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Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain, First Real Profit
- luso_brazilian 9y ago> Revenue in the recent period rose 2 percent from a year earlier to $731.6 million, buoyed by data-licensing sales and video advertising. I understand video advertising and if Twitter turns their attention to this area (after dipping their toes on Vine and Periscope) Youtube and Twitch may get a competitor. Now what does "data-licensing sales" means in this context? User data?
- benjojo12 9y ago> Now what does "data-licensing sales" means in this context? User data? It's likely their firehose feeds and things like that https://developer.twitter.com/en/enterprise https://developer.twitter.com/en/enterprise
- aglionby 9y agoAssume data-licensing refers to selling access to the tweet firehose and things like their premium search API [1]. [1] https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/tools/2018/access-the-full-history-of-tweets.html https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/tools/2018/a...
- benrmatthews 9y agoExpect it is access to tweet data via the API, e.g. social media listening tools that monitor for trends across Twitter and other platforms.
- pixelmonkey 9y agoTwitter acquired a company called Gnip back in 2014[1]. This company built a SaaS business off licensing Twitter's firehose of tweets, in various forms, to various industries. For example, my company, which provides real-time web/content analytics to high-traffic websites, licenses Gnip's real-time API of tweets so that we can do analytics on those tweets and embed them inside our customer-facing products. That revenue ends up counted in Twitter's data licensing sales. Other popular use cases include PR media monitoring systems (e.g. Brandwatch), news alerting (e.g. Dataminr), and even finance (e.g. Bloomberg licenses Twitter data for its terminal[2]). I wrote about that data licensing business here: https://muckhacker.com/the-twitter-growth-conundrum-8339eda162a4 https://muckhacker.com/the-twitter-growth-conundrum-8339eda1... Even though Twitter isn't growing DAUs quickly (and possibly will never do so), it is actually a pretty diversified business. It has a multi-hundred-million ARR SaaS business embedded inside a multi-hundred-million user consumer destination site, which primarily monetizes through a billion-dollar self-service advertising business. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/twitter-acquires-longtime-partner-and-social-data-analytics-provider-gnip/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/twitter-acquires-longtime-... [2]: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2015/bloomberg-twitter-data.html https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2015/bloomberg-twi...
- perseusprime11 9y agoI will still stay away from it
- majortennis 9y agoive been in for some time, wish i bought more during the 50% off sale
- djhworld 9y agoI wonder if the premium tier of the API has contributed towards this?
- walshemj 9y agoNo just cut back on stock options aka a paycut for the staff.
- adventured 9y agoA further quarter of a billion dollars in stock options per quarter is insane when stacked against a $15-$20b market cap. Practically no sustaining public companies operate like that, with that scale of constant dilution.
- wpietri 9y agoIt'll be interesting to see what that does to their hiring and retention, though. They are competing for people with Facebook, Google, etc. They weren't previously giving out those options to be nice.
- walshemj 9y agoAnd instead of paper options they will have to increase real $ - part of the problem for them is the way options are treated from an accounting perspective when in fact not all options get exercised.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- benaadams 9y agoTwitters advertising flow is messed up Promote Tweet -> Give card details -> Lets see what can do and cost $ Should be Promote Tweet -> Lets see what can do and cost $ -> Give card details
- csomar 9y agoAre they able to check your card balance?
- benaadams 9y agoNo; but twitter will likely get a better conversion rate if they tell people what it is they are buying and the cost, prior to handing over their payment details
- smogcutter 9y agoSeems like this way they filter out the looky-loos and narrow the gap between seeing the price and making a purchase.
- saguro 9y agoNo. Handing over card details just pre-authorizes them to make transactions later.
- mseebach 9y agoPerhaps it's a way to throttle analysis of their pricing algorithm?
- bad_user 9y agoIf you're not willing to give your credit card details, you're probably not willing to pay anyway.
- noway421 9y agoNot messed up form revenue generating point of view.
- countryqt30 9y agoIt's beautiful to see that Twitter and it's CEO could finally TURN IT AROUND! :) Happy for you guys — celebrate.
- indescions_2018 9y agoWhisper rumor is that $TWTR is shopping itself for an acquisition. With $DIS / FOX likely suitor. $30 stock price would place market cap approx $25B. Twitter Could Easily Be Acquired In 2018 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4135256-twitter-easily-acquired-2018 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4135256-twitter-easily-acqu...
