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Why does Twitter need to have a huge market capitalization and return for investors? Can't it just be the "global heartbeat of the information age", as the auth

Why does Twitter need to have a huge market capitalization and return for investors? Can't it just be the "global heartbeat of the information age", as the author so humbly (/s) puts it?

dhimes 7y ago
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. They are profitable; they exceeded expectations by a lot Q2. Not sure what the problem is. This happened to Yahoo too. They were quite happily tooling along, making profits, building cool stuff, and employing people with remote-work policies, small-biz tools for folks, and what-not. Then along came an activist investor who turned it into a royal shit-show. He finally convince Verizon to buy it, but man it was a wild ride. I don't know if it made the investors money, but it made a lot of people sad.
ci5er 7y ago
I have a serious question about your question, understood under the current regime rules: How does one build and maintain a "global heartbeat of the information age" without return to the funders? Even if I was an inventor that wanted to build one of these things for no personal benefit, until it was profitable (under some business model), it could not sustain without the goodwill of grant-givers or the greed of investors that knew their money would be returned to them under some sort of risk-adjusted time-based return calculation. In other words - who can afford to do something like this for free? (Now - I am not a fan of Twitter, so if the answer was "no one", it wouldn't hurt my feelings, but I guess some people think that it is important somehow?)
- dhimes 7y ago
  They're public. The funders' "payout" ship has sailed. They've also been profitable this year, according to Yahoo finance.
  - ci5er 7y ago
    Yes, now. But I don't know how one would finance the build-out of a public utility like this.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  I'm naive about business but I just don't understand what Twitter even needs a LOT of money for. Yes, they need some funds to run servers, update apps, and the usual internet company maintenance...but it's not like FAANG companies, which have a lot of ancillary products and services, many of which are big and expensive risks...but that's what investors signed up for, an ambitious innovative mission. Couldn't/shouldn't Twitter's mission be to distribute 140 characters from one person to many others...what do they need huge revenue and profits for?

Why does Twitter need to have a huge market capitalization and return for investors? Can't it just be the "global heartbeat of the information age", as the author so humbly (/s) puts it?

dhimes 7y ago

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. They are profitable; they exceeded expectations by a lot Q2. Not sure what the problem is. This happened to Yahoo too. They were quite happily tooling along, making profits, building cool stuff, and employing people with remote-work policies, small-biz tools for folks, and what-not. Then along came an activist investor who turned it into a royal shit-show. He finally convince Verizon to buy it, but man it was a wild ride. I don't know if it made the investors money, but it made a lot of people sad.

ci5er 7y ago

I have a serious question about your question, understood under the current regime rules: How does one build and maintain a "global heartbeat of the information age" without return to the funders? Even if I was an inventor that wanted to build one of these things for no personal benefit, until it was profitable (under some business model), it could not sustain without the goodwill of grant-givers or the greed of investors that knew their money would be returned to them under some sort of risk-adjusted time-based return calculation. In other words - who can afford to do something like this for free? (Now - I am not a fan of Twitter, so if the answer was "no one", it wouldn't hurt my feelings, but I guess some people think that it is important somehow?)

dhimes 7y ago
They're public. The funders' "payout" ship has sailed. They've also been profitable this year, according to Yahoo finance.
- ci5er 7y ago
  Yes, now. But I don't know how one would finance the build-out of a public utility like this.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
I'm naive about business but I just don't understand what Twitter even needs a LOT of money for. Yes, they need some funds to run servers, update apps, and the usual internet company maintenance...but it's not like FAANG companies, which have a lot of ancillary products and services, many of which are big and expensive risks...but that's what investors signed up for, an ambitious innovative mission. Couldn't/shouldn't Twitter's mission be to distribute 140 characters from one person to many others...what do they need huge revenue and profits for?