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Twitter shares drop after reporting declining monthly active users
- sschueller 8y agoIs the bubble finally bursting?
- danso 8y agoI think more time will tell. Facebook and Twitter are both still higher than where they were in March of this year. Same for Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft.
- rm_-rf_slash 8y agoAnd even if there is a social media bubble burst it’s not clear whether that would affect other tech stocks or the market as a whole.
- dominotw 8y agoamd, amzn, team had a good run yesterday. Seems like mixed bag. 12% fall for twtr considering it had more than 100% rise this year.
- bdcravens 8y ago> 12% fall for twtr considering it had more than 100% rise this year Of course, that number's currently at 19%; may end up day over 20
- crunchlibrarian 8y agoWhich bubble? The social networking bubble? Yes, probably. The rest of tech is actually doing remarkably well considering Twitter and Facebook's record setting decline yesterday.
- aphextron 8y agoLooks more like a well needed correction to me. $FB and $TWTR are still significantly above their 52 week lows.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- a2tech 8y agoTwitter has been all smoke and mirrors since day one. Their platform was never going to really make money.
- imjk 8y agoThey made $265MM dollars last quarter, up from $178MM same time last year. That’s on $711MM of revenue.
- nicky0 8y agoMakes me wonder what exactly are they spending $2B on per year?
- akvadrako 8y agoI think it's mostly sales and marketing.
- sigstoat 8y agohave they produced more profit than all their previous losses, yet? i don't think a2tech is wrong until that has happened.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoIs this how companies are typically valued?
- mi100hael 8y agoNot exactly, but if those previous losses were financed by investors, then it could point to difficulty for investors to get a return in the future.
- sushid 8y agoHow would you calculate that? With market rate interest? Standard rate of inflation? It's not a metric people look for when valuing companies.
- _pmf_ 8y agoWhat I don't understand is the discrepancy between the size of their engineering workforce and the lousy quality of their web client on mobile.
- Liquix 8y agoThis may be an intentional dark pattern / effort to drive users away from the web client and to the official app. Facebook and reddit do the same thing. More permissions = more juicy data to harvest.
- vorpalhex 8y agoNever assume malice where stupidity will do. I've been in an enterprise-y work environment. It's amazing the crap that gets churned out by massive teams for simple tasks.
- prolikewh0a 8y agoI assume malice. I work corporate for a Fortune 200 and if anything was broken as badly as Twitter's mobile website, it would be caught by someone in 5 minutes with an on-call assigned to fix the problem ASAP.
- stefan_ 8y agoDing ding ding. The web page is so comically broken it can only be intentional. No user pages even load for me unless I do an explicit reload; the first time around, the spinner just spins endlessly.
- pjc50 8y agoAnother fun one is that a single page load can give you a "rate limit exceeded" failure.
- gt565k 8y agoIt's a dark pattern indeed. Facebook does the same with their mobile web version. If you try to use messenger from a mobile browser, you are redirected to download the app. If you switch to "Desktop" mode in a mobile browser. The messenger is so freaking buggy and unusable, it deletes text as you type and try to send a message. It's made to frustrate you so you download the messenger app.
- krisroadruck 8y agoI think they lost the initiative the moment they decided to focus on censorship instead of combating spam/bots. Other things that didn't help include killing third-party clients a few years back, and screwing with the chronological timeline. Twitter was frickin amazing from like 2009-maybe 2013ish (though the whole TweetDeck aquisition in 2011 was a serious blow) and has been in steady decline ever since from a quality and usefulness perspective.
- pjc50 8y ago> focus on censorship instead of combating spam/bots There isn't really a distinction between these two. The crackdown on abuse was absolutely necessary, although it doesn't really go far enough, because the platform was getting a name for driving off high-profile users.
