It seems unsuitable for coordinating mass protests to me, because it's a single point of failure. In many countries, the government controls all Internet access, so blocking Twitter would be relatively easy. Sure, people can use Tor, but will enough people have it when Twitter gets blocked?
Seems like what's really "needed" is a distributed Twitter-like platform, using a DHT or something. Keep it small and simple enough, and a client could run on many devices 24/7, updating every a few times an hour, or more if the user's actively using it.
User identity might be the hard part, because a long hash isn't very human-friendly. But perhaps that could be solved by a centralized directory authority mapping user ID hashes to Twitter-like usernames. The mappings could be cached by clients in case the directory went down or got blocked. Sort of like how PGP keyservers work, letting clients get keys when they need them and add them to their local keyring.
> It seems unsuitable for coordinating mass protests to me, because it's a single point of failure. In many countries, the government controls all Internet access, so blocking Twitter would be relatively easy. Sure, people can use Tor, but will enough people have it when Twitter gets blocked?
No, you can set up endless blogs (using Wordpress or Joomla or any other CMS with Twitter plugins), and include a twitter stream in it. You can post to twitter by email or using similar plugins.
A government cannot block all those sites.
Blocking twitter is not enough to block all content coming from and going to twitter.
Sure, you can set up what are effectively Twitter proxies, and sure, the censors won't be able to keep up playing whack-a-mole.
But then the users have to do the same thing, preemptively finding such proxies and jumping between them. I'd guess that that would be a good enough result from the government's perspective.
And that's just read-only stuff. Post by email? DPI could drop packets containing emails addressed to Twitter, even if they're being sent through a mail server in another country. And, sure, you can proxy stuff, but again, the point here is the masses. If 95% of people are blocked from access, that would probably prevent mass protests from happening; or at least keep them from happening quickly and unexpectedly.
But besides all that, when the government cuts off the country's Internet access entirely, creating a nationwide intranet, none of those blog proxies are going to help. The only thing that is going to truly work in such a situation is peer-to-peer stuff.
> preemptively finding such proxies and jumping between them
This is why it is so important to create protocols for communication instead of single-point-of-failure services. While it is still possible for bad actors to interfere with traffic, it is much harder to shutdown an entire network of federated servers. In contrast, a service can be disabled by simply throwing legal papers at the person running the service (or otherwise threaten them, bribe them, etc).
> DPI could drop packets containing emails addressed
Which is why that email should have been encrypted. Even non-authenticated opportunistic encryption would make that kind of DPI much harder and more expensive.
We've had encryption for a long time, and there is absolutely no excuse for to not have encryption in all network software. Unfortunately, a lot of software has been badly negligent in their duty to keep their users safe.
> cuts off the country's Internet access entirely
...they should be left with a split network, still able to communicate internally. It is pure hubris to believe that a single service will always be available in any situation; when international links are involved, some amount of loss-of-service should be assumed. This is why email allows multiple MX records - servers fail, so build in backups, some of which can be local.
> peer-to-peer stuff
Yes, though the model to copy is federated services like email.
The power of the internet is that it IS peer-to-peer. No 3rd party has to grant authorization to listen(2) for connections or connect(2) to a remove host. This has been forgotten because of the damage that NAT does to the network (you aren't a full citizen ("peer") on the internet when you have to ask the NAT device to forward your packets.)
Now, after about a decade of failing to heed the warnings about NAT, the digital imprimatur[1] is being constructed and running proper peer to peer (no 23rd party) is harder than ever. Hopefully IPv6 can reverse this trend.
I'm confused. It sounds like you're arguing against me, but you basically agree with me. Except for...
> Yes, though the model to copy is federated services like email.
I disagree. For one thing, DNS. How many average users will be able to reconfigure their systems to use a DNS server besides the one their ISP provides? And when the national government cuts off the nation's external Internet access, what good will 8.8.8.8 be?
It seems obvious to me that, for this kind of use-case, peer-to-peer, DHT-type services are what's needed. Federated is better than centralized, but it would still be easy to censor and block. Even P2P protocols could be blocked by ISPs blocking inbound connections to their customers, but barring that, it would be difficult.
Reading that just indicates that the world needs social media, not Twitter per se. Many of the quotes there seem to indicate that Twitter's role was exaggerated.
The world needs the internet; the specific software running at the endpoints isn't particularly important. Twitter was used because... it was already used by the people involved.
The benefit of any place or tool for social activities is only tangentially related to the benefits provided by that place or tool. The value is the people that are using it, who can (and do) move all the time.
Anybody interested in the relationship between a service like twitter and the people that create it's value by using it may be interested in the talk[1] given by an admin o fark.com a few years ago, where they discuss how they almost destroyed their community ("you'll get over it") from a failure to remember why people came to their site.
