Twitter vs. X: Product Lessons For Startup Founders | The Breakdown
发布时间 2024-11-21 15:08:34 来源
How do you know if your users are getting value from your product? It might be really easy just to say, well, if they're watching more content on Twitter, that must be good. But yeah, me watching a bunch of fistfight videos, not what I actually want. If you're optimizing for a single metric to the exclusion of all other factors, you're probably going to lead yourself down one of these rabbit holes. This is where I think founder CEOs do have an advantage. They have the kind of moral authority of like, I started this company and this is what I believe, and this is where we're going.
如何判断用户是否从您的产品中获得了价值？直接说，如果他们在 Twitter 上观看更多内容，那一定不错，这么说可能很容易。但如果我一直在看一堆打架的视频，这并不是我真正想要的。如果您在优化某个指标时忽略了其他所有因素，您可能会陷入这样的误区。这也是我认为创始人兼 CEO 具有优势的地方。他们有一种道德权威感，比如：“我是这家公司的创始人，这就是我的信念，这就是我们要前进的方向。”
Welcome to a new series we're doing here at YC, looking at some of the most popular consumer products from across the internet and giving you our unvarnished thoughts. Tom and I both have a bunch of experience building products that a lot of consumers have used, and we thought it'd be interesting to just kind of like dive in and take apart some of the most popular products that you all probably use. So to start with, we're going to explore Twitter or what is it now called? X. X. X. Yeah, Twitter versus X, and what has happened over the last year or two under new ownership, let's euphemistically call it.
欢迎来到YC的新系列节目。在这个系列中，我们将考察互联网上一些最受欢迎的消费产品，并给出我们的真实看法。Tom和我都有丰富的产品开发经验，我们的产品曾被大量消费者使用过。我们觉得深入分析那些你可能正在使用的热门产品会很有趣。首先，我们将探讨Twitter，或者现在叫什么来着？哦，对，X。X。X。是的，Twitter对比X，以及在新管理团队接手的过去一两年里发生了什么变化，我们可以用一种委婉的说法来描述这些变化。
So where should we start? I think there's a ton of things we could talk about, obviously here. And the timing is right. This is like a very perfect moment to talk about Twitter. I'm sure a lot of people are using Twitter these days. By far, the biggest change that I have seen in Twitter over the last year or so is this shift from a chronological-ish feed of topics that you have expressed and you want to follow to now kind of like more of a TikTok feed of stuff that you might be engaging with.
那么我们应该从哪里开始呢？我觉得有很多话题可以聊，显然我们现在的时机非常合适。这正是讨论推特的好时机。我相信如今很多人都在使用推特。我在过去一年左右看到推特最大的变化就是，它从一个你表达过兴趣并想要关注的主题按时间顺序排列的动态，转变为更像抖音那样的动态，展示一些你可能会感兴趣的内容。
Yeah, and really explicitly, I used to see, like Twitter used to feel like a left-leaning. I mean, I'm a moderate to left-leaning person. The content was sort of left-leaning politics. And now I just seem to get like, MAGA rally after MAGA rally. Same. Which is sort of, you know, fine. I presumed it always existed, but I just never saw it and I don't think I've engaged with it. In a sense, it's sort of imperceptible. You know, it's not like a button has changed or the color scheme has changed, but just somehow the content has quietly morphed in a way that is becoming more and more evident.
对，以前我总觉得 Twitter 是偏左的。我自己是中间偏左的人，那时候平台上的内容大多是左倾政治观点。而现在，我感觉自己看到的内容好像全是 MAGA 集会（特朗普的支持者活动）。这种变化还是可以接受的，我猜这些内容一直都在，只是我以前没注意到，也没参与过。某种意义上说，这种变化是难以察觉的。没有哪个按钮变了，也没有什么色彩方案变了，但内容似乎默默地改变了，现在这种变化越来越明显了。
Yeah, on that topic in particular, to be fair, I think Elon explicitly said, when you're using Twitter, you should feel equally bad if you're on the far left or on the far right. And perhaps he has achieved that, I don't know. But at least in my own usage of the product, I'm sure that my engagement is up and my happiness when I go and resume my life is lower. Totally. Totally. And that's. I absolutely agree. Now I see way more videos of like some random fight in Mexico City or someone get smacked in the face by something or like random cat videos. Stuff is like, you know, it gets the dopamine hit going or something, but I don't feel like I've learned anything or like engaged with someone who's taught me something.
