Tag: Twitter

Of Group Creation & Thought Leaders #Startup

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

One of major issues of Usenet when it existed as a major online force was newsgroup creation. If you were to aspire to create a service that would be as large as, say, Twitter, you would have to deal with that issue as well. To me, it seems the solution would be to give Verified Account holders the exclusive ability to create new newsgroups. That would fix that issue quite well.

You would have the ability to have lots of newsgroups with a very specific subject that would be attached to a specific thought leader. There obviously would be some redundancy caused by this, but I really like this concept. It’s really strong and scales well. It also gives the opportunity to lots of value added features that I think people would really enjoy.

It’s just a really cool concept. It’s a really interesting way of fixing the creation of new newsgroups problem. Of course, there are any number of other UX issues to be addressed. You want to make the service feature rich, but you don’t want to make it so complex that it overwhelms people.

How To Found A ‘Twitter Killer’ Based On Usenet & IRC Concepts

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It is pretty obvious that Twitter is a right-time-right-place kind of service. Modern life needs something like Twitter, so, for the time being, it’s a “success,” if, by “success” you mean a service pretty much everyone hates but only uses because there’s no option other than the insane Gab.

So, as a thought experiment, how might found a service with potentially explosive growth that would crush Twitter — and to a limited extent Reddit. Reddit, in my belief, is kinda sorta Usenet but not nearly as much fun as Usenet was and I think it’s UX it’s a complete mess. Though I’ve heard they’re going to revamp it, so maybe much of what I’m griping about will become moot sooner rather than later.

Having said all that, let’s begin.

What I would do is, study what made IRC and Usenet popular 20 years ago and then, from the ground up, work to not only fix the problems with Twitter but also make the service as accommodating to advertising as possible. Usenet died, in large part because no one could figure out how to use to advertise goods and services without it being spam.

Anyway, after I spent a little time doing that, I would establish a very small limited-invite service that would be used to get the kinks out. The service would, in large part, be a Web implementation of any number of great Usenet clients that used to exist. Of course, it would be on just one Website so you wouldn’t have the problem of distributed computing that Usenet had. (There was lag in distributing posts which no one would accept in today’s fast-paced world.)

After I had done that, I would a small group of thought leaders and celebrities on Twitter and give them invites. I would give them some time to get used to the service’s new UX and then explain to them that since they were verified account holders, they would have the exclusive ability to create new Groups that would within them have Discussions. After giving them some more time to figure out exactly what that meant, I would then give them a limited number of invites that they could give friends. I would think slowly grow out the service in such a way that I think it would have explosive growth. Huge growth in a very quick amount of time. Like, early Facebook growth.

Now, of course, once the service got the buzz I would expect it to get, the major online players would either want to co-op it or buy it. I would politely decline because, well, they suck. 🙂 I just can’t see Twitter getting its act together to co-op the features of this proposed service. Facebook has a completely different vision and the one service that would probably be the direct competitor — Reddit — has an established user-based that would not take kindly to too dramatic a shake up in the UX.

You wouldn’t even need that much money to begin with, I don’t think. You could probably accomplish a lot with crowdfunding. But no one likes me and I can’t code and don’t want to learn so this is just a daydream. It’s a very compelling daydream, but a daydream nonetheless.

Of Thought Leaders, Content Providers & A Service Based On Usenet Concepts

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some basic problems exist online that a new discussion service devoted to updating the concepts of Usenet and IRC could fix. The first major problem is content providers continue to struggle to make money online. I believe if you designed a service based on the concepts of Usenet you might not be able to fix the problem but you could definitely ameliorate it.

I say this because what if you came to an profit sharing agreement with major online content providers so they could shoot out their content into this new service with all their ads intact. People would be able to inline edit the content, pick it apart in discussion and still be exposed to all the ads from the original content provider. This is pretty powerful I think. If, say, there was breaking news and the Washington Post or New York Times shot the story in its entirety into this discussion service, all the ads associated with the story would be seen as people were engaging actively with the content. This, in a sense, would take blogging to the next level.

I think that’s pretty cool.

Meanwhile, there is another problem: thought leaders are really growing tired of Twitter. It seems pretty obvious that if you gave them a better option they would bolt Twitter and bring their community and its collected fans along with them. If you told celebrities and other thought leaders that you gave them a service that gave them exclusive administrative goodies they probably would be extremely pleased. Giving verified account holders the exclusive ability create and manage newsgroups (or whatever they’re called in the service) would attract them in droves and be the basis of the new service’s initial success.