If there is one lesson that Twitter or any other social media business needs to learn, it's the one discussed in talk: involve the people that use your service at least somewhat in the changes you make to the service, and absolutely don't surprise them with sudden change, or they will find some other place to hang out.
> The world needs the internet; the specific software running at the endpoints isn't particularly important. Twitter was used because... it was already used by the people involved.
Hmm, the world needs networked communication; the specific protocol running at the endpoints isn't particularly important. TCP/IP was used because... it was already used by the people involved.
Further, the world needs easy communication; the specific mechanism to communicate isn't particularly important. Networking was used because... it was already used by the people involved.
I think the point is that twitter has evolved into a kind of news/whistleblower network and that the world needs that. It could be something else than twitter but right now twitter is filling out an important role.
My theory is that Twitter is way more popular with newspapers than the general public because it is easy to extract trending tweets compared to almost anything else and generate stories based on it.
While I agree, I also hate this. A Twitter trend can inspire good journalism, but it is not in and of itself journalism. Too many media sources slap a tweet on TV or on a website and call it journalism.
We very much need twitter. What other platform is there for teens to say 'DADDY' to world leaders? What other platform is their for those world leaders to put their feet in their mouth? These are the important things to online bullies and comedians.
Whatever. It's the equivalent of a parent thinking their baby is the most beautiful baby in the world, when it may not be the case to a more neutral observer.
I think he strikes a good tone in both emphasizing the importance of the work they are doing at Twitter, and how they need to do better. I think less than perfect objectivity can be forgiven.
I'm guessing the fact that this email shows up on the SEC web site may have to do with this:
> Per Chapter 4, Part 4, Sections 1400-1408 of the Labor Code, WARN protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring that employers give a 60-day notice to the affected employees and both state and local representatives prior to a plant closing or mass layoff.
I'm not a securities lawyer, but I think the basic idea is that news about the layoffs (and the associated costs) was deemed to be material information, so under reg FD it has to be released to all investors simultaneously.
> A WARN notification is required if more than 500 people (or 33% of the "active workforce") are being laid off. Check your state's Department of Labor (or whatever it is called in your state) to see the notices that have been filed by employees in your state. (from http://www.job-hunt.org/layoffs/pending-layoff-signs.shtml)
"Emails like this are usually riddled with corporate speak so I'm going to
give it to you straight."
Three paragraphs later...
"So we have made an extremely tough decision: we plan to part ways with
up to 336 people from across the company."
Edit: My bad, I should have been clearer in what I meant. There isn't really any corporate speak, but I wouldn't call 3 paragraphs of fluff 'giving it to you straight'
not OP, but what was announced 3 paragraphs later could have been written in the same sentence:
"Emails like this are usually riddled with corporate speak so I'm going to give it to you straight: we plan to part ways with up to 336 people from across the company."
It's not great, but it's certainly better than something like "We've decided to move forward with a new strategic initiative that will involve a synergistic restructuring of our organizations and in that process it's possible that some people may find themselves seeking opportunities"...
Gah, I really hate those "our firing you is your opportunity" lines.
It's more like "our incompetence has forced us to fire you but of course we, the incompetent ones, will stay; think of this as your opportunity to find a better company without incompetent management, good luck with that".
How is that corporate speak? I'm sure it was a tough decision and "parting ways" while maybe isn't the most direct way to say it, is far from obscure corporate jargon.
Specific numbers like that makes for a nice change. So far touch wood I've never been in a company where layoffs have happened, but people I know who have been often just get notice that "some" layoffs will happen and it rarely seems like most of management has a clue how many they're intending to cut, with there being some target $$ value in salary reduction or similar in mind.
Often the process then more broadly resembles a farce, with managers trying to protect their mini-empires by sabotaging others. Giving an explicit number seems to indicate that Twitter has a clear idea of exactly what they're trying to do here.
Even getting notice that layoffs are happening is doing well. At one company (somewhat awkwardly in my first week there) everyone was rounded up into a meeting area, and it was announced that layoffs were happening, and by the end of the day we'd know if we still had a job.
Later on in that job they handled it even worse, with a gradual attrician over several weeks of people suddenly finding out they no longer has a job, and would be paid their notice period. No idea how things went from there, since that was when I jumped ship.
(And hello! I still find it a bit odd when I see people I know commenting on Hacker News.)
Twitter has what, 4000 employees? Clearly some of them are not strong performers, or at least less strong than others. So you can gain more productivity per employee by cutting the weak - but you of course risk the best employees becoming disenfranchised and looking for work elsewhere.
> The roadmap is focused on the experiences which will have the greatest impact. We launched the first of these experiences last week with Moments, a great beginning, and a bold peek into the future of how people will see what's going on in the world.
That Moments is mentioned so high up in the email isn't particularly reassuring...since it means they haven't launched many other initiatives of note recently. Moments as a feature is extremely disappointing given the years of interesting discoveries that Twitter has yielded algorithmically via its, well, "Discover" tab. What's on Moments looks like a half-baked newspaper front page except when you click on an item, you go to tweets about that item instead of a full story.