在那个话题上，说实话，我觉得埃隆明确表示过，当你使用推特时，无论你是极左还是极右，你都应该感到一样糟糕。或许他已经实现了这一点，我不太清楚。但至少从我使用推特的体验来看，虽然我的参与度上升了，但每当我放下手机回归现实生活时，我的幸福感却降低了。完全同意。我现在看到更多的视频，比如墨西哥城的随机斗殴，或者有人被什么东西打到脸上，还有各种随机的猫咪视频。这些内容会刺激多巴胺，但我并不觉得自己学到了什么东西，也没有和提升我的人进行互动。
Correct. So why does this happen? Why are they doing this? Well, it's tricky. When a team and a product manager has a number to work towards, and in this case, like dwell time or engagement or number of minutes each user uses a server, uses a service, like a well-meaning product team, in my experience, tends to optimize and optimize and optimize for that single number. Almost without regard for harder to measure stuff like taste or like quality or educational content or I don't know.
好的，所以这是为什么会发生呢？他们为什么要这样做呢？嗯，这个问题有点复杂。当一个团队和产品经理需要朝着某个目标努力时，比如像用户停留时间、参与度或每个用户使用某项服务的分钟数等指标，根据我的经验，一个用心良苦的产品团队往往会不断优化、再优化，只为了提高这个指标。几乎完全不考虑那些更难以量化的东西，比如口味、质量、教育内容等等。
What do you think? Yeah. You bring up, I think, the critical point, which is how do you know if your users are getting value from your product? Yeah. It might be really easy just to say, well, if they're watching more content on Twitter, that must be good. Yeah. They're choosing to do it. So of course it's good. But yeah, me watching a bunch of fistfight videos is not what I actually want. Even though rooted in my lizard brain somewhere, I'm going to keep watching them. Totally.
你怎么看？对，你提出了关键点，那就是你怎么知道用户是否从你的产品中获得了价值？是的。可能很容易就说，如果他们在 Twitter 上观看更多内容，那一定是件好事。毕竟，他们自己选择观看。所以当然是好的。但是，我不停地观看打架视频并不是我真正想要的。虽然从某种原始本能来看，我可能会一直看下去。完全同意。
And when your business model is predicated on advertisers and selling like seconds of video roll, sure, the more hours your users spend on the site, theoretically, you should be getting higher ad spend. Whereas there are business models like Google famously who aim to get you off the site as quickly as possible. You're getting value if you did a search and the first search was so good, you click the first link and you disappear. Correct.
当你的商业模式依赖于广告商，并通过视频播放时长来盈利时，理论上讲，你的用户在网站上花费的时间越多，广告收入就应该越高。而像谷歌这样著名的公司则采用不同的商业模式，他们希望用户能尽快离开网站。如果你进行了一次搜索，第一个搜索结果非常准确，你点击第一个链接，然后就不再继续停留在网站上了，这表明你获得了价值。这就是它的商业策略所在。
The counter argument though I would make to that is if I am highly engaged in content that ultimately I really don't like, long-term retention will be poorer. And so eventually, even if your business model is ads and you're getting me to spend a bunch of time on the site, I'm going to eventually stop using it or I'll switch to something else. And then you'll get to the end of the time, the quality of the service and the desirability goes and your best users churn and go somewhere else.
我会提出的反对观点是，如果我对一个内容非常投入，但实际上并不喜欢，那么从长远来看，我的留存率会降低。即便你的商业模式是通过广告让我在网站上花费大量时间，最终我还是会停止使用，或者转去其他平台。到那时，服务质量和吸引力都会下降，你最好的用户也会流失到其他地方。
So let's talk about if you're going to go down a path like Twitter has gone down, or I should say X has gone down, where you move to this algorithmic feed and it just figures things out. Sometimes you'll get users that are in a bad state like I was a few weeks ago, where I just felt like every time I use Twitter, it was bad and yet I kept using it. And everybody said, oh, you're doing it wrong. You need to go and click the little dot dot dot button and say, not interested in this post, which I did. And it was very effective. But like, should the product designers make that more explicit?
所以，让我们来谈谈如果你决定走一条像推特（或者应该说X）所走的道路，也就是使用算法推荐信息流，并让它自动为你挑选内容。有时用户会陷入不好的状态，就像我几周前那样，感觉每次使用推特都很糟糕，但仍然不停地使用。大家都说哦，你用得不对，你需要去点击那个小点点点按钮，然后选择“不感兴趣”，我照做了，确实很有效。但产品设计师是否应该把这个功能设计得更显眼一些呢？
Yeah. Now is probably a good time to actually dive into the Twitter feed and take a look at it. This is my Twitter feed. I hope there's nothing too embarrassing. The first, the first item is this tweet from a guy called Massimo. I actually do follow him. His tweets are generally pretty good, but it's a sand castle maker, I guess. And if we scroll down, what do we got? Some political stuff. We've got some random soup. What is this?
好的。现在可能是个好时机来看看这个推特动态。这是我的推特动态，希望没有什么太尴尬的东西。第一条是来自一个叫Massimo的人的推文。我确实关注他，他的推文通常都不错，但我猜你可以说他是一个沙堡制造者。如果我们往下滚，会看到什么呢？一些政治内容，还有一些随意的东西。这个是什么？
The thing I really notice is like a bunch of, just like political videos, I'm just not really interested in. What percent of the world's population is white? What is this? You cut like, why am I seeing this? So what you're saying is I have to go to these three little buttons. Yes. And if you click not interested in this post, it will, I believe, eventually have you stop seeing that. Okay. So I don't need to mute or block. I'm just like, no, but here's a great product design question.
