Three answers, one of which makes me feel shamefully too much of an asshole.
1) I think optimizing the naive-to-twitter experience is something which can't really be done through incremental A/B testable changes.
2) They have had technical capability limits which prevent them from surfacing great content for users based on what anyone else would call "ad tech". These are both technical and organizational/philosophical (which, over a long enough timescale, are the root cause of technical limitations in a $20b company).
3) (the obvious one involving the quote about clown cars and gold mines).
It's not just "not logged in", it's "haven't been an active user for a long time". If one of my friends joins and JUST follows me, Twitter is boring/useless as can be. Their "recommend to follow" thing is utterly inadequate. Compare this to Facebook which is fucking awesome from your first interaction.
On Facebook you're generally connected to people you know in real life. So if a new person joins Facebook and connects with you, the FB recommendations are likely people the new person also knows. You frequently follow people on Twitter you only know from Twitter. Even if they follow you back, your friend just signing up may not know who the hell they are. So recommendations are more difficult.
Absolutely - Twitter has a harder problem to solve. Facebook also capitalized on the benefits of rich media earlier (biggest photo site in the world, now borging YouTube).
1) I think optimizing the naive-to-twitter experience is something which can't really be done through incremental A/B testable changes.
2) They have had technical capability limits which prevent them from surfacing great content for users based on what anyone else would call "ad tech". These are both technical and organizational/philosophical (which, over a long enough timescale, are the root cause of technical limitations in a $20b company).
3) (the obvious one involving the quote about clown cars and gold mines).
It's not just "not logged in", it's "haven't been an active user for a long time". If one of my friends joins and JUST follows me, Twitter is boring/useless as can be. Their "recommend to follow" thing is utterly inadequate. Compare this to Facebook which is fucking awesome from your first interaction.