I don't want to pile on the project as it is new...but it should've been given more thought and design time given how much prominence "Moments" has on the interface (it is one of four main icons on the menubar)...Nearly all of the stories are hours old...e.g. "Wave of terror attacks hits Jerusalem" and "Playboy covers up"..."FedEx truck splits in two", granted, is news to me...but not something that makes Twitter unique to me.
There's so much more potential in the Trends section...OK, maybe Twitter wants to filter out potentially visually NSFW topics like #NoBraDay...but things like #MH17 and #VMworld and #ILoveYouAboutAsMuchAs...just show me an automated feed of tweets by reputable sources (rather than spambots or random kids) so I can understand why these topics are suddenly trending without having to click through the trends tag and sort through a overwhelming timeline.
edit: that said, I like all the other products...besides core Twitter, Vine and Periscope are standouts (at least, as a consumer)...I just think that "Moments" isn't worth putting into the spotlight, unless there is literally nothing else to be proud of publicly.
> What's on Moments looks like a half-baked newspaper front page except when you click on an item, you go to tweets about that item instead of a full story.
How? When I click on it, it just peaks at the next picture.
Hmm...on closer inspection, clicking on a Moments item does not seem to bring up a timeline of "Top" tweets (as it does when you click on or search for a "Trending" topic)...it seems to bring up a human-curated list of tweets.
Here is the "moment" for "Wave of terror attacks hits Jerusalem"...there's only about 10 tweets there:
Though Fox News may not be everyone's choice of top news source, scrolling down, you'll see a great variety of tweets...maybe not as efficiently informative as the curated tweets, but I'm sure a hell of a lot more expansive and scalable.
Thanks for replying but I definitely don't have that, and definitely haven't had that walkthrough, and there's nothing on the web app either.
-
While writing this comment, I came across this verge article [0] which says "For now, the tab is shown only to US Twitter users" - so if anyone else is wondering, US only. Meh.
I'm a little surprised that they're only firing 336 people. Unless this is just the first round of layoffs and more will follow once products and management has been streamlined/trimmed whatever you want to call it.
Usually in a situation like this you want to cut hard and deep just the once. Every time you make cuts the entire workforce is on knife edge (excuse the pun), so it's best to do one round and get it out of the way so everyone can refocus on their work.
That's a long way of saying I doubt there are more layoffs planned. That's not to say they won't make more layoffs if they don't get their shit together.
It's moot. Veterans know there's another round coming no matter what, and tenderfeet will freak out no matter what.
Since this is their first round, it probably consists of an accumulated RIF list that's been made up mentally over time by each manager, containing the slackers, bums, obnoxious misfits, and anyone absurdly overpaid, as well as people who have made powerful enemies. It probably also contains people who were working on canceled projects and weren't valuable enough that another manager would fight to have them transferred instead (some may be rehired by others later anyway). Standard stuff. And as such, since Twitter hasn't come to Jesus at this point, it's a pretty small round. Later, when it becomes apparent that more of what they're doing is a drain on their very limited revenue with little or no realistic hope of any return on investment, there will be more rounds as more projects are canceled. Of course, by then, they'll have less cash available and so will need to cut even more...
Every company in a downward spiral starts by cutting fat, then muscle, and finally bone. You're correct that it's much better to cut too deep the first time and stabilize the company financially at a much smaller size before cautiously expanding, but no one does it that way. Remember, to a manager, the size of one's empire is the size of one's dick (not to mention current and future pay), and to a CEO it's the same with the size of the company. No one wants to cut more than the minimum that can possibly be justified at any given moment, which is why almost every company that cuts keeps cutting in a downward spiral until sale or bankruptcy... and thus why there's always another round, as every veteran knows.
>We feel strongly that Engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team
What percentage of 336 cuts would produce a team that is smaller and nimbler, I wonder? It sounds like engineers not on the "greatest impact" projects will be cut.
> We will honor them by doing our best to serve all the people that use Twitter.
seems a little pep talky to me for the people left.
I feel saying this would have been better:
> We will honor them with the utmost respect for each and every person. Twitter will go to great lengths to take care of each individual by providing generous exit packages and help finding a new job.
Really? Does it? I think Twitter needs a strong Twitter, shareholders need a strong Twitter even Twitter employees need it. However the world is, at best, ambivalent about Twitter, if it disappeared tomorrow a replacement would spring up within a few weeks if the world really needed a way to shotgun their messages into the ether.
A few automated trading algorithms would become marginally less effective. Some poorly written ones might crash or make a few million dollars worth of bad trades.
there have even been a few instances shown on HN where these algorithms picked stuff up from the internet and have run with it, i.e. placed real trades. I remember at least 2 instances of this recently, once where the story was fake and once where an earnings forecast(i think) was released on a site but they had not published the URL so the assumption was no one would see it. The bot made a significant sum on the second example.