我注意到的一件事情是，我总是看到一堆政治视频，但我对这些真的不感兴趣。比如，世界上白种人大约占多少人口？这是什么？你切到这些内容，为什么我看到这个？所以你的意思是，我要点击这三个小按钮吗？是的。如果你点击“不感兴趣”，最终你会停止看到这些内容。好的，那我就不用静音或屏蔽了。还有个好的产品设计问题。
Like they've now given you many tools to potentially solve your problem. Yeah. And I just don't know what I'm saying. Okay. Not interested. Fine. So, you know, I was thinking of all these things like this, like creating a game where the screen shot, the screenshot I found here, I was trying to figure out what do I do. And I came upon this Reddit thread. How do I stop Twitter from showing me random bullshit in my feed? But yeah, this is basically like the instructions off product on how to use the product.
就像他们现在给了你很多工具来潜在地解决你的问题一样。是的。不过，我不知道我在说什么。好吧，不感兴趣。那么，你知道的，我在想这些事情，比如说，创建一个游戏，我在这里找到了一个截图，然后我试图弄明白该怎么做。然后我发现了一个Reddit帖子，上面讨论的是如何阻止Twitter在我的信息流中展示随机的无聊内容。但总的来说，这就像是产品说明书，教你如何使用产品。
Yeah. When people need to record long videos telling other people how to use your product, you probably don't have something wrong. of it is top down trying to drive more engagement. The question is, where does it go and how they thought through that? And so it's perhaps useful to look at history and see the history of social networks and how this has played out for each of them. And so if we start with like Facebook, let's say, when Facebook started, there was no newsfeed.
好的。当人们需要录制长视频来教别人如何使用你的产品时，可能并不是你的产品真有问题。这可能是因为从上而下的策略试图推动更多的用户参与。问题在于：它将走向何方，以及他们是如何思考这个过程的。因此，可能有必要回顾历史，看一下社交网络的发展历程，以及这种情况在每个平台上的表现。如果我们从例如Facebook开始讲起，Facebook创建之初是没有新闻推送功能的。
It was your personal wall. You could post content there. We're aging ourselves now. Probably the single biggest change that Facebook spoke the product ever made for the better was moving to this newsfeed where basically, anytime someone would modulate their wall, it would show you the content that you had chosen to see. Yeah. So instead of having to go and creep on each individual person, just put it all there. It was content that you had already expressed that you wanted to see.
这是你个人的墙，你可以在上面发布内容。我们现在回想起来可能有些让自己显老。Facebook 最大的一次改变就是引入了“新闻源”功能，这个改变极大地优化了产品体验。新闻源会自动展示你选择关注的内容。因此，你不必一个个去查看他人的页面，所有你希望看到的内容都会集中展示在那里。
People you followed and brought it to you. Right. That made a lot of sense. There was a huge uproar at the time, though, if you remember. Yes. There were protests outside the Facebook office, but every single metric was way up. Yeah. And that's probably indicative of any consumer product change. You change something that people are used to. You're going to get millions and millions of people screaming about it, whether it's good or bad.
你关注的人带来了这个变化。对，这很有道理。不过，如果你还记得的话，当时引起了很大的轰动。是的，Facebook办公室外甚至还有抗议活动，但所有指标却大幅度上升。这可能就是任何消费者产品改变的一个特点。你对人们习惯的东西做了改变，不论好坏，都会有成千上万的人表达不满。
So anyway, Facebook made this change. But then what happened? Then Facebook got really popular and my mom joined and my sister joined and all these people that I don't really want to keep in touch with joined. And so the Facebook newsfeed got a little deluded for me. Totally. And then what happened? Instagram came along and it was a new network. It was a different type of content, but I think the biggest difference is the network was different.
所以呢，Facebook 做出了这个改变。但然后发生了什么呢？Facebook 变得非常受欢迎，我妈妈加入了，我姐姐也加入了，还有一些我其实不太想保持联系的人也加入了。所以对我来说，Facebook 的动态消息就有点杂乱无章了。之后又发生了什么呢？Instagram 出现了，这是一个新的社交网络。虽然内容类型不同，但我认为最大的区别在于网络本身的不同。
And that was great. It was the people I wanted to follow. Yeah. It was my actual friend. The adopters again, rather than this broader expanded social group. Right. But then what happened? Everybody else joined? I started following brands. It was interesting for a while. But then in the drive for engagement, they just started putting more stuff in my feed that I didn't really want to watch.
