5 ms·

Twitter: Years After the Alphabet Acquisition

62 points by kaws 11y ago

ghshephard 11y ago
Someone should append a (2019) to the title.
- codingdave 11y ago
  Or a (fanfiction).
archlight 11y ago
I really hope google will buy twitter so it can put back real time search in twitter stream a few years ago as an experiment.
- Spivak 11y ago
  They could also just pay Google to develop that feature for them. Cooperation doesn't have to happen only by acquisition.
- melted 11y ago
  I hope they buy it for a different reason: so they could drain this useless sea of vapidity and narcissism, and drive the company into the ground within 3 years tops. Or maybe Dorsey will do it on his own, who knows. Twitter's chance of death goes up dramatically if it's not a standalone entity.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    > Twitter's chance of death goes up dramatically if it's not a standalone entity. Currently the whole TWTR management is looking to please short-term "investor" and "speculator" scum. Companies don't exist for 3-month intervals and maximum gains, they exist for creating LONG TIME wealth (and that's the mistake Capitalism does). Existence inside a huge, rock-solid company frees management from the cognitive and financial round to be hyper-effective for capitalists instead for their users (who actually create the work that makes Twitter exist).
    - melted 11y ago
      It also frees the management from "fear of God", which results in ridiculous investments and initiatives, accelerated (and unnecessary) hiring, proliferation of middle management, empire building, politics, etc, etc.
      - mschuster91 11y ago
        > It also frees the management from "fear of God" It doesn't really matter if the "God" is Wall Street or a holding company like Alphabet. Only that I'd trust a holding company to be forced to maintain the company in order to not risk its value. A stock holder on Wall St just wants as much profit as possible as fast as possible, and if it goes bust then you can always sell shorts and still profit.
        melted 11y ago
        It does. Alphabet would care a great deal more if Twitter lives or dies. Wall St doesn't care in the slightest.
        mschuster91 11y ago
        On the other side, Google doesn't always follow this rule and I wouldn't trust them much more to look after Twitter than Wall St. Google has killed off (or left to rot, and then kill off) projects with huge user counts/business outlooks in the past... remember Google Reader and Google Code? Both could have kicked Feedly's and Github's/SF's asses multiple times over with a bit of investment, and Google basically let them rot until the backend of Google's infrastructure changed too much to justify the needed adaptions on the projects.
        melted 11y ago
        User counts were so pitifully small in those projects that they were destaffed for years before they were shut down.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 11y ago
You have a typo, in the section about Twitter's business tools you said they have '"millions of" of users'.
- karangoeluw 11y ago
  Good catch. Thank you
acslater00 11y ago
$29b in cash and stock?? Man, I'm really looking forward to the 150% run up in TWTR before Alphabet makes that $43 tender offer. brb calling my broker
0x0dea 11y ago
In a similar vein: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
PhilWest 11y ago
Why is there an earnings call if it's wholly owned by Alphabet?
- taylorhou 11y ago
  OP states that Google keeps Twitter as its own entity that reports, runs, and operates independently.
wslh 11y ago
This is an unreal post: "When Alphabet bought Twitter back in June 2016 for almost $29 billion", you can easily check Twitter valuation at $10 billion here: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=gHO_VpH9GsnBe-iwiZAN https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=gHO_VpH9GsnB... so... spending 3X the public market valuation will be crazy. And speaking about science fiction, what will Alphabet/Google do to turn around Twitter? Also the posts saying: "I quit Facebook" are nonsense, how many people around you removed themselves from FB? Most probably, very few.
- orf 11y ago
  > how many people around you removed themselves from FB? Almost everyone, it's becoming a ghost town on Facebook proper. Whatsapp/messenger/instagram not at all, but few of my 300+ friends really use it that much any more.
  - wslh 11y ago
    > Almost everyone, And what do they do? I mean, are they distributed into many different occupations?
- nostrademons 11y ago
  I think he's assuming the market will turn around, or at least Twitter will turn around enough that it's an attractive acquisition target.
- karangoeluw 11y ago
  > spending 3X the public market valuation Just last year, Twitter’s market cap was more than double what it is today. Since then, they have managed to grow revenue by 48% while reducing the losses by 9%. So, with all that, I think $29B is a steal for the acquisition. EDIT: my last response here was uninformed. > And speaking about science fiction, what will Alphabet/Google do to turn around Twitter? Clearly you have not read the post, and are jumping to conclusions.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
fchollet 11y ago
So Periscope and Moments would be the saving grace of Twitter? On what planet does the author live?
- sigmar 11y ago
  Moments is pretty amazing. Have you used it? Seems to me like it is miles ahead of snapchat's stories
  - Riod 11y ago
    I have. Gives me a bunch of bs I have no interest in. How about ask me/infer from who I follow, what I'm interested in? Google now does that and blends it in with more general stories; simple and useful. Not intrusive and useless like moments.
  - azinman2 11y ago
    Apples and oranges. Snapchat is personal, moments is more like news.
    - sigmar 11y ago
      >snapchat's stories I was referring to the stories that are local or worldwide events that are curated. much like moments.
      - azinman2 11y ago
        While I don't have hard data, my understanding of stories is that they're a huge part of snapchat usage now -- as a private story.
- karangoeluw 11y ago
  How much have you used the two products?
qj4714 11y ago
Ha ha...April Fools came early this year
- jasonkostempski 11y ago
  I think you mean it came early next year.
riffic 11y ago
Way overpriced. All the cool kids are using GnuSocial/OStatus anyways (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus).
Animats 11y ago
From the article: "Twitter is live". Now that's a useful concept to focus the business. That tells Twitter what not to do. Twitter should do only things that are happening right now. All retrospective uses of Twitter data would be via Google and Google accounts. Monetization of Twitter might not involve ads on Twitter. Google could data-mine Twitter for ad-targeting data. That might be more useful than "paid tweets". Google's AI capabilities could be used to digest the Twitter flood and create news alerts. A Google Maps overlay of where things are happening on Twitter right now, for example. Enough activity, and a Google satellite (yes, Google has their own spy satellites [1]) would focus on the target area as soon as possible. This could work out. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-10/google-buying-satellite-company-skybox-imaging-for-500-million http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-10/google-buy...

