5 ms·

Because running the ads team at Twitter alone would take 75 people.

by Xyik 10y ago

lisper 10y ago
Not if they implemented something like AdWords.
nateberkopec 10y ago
Snapchat is a pretty good comparable for Twitter's business model and employs less than a tenth of the employees, according to Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/08/11/the-most-valuable-employees-snapchat-doubles-facebook/#5a2c7104f754 http://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/08/11/the-most-va...
koolba 10y ago
> Because running the ads team at Twitter alone would take 75 people. Then make it 150 people. 75 for tech and 75 for ad sales. Right now it's something like 3500-4000 people working there. What do they do? I think WhatsApp had something like 50-60 employees around the time they got acquired by Facebook. Sure the request/response ratios are different (few publishers, lots of subscribers), but at the end of the day I don't understand how you can have, literally, thousands of people to run something like that.
- hinkley 10y ago
  The little bits of the funding process that I've been able to observe tell me that you can get a round of funding on hype, but if you can't get it on hype then the investors tend to demand a better burn rate from the company. Or at least that's always the story I've heard right before the startup I or a friend worked at started making big changes. It's entirely plausible at this point that the next time they go for more cash, they'll have to lay off 10% of their workforce to make their financials look more appealing.
- s_kilk 10y ago
  > Right now it's something like 3500-4000 people working there. What do they do? I can't find it now, but there was a comment on here a few months back from someone who worked at Twitter for a while (in the recent past). Supposedly there's a lot of staff basically hanging around playing ping-pong, waiting for the chance to cash out their shares. Not sure I believe it fully, but hey, anecdote.
  - spacehome 10y ago
    This one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12252995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12252995
    - s_kilk 10y ago
      Yes! Thanks!
  - daveFNbuck 10y ago
    I worked at Twitter for about 2 years, ending 3 years ago. By the end of my time there I was working maybe 4 hours a day and most of that was in meetings. At the same time, I got told off by my manager for meeting too many of my quarterly goals and he held a meeting to tell the whole team to be less productive in general. If we were waiting on an A/B test to validate the outcome of project 1, we were not to start working on project 2 until that experiment was complete and a launch decision could be made. A/B tests typically last 1-2 weeks, during which there is nothing more to be done on project 1.
    - chetanahuja 10y ago
      "he held a meeting to tell the whole team to be less productive in general." WTF?? What was the stated objective for this sort of instruction? Or was it just blatant gaming the system to keep everybody's jobs?
      - paulddraper 10y ago
        Reading between the lines, it was probably more along the lines of instructions that don't have efficiency a priority. Like only do one project at a time. Doesn't sound terrible, but it increases wait times.
      - daveFNbuck 10y ago
        Pretty much what paulddraper guessed, the stated goal was to ensure that the first project is completed as quickly as possible so that our output would be more reliable for other teams. That meeting happened during my last week, so I can only hope that it wasn't strictly enforced.
- Rapzid 10y ago
  This is a really good point. I remember when all of Rackspace had just that many.. Around when swift launched there were about 1k employees in the cloud division, and about the same number as twitter across all business segments.
- Animats 10y ago
  It's fear. Twitter was a neat little idea that scaled easily. It doesn't need many people to keep it going. Twitter could have been the next Craigslist - so cheap to run it takes only a tiny team, but so powerful in concept it crushed the classified ad industry. But it's such a simple idea that Facebook or Google or WeChat could add a "tweet" capability and perhaps crush Twitter. So there's a desperate attempt to get big enough to fight back, or come up with a second product, or something. Sometimes that doesn't work.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Scaled easily? Did you miss fail whale era?
  - snowwrestler 10y ago
    > But it's such a simple idea that Facebook or Google or WeChat could add a "tweet" capability and perhaps crush Twitter. So why don't they? The reality is that both Google and Facebook have made their attempt to own "real time" and both efforts failed. Google even had to pay for the Twitter firehouse for a while, and eventually just gave up. When people need to know what's going on RIGHT NOW, neither Google nor Facebook is where they turn. Twitter is the fastest publishing platform on the planet. Tweets beat an earthquake from Virginia to New York, just like XKCD joked they would. Contrary to popular belief, this is is not easy to do.
    - slim 10y ago
      > this is is not easy to do Man, google and facebook are streaming live video