Fascinating - especially if the loop get closed and trading algorithms can generate short-lived tweets (Markov chains?) to disrupt their opponents sentiment analysis.
I would assume Twitter would eventually find a reason in the terms of service, or add it, where that sort of thing isn't allowed. Therefore they could create their own poor implementation of the idea in a desperate attempt to generate some revenue.
Apparently the people doing it are gaining something from it, else as you note there would be less of it. I don't know whether it's value-creating or not as a whole; there are different types and classes of HFT operations and algorithms (including those that try to trade based on rumors and sentiment), and various arguments about who is or is not better off for their existence. Someone who wants to assert that it's harmful needs to have some kind of tally of all the benefits/profits and all the harm/losses that shows net value destruction, or at the very least a complete ethical argument. All we got was "the world needs less of this", which doesn't really do much to further anyone's understanding nor provide a digestible view on the matter.
This doesn't always mean that insiders are dumping stock because they know the company is doomed. Sometimes yes, but when you have a company like Twitter where a pretty significant percentage of compensation is in stock options and RSUs, then you're going to have lots of insiders selling in batches, so they can actually use that compensation to get things like houses and cars and diversified investment portfolios.
All of the above companies are asset managers, not principal investors (even MS in this context). Meaning that they don't benefit from a stronger Twitter, but the individual investors and pension accounts who own their ETFs and index funds do.
You might have a point if rich people's investment vehicles (like hedge funds, private equity or venture funds) owned the majority of TWTR - but they don't, as you showed.
Many could certainly clone the Twitter service in under a weekend, and since nobody would be using it, it would certainly appear they did a good job.
What you couldn't do in a weekend is provide something to operate at the scale Twitter does, such that it could be dropped in to replace (or handle all the traffic if Twitter ceased to exist).
Especially if they need thousands of people to maintain it, when WhatsApp needs 50 employees even though they process an order of magnitude more messages.
I know one company [1] who set its mission to "Advancing humanity through the power of software". I wonder what's the credit when your values are quoted in a parody show ("Silicon Valley", HBO).
Odd. While incredibly flawed it's still the single best toolto fight against censorship and public and private control. If you have doubts go look at how many national governments have blocked it at one time or another. The world is better off with a strong Twitter.
Saying it like that makes it sound too much like the brand is what is needed as opposed to the tool. To put your words another way: The world is better off with a strong tool to fight against censorship and public and private control.
If Twitter starting taking massive cash payments from governments to filter content, it would be a strong Twitter with lots of cash, but not a strong tool to fight against anything.
But the brand can't be dismissed. The brand attracts users which amplify the reach of the message of an individual. Without the brand and network you're just standing on a street corner with a bullhorn.
It's really just that a strong social media network is needed. Twitter's format works well for this, but I wouldn't be under any delusions that no one would fill the gap that Twitter left. Social media isn't very entertaining unless it capture a significant portion of the market, I'm fairly confident that people would settle on a new service instead of being fractured across a bunch of different social networks. This is a big part of the reason why Facebook and Twitter have lasted so long. There are lots of other companies providing very similar services, I've tried a few, but without friends on there there isn't much of a point.
Yes, but Twitter deserves credit for creating something that didn't exist. It's global IRC for the masses. That and it brought the Internet real-time search. That's huge and did not exist before Twitter.
> While incredibly flawed it's still the single best toolto fight against censorship and public and private control.
But is it the best because it is better than the alternatives we would have without it is, or is it the best because its dominance in messaging prevents better tools (in terms of "the fight against censorship and ... control") from being developed or gaining traction and critical mass -- e.g., is the goal you point to really being served by a strong Twitter, or held back by it?
The alternatives have no base, no brand and aren't as universally accessible (regardless of blockages). The world needs Twitter because Twitter is the most efficient way of reaching a large audience quickly NOW. Regardless of what the future holds, or "what-if" scenarios the reality remains that Twitter holds a place as the world's voice in certain situations.
Well I argue that point. I love both but I can't imagine running the streets of the Arab spring with my laptop, or trying to keep my phone battery going while I maintain my connection to an IRC network.
There are some things where the combination of public, easy to use, short, sms friendly are a big plus for some things. Not that twitter is the only one doing these things or that they couldn't be built on ICR.
I think you have a point. I use Twitter a lot for professional and sometime personal reasons however it does have potential to be replaced by a better networking site. Even though its a powerful tool, I don't think it helps users and businesses like it use to, unless you pay for features. Ashton Kutcher explained how Twitter, not Facebook, can be the new Myspace: http://www.askmeanything.me/influencers/ashtonkutcher
Since "streamlined roadmap" is singular, it must be prefaced with an "a".
The correct phrase would be "to produce a streamlined roadmap." (if it were plural, you could instead use "to produce streamlined roadmaps.)
