a few exceptions of some people that others find interesting.
There's nothing on Twitter that doesn't exist on dozens of other online services.
The fact they've never been able to make it a commercial success, and nobody wants to buy them, hasn't surprised me in any way.
That said, Twitter has some pretty clever tech to handle the volume of tweets
That's a horrible thought, one of the reasons birds twitter is to mate... The thought of celeb "85s" having some sort of mating ritual over twitter... I think I need a shower, or three.
There is probably a couple somewhere that croons "we met on twitter..." while friends retch in electric sleep...
The sooner twitter is put out of our misery, the better..
I can imagine some turn-around guru walking into their office and doing a Harrison Ford "you were crap before, and you're twice as crap now"...
Twitter is finally being realised for what it is. A toxic, pointless place.
For the ones that are being laid off, yes, it's a shame but I wonder how many can genuinely, objectively sit back and identify that the job they do is worthwhile and required. I certainly can't figure out why Twitter needs so many staff.
It's the online age. Fads come and go, some shine brighter than others but still snuff it in the end. Even FB has lost its shine and that was the big world changer when it first got mainstream notice.
For all those companies who have scaled back on phone line based support, generally ignore emails and only respond to Twitter.
Well, free init!
Worth what they paid for it, probably.
Edit: going to make it hard for El Reg to fill those column inches if Twitter goes Mammaries Sunwards and they can't publish Tweets any more.
David Roberts: "Edit: going to make it hard for El Reg to fill those column inches if Twitter goes Mammaries Sunwards and they can't publish Tweets any more."
I think that's going to make it difficult for all news outlets IME. They may have to re-employ some journalists to actually research and write stuff rather than the current MO of "Scrape frothing indignation from Twitter. Boom: Journalism".
I can see twitter being bought by the BBC or the Gaurdian or similar when it gets cheap enough, journos appear to love it. Guess they actually have to research stories and check facts if it went away.
I quite like twitter, I use it to follow local farmers markets, live music venues, a few writers I like. I'm well out of the demographic for dick pics/abuse/trolling/fan wars.
>>A pointless toxic place...
>I use it to follow local farmers markets, live music venues, a few writers I like.
Anything which couldn't be done with email, an RSS or NNTP feed?
Tweets (as documented in web pages) seem to be primarily self-promotion - marketing of people.
Full disclosure: I've never been near twitter.
Given the BBC even sticks gaffer tape over logos in shot that are too prominent, I'm constantly surprised at the constant promotion of both Twitter and Facebook: after all, they are, or aspire to be, commercial operations.
The French, though, appear to have the right idea.
The promotion of these commercial services by public service broadcasters is, indeed, the most annoying thing. They do it because a) they're lazy and b) it makes them look "engaged" with the public. But basically it just means they provide free advertising for them.
Twitter is basically just a JSON API that turned into a money pit.
The promotion of these commercial services by public service broadcasters is, indeed, the most annoying thing. They do it because a) they're lazy and b) it makes them look "engaged" with the public. But basically it just means they provide free advertising for them.
The worst are IMHO the idiots that have moved their customer interaction to FB and Twitter exclusively, because that forces the customer to accept fairly onerous threats to their privacy in the form of FB and Twitter terms and conditions, just to talk to them. Needless to say, that approach usually means the company will forever fail to make our list of approved providers...
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