这真的很棒。我关注的是我真正想关注的人。是的，是我真正的朋友，而不是那些更广泛的社交圈。没错。但是后来发生了什么呢？其他所有人都开始加入。我也开始关注一些品牌。刚开始还挺有趣的。但后来为了提高参与度，他们开始在我的信息流中加入越来越多我并不想看的内容。
And now I open Instagram and it's like approximately zero photos of my friends and just kind of random clickbait. Yeah, totally. So it goes from this tight-knit social community. People you're seeing every day, you're engaging with their photos. And then it sort of broadens out how did we get from a small social network of my friends to this like just engagement base? Yes.
现在我打开Instagram，几乎看不到我朋友的照片，看到的都是一些莫名的点击诱饵。是的，确实如此。平台从一个紧密联系的社交社区──每天都能看到朋友并互动──变成了一个更广泛、更注重用户参与度的空间。我们是如何从一个由我的朋友组成的小社交网络变成这样的呢？
And TikTok, the most recent one, I think just skipped straight to the end game. Total speed. Which is like, let's just show all the possible content in the world and let the algorithms figure out what the human brain wants to see. Yeah. And it feels like a deeply unsatisfying experience. You're just empty calories, perhaps. So yeah, what can people learn from this?
翻译为中文：
抖音作为最新的平台，我认为它直接跳到了终局。这是一个完全追求速度的平台。它的理念就是：我们来展示世界上所有可能的内容，然后让算法去判断人脑想看什么。是的，这种体验让我感觉非常不满足，就像是空洞的热量。所以，人们能从中学到什么呢？
I would say, what I would try to encourage product builders to think about is like, what problem are you really trying to solve in the world? If it's born like being bored, then TikTok maybe is an awesome product to solve that. If the product you're trying to build is like connection between real people, then probably you need to very explicitly fight against this urge to just drive more engagement. Totally. And the sort of understanding that human communities are based around Dunbar's number. You can only really know 150 people. And so a social network that kind of constrained itself to that smaller group might be really interesting. But then you have to try in a different way to monetize because you're not getting as many eyeballs as me. Hours of viewership, therefore your ad revenue goes down and shelled. A pressure ultimately pushes you towards his algorithmic feed.
我想说的是，我鼓励那些开发产品的人思考一下，你真正想在这个世界上解决什么问题？如果是为了解决无聊的问题，那么抖音（TikTok）可能是一个不错的产品。如果你想开发的产品是促进人与人之间的真实连接，那么可能需要明确地抵制单纯追求更高参与度的冲动。同时，我们需要理解人类社群是基于邓巴数字的，你最多只能真正认识150个人。因此，一个将用户群体限制在这样小规模的社交网络可能会很有趣。但是，你需要用不同的方法来实现盈利，因为你无法获得那么多的关注度和长时间的观看，这样你的广告收入就会减少，最终可能会迫使你走向算法驱动的信息流。
All right. So you're Elon, what should you do? I don't know. I don't know if he bought as a commercial concern, really, but political influence or on a whim as a joke. I don't really know. Yeah. I think if I were in charge, the number one thing I would do is I think the idea of an algorithmic feed where it tries to sort the content, the universe of content that you might want to see, sort it per your interest. I think that makes a ton of sense. The introduction of a lot of entropy content is what I would call it. Content that like maybe I want to see, but very likely I don't want to see like the fist fights and the car crashes. I think that needs to be done much more judiciously and much clearer ways for users to give feedback about what they want and don't want.
好的。那么，如果你是埃隆（马斯克），你该怎么做？我也不知道。他收购公司可能并不是出于商业目的，而是为了政治影响力，或者只是出于一时兴起。我真的不确定。是的，如果我是负责人，我会首先做的一件事就是，我认为根据用户兴趣来排序内容的算法推荐流非常有意义。对于那些我可能想看但很可能不想看的内容，比如打架和车祸的视频，我称之为“无序内容”，需要更审慎地引入。还需要更明确的方式让用户反馈他们的喜好，表示想看或不想看的内容。
Yeah, because as you said earlier, there are these ways to curate Twitter. And actually it does seem to be pretty effective. You spend five or 10 minutes telling it what you like and you don't like and your feed gets better. Another way I tried was see these kind of curated lists up top. So you've got your obviously your following tab, which is people. Some people like it. Some people don't. There are these lists kind of pre-made lists. So when the Ukraine war first broke out, I followed a set of people who seem to be very well informed. And this is advertising free. There's no random Mexican fist fights. It was a pretty high quality way to learn about what was going on. The same with the UK politics. So we've just had an election in the UK.