62 points by kaws 11y ago

ghshephard 11y ago

Someone should append a (2019) to the title.

codingdave 11y ago
Or a (fanfiction).

archlight 11y ago

I really hope google will buy twitter so it can put back real time search in twitter stream a few years ago as an experiment.

Spivak 11y ago
They could also just pay Google to develop that feature for them. Cooperation doesn't have to happen only by acquisition.
melted 11y ago
I hope they buy it for a different reason: so they could drain this useless sea of vapidity and narcissism, and drive the company into the ground within 3 years tops. Or maybe Dorsey will do it on his own, who knows. Twitter's chance of death goes up dramatically if it's not a standalone entity.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > Twitter's chance of death goes up dramatically if it's not a standalone entity. Currently the whole TWTR management is looking to please short-term "investor" and "speculator" scum. Companies don't exist for 3-month intervals and maximum gains, they exist for creating LONG TIME wealth (and that's the mistake Capitalism does). Existence inside a huge, rock-solid company frees management from the cognitive and financial round to be hyper-effective for capitalists instead for their users (who actually create the work that makes Twitter exist).
  - melted 11y ago
    It also frees the management from "fear of God", which results in ridiculous investments and initiatives, accelerated (and unnecessary) hiring, proliferation of middle management, empire building, politics, etc, etc.
    - mschuster91 11y ago
      > It also frees the management from "fear of God" It doesn't really matter if the "God" is Wall Street or a holding company like Alphabet. Only that I'd trust a holding company to be forced to maintain the company in order to not risk its value. A stock holder on Wall St just wants as much profit as possible as fast as possible, and if it goes bust then you can always sell shorts and still profit.
      - melted 11y ago
        It does. Alphabet would care a great deal more if Twitter lives or dies. Wall St doesn't care in the slightest.
        mschuster91 11y ago
        On the other side, Google doesn't always follow this rule and I wouldn't trust them much more to look after Twitter than Wall St. Google has killed off (or left to rot, and then kill off) projects with huge user counts/business outlooks in the past... remember Google Reader and Google Code? Both could have kicked Feedly's and Github's/SF's asses multiple times over with a bit of investment, and Google basically let them rot until the backend of Google's infrastructure changed too much to justify the needed adaptions on the projects.
        melted 11y ago
        User counts were so pitifully small in those projects that they were destaffed for years before they were shut down.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Spivak 11y ago