I'm normally not a Grammar Nazi, but when you're talking about drafting a short SEC filing that will be read by hundreds of thousands, declaring the fate of 8% of your workforce... I think the least you can do is make it look like you put some effort into it. Of course, my initial post has been downvoted to hell, but such is life. I probably should have actually included this explanation and disclaimer in my OP rather than expecting it to be self-evident.
Slightly OT, but honestly I think the world really doesn't need Twitter. If you view the evolution of the internet as a phenomenon fundamentally linked to the emergence of a global cultural consensus, or even consciousness, then to reduce a sizable fraction of its bandwidth to 140 chars, vicious echochambers and a communication mechanism custom designed to bump people's thoughts out-of-context for the purposes of ridicule then Twitter should be viewed as harmful. I hope some of these coming changes directly address the harm current Twitter does to the quality of human communication on the net.
As a hobbyist coding small projects like Twitter in my spare time, I feel their pain and have consistently had to re-adjust the code base, and the amount of project contributors. This is observable on the micro-scale, and I would loathe to think how this plays out on the scale of Twitter, where unbridled and unchecked scale was allowed to take over the company, causing them to lose focus.
Twitter is essentially one big DevOps success story / failure after another, and I have faith they can start to focus again. One motif / question I have seen in every pundit's post about Twitter as a company is why the market (up until now perhaps) has not decided Twitter's faith? If it really is the case that Twitter is a big data company, then how come 90% (random estimate) of their users are fembots / fake accounts?
> Emails like this are usually riddled with corporate speak so I'm going to give it to you straight.
Well, since you said it that way, I should assume that what comes next will not sound like a steamy pile of meandering corporate speak, right?
> The team has been working around the clock to produce streamlined roadmap for Twitter, Vine, and Periscope and they are shaping up to be strong. The roadmap is focused on the experiences which will have the greatest impact.
A roadmap focused on high-impact experiences. Got it. I hope your firings go really well, Bob.
He said he would give it to you straight, not ELI5. They are focusing on fewer things that they believe are the most valuable, and stopping stuff that isn't core to their purpose. What about this is confusing to you?
What you said is as near the definition of "giving it straight" as one might expect to follow his preface. What he actually said is as near the definition of corporate speak as possible. There is no confusion on my part. Perhaps Jack is the one confused about what people mean by "corporate speak".
"We're laying off up to 336 people, with the biggest impact to Product and Engineering. We'll be providing generous exit packages and helping find new jobs. Sorry. It's our fuckup, not yours."
If you understood exactly what he meant, then it was pretty straight. Especially the bit about how many people are being let go and from where, that's remarkably forthcoming.
I see what you're saying -- but if the "generous exit packages" and "help finding a new job" are true, then it's still way better than some companies I've worked at, where the firings consisted of two weeks of pay and being escorted out of the building on the same day (of course, said companies weren't in SV).
Of course, given his buzzword-filled talk, those "generous exit packages" might just consist of two weeks pay as well.
"As many of you who have(had) vested stock with us know, our stock and investor faith have collapsed - and in a desperation move to win back our shareholder's trust, we are 'going lean,' so to speak, so we spent a mid-six-figure sum in hiring an outside consulting agency to eliminate human capital - so we didn't have to review it internally - regardless of what you've built with us."
Here's what "giving it straight" really looks like, while also having a chance to save face:
Everyone,
As part of a restructuring of our workforce, we must layoff 336 people from across
the company.
This is an extremely difficult decision. We believe this is a necessary step to put
our company on a stronger path towards growth. The team has been working around the
clock to produce streamlined roadmap for Twitter, Vine, and Periscope and they are
shaping up to be strong. With the utmost respect for each and every person, Twitter
will go to great lengths to take care of each individual by providing generous exit
packages and help finding a new job.
The roadmap is a plan to change how we work, and what we need to do that work.
Product and Engineering will make the most significant structural changes to
reflect our plan ahead, focused on the experiences which will have the greatest
impact. We feel strongly that Engineering will move much faster with a smaller and
nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce. And the rest
of the organization will be streamlined in parallel.
Let's take this time to express our gratitude to all of those who are leaving us.
We will honor them by doing our best to serve all the people that use Twitter. We
do so with a more purpose-built team, which we'll continue to build strength into
over time, as we are now enabled to reinvest in our most impactful priorities. As
always, please reach out to me directly with any ideas or questions.
Jack
Notice I left out Moments, because I think it's in really poor form to mention efforts made before the layoff, with those 336 people, as being a part of this new roadmap that includes laying off those 336 people. Really, really poor move.
The purpose of language is communication. Did you understand what melvinmt meant? Yes, of course you did. What's the big deal? What are you gaining by "correcting" a pointless[1] semantic distinction, other than your own smug satisfaction?