是的，因为正如你之前所说，现在有一些方法可以优化Twitter上的内容流。实际上，这些方法看起来还挺有效的。你花五到十分钟告诉它你喜欢什么和不喜欢什么，你的资讯内容就会变得更好。我还尝试了另一种方法，就是查看那些在上面展示的精选列表。所以你有一个关注选项卡，里面是你关注的人，这个有些人喜欢，有些人不喜欢。还有这些列表，像是一种预设好的列表。当乌克兰战争刚爆发时，我关注了一批看起来消息非常灵通的人。而这个过程是没有广告干扰的，不会出现莫名其妙的墨西哥斗殴视频，这是一种高质量了解时事的方式。对于英国政治也是一样。我们刚在英国举行了一次选举。
So just zooming out what you're basically doing is you're inheriting the credibility of work other people have done. That's exactly what I'm doing. But it's so hard to find these lists. I had to give you the round. It's insane. And these are so, so powerful. And the thing that I find Twitter is still for all of the junk on it, the garbage, the clickbait, the thing that I found the most valuable is when there truly is a breaking news event, the attempted assassination of the Trump. It's still the first place. It's unbelievable. Like the Ukraine war, UK politics, in those moments, it shines. But when there's nothing happening, it's just feeding you this constant drip feed of junk.
从整体来看，你实际上是在继承其他人工作所积累的信誉。这正是我正在做的事情。但找到这些列表真的很难。我不得不告诉你，真是太疯狂了。这些列表真的非常强大。我发现，尽管推特上有很多垃圾内容和标题党，但在真正有突发新闻事件时，比如对特朗普的暗杀未遂，推特仍然是最快发布消息的地方。这简直令人难以置信。在乌克兰战争或英国政治这种时刻，推特的表现非常出色。但当没有重大事件发生的时候，它就只是不断给你推送各种垃圾信息。
Why is it so good at those things? I think it is that it is so easy for first party information owners to put content onto the platform. So during the assassination attempt, we saw a bunch of firsthand videos that the normal media organization would not have produced for us. It's a weekly magic. It is. And I feel like community notes have done a relatively good job of calling out the stuff that's fake news versus real news, actually. So in one sense, I think that's been a really positive change. Maybe let's touch on some of the other changes we've seen over the last 12 months or so. The blue tick, that was a big status symbol, which wasn't it?
为什么这些事情做得这么好？我认为这是因为第一手信息的拥有者很容易在这个平台上发布内容。因此，在暗杀未遂事件中，我们看到了许多正常媒体机构无法为我们提供的第一手视频。这每周都像是魔法一样，的确如此。而且我觉得社区注释在区分假新闻和真实新闻方面做得相对不错。所以从某种意义上说，这是一个非常积极的变化。也许我们可以谈谈过去12个月左右我们看到的其他一些变化。蓝勾认证曾是一个重要的地位象征，不是吗？
Yes. Oh yeah. I emailed the person. I knew it. I got a blue tick. And yeah, the blue checkmark was a signal of credibility, I think, so that other people who saw posts that had that, they knew like, okay, this is at least somehow legit. It's not just a random bot account doing something. And now you can pay what, like seven bucks or nine bucks a month or something. And you might have Donald Trump's parody account, but all parody account always gets truncated. And then you see the blue ticks. It's like Donald Trump, blue tick. This must be real. Yeah.
是的。我给那个人发了电子邮件。我就知道会这样。我得到了一个蓝色认证标记。是的，这个蓝色勾标是可靠性的象征，我认为这样让看到这些帖子的其他人知道，至少这个账号是有点可信的，而不只是一个随机的机器人账号在做事情。现在你可以花大约七美元或九美元一个月买到这个标记。你可能会看到一个唐纳德·特朗普的恶搞账号，但所有恶搞账号都会被截断。然后你看到蓝色勾标，就想，哦，是唐纳德·特朗普，有蓝色勾标，这一定是真的。
So I think they overloaded this idea where they wanted to filter out bots. And the only way to do it was to get them to pay money. Yeah, that makes sense. And if they connect that to the blue check, though, they now overload this term. And now I don't know if it's just a 12 year old is basement paying for Twitter premium or an actual legit person that I should pay attention to. I mean, people talked about editing tweets for like the longest time is if it was going to destroy the world or something and it's just really, it's been fine, right? It's fine. It works. You should be able to edit stuff.
所以，我认为他们可能把这个想法用得过头了，他们想通过让用户支付费用来筛选掉机器人。这听起来有道理。但是，如果他们把这个和蓝色认证勾连起来，就有点过度使用这个概念了。现在，我都不知道是不是一个住在地下室的12岁小孩在为Twitter高级服务付费，还是一个值得我关注的真实用户。我是说，人们过去总在讨论编辑推文会毁灭世界什么的，但实际上，一切都不错啊。这功能不错，你应该能够编辑内容。
Yeah. So that's a kind of big non-event. If we just look at the sidebar here on the screen of Twitter, what are all those icons on the left? Oh my god. Yeah. You know, I don't think I've clicked more than two or three of those. I recently clicked on the Grock one, which is the one to kick rock. What happens? This is a perfect example of like a product expanding beyond what I think the users think of it as. Totally. So this is basically chat GPT inside of Twitter, which to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And I'm sure to any normal person makes zero sense. Okay. I think this is a great example of probably the job of a founder or product leader, which is to clearly articulate to the entire team and to the world what this product is for and how you're supposed to use it. Yeah. And I feel like this is an example of it deviating from that. And I just worry that's just not a lot of great consumer products since coming out of that.
