This. I get that they want sign-ups, but it's hard to sell the service with that page.
Even when you go to a tweet from an external link when not logged in, 20% of the vertical height is taken up by a big blue "Sign up for Twitter (or log in)" thing.
Just give me the content and lure me into hitting the "Follow" button.
This was why I put together our trending search feature @ http://theenginuity.com on the front-page.
We compile a list of social trends from our indexes of social data and make it easy to instantly figure out what's going on based on your language / region settings.
If Twitter knows what everyone likes, or is talking about (especially the influencers), then that would be a good source of search results if I'm looking for something to buy or do. Its an entirely different search engine than Google or even Facebook.
I read the nytimes.com all the time. They have no idea who I am and never will. I'll never signup for an account. They still get to feed me ads.
I consume ESPN one-way. They have no idea who I am and never will. It's worth $50 +/- billion to Disney (per Forbes and others).
Why can't Twitter maximize that potential? Most of Google's global users don't have or don't use a G account, and are not signed in when they search (even if Google builds a profile on them anyway). That doesn't detract from Google's ability to monetize based on interest and intent. Twitter's intent will never be as valuable, but it wouldn't take much given we're talking about Google's intent being worth $100 billion in advertising sales in the near future.
My point being, perhaps Twitter's biggest mistake is in trying to be Facebook and worrying about users. Instead they should focus on maximizing output of high quality sources, and boosting total consumption.
Edit: I'm confused by the downvotes. I wasn't trying to turn it into a discussion about whether paywalls are right or wrong, I was just drawing out that either the parent was not reading nytimes all the time, or they were evading the paywall, or they were paying for access. They're talking about how Twitter should get value from giving readers access and using nytimes as an example - but it seems like a terrible example, given that nytimes actively tries to prevent people from reading more than 10 articles/mo for free.
How do you know you're not being tracked through cookies on other sites that you have logged into, or ad networks that interact with those sites? When I load nytimes.com and view the network trace, I see about 50 different domains appear there:
pagead2.googlesyndication.com
s.tagsrvcs.com
<number>.fls.doubleclick.net
px.dynamicyield.com
beacon.krxd.net
pixel.tapad.com
c1.rfihub.net
tags.w55c.net
p.rfihub.com
secure.quantserve.com
d.xp1.ru4.com
...
1) use Firefox 2) use NoScript, don't allow Javascript on NY Times or any other domains it pulls in 3) set Firefox -> Preferences -> Privacy -> Clear history when Firefox closes -> clear all items except browsing history
To access NY Times (or really any website) first QUIT Firefox. Then restart. Now there are no cookies, caches, etc in existence. Then when you go to nytimes.com, all those other domains don't see any existing cookies. It's all new. Let them track you all they want.
When done reading, quit Firefox. Now none of the domains mentioned above can track you via cookies. Their tracking has accomplished nothing. They've all seen your single session on nytimes.com and nothing else!
Side effect from using NoScript is no paywall limits on number of articles.
One possible complaint is that I clear caches every time I exit Firefox. But I never notice any delays when starting, using a decent speed connection means the caches reload quickly. Also, I happen to have a knack for remembering passwords, so I don't mind re-entering on those sites that need them. But nytimes.com does not need a password in the scenario I just presented. (BTW I rarely re-use passwords across different sites).
I can still be tracked by IP address. Not much I can do about that other than force Comcast to give me a new one every once in a while. But that's merely a palliative, since a determined tracker can probably reestablish who I am from other information (c.f. panopticlick.eff.org).
My next step will be to get Squid running on my firewall, to help sanitize my HTTP headers, etc. But I've been meaning to do that for at least 10 years and haven't gotten around to it yet. So my paranoia does have its limits. :)