Hacker News Reader

Comment by AcerbicZero | Hacker News Reader

A company selling an arguably better service than the existing solutions might be more valuable than a company selling ads to a dwindling user base?

I'm shocked, utterly shocked.

View on HN

> a company selling ads to a dwindling user base?

Twitter's userbase isn't "dwindling" (diminishing gradually in size, amount, or strength.) It's not growing as fast as shareholders might like, but its monthly active users are growing in number: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly...

I feel like while twitter user base may not be growing, it's effects on the average person's social life has diminished.

I feel like 5 years ago Twitter was really popular among st friends and we talked about things people tweeted, etc.

Since then I don't have a single friend who actively uses twitter, maybe it's that my preferences simply changed, but the overall visibility of twitter seems to be diminished.

Feel the same about every social network, and honestly the net has become "lonelier" for lack of a better word. Facebook is just people selling their junk, whether fingernail addons, kids clothing, or diet regimes. Twitter is really just people shouting into the ether, I enjoy it during college football games of collective "yay" or "nooo" moments with a few real life friends but otherwise its a high noise news feed. LinkedIn has a bizarre social aspect to it that confuses me.

I don't know, maybe its me getting older, but more digitally connected than ever and feel much less personally connected than ever except with the friends that I keep direct/group imessage conversations going with for months and years at a time.

I really feel this way too. People talk about using FB groups or Twitter or some niche social network to be connected to a community, but I haven't felt that way in ages. Not since being active on a few phpbb and vbulletin boards. More connected in a way, but it feels so impersonal or I just can't figure out how people are finding their communities in these huge networks.

Another personal example, IG direct messages aren't used that much from my experience (could be different for others or in the odd one). That few times I've been hit up or hit someone up on it, response or messages back and forth usually take forever. It kills the conversation. The only time a conversation has survived and a friendship began was when the convo quickly moved over to another medium (FBM in that case).

I honestly feel more at home commenting here than on FB. On FB, you're speaking to everyone that you know, and whatever you say will likely show up in their face. I don't want to be talking to my college buddies, great aunts, and girlfriend's friends at the same time.

I'm guessing you won't see this anymore. But your profile is empty here. I was talking about feeling like a community plus potentially making acquirances or friendships. I've never had any of that happen on HN. My profile is filled up. I'm guessing you haven't either. That doesn't really feel at home to me in the same way as the older days I'm describing.

I do get your point though of feeling at home in a general sense.

I can't imagine using Twitter as a regular person. It seems nice as a new aggregator or celebrity soap box but doesn't seem to provide much value to regular people.

I hear about announcements via twitter than then link to actual new stories and usually skip twitter entirely. Maybe I'm just not the right audience.

I would be curious to see just how many active users there are when you take all the bots out.

Same is true for most social networks. For example, Instagram is full of them.

Definitely. But anecdotally I still see a new person join IG or become active again or for the first time pretty frequently. Maybe twice a month. I barely know anyone in real life who uses Twitter anymore.

Acceleration may be dwindling... And given population (of age that uses twitter) increase, the rate of increase in twitter usage may actually dwindle even if it goes up (which I doubt.)

I'm sure twitter trump-eted growth numbers both internally and externally when they had hockey stick growth around the 2016 election.

And advertiser ROI - which was never good - is dropping. Twitter's market share of the advertising world is not enough to sustain it. Hence their attempts to move over into video, for better ROI. But it seems like it could be a move that is out of their depth. It's sort of like a fast food company that suddenly decides they can't make money on their burgers so they start selling insurance from their drive through.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com