You have a typo, in the section about Twitter's business tools you said they have '"millions of" of users'.

karangoeluw 11y ago
Good catch. Thank you

acslater00 11y ago

$29b in cash and stock?? Man, I'm really looking forward to the 150% run up in TWTR before Alphabet makes that $43 tender offer. brb calling my broker

0x0dea 11y ago

In a similar vein: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...

PhilWest 11y ago

Why is there an earnings call if it's wholly owned by Alphabet?

taylorhou 11y ago
OP states that Google keeps Twitter as its own entity that reports, runs, and operates independently.

wslh 11y ago

This is an unreal post: "When Alphabet bought Twitter back in June 2016 for almost $29 billion", you can easily check Twitter valuation at $10 billion here: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=gHO_VpH9GsnBe-iwiZAN https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=gHO_VpH9GsnB... so... spending 3X the public market valuation will be crazy. And speaking about science fiction, what will Alphabet/Google do to turn around Twitter? Also the posts saying: "I quit Facebook" are nonsense, how many people around you removed themselves from FB? Most probably, very few.

orf 11y ago
> how many people around you removed themselves from FB? Almost everyone, it's becoming a ghost town on Facebook proper. Whatsapp/messenger/instagram not at all, but few of my 300+ friends really use it that much any more.
- wslh 11y ago
  > Almost everyone, And what do they do? I mean, are they distributed into many different occupations?
nostrademons 11y ago
I think he's assuming the market will turn around, or at least Twitter will turn around enough that it's an attractive acquisition target.
karangoeluw 11y ago
> spending 3X the public market valuation Just last year, Twitter’s market cap was more than double what it is today. Since then, they have managed to grow revenue by 48% while reducing the losses by 9%. So, with all that, I think $29B is a steal for the acquisition. EDIT: my last response here was uninformed. > And speaking about science fiction, what will Alphabet/Google do to turn around Twitter? Clearly you have not read the post, and are jumping to conclusions.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

fchollet 11y ago

So Periscope and Moments would be the saving grace of Twitter? On what planet does the author live?

sigmar 11y ago
Moments is pretty amazing. Have you used it? Seems to me like it is miles ahead of snapchat's stories
- Riod 11y ago
  I have. Gives me a bunch of bs I have no interest in. How about ask me/infer from who I follow, what I'm interested in? Google now does that and blends it in with more general stories; simple and useful. Not intrusive and useless like moments.
- azinman2 11y ago
  Apples and oranges. Snapchat is personal, moments is more like news.
  - sigmar 11y ago
    >snapchat's stories I was referring to the stories that are local or worldwide events that are curated. much like moments.
    - azinman2 11y ago
      While I don't have hard data, my understanding of stories is that they're a huge part of snapchat usage now -- as a private story.
karangoeluw 11y ago
How much have you used the two products?

qj4714 11y ago

Ha ha...April Fools came early this year

jasonkostempski 11y ago
I think you mean it came early next year.

riffic 11y ago

Way overpriced. All the cool kids are using GnuSocial/OStatus anyways (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus).

Animats 11y ago

From the article: "Twitter is live". Now that's a useful concept to focus the business. That tells Twitter what not to do. Twitter should do only things that are happening right now. All retrospective uses of Twitter data would be via Google and Google accounts. Monetization of Twitter might not involve ads on Twitter. Google could data-mine Twitter for ad-targeting data. That might be more useful than "paid tweets". Google's AI capabilities could be used to digest the Twitter flood and create news alerts. A Google Maps overlay of where things are happening on Twitter right now, for example. Enough activity, and a Google satellite (yes, Google has their own spy satellites [1]) would focus on the target area as soon as possible. This could work out. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-10/google-buying-satellite-company-skybox-imaging-for-500-million http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-10/google-buy...