是的，所以这有点像一个大不起眼的事情。如果我们只看一眼Twitter屏幕左边栏的图标——哦，天哪。你知道吗，我觉得我点过的不超过两三个。我最近点了一个叫Grock的图标，它的意思是“踢石头”。结果怎样？这很明显是一个产品超出用户预期的例子。完全同意。基本上，这是在Twitter里加入了ChatGPT功能，对我来说这没什么意义，我相信对普通人来说更是毫无意义。我认为这是一个很好的例子，说明创始人或产品负责人需要清楚向整个团队及用户传达产品的目的及使用方式。然而，我觉得这个例子偏离了这一目标。我担心这样做不会有很多优秀的消费产品出现。
I think I admire him in many, many ways. I mean, if you saw the recent SpaceX landings like catching the booster in the chopsticks, absolutely incredible. But when it comes to mass market consumer product, this does not seem super well thought out. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Bezos once said that like taste is not transferable across domains. And to me, this is like a great example of that. I would say Elon, like if I drive a Tesla, I think it's the best car that I've ever sat in. But the taste and the decisions they made on that do not match what I see on Twitter and X these days.
我在很多方面都非常钦佩他。我的意思是，如果你看过最近SpaceX的着陆，比如用"筷子"抓住助推器，那真的是令人难以置信的壮举。不过，当涉及到大众市场消费品时，这方面似乎没有经过太好的考量。是的，是的。杰夫·贝索斯曾经说过，品味是无法跨领域转移的。对我来说，这就是一个很好的例子。我会说，伊隆，如果我开特斯拉，我觉得这是我坐过的最好的车。但是，他们在这方面做出的品味和决策与我最近在推特和X上看到的不太一致。
Another topic. What's with the name? Why did we change the name to X? I don't think I've unironically called it X ever. Yeah. And I do not intend to change that. It's just astonishing because Twitter like got the verb, you know, like to tweet when your product gets the verb, you won. Yeah. Like I Googled it or with bump, I didn't know if anyone said, I'll bump you with Monzo in the UK. People said like, I'm Monzo, you money, Monzo, me the money. Like we got the verb, right? Yeah. Bump has been shut down for now a decade. And Apple just copied it. So 14 years later, now you can hold your two iPhones together. And people literally call it bumping. We should bump. And I hear that. I'm like, yeah, no, it was a good name.
另一个话题。怎么回事，这个名字是怎么来的？我们为什么把名字改成X？我好像从来没有正儿八经地叫过它X。是啊，我也不打算改口。这太令人惊讶了，因为推特就像是得到了一个动词，"发推"。当你的产品成为动词的时候，你就成功了。对吧。就像我用谷歌搜索或者用Bump一样，我不知道在英国有没有人说"我用Monzo给你转钱"。人们说：“我Monzo你钱，给我Monzo钱。”我们也抓住了这个动词，对吧？Bump这个应用已经关闭了十年，而苹果只是复制了它。14年后，现在你可以把两部iPhone靠在一起，人们实际上称之为"bumping"，"我们该bump一下"。听到这种说法的时候，我想，是啊，那是个好名字。
So how did we come up with our product names? For me, with bump, we built the product. And I showed it to some friends. And I said, what did you just do? And they said, we bumped our phones together. And I said, that's it. Well, that's one of the beauties of starting a consumer internet company, like relatively towards the start of the internet. I mean, I think names are available. The domains we could get Monzo.com. Actually, we were first called mondo.com. They had these connotations of a world in a lot of European languages, moan, or mondo, or means world. And it's surface slang for awesome. Someone told me, go, we kind of just liked it. We could get the dot com. And then we got sued. This German company had a conflicting trademark. And so we had to change the name.
那么，我们是如何想出我们的产品名称的呢？就我个人而言，在开发"Bump"这个产品时，我展示给朋友们看，然后问他们："你们刚刚做了什么？" 他们回答说："我们把手机碰到了一起。" 我心想，这就是了。这正是创办一个面向消费者的互联网公司的好处之一，尤其是在互联网刚刚起步的时候。很多名字都是可以使用的，我们也能够获得像Monzo.com这样的域名。实际上，我们一开始的名字是mondo.com。这个名字在很多欧洲语言中都有"世界"的含义，像"moan"或"mondo"，同时也是"超赞"的俚语。有人告诉我们这个名字不错，我们自己也喜欢它，而且能够注册到.com域名。然而，我们后来被一家德国公司起诉，因为商标有冲突，所以不得不更改名字。
And we went to our user, and like, hey, what we like the end, we got a new M logo, watched our new name be, and like 14,000 people suggested different names. And so, Monzo was one of them. And it stuck ever since. But I think when you get something short and catchy, and you have the verb, just like total insanity to change, especially for something as meaningless as X, right? Like that the whole basis of that seems to be Elon Musk is obsessed with the letter X. Yes. And perhaps the most favorable view of it would be he has in his mind this grand plan of a future product that is not Twitter. Twitter, maybe is some tiny piece of it.