There are seemingly an endless different ways you could use this service when it comes to thought leaders. Imagine a major musician dropping a track into the service in such a way that people could discuss it between themselves with significantly more engagement than the typical tweet. Or, hell, for that matter, you could put an entire podcast into the service and people could debate the podcast with great gusto. I really like that one.

Anyway, as I keep saying, I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn. It’s just fun to write about this. Though, if you want to see me talk about this at great length, look at my Instagram account.

Yet More Idle Mulling Of A ‘Twitter Killer’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have discussed this at great length, but it does seem to me that the time is ripe for a “Twitter Killer.” Twitter is a mess. It was never designed for discussion and pretty much it’s completely useless. It serves a cultural purpose and as such we force it to work, but in real terms it’s completely useless.

The ironic thing is, 20 years ago, people had online tools that were significantly better than Twitter. I speak, of course, of Usenet and IRC. Now, some of the functionality of Usenet exists with Reddit, but it’s so poorly implemented as to be useless at least for me. I have heard rumblings that they’re going to revamp their interface, so maybe some of my complaints will be addressed by Reddit sooner rather than later. Time will tell, I guess.

But 20 years ago, Usenet was a public discussion system that, at its height in about 1996, was a large-scale discussion system that was feature rich and allowed for any number of different use-cases that simply aren’t found with Twitter. You had full-page posts. You had robust threading. You had subdivision of topics. Meanwhile, with IRC — or AOL Chatrooms, for that matter — you had massive live chat taking place. Now, the only place you can find IRC-type functionality is with enterprise Slack.

Anyway, the point is, I feel that while Silicon Valley is mentally masturbating about bitcoin and VR & AR that someone, somewhere should design a service for the masses that draws directly from Usenet and IRC. Maybe not a direct copy, but something similar that is easy to use and yet has the functionality of those two services in the same place. I have gone into great detail about my vision for this on my Instagram account, but I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn, so it’s highly unlikely I would be involved with anything should it ever happen.

I feel as though this is ever-more-urgent now that Trump is president and he is a creature of Twitter. Maybe if we killed Twitter, replaced it with something a bit more feature rich, then the service in itself would in some way mitigate Trump as a media animal. Maybe I’m being delusional, maybe I’m not.

I have given this a lot of thought, and to me, what you do is you give Verified Account holders a little bit more power than the average user. Maybe they, alone, could create topic subdivisions, which I call “Groups.” Within Groups would be “Discussions.” Discussions, depending on my mood, would be something like live chat that had a feature rich option to use video and entire page posts. Or something. Something where you had the best of both IRC and Usenet with a dash of video thrown in for good measure.

Regardless, I just really like talking about this because Trump worries me and anything that might take a bite out of his media ability is something that would make all of us safer. But, like I said, I don’t have any hope. Unless I fall into a huge amount of money and can do this my self, nothing will come of it. Oh well.

How I Would Fix Social Media & Save The Republic #Resist

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have gone into great detail here and on my Instagram account about my concept for a new social media platform. But this post is about what, specifically, we need to do to fix the obviously broken social media model.

First and foremost, we need to manage bots and trolls better. I would go so far as to say that if you built a better mousetrap and, in essence, required all your users to be, like, real people and stuff, that that would go a long way to fixing the problems associated with modern social media.

The reason Twitter is such a shit hole is they willfully facilitate bots and trolls’ use of the service. If you built a service from the ground up that made it difficult for bots to use the service as well as had an aggressive, proactive management of trolls I think you would win over a lot people who feel overwhelmed by Twitter’s shit experience.

Another thing I would do is give verified account holders on a service a sense of stakeholdership by giving them added rights and responsibilities. In my fevered imagination, you might give them the ability to make Groups that would be the cornerstone of the service. Theses Groups would be divided into Discussions that would be a mixture of the old AOL Chat Rooms and the old Usenet news groups. It’s a start, at least. Twitter wasn’t designed for discussion and if you built a service from the ground up for just that then I think it would be a success. Yes, Reddit exists, but I don’t like the interface and you would need a service designed more as a Twitter Killer than a Reddit Killer. Reddit does its job quite effectively, while Twitter, alas, does not.