- adventured 9y agoIt's not a whisper rumor. That speculation has been extremely rampant for years at this point.
- mv4 9y agoLast time they were shopping, there was a huge influx of fake users, almost as though all fraud detection checks were disabled. This time is different, or is it. Just how much of their new revenue is due to fake users, ad fraud, and automation?
- adventured 9y agoThey don't have any new revenue. Sales were only up 2%. What changed is their expenses. Negative $167m to positive $91m in net income, year over year for the quarter. That's nearly entirely from adjusting their expenses down. Dorsey is turning Twitter into the profit machine it should have always been by properly adjusting its expenses to the size of the business (rather than the size they hoped it would become years ago).
- mv4 9y agoThat's actually better than I expected.
- samfisher83 9y agoThey are generating about 600 mil in free cash flow. Their revenues aren't growing. Other than acquisition there is no way to justify a 24 billion dollar valuation.
- Steeeve 9y agoTwitter loves Trump. It's not just twitter... the whole profit center around online communities is based on active communities. Most topics are cyclical - once the Superbowl is over, it's hard to keep a football community active. Only so many people are interested in the draft, in coaching changes, etc. But throw in some controversy and all of a sudden everything lights up again. The problem, or _a_ problem, is that people can only handle so much controversy. They have lives to lead. They _need_ to be happy. But as more and more profit centers are tied to active online communities, and as people who run those communities strive to keep people active, and since controversy is as easy a tool to use as there is in the toolbox... Well the end result is that online interaction shifts from being something that brings people together into something unhealthy. Don't get me wrong, Twitter is a great tool for getting up to the moment information out there and for consuming it. I just wonder what there bottom line would look like if Trumps Tweets weren't making headlines 3 times a week. The social health issue is one for all companies that compete in the social media space to figure out.
- trs80 9y ago>Twitter loves Trump. Hidden camera investigations[1] into Twitter employees suggest otherwise. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64gTjdUrDFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64gTjdUrDFQ
- Bulk70 9y agoTwitter staff != Twitter Inc
- orf 9y agoSeems like a lot of out of context clips to push a narrative, standard project veritas stuff. Like the clip about banning certain groups of people: the engineer says "it's going to ban a certain way of talking". You might take from this based on the video that he's talking about inadvertently banning right-leaning users. Well, what if he's talking about banning racism or messages that use ((subtle dog-whistles)) instead of overt racism? Also, not many people like Trump, especially not in left-leaning areas (like where Twitter is based). Are employees not allowed to voice their dislike of a very dislikable man, while drinking at a social event?
- sova 9y agoBloomberg claiming they know why the stock rose. You could cite any reason
- jonknee 9y agoAre you saying the giant move in the stock directly after they announced earnings is not related to the earnings?
- sova 9y agoIt's always supply and demand, maybe demand rose as a result, or supply decreased as a result, but to claim that an earnings report directly correlates to valuation is like claiming that measuring the temperature of the sea affects the water level.
- fenwick67 9y agoThey actually say "Twitter Soars After Surprise Sales Gain", not "because of surprise sales gain"
- draw_down 9y agoCome on.
- andy_ppp 9y agoI said a while back they were optimising their algorithm for rage and that The Donald would be good for business. I think they are probably still buy because I suspect they will be bought - such a feature of the Internet it is hard to imagine a conversation, TV show or live event without it.
- jdavis703 9y agoAre you active on Twitter? I'm not saying you're not, I'm just genuinely curious on what other's filter bubble experience looks like. For me most of what I see is related to state and local politics, and policy wonk issues. But I've also managed to curate my feed. Except for when something really big happens, my feed honestly does not feel to be full of rage. I wonder if your interactions send some kind of signal to Twitter that rage Tweets are what keep you most engaged?
- zimpenfish 9y agoI am active on Twitter and have curated my feed to be full* of rage. * Ok, more like 50-75% depending on what the Dumbass Gibbon or the Brexidiots have said/done recently.
- gaius 9y agothey were optimising their algorithm for rage The humans think this is “engagement” but the algorithm knows the truth. Phillip Morris is also profitable...
- bad_user 9y agoI've been very active on Twitter in the past 2 years and not due to Trump or other controversies. A lot of developers I want to follow are active on Twitter. So it might be due to Trump, don't know, but I'm glad it's going well for them.
