Company / division: Twitter
Twitter Removes Usernames in Replies from 140-Character Limit – Mashable (Mar 30, 2017)
This has been a heck of a long time coming – Twitter first announced this change way back in May last year, but it’s taken until now to actually implement the change, supposedly because Twitter has been testing various ways of making it work, though we’ve seen essentially this version in the wild now for some time. Though this change is positive in principle, because it frees up the payload of the tweet from the signaling, allowing more of the 140 characters to be used for content, not everyone is a fan of the implementation. That’s because the indication a tweet is a reply has now been extracted from the tweet itself and put above it in the interface, which makes it harder to see that context. There was no perfect way to achieve this objective without at least some of that tradeoff, but it’s still ridiculous that it took Twitter this long to implement the change when it seems to have been working on this specific implementation for months. It’s just another sign that Twitter continues to move very slowly in evolving its core product, and that fixes for big remaining frustrations are likely to take equally long to emerge.
via Mashable
Twitter will start putting ads in front of Periscope videos – The Verge (Mar 28, 2017)
Like Facebook, Twitter is pushing ads into more and more places, including videos on its platform, in an attempt to drive ad growth at a time when that rate of growth has been slowing. In Facebook’s case, the slowdown is due to saturating ad load, whereas for Twitter it’s a combination of anemic user growth and ineffective ad formats. Pre-roll ads for live video are likely to be a bit of a turnoff for users, but if the video is important (and long) enough then they may just put up with them anyway. But this is yet another sign that Twitter is willing to try lots of new things when it comes to finding new sources of revenue, on top of last week’s reports about testing a paid subscription service.
via The Verge
Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and YouTube are bidding to stream the NFL’s Thursday night games – Recode (Mar 24, 2017)
When Twitter won these rights last time around in their first year as a separate set from television rights, it turned out to be something very different from what many of us expected. Rather than a massive splurge on a very valuable set of rights, it turned out that the winner merely got the right to show the games along with advertising mostly already sold by broadcasters, meaning there was very little additional revenue opportunity, and as such Twitter got the rights for a paltry $10 million. These NFL games have actually been a good fit with Twitter’s overall live strategy, which has mostly been focused on winning audiences rather than lots of new revenue, but it seems others are interested in taking another crack this year. It would obviously fit well with Facebook’s recent push into professionally produced live video, but also with YouTube’s recent investment in e-sports rights and with Amazon’s foray into TV bundles and Twitch video streaming. It’s less of a good fit with Apple’s current focus in the TV space, so it’s not surprising that its name doesn’t appear here. I’ll be very interested to see if the NFL is pitching the same kind of package as last time or whether the winning bidder will have the right to sell more of its own ads this time around.
via Recode
Twitter might build a paid subscription service for power users – The Verge (Mar 23, 2017)
I’m in two minds about this report. On the one hand, I’ve thought for a while that some kind of premium subscription service would be a great way to allow the heaviest users of Twitter to pay for the value they get out of it (while potentially avoiding ads), and serve as a useful additional revenue stream at a time when Twitter’s ad revenue has been stagnating. On the other hand, the news that this will effectively be an enhanced version of Tweetdeck is less appealing. Tweetdeck is for a particular type of Twitter user – one who wants lots of tabs open at once with various different feeds – but that’s not all power users by any stretch. And as an app Tweetdeck has a somewhat miserable reputation for reliability – the only times I ever see it mentioned on Twitter itself are when it’s crashing on people. I’ve used it occasionally in the past, but not for some time now, not least because it’s been neglected as a native app on macOS since 2015. If this new option really is limited to and centered on Tweetdeck, it’ll have appeal mostly limited to a certain kind of power user (mostly companies, brands, and professional social media managers), but if it’s instead aimed at power users broadly and supports other endpoints too, then it’s more interesting. We’ll probably have to wait until Twitter concludes its testing to know one way or the other, though.
via The Verge
ANA Tells Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest to Open Up – AdAge (Mar 17, 2017)
The ANA represents 1000 large advertisers including many of the largest companies in the US, so what it says definitely counts for something when it comes to advertising policy. And in this case it’s saying that it wants other big tech companies to submit to outside audits alongside Facebook and Google, who have already committed to do so. Strangely, Instagram is on the list anyway, alongside other independent names like Twitter and Snapchat. There really seems to be increasing pressure from advertisers for transparency and consistency, and this was one of the themes of P&G exec Marc Pritchard’s talk a few weeks back in which he called on the ad industry to do better on several fronts.