[1]: Yes, it's pointless. Why is there no such distinction for "more"?
Why misusing? Language has meaning by the convention of its users -- not by the fiat of English teachers. By the consensus of informal English, "less" and "fewer" can both be used in that scenario (by definition, since lots of people do it).
409 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadLet's not get carried away here. Twitter is great. I use it too much of the day. But the world hardly needs Twitter.
Seems like what's really "needed" is a distributed Twitter-like platform, using a DHT or something. Keep it small and simple enough, and a client could run on many devices 24/7, updating every a few times an hour, or more if the user's actively using it.
User identity might be the hard part, because a long hash isn't very human-friendly. But perhaps that could be solved by a centralized directory authority mapping user ID hashes to Twitter-like usernames. The mappings could be cached by clients in case the directory went down or got blocked. Sort of like how PGP keyservers work, letting clients get keys when they need them and add them to their local keyring.
No, you can set up endless blogs (using Wordpress or Joomla or any other CMS with Twitter plugins), and include a twitter stream in it. You can post to twitter by email or using similar plugins.
A government cannot block all those sites.
Blocking twitter is not enough to block all content coming from and going to twitter.
But then the users have to do the same thing, preemptively finding such proxies and jumping between them. I'd guess that that would be a good enough result from the government's perspective.
And that's just read-only stuff. Post by email? DPI could drop packets containing emails addressed to Twitter, even if they're being sent through a mail server in another country. And, sure, you can proxy stuff, but again, the point here is the masses. If 95% of people are blocked from access, that would probably prevent mass protests from happening; or at least keep them from happening quickly and unexpectedly.
But besides all that, when the government cuts off the country's Internet access entirely, creating a nationwide intranet, none of those blog proxies are going to help. The only thing that is going to truly work in such a situation is peer-to-peer stuff.
This is why it is so important to create protocols for communication instead of single-point-of-failure services. While it is still possible for bad actors to interfere with traffic, it is much harder to shutdown an entire network of federated servers. In contrast, a service can be disabled by simply throwing legal papers at the person running the service (or otherwise threaten them, bribe them, etc).
> DPI could drop packets containing emails addressed
Which is why that email should have been encrypted. Even non-authenticated opportunistic encryption would make that kind of DPI much harder and more expensive.
We've had encryption for a long time, and there is absolutely no excuse for to not have encryption in all network software. Unfortunately, a lot of software has been badly negligent in their duty to keep their users safe.
> cuts off the country's Internet access entirely
...they should be left with a split network, still able to communicate internally. It is pure hubris to believe that a single service will always be available in any situation; when international links are involved, some amount of loss-of-service should be assumed. This is why email allows multiple MX records - servers fail, so build in backups, some of which can be local.
> peer-to-peer stuff
Yes, though the model to copy is federated services like email.
The power of the internet is that it IS peer-to-peer. No 3rd party has to grant authorization to listen(2) for connections or connect(2) to a remove host. This has been forgotten because of the damage that NAT does to the network (you aren't a full citizen ("peer") on the internet when you have to ask the NAT device to forward your packets.)
Now, after about a decade of failing to heed the warnings about NAT, the digital imprimatur[1] is being constructed and running proper peer to peer (no 23rd party) is harder than ever. Hopefully IPv6 can reverse this trend.
[1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
> Yes, though the model to copy is federated services like email.
I disagree. For one thing, DNS. How many average users will be able to reconfigure their systems to use a DNS server besides the one their ISP provides? And when the national government cuts off the nation's external Internet access, what good will 8.8.8.8 be?
It seems obvious to me that, for this kind of use-case, peer-to-peer, DHT-type services are what's needed. Federated is better than centralized, but it would still be easy to censor and block. Even P2P protocols could be blocked by ISPs blocking inbound connections to their customers, but barring that, it would be difficult.
The benefit of any place or tool for social activities is only tangentially related to the benefits provided by that place or tool. The value is the people that are using it, who can (and do) move all the time.
Anybody interested in the relationship between a service like twitter and the people that create it's value by using it may be interested in the talk[1] given by an admin o fark.com a few years ago, where they discuss how they almost destroyed their community ("you'll get over it") from a failure to remember why people came to their site.
If there is one lesson that Twitter or any other social media business needs to learn, it's the one discussed in talk: involve the people that use your service at least somewhat in the changes you make to the service, and absolutely don't surprise them with sudden change, or they will find some other place to hang out.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI (language warning, if that matters (it's veyr mild))
Hmm, the world needs networked communication; the specific protocol running at the endpoints isn't particularly important. TCP/IP was used because... it was already used by the people involved.
Further, the world needs easy communication; the specific mechanism to communicate isn't particularly important. Networking was used because... it was already used by the people involved.
LOL, sure as hell. Twitter was blocked in most of these countries (and Turkey too). The outcry was huge, but guess what... They 'survived'.