- hockeybias 9y agoI enjoy twitter for being able to promptly get links to news from newspaper people.
- otalp 9y agoI didn't join twitter due to Trump, but I kept going there to see if his ludicrous tweets were real, when one day I decided on a whim to create an account since I liked the design compared to Reddit and Facebook. I found a lot of good people and pages to follow, and now I login everyday, and it's probably a more useful use of time than my usage of Reddit/YouTube/Facebook.
- visarga 9y agoI started using Twitter daily a year ago and now I follow about 600 deep learning researchers. It is more lively than /r/machinelearning. I quite enjoy occasionally being able to chat with top guys in the field, especially that they are so busy. Pro tip: when a Trump article comes, select "I don't like this tweet" from the side menu, and after a few such actions applied here and there, your feed is going to feel clean.
- mohdmasd 9y agoCan you please list some of these deep learning accounts, should be very interesting. Thanks!
- snowwrestler 9y agoYou can see who a person is following on Twitter. Assuming the same username on Twitter as here: https://twitter.com/visarga/following https://twitter.com/visarga/following
- jxub 9y agoIt's amazing how tech companies and unicorns are valued. If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their aes and their value stays neutral, and first signs of profit send the stocks to the moon. That is also the behaviour of crypto, but in this case the stocks aren't overvalued to start with, as decades of inflation have done to stocks. Looking from another side, in crypto we haven't developed a sound investing framework yet, other than the usual github/reddit/social/TA checks, possibly because we are dealing with a protocol, not a product. The interesting thing here, and maybe a somewhat contrarian position to take in the Twitter case, is that they're not a tech company, but a protocol company. And their value can't be measured with a number, they're essentially playing the same field as TCP or IRC, which value we haven't measured. I would be buying $TWTR stock, if it weren't for cryptos like VEN, GVT or REQ which may be equivalent to investing in Twitter in the seed phase. Actually, this line of thought is really interesting, I may write something longer and more coherent about this stuff.
- wbl 9y agoHow did being a protocol work out for DEC? Or Sun?
- jxub 9y agoBeing a protocol company is risky for adoption, but helps develop a huge moat over the competition, which doesn't remove the possibility of becoming an E-Corp-like company and/or dying from inefficiency. No idea about these two in particular sorry.
- jonknee 9y ago> If they are losing, the public market or VC's cover their aes and their value stays neutral In the past year TWTR has been as low as $14.12, it has been anything but neutral.
- jxub 9y agoSorry, I might be too used to the swings in crypto. Last year has been bad for twitter indeed looking from traditional-Buffetian investing point of view.
- zanny 9y agoIn the last two years I've seen a large migration of digital artists off of traditional gallery sites (Deviantart, Artstation, etc) to Twitter as their "gallery". The same thing happened with Tumblr circa 2012-2014, but even those folks are moving to twitter instead of using a dedicated site designed for showcasing art. I've never had a Twitter account because I'd much rather see ostatus and decentralized networks succeed, and Twitter has never offered anything meaningful in the past, but if this trend continues I'll be stuck signing up there just like I did with Tumblr not to use it as a social network but as a media consumption platform (as was mentioned in the article, video is also growing). Its also similar to how musicians were nigh forced to start using Youtube as their primary jumping off point over Bandcamp and Soundcloud because that was where the eyeballs were. What kind of backwards world would it be if artists, musicians, animators, etc are all using Twitter as their primary distribution platform just because of the network effects. Same reason Tumblr took off in those circles. It doesn't matter if the UI is lacking even the barest support for effective navigation of media, its all about social bridging and getting into feeds. In my experience about 80% of artists and writers that use Tumblr have their creative works inaccessible because they are buried under a mountain of reblogs and non-content filler posts with limited to no means to filter or navigate them. I'd hope this trend doesn't continue, but it almost certainly will. Those making a living for themselves through online media are doing so via network effects and memes. Get a breakout success, get into peoples "feeds", and spread through casual retweets and reblogs. Its never about discovery or wanting to find them, its them getting randomly referred to you through the hive mind, and that creates a handful of wildly successful winners and a sea of equally competent and capable creators that never gain any traction.