It’s weird that it’s so obvious that you could build an effective competitor to Twitter doing these basic things and…yet…no one seems all that interested in doing it. Probably because the nerds in Silicon Valley are now abuzz over AR and VR. Social media is a dead issue to them and they just don’t see the point. It’s a mature market and they see no challenge.

And, yet, Twitter is so bad and such a threat to the Republic that something needs to be done. I would do it myself, but I have no money, can’t code and don’t want to learn.

Twitter & The End Of The American Republic

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Something really needs to be done about Twitter. Twitter is horrible. What makes it so bad is seems to aid and abet the most extreme voices being heard at the cost of more moderate ones. It’s all very sad. And, at least in the near term, there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it.

America suffered a terrorist attack of sorts last year during the 2016 election cycle and we’ve done, in real terms, to address it. This is so because of a complex assortment of problems in the American political system which in historical context can leave one aghast.

The key take away is that in the short term we’re screwed. Because of gerrymandering and a continuing meme war on the part of Russian trolls and bots, not to mention Donald Trump’s unhinged yet oddly effective divide and conquer government style there simply is nothing we can do for the next few years. It could be a decade before anything is done, in real terms, to fix these systemic problems.

Really, if we wanted to fix one of the problems associated with our bizarre political system right now, we would get Google — or the US Government for that matter — to buy Twitter. Have the Federal government buy Twitter and implement some basic, much needed reforms to the service. Or, really, shut it down. Maybe if we shut Twitter down something much better would pop up to replace it.

It’s obvious that we need something like Twitter. It’s just that Twitter does such a bad job of service it’s technological and media space that it’s doing real damage to our politics and civil society. Given the stakes, I don’t think it would be too much to ask for it to be a lot harder to make a Twitter account. Maybe everyone on Twitter should have to be verified?

I still like the idea I’ve long proposed where you might have “Groups” in a hypothetical replacement service that could only be created by verified accounts. Within these Groups you’d have threaded “Discussions” that anyone could participate in. It would be kind like a mish-mash Reddit and Twitter, but really simply an update of the old Usenet concept. But, really, the point is to make it more difficult for bots and paid trolls to attack the United States political system during a campaign cycle.

But there just doesn’t seem to be anything, in the short term, that we can do about the problem. Nothing at all. We’re screwed. Nothing is going to happen because no one wants to do anything about it. If we don’t do something about it, however, we run a real risk irrevocable damaging being inflicted on the American Republic. Now that it’s been established that the Russians can screw around with our election system, what’s to stop some other nation from following in their footsteps?

Really, at this point, nothing. The American Right is so callow, Vichy and power hungry while the American Left is so busy imploding that in real terms there is nothing that can or will happen in the short term. We’re stuck with what we got for two, four, even eight more years at the least. We need some leadership and I don’t see that happening anytime soon, sorry to say.

Talk To Me Internet: We Need To Do Something About Twitter

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It’s pretty obvious that we are going to have a repeat of 2016’s political catastrophe if don’t do something about Twitter’s bot problem. But, alas, it’s just not a priority for us as a nation right now. The Russians will come back eventually and keep throwing elections to the politician of their choice until The Powers That be finally, finally have a vested interested to do something

How long that will be, exactly, is anyone’s guess.

Could be a long, long, long, long time. Decades.

It would be cool to think Google would buy Twitter and do something really cool with it or that, hell, maybe the government would buy it. But, alas, neither one of those things is ever going to happen and we’re just screwed.

Here’s a bonus Talk To Me Internet:

Talk To Me Internet: Some Musing About Writing A Novel Versus A Screenplay

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The interesting thing about writing a novel as opposed to a screenplay is how much more of a community there is with a screenplay. I have tried — and failed — to write a screenplay in the past and people got really excited. Writing a novel, meanwhile, is a much more solitary venture. You have to think deeply and reflect on the universe you’ve created because you can’t just rely upon your director to show it for you.

Meanwhile, I still think Ilana Glazer would be a great Bond Girl. She’s perfect for such a role. It would put a modern twist on a pretty traditional role. Additionally, I think Twitter should do away with Periscope altogether and put all its features in the main Twitter app.