- vorpalhex 8y agoTwitter has been very sloppy in maintaining a clear line between abuse and unpopular opinions. Twitter has value because it's a relatively open place where anyone can interact. When twitter starts having strong opinions about what content is acceptable or not outside of abuse, then it becomes a very liberal echo chamber which drastically biases all the conversations that go on in it. The issue, and this isn't a twitter specific issue, is that the line between preventing abuse and censoring content is not a clear or distinct line at all - some users want every art installation to have a trigger warning before it while other users hold the firm political opinion that the mixing of different races is unethical. It's not clear that Twitter (or Facebook, or Reddit) has ever been good at navigating that line, or that they should be in that business. Reddit is somewhat successful in that most of the moderation happens at least at a subreddit level, so that if you disagree with a given community you can simply move to a different one.
- pjc50 8y ago> some users want every art installation to have a trigger warning before it while other users hold the firm political opinion that the mixing of different races is unethical. Those aren't even slightly equivalent positions, though. One is a request that material dealing with shocking or upsetting subjects be marked as such so that people who may be affected can avoid it, and the other is unsubstantiated racism that has been known as wrong for a century or more. For twitter in particular, there's an important difference between expressing an opinion to the world in general (or at least your followers) versus actually "@"ing somebody. While you might argue that people should be allowed to post anti-miscegenation rants into the void, posting them @ a mixed-race couple is clearly abuse.
- argo_ 8y agoAny ideas about where the users (twitter/facebook) are going to? What these users that are not on twitter anymore are doing instead?
- AznHisoka 8y agoInstagram is my first guess.
- perseusprime11 8y agoInstagram will have its own moment to shine. All the 40 somethings trying to be like 20 somethings with their before and after pictures is not going to last once they realize that they are simply models on steriods. Usage will drop.
- donaltroddyn 8y agoI left Facebook entirely earlier this year, and haven't replaced it with any other service. I'm wondering now about my Twitter account. It's a good source for infosec and test automation news, but nothing I couldn't live without.
- foolproofplan 8y agoAny specific accounts you might suggest related to test automation?
- pwned1 8y agoReal life.
- cirgue 8y agoI hope that's where this is going.
- thewizardofaus 8y agoMe too. I noticed something yesterday on the train - which made me sad. The carriage had over 100 people; yet 95% had their heads down and looking at their phone. Most people didn't lookup throughout the whole 20 minute train ride. For social media making everyone connected, it sure has made everyone else more isolated with each other.
- perseusprime11 8y agoTwitter is not showing not much growth in MAUs. Valuation is still high. Market cap is based on future cash flows. No future cash flows (MAUs) means market cap has to come down. Just showing profit is not enough. It just shows you can control expenses but does not deserve the huge market cap. This is a $1billion company posing as a $30B company. Anybody disagree?
- snowwrestler 8y agoI propose that MAU growth is a dumb metric for a company that is 10 years old. Companies exist to make money, not attract eyeballs. Plenty of companies make good money without reaching every person in the world, or even a sizable percentage of them.
- pjc50 8y agoUnfortunately most tech valuations since the first dot-com boom have been predicated on the assumption that one company will eventually take over the world in a particular market.
- perseusprime11 8y agoI agree with the intention of your message but if Twitter is making money from attracting eyeballs, won't it become the metric unless their business model fundamentally changes.
- jiveturkey 8y agoTwitter is the type of company that only works due to network effect. Like ebay and facebook. So I'd say the age of the company is immaterial, it's how much of the market they've acquired so far. MAU growth is a fair metric.
- snowwrestler 8y agoSome networks are more valuable than others. Raw MAU tells you nothing about the LTV of those AUs. What's better for eBay: a shitload of people who never buy anything? Or a smaller network of engaged, repeat sellers and buyers? And some networks have negative value. 4chan, despite attracting large traffic numbers and being a well-known cultural force on the Internet, has always struggled to attract advertisers. To maximize financial value of its user network, a parent company must exclude users and content that subtract value. Examples would be lower-LTV users who drive away higher-LTV users via harassment. Or users who post content so objectionable that brands don't want to advertise against it. MAU growth alone tells you nothing about those things.
- foobarbazetc 8y agoGuys... I hate to break this to you but their MAU were always juiced due to rampant bot activity. They said they were culling bot nets and this is the result. A lot more culling to go, though.