- snoman 9y agoThe trend certainly will continue, if only because that's how it's always worked - even before twitter, or even the internet. TV, radio, newspapers, publishers, etc. have always had this power - you had to market yourself to enough people for someone with influence in one of the aforementioned medias to consider you worthy and propel you to visibility and success. One might even say that the current state of affairs, or trend, is preferable because it's not some small group of people acting as gatekeepers, but instead it's "the hivemind" as you've put it.
- waytogo 9y agoRediscovered Twitter for blockchain news. Why: Subreddits for different tokens/currencies end up being echochambers (but still good resources as long you follow multiple subs). HN rarely shows blockchain stuff and the upvoted ones are often just anti crypto. Following 30-50 crypto influencers on Twitter provides a good mix.
- Shounak 9y agoCan you recommend some good crypto influencers to follow?
- waytogo 9y agoA good while controversial start is Ian Balina @diaryofamademan (ICO heavy content) and then just follow founders from various cryptos (Vitalik from Ethereum, Jed from Stellar). Then just add all the people mentioned people retweet.
- heartbreak 9y agoMy must-follow for cryptocurrency insight is @tqbf.
- loceng 9y agoAnyone you follow who's prominently against cryptocurrencies structured like Bitcoin, Ethereum's Ether et al - that aren't stable?
- grad_ml 9y agoTwitter is the world's news paper now. I think, as world newspaper, it is worth it's value.
- wott 9y agoYes, if you mean to wrap world potatoes peelings.
- craftyguy 9y agoIt's not a 'news paper', it's a street corner in medieval Europe lined with 'prophets' all spewing shit in an attempt to attract followers.
- rhizome 9y agoYour comparison is inapt. One tweet in your timeline can not drown out other tweets.
- craftyguy 9y agoI never said that, nor do I think that was implied.
- rhizome 9y agoYou did. There is no concept of "volume" on Twitter in the way that a passerby in Medieval Wherever would miss some information over other.
- GotAnyMegadeth 9y agoThat's not entirely true. Twitter doesn't show you all tweets in chronological order, it has some kind of sorting algorithm like Facebook. If you follow enough people popular tweets and tweeters definitely drown out less popular ones
- visarga 9y ago> it's a street corner in medieval Europe One laaarge street corner.
- imartin2k 9y agoSystematic outrage and Trump can be successfully monetized. Damn, I always had the silent hope that Twitter wouldn't not reach this point.
- jjrh 9y agoI'm still amazed how bad the Twitter.com UI is. The fact stuff like Hootsuite,tweetdeck and a zillion similar tools exist to effectively make twitter usable if you follow more than a dozen people is crazy. There is a whole bunch of innovation waiting to happen: for instance Twitter could build a community around creating and sharing 'lists' for just about any topic. I wanted to make a 'list' for every Canadian MP but man that's a lot of work and surely someone has done it already but I have no clue how to find that 'list'.
- visarga 9y agoYou can make lists on Twitter and see other people's lists.
- detaro 9y agoThe problem was searching for lists other people have made, not having a list feature at all.
- jjrh 9y agoIt's the type of thing twitter could really facilitate too - oh I see you added snoopdog and drdre, you might be interested in the "West coast Rappers" list! Publishing/maintaining lists is something a organisation could do - ie CNN might want to publish a list of all their political journalists. The list thing is really just a example of a feature they could have experimented with and for whatever reason didn't.
- thraw_awaii 9y agoHm, found this. Doesn't seem to work anymore. Wonder what happened: https://audiense.com/search-lists-twitter/ https://audiense.com/search-lists-twitter/ Also, scouring peoples profiles for lists (they've made or belong to) seems to be a thing according to this: https://www.postplanner.com/how-to-find-twitter-lists-in-niche-industry/ https://www.postplanner.com/how-to-find-twitter-lists-in-nic...
- xd1936 9y ago
- timdellinger 9y agoConfession: when I open up twitter, the thing that excites me most is when I see that patio11 has tweeted. His stuff is just an absolute must-read for me. He uses twitter almost like a blog, which is different than most other people I follow. Some people use twitter like it's facebook, some people use it merely as a pointer to other content, some people use it to argue, some people use it to interact with major brands / corporations. I'm not sure if this is a strength or a weakness of the platform. I guess the important thing is that it's getting used.