我们去找用户，问他们喜欢什么，告诉他们我们有了一个新的“M”标志，然后问我们的新名字应该是什么，大约有14,000人提出了不同的名字。最终，“Monzo”成为其中之一，并一直沿用至今。但我认为，当你得到一个简单且朗朗上口的名字，并且它具有动词属性时，改变它简直是疯了，尤其是为了一个像“X”这样没有意义的东西。因为整件事情的根基似乎就是埃隆·马斯克对字母“X”情有独钟。可能最乐观的看法是，他心中有一个宏伟的计划，想开发一个与推特不一样的未来产品，而推特也许只是其中的一个小部分。
But he's putting that on the world ahead of saying what that product is. And I think it makes no sense. Yeah. I mean, it started out pre-paypal. It was going to be an all-encompassing online bank, right? And it sort of merged. And there was a big fight over what name they chose. And they've been talks, mostly by Elon, it seems like that Twitter's going to become a payments platform. So that's the view of this like Twitter becomes everything out. Yeah, I would much prefer if they showed where it's going and then have the name match what people perceive when they see that product versus what seems like the opposite.
他在对外宣传产品之前，先给它起了名字，我觉得这没有意义。起初，在PayPal成立之前，它是想成为一个包罗万象的在线银行，对吧？后来它进行了某种合并，当时对名字的选择有过激烈争论。如今，尤其是埃隆，频繁谈论Twitter可能会变成一个支付平台。所以有一种观点认为Twitter最终将涵盖一切。我更希望他们先展示产品的发展方向，然后根据人们对该产品的认知来命名，而不是像现在这样显得颠倒了顺序。
So if you're thinking about changing your name, how do you go about it as a founder? Yeah. Number one, if you think you need to, the best time to do it is now rather than later, because there's less awareness in the world about your product. And then I think that my advice is just try to pick something that people can easily say. And when I say it to you, you can type it into Google and spell it right. Yeah, you don't have to ask how is that spelled? Correct. Yeah, never. And ideally, if you can pull it off, it has something to do with what your product does. And I think ultimately, the best companies bring meaning to the name often rather than the other way around. And Monzo doesn't mean anything like Google didn't mean anything other than some nerdy thing. Yeah. Amazon's a big river in the South America, like you bring meaning to it, as long as you can say it and spell it. And I think that's all that that is.
所以，如果你作为创始人正在考虑改名，你应该怎么做呢？首先，如果你觉得有必要改名，最好现在就做，而不是拖到以后，因为现在对你的产品的认知还比较少。我的建议是，选择一个容易被人说出和拼写的名字。这样，当我告诉你这个名字时，你可以直接在谷歌上输入，且能正确拼写，不需要问“怎么拼写？” 如果可能的话，尽量让这个名字与产品的功能相关。最终，最成功的公司往往是赋予名字意义，而不是依靠名字本身的意义。比如，Monzo和Google最初都没有特别的含义，Amazon原本只是南美的一条大河。只要名字好说好拼，你就可以赋予它意义。
How do you think all of these changes have impacted the revenue commercials at Twitter? Right. Well, I don't have any insight information, but from what I've read, a bunch of advertisers don't love the type of content that their ads might appear next to. And so they've pulled out. So I think ad revenue is down significantly. I don't know how the subscription revenue is doing. I'm sure it's okay, but probably not taking over. So probably the revenue metrics aren't great, but I bet the engagement metrics are off the chart. And that's sort of the problem, right? When you give a team, especially if it's a product manager, this singular number to optimize for, just everything else goes out the window. And you just, it's like the infamous sort of AI that's tasked with making paper clips. And you just end up with the whole world enslaved for this enormous paper technician. You did my job, boss.
你认为这些变化对Twitter的广告营收有什么影响？嗯，我没有内部消息，但据我所知，一些广告商不喜欢他们的广告可能会出现在旁边的内容类型，所以他们撤出了。因此，我认为广告收入显著下降。我不知道订阅收入情况如何，我确信还可以，但可能没有大幅增长。所以整体营收指标可能不太理想，但参与度指标可能非常高。这就是问题所在，当你给一个团队，尤其是一个产品经理，一个单一的数字去优化时，其他一切都被忽视了。这就像一个被赋予制作回形针任务的AI，最后整个世界都被用于满足这个巨大的回形针技术需求。你做了我的工作，老板。
Yeah. And so I do think that a lot of top down ownership is really important in things like this. Like when I worked on Google Photos, I was kind of the user that we were designing the product for. And of course, there will be critics of that. I was designing the product for how I wanted to use it. And there are people who wanted to use it in a different way. But at least it had a consistent worldview of what this product is for, how you should use it. And it feels like maybe we're getting that from Elon here. And what he wants Twitter to be is just, we're not ready for you.