- artilect 8y agoThere is a huge opportunity for any new people that want to get into the game. Conservatives hate Twitter. It's turning into a left-wing cesspool. Even an account devoted completely to science will constantly show me the next hot thing that will take down Drumpf. Gab.ai is devoted to free-speech and is able to control the bots without affecting anyone. With regard to the first amendment, Twitter says they are the one that is speaking, not the user, when a tweet is sent, therefore it's their first amendment right to choose what to display. This is bullshit, they're not the speaker any more than a park or a phone call is the speaker when someone is talking there. This censorship will be the demise of all Big Tech platforms as free speech alternatives pop up over the next few years.
- sandworm101 8y agoTrump, but not in the way you might think. Facebook instantly becomes uncool once your grandparents join and try to friend you. Southpark knew this years ago. Now the iconic angry grandparent is on twitter. Not only are kids leaving as their grandparents sign up to follow Trump, everyone sees king grandpa in Trump. It isn't about politics or anger. Twitter is just falling off the uncool grandparent cliff.
- dboreham 8y agoIt's also just not that useful.
- swebs 8y agoEh, Twitter was always the social media site for old people. Much of their early marketing targeted network TV and nightly news.
- sandworm101 8y agoNighttime TV has changed, especially late night. It used to be old people but the Daily Show or Colbert aren't watched by old people. Retirees watch the daytime news, the fox/CNN/MSNBC crowd. Nightime TV, and streaming generally, is for the working young.
- fullshark 8y agoTwitter would probably doing a lot worse if HRC won: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/what-is-trump-worth-to-twitter-one-analyst-estimates-2-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/what-is-t... I think when we imagined the internet the idea that the president could communicate with us instantly from anywhere in the world was one of the ideal use cases for it. Who could have guessed the reality of it though!
- josefresco 8y agoTrump would not have disappeared if Hillary had won. He would have lead the charge to take her down. Prior to the election he had already amassed a very large follower count.
- red_hare 8y agoHopefully this will encourage them to finally deal with their handle-squatting issue.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- magwa101 8y agoAhh, the big SV vanity metric comes home to roost.
- ISL 8y agoTo me, the real TWTR story isn't the 14% drop this week, but that TWTR's price is up 100% from the level it held through all of 2016, a time which included takeover talks.
- stuckinarut 8y agoTrump effect.
- gnicholas 8y agoDon't forget the part where they now show you tweets that people you follow have liked, just the same as if they had retweeted them. I already unfollowed people who tweet/retweet too much for my liking, and now I have to unfollow people who 'like' things prolifically also? Ridiculous.
- vmarsy 8y ago> Don't forget the part where they now show you tweets that people you follow have liked, just the same as if they had retweeted them. I rarely use twitter but the first time I saw these "person X liked this" I just looked up how to not get that. Turns out it's pretty simple, you just click on that tweet menu and select "I don't like this tweet", repeat for maybe one or two other tweets on your timeline, and then refresh your feed and they're all gone. People mentioned it can come back after a couple months, you'd notice quickly as your feed quality would suck, you just redo the same. The only one I see now are "person X and Y liked Z tweet" but in that case I follow X, Y, and Z, so it's usually relevant.
- gnicholas 8y agoGlad it works for some. I have not personally had luck with that trick, but maybe I've not done it enough times.
- nasredin 8y ago>>People mentioned it can come back after a couple months, you'd notice quickly as your feed quality would suck, you just redo the same. Don't you feel like a rat in an experiment? What's the point of this if you don't even own the controls to the software? Rhetorical questions.
- bromuro 8y agoI follow mainly programmers and I love this feature. I always discover interesting tweets, which are useful for my job.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- djhworld 8y agoI like twitter, I don't really tweet that much though, don't really have that much to say. I follow a lot of people, but I'd imagine if I looked at the stats, probably only the top 25% of those tweet regularly and the rest probably just get lost in the ether, or just don't tweet at all
- ballenf 8y agoTwitter has some misguided PR priorities. So many news stories include tweets from extreme perspectives that have gotten thousands of likes/retweets/whatever. Since Twitter really works on their API for this, it's clear they think it's a good thing. This is their biggest source of free advertising and it always presents Twitter as a fringe-fest or, worse, knee-jerk mob mentality and nothing more. They really need to re-think promoting a system that gives the outside world a view of only the most extreme and unflattering view. No matter your political views, someone you respect will have negative Tweets presented in the news. It really makes it feel like it's only a platform for someone else.