Twitter is just a medium. The preferred medium for some. There are countless alternatives nowadays, no one needs twitter.
Twitter is a news source not a newspaper.
While I agree, I also hate this. A Twitter trend can inspire good journalism, but it is not in and of itself journalism. Too many media sources slap a tweet on TV or on a website and call it journalism.
Twitter simply connects the event's with the journalists :)
I think he strikes a good tone in both emphasizing the importance of the work they are doing at Twitter, and how they need to do better. I think less than perfect objectivity can be forgiven.
> Per Chapter 4, Part 4, Sections 1400-1408 of the Labor Code, WARN protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring that employers give a 60-day notice to the affected employees and both state and local representatives prior to a plant closing or mass layoff.
http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WARN...
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-2F526X/853662030...
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000156459015...
I'm not a securities lawyer, but I think the basic idea is that news about the layoffs (and the associated costs) was deemed to be material information, so under reg FD it has to be released to all investors simultaneously.
For California: http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/Layoff_Services_WARN...
WARN wouldn't even apply here since the cutoff is 500 or 33% of active workforce. Twitter's cuts are below both.
It's more like "our incompetence has forced us to fire you but of course we, the incompetent ones, will stay; think of this as your opportunity to find a better company without incompetent management, good luck with that".
None of the people who got fired are like "OMG... Jack is such a great guy for firing us without so much fluff"
If anything is just good for him, and press, just for him, if anything his message basically say "We want a strong twitter and you are weak".
Corporate speak usually refers to deliberately obfuscatory language, and I see none of that in what he wrote.
Often the process then more broadly resembles a farce, with managers trying to protect their mini-empires by sabotaging others. Giving an explicit number seems to indicate that Twitter has a clear idea of exactly what they're trying to do here.
Later on in that job they handled it even worse, with a gradual attrician over several weeks of people suddenly finding out they no longer has a job, and would be paid their notice period. No idea how things went from there, since that was when I jumped ship.
(And hello! I still find it a bit odd when I see people I know commenting on Hacker News.)
That Moments is mentioned so high up in the email isn't particularly reassuring...since it means they haven't launched many other initiatives of note recently. Moments as a feature is extremely disappointing given the years of interesting discoveries that Twitter has yielded algorithmically via its, well, "Discover" tab. What's on Moments looks like a half-baked newspaper front page except when you click on an item, you go to tweets about that item instead of a full story.
I don't want to pile on the project as it is new...but it should've been given more thought and design time given how much prominence "Moments" has on the interface (it is one of four main icons on the menubar)...Nearly all of the stories are hours old...e.g. "Wave of terror attacks hits Jerusalem" and "Playboy covers up"..."FedEx truck splits in two", granted, is news to me...but not something that makes Twitter unique to me.
There's so much more potential in the Trends section...OK, maybe Twitter wants to filter out potentially visually NSFW topics like #NoBraDay...but things like #MH17 and #VMworld and #ILoveYouAboutAsMuchAs...just show me an automated feed of tweets by reputable sources (rather than spambots or random kids) so I can understand why these topics are suddenly trending without having to click through the trends tag and sort through a overwhelming timeline.
edit: that said, I like all the other products...besides core Twitter, Vine and Periscope are standouts (at least, as a consumer)...I just think that "Moments" isn't worth putting into the spotlight, unless there is literally nothing else to be proud of publicly.
How? When I click on it, it just peaks at the next picture.
Moments is a glorified image slider.
Here is the "moment" for "Wave of terror attacks hits Jerusalem"...there's only about 10 tweets there:
https://twitter.com/i/moments/653855067158614017
And here's a Twitter search for "terror attacks jerusalem"
https://twitter.com/search?q=terror%20attacks%20jerusalem&sr...
Though Fox News may not be everyone's choice of top news source, scrolling down, you'll see a great variety of tweets...maybe not as efficiently informative as the curated tweets, but I'm sure a hell of a lot more expansive and scalable.
-
While writing this comment, I came across this verge article [0] which says "For now, the tab is shown only to US Twitter users" - so if anyone else is wondering, US only. Meh.
[0] http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9457267/twitter-moments-pr...
10% is a high number, but not for a company that has never made a profit and is currently hemorrhaging money.
That's a long way of saying I doubt there are more layoffs planned. That's not to say they won't make more layoffs if they don't get their shit together.
Since this is their first round, it probably consists of an accumulated RIF list that's been made up mentally over time by each manager, containing the slackers, bums, obnoxious misfits, and anyone absurdly overpaid, as well as people who have made powerful enemies. It probably also contains people who were working on canceled projects and weren't valuable enough that another manager would fight to have them transferred instead (some may be rehired by others later anyway). Standard stuff. And as such, since Twitter hasn't come to Jesus at this point, it's a pretty small round. Later, when it becomes apparent that more of what they're doing is a drain on their very limited revenue with little or no realistic hope of any return on investment, there will be more rounds as more projects are canceled. Of course, by then, they'll have less cash available and so will need to cut even more...