Because running the ads team at Twitter alone would take 75 people.

by Xyik 10y ago

Because running the ads team at Twitter alone would take 75 people.

lisper 10y ago

Not if they implemented something like AdWords.

nateberkopec 10y ago

Snapchat is a pretty good comparable for Twitter's business model and employs less than a tenth of the employees, according to Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/08/11/the-most-valuable-employees-snapchat-doubles-facebook/#5a2c7104f754 http://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/08/11/the-most-va...

koolba 10y ago

> Because running the ads team at Twitter alone would take 75 people. Then make it 150 people. 75 for tech and 75 for ad sales. Right now it's something like 3500-4000 people working there. What do they do? I think WhatsApp had something like 50-60 employees around the time they got acquired by Facebook. Sure the request/response ratios are different (few publishers, lots of subscribers), but at the end of the day I don't understand how you can have, literally, thousands of people to run something like that.

hinkley 10y ago
The little bits of the funding process that I've been able to observe tell me that you can get a round of funding on hype, but if you can't get it on hype then the investors tend to demand a better burn rate from the company. Or at least that's always the story I've heard right before the startup I or a friend worked at started making big changes. It's entirely plausible at this point that the next time they go for more cash, they'll have to lay off 10% of their workforce to make their financials look more appealing.
s_kilk 10y ago
> Right now it's something like 3500-4000 people working there. What do they do? I can't find it now, but there was a comment on here a few months back from someone who worked at Twitter for a while (in the recent past). Supposedly there's a lot of staff basically hanging around playing ping-pong, waiting for the chance to cash out their shares. Not sure I believe it fully, but hey, anecdote.
- spacehome 10y ago
  This one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12252995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12252995
  - s_kilk 10y ago
    Yes! Thanks!
- daveFNbuck 10y ago
  I worked at Twitter for about 2 years, ending 3 years ago. By the end of my time there I was working maybe 4 hours a day and most of that was in meetings. At the same time, I got told off by my manager for meeting too many of my quarterly goals and he held a meeting to tell the whole team to be less productive in general. If we were waiting on an A/B test to validate the outcome of project 1, we were not to start working on project 2 until that experiment was complete and a launch decision could be made. A/B tests typically last 1-2 weeks, during which there is nothing more to be done on project 1.
  - chetanahuja 10y ago
    "he held a meeting to tell the whole team to be less productive in general." WTF?? What was the stated objective for this sort of instruction? Or was it just blatant gaming the system to keep everybody's jobs?
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      Reading between the lines, it was probably more along the lines of instructions that don't have efficiency a priority. Like only do one project at a time. Doesn't sound terrible, but it increases wait times.
    - daveFNbuck 10y ago
      Pretty much what paulddraper guessed, the stated goal was to ensure that the first project is completed as quickly as possible so that our output would be more reliable for other teams. That meeting happened during my last week, so I can only hope that it wasn't strictly enforced.
Rapzid 10y ago
This is a really good point. I remember when all of Rackspace had just that many.. Around when swift launched there were about 1k employees in the cloud division, and about the same number as twitter across all business segments.
Animats 10y ago
It's fear. Twitter was a neat little idea that scaled easily. It doesn't need many people to keep it going. Twitter could have been the next Craigslist - so cheap to run it takes only a tiny team, but so powerful in concept it crushed the classified ad industry. But it's such a simple idea that Facebook or Google or WeChat could add a "tweet" capability and perhaps crush Twitter. So there's a desperate attempt to get big enough to fight back, or come up with a second product, or something. Sometimes that doesn't work.
- overcast 10y ago
  Scaled easily? Did you miss fail whale era?
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  > But it's such a simple idea that Facebook or Google or WeChat could add a "tweet" capability and perhaps crush Twitter. So why don't they? The reality is that both Google and Facebook have made their attempt to own "real time" and both efforts failed. Google even had to pay for the Twitter firehouse for a while, and eventually just gave up. When people need to know what's going on RIGHT NOW, neither Google nor Facebook is where they turn. Twitter is the fastest publishing platform on the planet. Tweets beat an earthquake from Virginia to New York, just like XKCD joked they would. Contrary to popular belief, this is is not easy to do.
  - slim 10y ago
    > this is is not easy to do Man, google and facebook are streaming live video