The Resistance Needs An App To Use Instead Of Twitter

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now, I have gone into great detail about my personal vision for a “Twitter killer,” but because I don’t have any money, can’t code and don’t really want to learn, it’s just a daydream. But I can, at least, give some sense of what I think would be effective for The Resistance when it comes to defeating Donald Trump at his own game.

We need a service like Twitter, only better. We need a service that encourages longer, more in depth discussions. Now, I am WELL AWARE that Reddit exists. But I find Reddit too inward looking, difficult to use and from a design standpoint, kind of ugly.

So, I want an app that maybe is a fusion of the old IRC with the old Usenet. That probably makes no sense to most people, but it will to a few people. I have mapped out that vision in great detail on Instagram, but no one has taken me up on it and I should probably just focus on writing my novel.

Anyway.

Civil Cold War: Steve Scalise’s Alexandria Shooting In The Age Of Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The more I think about it, the more it seems pretty obvious that what a growing number of people are seeing as a “Civil Cold War” is really more a president’s era is a reflection of his or her personality. Since Donald Trump is a nut job, we have crazy thing happening on a nearly daily basis.

Let me take a moment to note that apparently Shakespeare In The Park has been doing updated Julius Caesar productions with the president of the moment filling in for the traditional depiction of Caesar for something like a decade and only this time around was there a problem. That’s example of what I’m talking about. When the president and his followers think the world is out to get them, they warp the world around them.

So, let’s address the tragic events in Alexandria. It seems as though there is a lot of “fake news” floating about the event. We don’t know for sure if the shooter asked if the participants in the softball match were Democrats or Republicans yet. We just don’t know.

But that hasn’t stopped people from assuming the worst, from freaking out. Then they turn to the dumb thing Kathy Griffin did with the squatty potty or Shakespeare In The Park and say, “Look, look what those damn liberals did.” It makes you wonder where all that rage is coming from, what existential issue is causing people to hate liberals so much. What do they want, for everyone to be forced to watch Keith Urban videos until the End Times?

I guess I think maybe there are two things at work that are feeding off of each other. On one hand, you have long-term issues in the collective American psyche. People are on the Right have gone beyond the surreal in their rage against liberals and the center-Left. That rage is such that it leaves me scratching my head. Meanwhile, the personality of the Dear Leader, Donald Trump, only feeds into this horrible situation and takes American civil society to the breaking point.

The combination of those two things has resulted in the Cold Civil War we are now in. And, sad to say, this Cold Civil War will grind on for as long as Trump is president. The complete civil meltdown in the United States right now between Trumplandia and The Resistance will go on for as long as Trump is president. And given how insanely conservative Mike Pence is, this era could go on much longer, and have much more devastating consquences than any of us ever imagined.

There’s no easy answer. That combination of general trends in our nation’s political history combined with Trump’s personal quirks will haunt us for decades. These are intractable problems. So, the events in Alexandra are tragic and unfortunate and I regret that they happened. But they could be the tip of the ice burg. We could see a smattering of such events here and there for four or eight more years.

I have suggested before that one way to fix these problem would be through technology. Maybe if Silicon Valley took just enough time to stop funding AR and VR to look into fixing the problems associated with Twitter with a new startup that did just that, maybe we could mitigate some of the issues we’re experiencing now. I have gone into great detail about my vision for such a service using Instagram, but I will give you some general thoughts now because it’s relevant.

We need a service that helps give content providers the feeling that they have a vested interest in using the service. So, in that sense, I could see this as an opportunity to disrupt the newspaper business as well as ameliorate some of the titanic issues facing the American Republic right now. Meanwhile, you would make at the core of such a service threaded discussion based on full pages posts. This may sound just like Reddit, but the vision I have is more an update of the old Usenet form of online discussion than anything else.

I propose this because maybe if a social media start up assumed you would write more than just 140 characters, and you did so in the context of a threaded discussion, maybe, just maybe, things would be a little bit better than they are now. A man can hope, right?

But we really need to address the origin of this Cold Civil War we’re in. If we engage each other instead of throwing rhetorical shit at each other, then maybe we can rise above this horrible situation we’re in. But, alas, I fear not until Trumplandia is defeated politically will that happen. Trump is simply too powerful right now and that power grows every time there is something outrageous that happens that divides people. Trump was voted in because he promised change and he’s doing just that.

But not for the better. Not at all for the better.

Shelton Bumgarner is the Editor and Publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He can be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.