- patio11 9y agoHe uses twitter almost like a blog Yep, and I'm more than a little disappointed in myself about that. Something about the form factor of writing there and the perceived "well it doesn't have to be shippable, it's just twitter" quality bar lets me keep up a habit of writing there almost daily while I struggle "sitting down to write essays" even on a monthly basis.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoAlso, discoverability. Blogs have UI with mostly O(1) access to any article. Twitter and Facebook are O(n) - the older a post, the more difficult is to find it. I like your tweets too, btw.
- 0xCMP 9y agoI don't think this is a bad thing. In fact there probably is room in normal websites and blogs to allow you to write shorter "less quality" material along with the higher quality stuff. I'm kind of convinced it's something like Medium + Twitter: A timeline of "tweets" on the home page where you can do everything you could on twitter but on the website (possibly syndicated) where you could also announce/promote articles written. One cool thing I realized is you can repromote old articles on your website when they become relevant again with a small blub just like most people end up doing all the time on Twitter. But on your website, owned by you, etc. etc.
- jasonkester 9y agoThat probably explains why patio11 is the only thing I ever read on Twitter. I have no idea whether I follow anybody. My only interaction with the site is to go to https://twitter.com/patio11 https://twitter.com/patio11 from time to time, scroll way down to the last thing I remember having read, then read up. I can't understand why they don't have a simple way to sort things in the order they were written. But then it's possible that I'm the only person who reads it this way, so perhaps it's unreasonable to expect them to build a feature for me. I try from time to time to read other people's twitters. Even tech people who are interesting here and on their blogs. It's unbearable.
- francescopnpn 9y agoI think the boost comes from ICO-related ads. Especially as Facebook just banned them.
- qume 9y agoWow all these posts and youre the only person to mention this. I find that really strange. Of course twitter has just landed a dumptruck load of cryptocurrency ad revenue. Now the question is will they ban it for the same reasons facebook did given how key it is to profitability?
- francescopnpn 9y agoI highly doubt they will ban cryptocurrencies from their ad-platform when they can barely stay afloat. I speculate Facebook did so only because they're under pressure plus Zuckerberg said he's looking into the blockchain. I wouldn't be surprised if they'll monetize Messenger or WhatsApp with (the speculation it self of) a token in 2019/2020, akin to Telegram. Messaging-based apps are notoriously hard to monetize and Zuckerberg has said on earning's calls that he's unsatisfied with Messenger's progress in terms of monetization.
- jonbarker 9y agoWould love to see how they solve the problem of third party markets for twitter followers.
- sekou 9y agoThis excellently shows the problem with how value is currently assessed in the social media landscape. The "In case you missed it" algorithm-based organization of tweets and the focus on video to "increase engagement" at any cost are same reasons why there has been a widespread backlash against Facebook. On the other hand, building your feed from the ground up granularly is one of the larger differences between Twitter and Facebook.
- Agathos 9y agoWhenever I see, "In case you missed it," I read it as, "Now you have to decide if checking for new tweets is worth re-reading a half dozen tweets you've already seen." So far, the answer is usually yes. I follow a lot of good people and the fear of missing something is real. But it's not 100% yes and I don't think the trend line looks good for Twitter.
- icodemuch 9y agoSo Twitter has finally given up on building for the avg person and begun creating more tools to make life easier for advertisers (ie big money) and they're suddenly more profitable. Shocker!!
- wef883j 9y agoRevenue was up 2%. The rest is cost cutting. https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16991140/twitter-profit-q4-2018-earnings-revenue-cuts https://www.recode.net/2018/2/8/16991140/twitter-profit-q4-2...
- kelukelugames 9y agoOh good, I'm just down 17% on my TWTR holdings now.
- Profragile 9y agoIf you let them control the narrative, they will control you and hence the market. However, after they start controlling you, their downfall begins.
- lgleason 9y agonote that they slashed spending as well. Given all of the talk of regulation I don't think they are out of the woods yet. If increased regulation does happen it will have an enormous effect on the business.
- kapv89 9y agoGlad to see twitter doing good financially. Out of all the social media platforms I use, it is by far the best.
- mark_l_watson 9y agoThis seems fair, as a consumer. I follow a few very good computer scientists and entrepreneurs on Twitter and the things they post are of high value to me. I don’t mind the ads or the web app. I favor reading books and academic papers over random web browsing, but some time spent on Twitter, HN, and a few Reddit subs-Reddit’s keeps me up to date, tech-news wise.
- gfyrt 9y agoTrump trump trump trump trump Trump!!!!!!!!!!