是的，我确实认为，在这样的事情上，自上而下的掌控非常重要。就像我在谷歌相册工作时，我就是我们设计产品的用户。当然，这会有一些批评意见，因为我是在按照我自己的使用方式设计产品，而有些人想要以不同的方式使用它。但至少，这样的产品有一个一致的使用观念，即这个产品是为了什么、应该怎么用。而现在，看起来我们可能从埃隆那里得到了类似的感觉，他对推特的设想是——我们还没准备好。
I wrap this all up to kind of summarize what we've talked about. What advice would you give to a product founder who's starting out, maybe they're hiring their first or second product manager, kind of scaling? I think the number one thing is trying to articulate what is your product for and who is supposed to use it. And what are the good states that a user might get into? And what are the states that maybe look good but are actually bad? Yeah. And can you wrap that up into a metric? Like is that always a metric you're optimizing for?
我把以上内容总结一下。对于刚刚起步的产品创始人，比如他们正在雇佣第一或第二个产品经理，并准备扩展业务，你有什么建议吗？我认为最重要的一点是要明确表达你的产品用途以及目标用户是谁。还有，用户使用过程中可能进入的良好状态是什么？以及那些看似良好但实际上不佳的状态又是什么？对，这些能否被总结成一个指标？比如说，这个指标是不是你一直在优化的目标？
Yeah. I'm not sure there is, to be honest. Thinking about my example on Twitter, I'm sure my time spent is up. I'm sure every engagement metric number of likes, number of whatever is all up. But if you asked me after I close the app, how do you feel Dave? I would probably say, I was a waste of my time. I wish I'd been playing with my kids instead. And this is kind of heresy right to tell consumer product founders that they just we're not saying they shouldn't have metrics. Sure, metrics should be part of your toolkit. But if you're mindlessly optimizing for a single metric to the exclusion of all other factors, you're probably going to lead yourself down one of these rabbit holes where you end up with an engagement file.
是的，说实话，我不确定是否存在这种情况。想想我在 Twitter 上的例子，我肯定花费的时间增加了。我敢肯定，所有参与度指标，比如点赞数量等，都在增加。但如果你在我关闭应用程序后问我，戴夫，你感觉如何？我可能会说，这简直是浪费时间。我希望能把时间花在陪孩子们玩上。这种说法对消费产品创始人来说有点离经叛道。我们不是说他们不应该有指标。当然，指标应该是你工具箱的一部分。但如果你不加思索地只专注于一个指标，忽略其他所有因素，你可能会走入误区，最终陷入一种只看参与度的困境中。
Yeah. I think this is where the role of the product leader is really important. Because you can just say, we're building it this way. I might not be picking the optimal way to grow this product, but at least it's going to be consistent and have a clear purpose. And having that kind of clear vision for what you want to product to be over time and having the authority as a founder to kind of enforce that right? This is where I think founder CEOs do have an advantage. They have the kind of moral authority of like, I started this company and this is what I believe and this is where we're going.
是的，我认为这就是产品领导者角色非常重要的地方。因为你可以决定产品的开发方向。可能我选择的不是让这个产品成长的最佳方式，但至少这个方法是有一致性和明确目的的。拥有这样一种清晰的长期愿景，并作为创始人有权力来执行这一愿景，这一点很重要。在这里，我认为创始人兼首席执行官有一定的优势。他们有一种道德权威感，因为是他们创立了这家公司，并且相信这是他们想要前进的方向。
Yeah. When you're saying that, I'm thinking of Steve Jobs and in building the iPhone and making decisions on what they were going to do and the iPhone and what things they were explicitly not going to do. Some of those decisions in hindsight, I think they changed and they were probably the wrong decisions. But he was the owner of that. And so there was really no debate, I think, inside of Apple about what things they would do or what things they wouldn't do. It was just baked into the culture. Everyone knew. Like, we're going to do it this way.
好的。在你这样说的时候，我想到了史蒂夫·乔布斯在打造iPhone时所做的决策，包括他们选择要做的事情和明确不做的事情。在事后看来，一些决策可能发生了改变，并且也许是错误的决策。但这是他的责任。因此，我认为在苹果内部其实没有多少争论关于他们会做什么或不做什么。这些文化已经根深蒂固，大家都明白：我们就会这样做。
And so I want to thank you all for listening to our first in hopefully a long series of product deep dives.
感谢大家收听我们的第一次产品深入探讨，希望这是一个长系列的开始。
If you have a product that you would like us to dissect, let us know in the comments.
如果您有希望我们深入分析的产品，请在评论中告诉我们。
Yeah. Thanks for watching.
好的，谢谢观看。