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The grumbling around Twitter is about its continued quarterly losses and how it's not fulfilling the expected ROI from the $2.8 billion invested. Not relevant

by jasode 11y ago

The grumbling around Twitter is about its continued quarterly losses and how it's not fulfilling the expected ROI from the $2.8 billion invested. Not relevant to puzzling out the losses is explaining all the other "cool" things about Twitter such as "giving people a voice" or "a broadcasting platform for journalists/celebrities/revolutionists/politicians". That's emotional analysis instead of financial analysis. The common defenses of Twitter often has the same flaws in writing structure: 1) Ignore the billions invested and repeated losses on the balance sheet 2) Then point out some amazing feature or undeniable human benefit that stirs the emotions and imagination Examples... I don't get the narrative and negativity about Iridium/Motorola satellite phone service?! Who wouldn't want the ability to make global phone calls from the middle of the ocean, Antarctica, and Mt Everest?! Humanity needs a phone like that! Well, all those cool things don't matter, the company went bankrupt. I don't get the narrative around the Concorde supersonic airplane? Who wouldn't wouldn't value the ability to fly New York to London in 3 hours instead of 6?! Well, the airlines cancelled the program after financial analysis showed it barely broke even or lost money. Idea for blog quality improvement: Instead of talking up the positive features of whatever company product, explain how the monetary numbers can work out.

skybrian 11y ago
I agree, but beware the sunk-cost fallacy. What matters is whether Twitter could turn a profit today. If so, the original investors may lose money and the company might even go bankrupt, but the service should still survive. (This is why Iridium is still around but the Concorde isn't.)
dang 11y ago
> The grumbling around Twitter is about its continued quarterly losses That, plus how hard it is to use. Twitter is the only product of the social era that ever interested me, but I almost only ever read things. Every time I think about actually posting to it, I'm daunted. It's Byzantine. It seems unfair to me, though, that they don't get to count read-only users as active for purposes of demonstrating growth. I'm definitely an active user, but (an ex-Twitterer explained to me) apparently people like us don't count. That seems seriously wrong, given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture).
- zippergz 11y ago
  I feel like I must be missing something, because I see this argument a lot, but I don't get it. How is it too hard to post? You type the words you want to say into the box, and click the button. I saw the "missing manual" article that went around the other day, and I agree they have way too many bizarre and undocumented behaviors, but you can ignore that stuff 99% of the time and be fine. Edit: I should add, this is a genuine question. I really do want to understand what people find hard about posting on Twitter.
  - ryanbrunner 11y ago
    Being a "read-only" Twitter user, I don't think it's about the technical difficulty of posting to Twitter (definitely if you're posting to Hacker News, you're not going to have problems knowing how to post to Twitter), but rather, the futility of it. Twitter, to me at least, seems like a platform for relatively influential people / people who have a pretty unique insight on something happening real-time to post. If I post on Twitter, I get maybe a few likes and retweets, and nothing else. On facebook, or reddit, or even here, I'm far more likely to feel like a part of a conversation rather than a lone voice yelling into a sea of a million people.
    - zippergz 11y ago
      This definitely resonates with me. I've been a Twitter user since the very early days. Early on, I could tweet something (even something mundane) and get dozens of replies. More if it was something interesting. These days, no matter how interesting the Tweet, I'm lucky to get 2-3 responses (including likes). Clearly I'm not an unbiased judge of the quality of my Tweets, but by any measure I'm finding it MUCH harder to get responses these days.
    - petra 11y ago
      One easy thing to do is to start a discussion with someone non-famous who responded to someone you read. Often you'll get a nice conversation out of it.
lingben 11y ago
you would think a VC - out of the average person out there - would, you know, kinda sorta pay attention to the numbers, maybe? but it seems they just throw stacks of bills at targets and hope that one of them sticks
- jshen 11y ago
  you would think a non VC - compared to a seasoned professional with a great track record - would, you know, kinda sorta pay attention to what the seasoned professional says, maybe? But it seems they just throw out unthoughtful comments and hope that someone falls for it.

by jasode 11y ago

skybrian 11y ago

I agree, but beware the sunk-cost fallacy. What matters is whether Twitter could turn a profit today. If so, the original investors may lose money and the company might even go bankrupt, but the service should still survive. (This is why Iridium is still around but the Concorde isn't.)

dang 11y ago

> The grumbling around Twitter is about its continued quarterly losses That, plus how hard it is to use. Twitter is the only product of the social era that ever interested me, but I almost only ever read things. Every time I think about actually posting to it, I'm daunted. It's Byzantine. It seems unfair to me, though, that they don't get to count read-only users as active for purposes of demonstrating growth. I'm definitely an active user, but (an ex-Twitterer explained to me) apparently people like us don't count. That seems seriously wrong, given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture).

zippergz 11y ago
I feel like I must be missing something, because I see this argument a lot, but I don't get it. How is it too hard to post? You type the words you want to say into the box, and click the button. I saw the "missing manual" article that went around the other day, and I agree they have way too many bizarre and undocumented behaviors, but you can ignore that stuff 99% of the time and be fine. Edit: I should add, this is a genuine question. I really do want to understand what people find hard about posting on Twitter.
- ryanbrunner 11y ago
  Being a "read-only" Twitter user, I don't think it's about the technical difficulty of posting to Twitter (definitely if you're posting to Hacker News, you're not going to have problems knowing how to post to Twitter), but rather, the futility of it. Twitter, to me at least, seems like a platform for relatively influential people / people who have a pretty unique insight on something happening real-time to post. If I post on Twitter, I get maybe a few likes and retweets, and nothing else. On facebook, or reddit, or even here, I'm far more likely to feel like a part of a conversation rather than a lone voice yelling into a sea of a million people.
  - zippergz 11y ago
    This definitely resonates with me. I've been a Twitter user since the very early days. Early on, I could tweet something (even something mundane) and get dozens of replies. More if it was something interesting. These days, no matter how interesting the Tweet, I'm lucky to get 2-3 responses (including likes). Clearly I'm not an unbiased judge of the quality of my Tweets, but by any measure I'm finding it MUCH harder to get responses these days.
  - petra 11y ago
    One easy thing to do is to start a discussion with someone non-famous who responded to someone you read. Often you'll get a nice conversation out of it.

lingben 11y ago

you would think a VC - out of the average person out there - would, you know, kinda sorta pay attention to the numbers, maybe? but it seems they just throw stacks of bills at targets and hope that one of them sticks

jshen 11y ago
you would think a non VC - compared to a seasoned professional with a great track record - would, you know, kinda sorta pay attention to what the seasoned professional says, maybe? But it seems they just throw out unthoughtful comments and hope that someone falls for it.