What happens when a skill you have becomes obsolete? No, this isn't a R vs. Stata thread---it's a thread about a working paper w/ @sonnytambe!
https://t.co/w6nLf1tnST

Two years ago on a weekend, I built a tool to make it easier to evaluate Twitter accounts. Since then 36590 people used it to analyze 55390 different Twitter accounts.

Over the last months @mmkaradeniz and I made a new version. We launched it last night:

@accountanalysis doesn't use machine learning or AI „magic“. Instead of telling users if an account is authentic or not, it helps them to evaluate the accounts themselves.

It visualizes the different features (date, time, type, app, etc.) of Tweets to make them interpretable. /1

@accountanalysis The core concept is still the same, but it looks much better and is easier to operate. Not only for the users, but us developers as well. Enabling us to continuously roll out new features in the future.

Side-by-side screenshots of the old and new version. /2

@accountanalysis Some people had questions what different charts displayed and how they could be interpreted. There are now explanations for all charts, that can be toggled on and off at any time. /3

@accountanalysis The selected/retrieved Tweet count moved to the top to make it clear that not all Tweets of an account are analyzed. 3200 is the API limit by Twitter. It's possible to get more through the Premium API, but I don't think people would pay $100+ for the analysis of one account. /4

“Why are Tumblr and Facebook cracking down on sex so much? And why is Facebook in so over zealous about it? It’s all Apples fault!” Etc etc

I can explain all. It is largely the fault of a set of US laws called SESTA and FOSTA.

argh chrome updated and it seems they've intentionally broken custom search engines. I have had a keyword search for "foone" which searches my own twitter, so I just type "foone BLAH" and it gives me a twitter search for when I said BLAH, right?

but now I get that option in the titlebar of "search twitter self-search" which is the name of the search"
if I just type "foone blah" now...

it ignores the search I have had defined for years and just googles it.

and this is definitely on purpose because they didn't just break it, they changed it. it's now "fooneblah"

there doesn't seem to be an option to make this stop and get the old behavior back :(

People sometimes ask me what my vision of DeFi is. This is a very tough question. DeFi is very messy with thousands of experiments happening. But high level, I think DeFi will go through 2 phases:

During the 1st phase (next 2-5 years), we'll continue to build games, casinos, and speculative products.

This sounds uninspiring. But it has two main important consequences.

1) This will ultimately lead to hundreds of millions of users to install wallets and get uncomfortable with the UX.

2) This will force the tech (especially scaling) to mature.

Once we've achieved these two goals, phase 2 begins. In phase 2, products that serve real economic activities / integrated with the real economy will be built and flourish.

Right now, such products barely exist. @terra_money comes to mind. But this is the kind of products that I really look forward to. They are more economically sustainable, and create more value.