via AdAge
Twitter Adds Top Commentary Tab to Live Video Experience – Mashable (Mar 1, 2017)
It looks like Twitter debuted a new Top Commentary tab in its live video screen last night for President Trump’s address to Congress. This should have been there from the beginning – the uncurated selection of tweets that has been shown against most live video since it launched on Twitter has been an unusable mess, and this new tab is a huge improvement. For the first time, this actually demonstrates the value of a curated stream of top tweets for a real-time event, something most active users of Twitter likely already grasp, but new users tuning in for a live video event don’t. Showing them the value – and power – of watching a well selected stream of tweets in real time is critical to converting them to active users of the platform. But of course Twitter should be doing this kind of real-time curation constantly for major topics across the site, especially given that it appears the feature is algorithm-driven, which means it’s much more scalable than something curated by human beings.
via Mashable
Twitter Provides Three More Enhancements to Dealing with Abuse and Harassment (Mar 1, 2017)
I’ve been very critical of Twitter over its poor response to abuse and harassment on the platform, so I don’t think they should get a free pass now just because they’ve finally decided to do something about it. However, kudos to them for finally acting on these issues after the years of bizarre prevarication on this point – they’ve now moving quickly, as promised (here are two other steps taken in the last few weeks). These latest changes are actually some of the best they’ve announced during this period, because they actually remove content proactively from your feed based on algorithms. This has always seemed like it would have to be a big part of the answer – human curation was never going to be able to deal with the volumes involved here. But another positive change is more feedback on abuse reports users submit, which has been largely missing from the app itself so far. There’s still a risk of false positives and Twitter definitely needs mechanisms for appeal and reinstatement where those occur, but it does finally feel like Twitter is making meaningful progress here.
via Twitter
Twitter Is Now Temporarily Throttling Reach Of Abusive Accounts – BuzzFeed (Feb 16, 2017)
Unlike last week’s changes, which were mostly about changes in the user interface of non-abusive users, this change is directed specifically at limiting the reach of abusive users, which feels like a more important and urgent priority. The limits are only temporary – no-one is getting kicked off the platform for this abusive behavior, merely having their reach limited for 12 hours or so in the cases so far. I wonder if – by analogy to an iPhone lock screen – the lockout period will be longer after each offense until eventually the user is banned; that’s something Twitter doesn’t seem to have commented on yet publicly. But it’s also not clear that there’s an appeal mechanism, which is a bit worrying because Facebook, Twitter, and others have sometimes blocked innocuous users either by mistake or through mis-application (or over-zealous application) of policy. I’m all for Twitter cracking down on abuse – it should be a key priority – but it needs to happen in a way that’s transparent and appealable. So there’s definitely progress here, but we still need more.
via BuzzFeed
Twitter Reports Q4 2016 Earnings Which Miss Badly on Revenue (Feb 9, 2017)
Twitter’s results this morning were a great illustration of the quandary Twitter presents: on the one hand, it’s never been more important or relevant in the world, and on the other it just doesn’t seem to be able to turn that into meaningful user growth, revenue growth, or profitability. Revenues were actually down year on year, especially in the US, while losses also increased due partly to restructuring costs. Monthly user growth was anemic again, while daily user growth accelerated, though Twitter bafflingly continues to refuse to provide actual DAU numbers (it’s likely that they’re well under half of its MAU number of 319 million, so around 150 million). Meanwhile, Twitter is still talking about exactly the same shortcomings in its ad product around measurement, targeting, delivering ROI, and creative capabilities that it’s been talking about for ages now. And it sounds like it’s rethinking a number of its direct response ad formats and may kill off some that are actually delivering revenue because they’re too resource-intensive. At this point in Twitter’s history (almost 11 years in) and Jack Dorsey’s second tenure (a year and a half in), the company really shouldn’t be about to undergo yet another major reset in its strategy. In the meantime, Twitter management is asking investors to take it on trust that they can convince advertisers that the underlying growth in DAUs and impressions means they should spend more money on Twitter. We’re certainly due for at least one more really shaky quarter, but there’s a good chance we won’t see meaningful financial progress in 2017 at all. I’ve done a slightly more in-depth take at Beyond Devices here.
via Twitter (PDF)
Twitter says it’s going to start pushing more abusive tweets out of sight – Recode (Feb 7, 2017)
This is one of those times when the word “finally” seems the apt response. Twitter has denied and stalled its way around the abuse issue, and never seems to have taken it nearly seriously enough, but the promise last week that it was finally ready to start moving faster seems to be bearing at least some fruit. And as I said last week, it’s presumably not a coincidence that Twitter’s Q4 results are out on Thursday – I’m sure the company would like to defuse the abuse issue a little and focus on other things on its earnings call. The changes announced today are positive, but I see at least two flaws: firstly, there’s no real transparency over the rules used to designate tweets or replies as either unsafe or “less relevant”. I understand the desire not to spell out exactly what filters are used to avoid malefactors gaming the system, but this is likely to trigger lots of complaining when an opaque algorithm gets things wrong. Secondly, and in a bigger picture sense, this is all still about presentation and not about actually policing the platform for true abuse – so many reports of abuse and harassment have gone entirely unheeded by Twitter, and none of this will address that fundamental issue.