Every company in a downward spiral starts by cutting fat, then muscle, and finally bone. You're correct that it's much better to cut too deep the first time and stabilize the company financially at a much smaller size before cautiously expanding, but no one does it that way. Remember, to a manager, the size of one's empire is the size of one's dick (not to mention current and future pay), and to a CEO it's the same with the size of the company. No one wants to cut more than the minimum that can possibly be justified at any given moment, which is why almost every company that cuts keeps cutting in a downward spiral until sale or bankruptcy... and thus why there's always another round, as every veteran knows.
Really nothing to see here at all.
The rest, I'm not as sure.
What percentage of 336 cuts would produce a team that is smaller and nimbler, I wonder? It sounds like engineers not on the "greatest impact" projects will be cut.
> We will honor them by doing our best to serve all the people that use Twitter.
seems a little pep talky to me for the people left.
I feel saying this would have been better:
> We will honor them with the utmost respect for each and every person. Twitter will go to great lengths to take care of each individual by providing generous exit packages and help finding a new job.
Really? Does it? I think Twitter needs a strong Twitter, shareholders need a strong Twitter even Twitter employees need it. However the world is, at best, ambivalent about Twitter, if it disappeared tomorrow a replacement would spring up within a few weeks if the world really needed a way to shotgun their messages into the ether.
So, you know, there's that.
[1] http://www.deltixlab.com/research/an-automated-trading-strat...
[2] http://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2011/TrusheimChakoumakosYendlu...
Edit: typo
You may be browsing from localhost but the rest of us has to download this HTML...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151012/22104032520/just-...
Also interesting to note that over the past year insiders have only bought 1.5m shares while offloading 12.5m.
[1] http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/ownership-summary
You might have a point if rich people's investment vehicles (like hedge funds, private equity or venture funds) owned the majority of TWTR - but they don't, as you showed.
And what happens if those asset managers lose money year after year or don't keep up with others?
/s
Many could certainly clone the Twitter service in under a weekend, and since nobody would be using it, it would certainly appear they did a good job.
What you couldn't do in a weekend is provide something to operate at the scale Twitter does, such that it could be dropped in to replace (or handle all the traffic if Twitter ceased to exist).
When you're the CEO of twitter, yes. You're not going to say anything else.
[1] https://www.atlassian.com/company
If Twitter starting taking massive cash payments from governments to filter content, it would be a strong Twitter with lots of cash, but not a strong tool to fight against anything.
But is it the best because it is better than the alternatives we would have without it is, or is it the best because its dominance in messaging prevents better tools (in terms of "the fight against censorship and ... control") from being developed or gaining traction and critical mass -- e.g., is the goal you point to really being served by a strong Twitter, or held back by it?
Everyone wants to make the world a better place
There are some things where the combination of public, easy to use, short, sms friendly are a big plus for some things. Not that twitter is the only one doing these things or that they couldn't be built on ICR.
> The team has been working around the clock to produce streamlined roadmap for Twitter,
"to produce streamlined roadmap" Really?
The correct phrase would be "to produce a streamlined roadmap." (if it were plural, you could instead use "to produce streamlined roadmaps.)
I'm normally not a Grammar Nazi, but when you're talking about drafting a short SEC filing that will be read by hundreds of thousands, declaring the fate of 8% of your workforce... I think the least you can do is make it look like you put some effort into it. Of course, my initial post has been downvoted to hell, but such is life. I probably should have actually included this explanation and disclaimer in my OP rather than expecting it to be self-evident.
Twitter is essentially one big DevOps success story / failure after another, and I have faith they can start to focus again. One motif / question I have seen in every pundit's post about Twitter as a company is why the market (up until now perhaps) has not decided Twitter's faith? If it really is the case that Twitter is a big data company, then how come 90% (random estimate) of their users are fembots / fake accounts?
Well, since you said it that way, I should assume that what comes next will not sound like a steamy pile of meandering corporate speak, right?
> The team has been working around the clock to produce streamlined roadmap for Twitter, Vine, and Periscope and they are shaping up to be strong. The roadmap is focused on the experiences which will have the greatest impact.
A roadmap focused on high-impact experiences. Got it. I hope your firings go really well, Bob.
No, it's really not.
Only on HN. <eyeroll>
http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/
Of course, given his buzzword-filled talk, those "generous exit packages" might just consist of two weeks pay as well.
+
> We will honor them by doing our best to serve all the people that use Twitter.
SYNTAX ERROR
[1]: Yes, it's pointless. Why is there no such distinction for "more"?
Just trying to help ;-)
Update: So I just googled around and learned that "were" is used for the subjunctive mood i.e. wishes/thoughts. Good to know!
[1] This is a fact.
Because English is weird. I still want two use it correctly.