- swanson 8y agoI think it was straightforward to predict that monthly active users would be down after they banned the bots (and lots of accounts were tweeting about losing 4-7 figures worth of followers) -- I'm a bit surprised that this is being cited as the reason for the bloodbath. Surely this point is not a sophisticated analysis or am I way over-estimating owners of tech stocks that live and die on earnings calls?
- ilamparithi 8y agoThey recently started logging out users and asking for mobile number. I didn't want to give my mobile number so I uninstalled the app. Occasionally visit the website and view some users' tweets (without logging in). But as it was mentioned elsewhere it's full of dark patterns and an irritating experience.
- 0x00000000 8y agoCan you delete your account if you wanted to without providing a phone number? On Instagram you can't once it starts asking you.
- ilamparithi 8y agoI don't think so since we are already logged out.
- Waterluvian 8y agoWhat is the endgame for companies like Twitter and Facebook? It seems like the only behaviour for publicly traded tech companies is grow or die. So what happens when they hit some theoretical maximum? Is it not acceptable that they're making money? Is there no steady state? Not saying that Twitter is there. But theoretically what does that look like? "Hey, so we basically maxed out our target market share. We're healthy, profitable, popular, but this is basically the limit. There aren't any more people in our demo left on the planet to capture." "Nope. Go make more money. Sell more ad space. Or shift focus to a new product or something." "But that will either degrade the quality of our product or take our eye off the ball and allow a competitor to eat our lunch." "Too bad. I don't care how profitable you are, only that you're more profitable than last year."
- andrestan 8y agoThere are plenty of public companies that reach a steady state. What happens for those companies is their PE ratios shrink, they start paying out dividends and their expectation is to be a big lumbering giant whose valuation isn't expected to have dramatic swings based on outsized expected future earnings. What happened here is not "Wall Street" saying that Twitter must die, it's saying "Hey, your newly expected future earnings are no longer able to justify your prior valuation and therefore here's your new valuation based on all currently available information".
- Waterluvian 8y agoOkay so twitter has been in a "valued based on anticipated growth" state. And other companies can matriculate to a "valued based on reliable dividends" state? This I can understand. Thanks.
- sushid 8y agoAll this is new territory, mind you. This is why older traditional/value investors like Buffett don't dabble in tech. The PE ratios are through the roof and we don't know what it will mean once we start seeing these companies truly decline.
- Wissmania 8y agoHonestly pretty pathetic that investors hadn't priced in the existence of bots into their valuation of the company. Perhaps I expect too much.
- inverse_pi 8y agoThe surprising thing to note here is how much optimism the street has in $twtr. Just one quarter of small beat and the stock jumped 100%. After the drop today (to $34) it's still too high for $twtr which hasn't actually proved anything since the stock was high teens low 20s. If anything, their live streaming effort is pretty much down the drain, and Anthony Noto, who's pretty much the heart and soul of Twitter operation, left. I'm super surprised the stock is still mid 30s.
- ISL 8y agoThe Tweeter-in-Chief has provided more free marketing than money could buy. Twitter is now an indelible brand on decadal timescales. They might go the way of MySpace someday, but, at present, there's nothing in the West quite like Twitter.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ashray5 8y agoTremendous pessimism on this thread. It's time for an intelligent investor to buy.
- acd 8y agoCopy paste to Facebook if you use google trends on social networks. Ask your self this will the world be a better or worse place without Twitter?
- milankragujevic 8y agoWell, they recently banned me for being under 13 when I opened my account in 2010, so I guess serves them right :P
- stuckinarut 8y agoThat's actually a liability thing though, I think (COPPA?)
- milankragujevic 8y agoBut how do I fix the past? I can't undo it, but I want to keep my account... :/