via Recode (Twitter’s own blog post here)
Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour is now running all of Twitter’s live video products- Recode (Feb 6, 2017)
Live video is a big focus for Twitter, arguably to the exclusion of almost any other major innovation in the core product, and so it makes sense that it has a leader who reports directly to Jack Dorsey. But Twitter has always had two approaches to live video: Periscope, the original play, is a standalone app focused on user-generated content, and then there are all Twitter’s live video partnerships with existing content owners like the NFL and Bloomberg. It makes sense to start bringing these products together under a single leadership to make sure they work together effectively, but I think it’s also quite possible that we start to see Periscope integrated more into the core app and lose some of its identity as a separate product. Hopefully this will also free up Keith Coleman, who runs product at Twitter, to focus on all the other things that need fixing.
via Recode
97 companies file opposition to Trump’s immigration order – TechCrunch (Feb 6, 2017)
Last week, Recode reported that several big tech companies were drafting a letter to the Trump administration on immigration, though I still can’t find confirmation that this letter has actually been sent. However, those tech companies and many others have now filed an official friend of the court brief in the lawsuit being brought against the administration by the states of Minnesota and Washington. This steps things up a notch, formally putting the 97 companies behind the brief on the other side of a court case from the administration. As with the early condemnations of the executive orders just over a week ago, Amazon is notable by its absence, as is Tesla (whose CEO Elon Musk has continued to sit on the advisory council Uber CEO Travis Kalanick vacated last week). Tesla’s absence is consistent with Musk’s overall stated strategy of trying to bring change from within, but Amazon’s absence may simply be due to the fact that it weighed in on the case separately earlier in the process (though Microsoft has participated at both stages).
Update: this tweet explains that Amazon was asked not to sign the amicus brief because it was a witness in the original case.
via TechCrunch (more coverage on Techmeme)
Twitter To Roll Out Anti-Harassment “Fixes” This Week – BuzzFeed (Jan 31, 2017)
One of the most baffling aspects of Twitter’s inertia over the past couple of years has been its refusal to take the issue of abuse and harassment on the platform seriously. This late-night tweet storm by the company’s VP of Engineering suddenly revealed that Twitter had decided to take the issue much more seriously and move much more quickly to resolve it (“days and hours not weeks and months”). When essentially everyone outside Twitter HQ has recognized that this was an issue that needed swift resolution for years now, why did it take Twitter so long, and what has changed now? One answer is that Twitter’s earnings are coming up next week, and making a strong statement about this now helps neutralize awkward questions about it then, even if Twitter hasn’t announced anything more concrete. Another is that Twitter is responding to the thorny questions about President Trump’s usage of Twitter and calls for him to be booted off the service by dealing with abuse more broadly. And perhaps some people at Twitter that have wanted to move faster on this issue but been blocked by Jack Dorsey or others finally managed to break through whatever barriers existed. Regardless, it’s good news assuming some meaningful change does come out of all this, but it still says nothing good about Twitter’s internal culture that it took this long to get to this point.
via BuzzFeed
Silicon Valley’s responses to Trump’s immigration executive orders, from strongest to weakest – The Verge (Jan 28, 2017)
This is a good summary of the responses from the tech industry so far to President Trump’s executive orders on immigration from Friday. It also does a nice job sorting the responses by strength – there’s quite a range in the responses, from those focusing narrowly on the practical impacts on employees of each company to those issuing broader moral condemnations of the policy. This certainly won’t be the last we hear on this topic. It’s notable that as of right now Amazon is one of the major holdouts among the big consumer tech companies.
via The Verge
Twitter replaces the Moments tab with Explore – The Verge (Jan 26, 2017)
After lots of Facebook news, it’s finally Twitter’s turn to announce a new feature, in this case an Explore tab which replaces but also subsumes Moments. This will allow trending topics and other content discovery features to sit alongside Moments in the interface, which makes a lot of sense. Moments have done fairly well at Twitter, but I suspect there have also been lots of users who never used it and were frustrated that it took up a tab in the interface, and often had an annoying little blue dot indicating there was unviewed content too. That’s not to say all those users will instantly use the Explore tab – I never look at Trending topics on Twitter, and imagine many other users are the same. But for new users or those that haven’t spent the time finding the right mix of accounts to follow, the feature can be a useful starting point for finding interesting content. Now, Twitter just needs to do a better job with the on boarding process, which is still too account centric and not topic-focused enough. It’s also worth noting, as this Mashable post does, that live video will be prominently featured at the top of the Explore tab when available.
