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Twitter is a business model that will be studied for years IMHO. No clear path to revenue, viral adoption, and very little product development away from its cor

Twitter is a business model that will be studied for years IMHO. No clear path to revenue, viral adoption, and very little product development away from its core competencies. I use Twitter often, but it has always seemed like a platform most useful if you have something to promote. One big flaw has been trying to find value to ordinary users who want to do something beyond typing into an echo chamber. If Twitter goes away it would be interested to figure out what would take its place.

criddell 10y ago
> No clear path to revenue I don't know about that. They have $2.2 billion in revenue last year. Get the employee count down to 300 people and you have a great business.
- josh_carterPDX 10y ago
  No you're right. However, aside from having ad revenue I don't see anything they can do to accelerate their revenue growth. But yeah, cut spending, get employee count way down, and they could break even sooner than later.
  - basch 10y ago
    bull. twitters growth stalled because its way to hard to join and sort through. look how long you can be part of reddit before you make an account. you can even bookmark http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience and have a custom mix without having an account. their logged out front page is a pile of shit. imgur.com is better at what twitter is trying to be, twitter should chase digg/medium not lowest common denominator memegrabs.
    - criddell 10y ago
      > twitters growth stalled I think maybe Twitter's growth stalled because it's mostly done growing. Do they need more users? They can already generate billions of dollars every year and maybe that's enough.
fjdlwlv 10y ago
Most ordinary users love the echo chamber. That's the whole point of it.
concinds 10y ago
> it has always seemed like a platform most useful if you have something to promote Twitter is most used for 2 things: - to promote your own brand (which includes companies like CNN & Google, as well as authors, writers and celebrities) - to gossip about what you ate for lunch, or how everything is falling apart and the world has never been so bad, or whine about Mondays The users that do #1 tend to do very little of #2, and vice versa. Listening to #2 will add very little value to your life except extra anxiety and distraction, but #2 is needed because they're the people to whom brands are promoting themselves. The problem is people keep coming back to Facebook to keep up with friends, and people keep coming back to Twitter to watch and participate in drama. The former will inevitably be more engaged with the advertising than the latter, and Twitter can't change that.

criddell 10y ago

> No clear path to revenue I don't know about that. They have $2.2 billion in revenue last year. Get the employee count down to 300 people and you have a great business.

josh_carterPDX 10y ago
No you're right. However, aside from having ad revenue I don't see anything they can do to accelerate their revenue growth. But yeah, cut spending, get employee count way down, and they could break even sooner than later.
- basch 10y ago
  bull. twitters growth stalled because its way to hard to join and sort through. look how long you can be part of reddit before you make an account. you can even bookmark http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience http://reddit.com/r/tech+askhistorians+bestof+askscience and have a custom mix without having an account. their logged out front page is a pile of shit. imgur.com is better at what twitter is trying to be, twitter should chase digg/medium not lowest common denominator memegrabs.
  - criddell 10y ago
    > twitters growth stalled I think maybe Twitter's growth stalled because it's mostly done growing. Do they need more users? They can already generate billions of dollars every year and maybe that's enough.

fjdlwlv 10y ago

Most ordinary users love the echo chamber. That's the whole point of it.

concinds 10y ago

> it has always seemed like a platform most useful if you have something to promote Twitter is most used for 2 things: - to promote your own brand (which includes companies like CNN & Google, as well as authors, writers and celebrities) - to gossip about what you ate for lunch, or how everything is falling apart and the world has never been so bad, or whine about Mondays The users that do #1 tend to do very little of #2, and vice versa. Listening to #2 will add very little value to your life except extra anxiety and distraction, but #2 is needed because they're the people to whom brands are promoting themselves. The problem is people keep coming back to Facebook to keep up with friends, and people keep coming back to Twitter to watch and participate in drama. The former will inevitably be more engaged with the advertising than the latter, and Twitter can't change that.