via The Verge (official blog post here)
The Trump bump: Twitter is getting a second look from brands – Digiday (Jan 25, 2017)
I’ve had lots of calls from reporters ever since the election about whether Donald Trump was going to be the thing that finally turned Twitter around, and I’ve said no every time, for several reasons. Firstly, he’s far from the most followed account on Twitter – the first time I was asked this question, he was only number 100 on the list of accounts with the most followers, and though he’s risen the ranks since then, there are still many above him. Secondly, Twitter’s biggest challenge is that even when it’s in the news, most people who see the news won’t see it on Twitter but on TV, on news sites, or even in the newspaper, meaning that Twitter doesn’t monetize the vast majority of the attention it receives. Thirdly, lots of advertisers have decidedly mixed feelings about wanting to associate their brand with a Trump-led resurgence in interest in Twitter, and Twitter employees have had similar reservations. This article covers some of that, but suggests that interest in Twitter (though not spending) among advertisers has risen since the election. I’m still very skeptical that we’re going to see any kind of meaningful bump for Twitter off the back of all this.
via Digiday
Alphabet’s Google Buys Mobile App Tool Fabric From Twitter – Bloomberg (Jan 18, 2017)
Twitter canceled its annual developer conference, Flight, back in October, and I posited at the time that this would send a strong message to developers working with Twitter, though I got pushback from some people at Twitter. Now, Twitter is selling its developer tools (collectively known as Fabric) to Google, rather validating my initial take on the Flight cancelation (no pun intended). This is certainly a result of Twitter’s narrower focus going forward on user-facing, live content including video, but it reinforces the sense that Twitter has really messed around with developers over its history. Developers will still be able to create and run apps for Twitter, but Fabric was a big part of Twitter’s developer toolset and a major focus of those Flight conferences in the past. Lots of those tools, though, had little to do with the core Twitter product, so there’s definitely some logic in selling it a company – Google – which is committed to providing a broad set of generic tools to developers.
via Alphabet’s Google Buys Mobile App Tool Fabric From Twitter – Bloomberg (more on Techmeme)
Vine Is Dead: Twitter Pulls Plug on Short-Form Video Service – Variety (Jan 17, 2017)
This isn’t news per se – it was announced some time ago. But the shutdown is notable for coming in the midst of another big video push by Twitter, around live video. Vine was the hot thing back in 2012, but Twitter’s focus has become so much narrower in the past few months that it now doesn’t fit and must be discarded. That’s both sad and odd, because Vine had its legion of fans, it was particularly well suited to basketball highlights, and it made a few stars of its own. But neither those stars or Twitter made money directly from Vine, the experience was always very separate from the core Twitter app, and Twitter’s focus is now elsewhere. It remains to be seen, though, whether Twitter will actually be better served by offering the same live video available elsewhere rather than sticking with one of its most unique forms of content.
via Vine Is Dead: Twitter Pulls Plug on Short-Form Video Service | Variety
Twitter’s marketing chief shows off vibrancy in her pitch – Mashable (Jan 13, 2017)
Twitter CMO Leslie Berland spoke at CES about what Twitter is doing to grow its business, and it gets at the root of Twitter’s current problems. The good news is that Twitter seems to have a decent understanding of why it’s stuck when it comes to user growth – people don’t know what Twitter is for, they think it’s a social network, and they think they have to tweet themselves to get value out of it. The problem is that Twitter hasn’t done very much yet to address these three issues effectively, and you could argue that’s Berland’s job now, to the extent that marketing includes product. But of course Twitter has famously had separate heads of product, and Jack Dorsey himself seems to want a strong role in that domain too, which may be part of the problem (that and the inability to retain those heads of product).
via Twitter’s marketing chief shows off vibrancy in her pitch – Mashable
Inside Twitter, employees reckon with Trump – The Verge (Jan 12, 2017)
Twitter is probably the tech company that has the most complex relationship with Donald Trump as a candidate and now as president-elect. On the one hand, like many Silicon Valley people, Twitter employees seem largely to be horrified by Trump, but on the other he’s used their product more effectively than any candidate in history, and continues to use it regularly as he prepares to assume the office of the presidency. This piece does a nice job highlighting these conflicts, and the relative powerlessness of anyone at Twitter to resolve them.
via Inside Twitter, employees reckon with Trump – The Verge