4 ms·

Looks like they are betting on potential. To be honest, Twitter is so mainstream that it is entirely new medium of news/discovery/conversation just like Radio/T

by dm8 13y ago

Looks like they are betting on potential. To be honest, Twitter is so mainstream that it is entirely new medium of news/discovery/conversation just like Radio/TV/Internet. I'm sure they will be extremely profitable company in the future.

umsm 13y ago
Exactly. It feels like they are not concentrating on their profitability yet. When they do, I believe they will have a lot more income.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Oh my god. They're bleeding money. If they don't IPO now, how much longer could they last for?
Touche 13y ago
I doubt it. Twitter is fundamentally flawed in a way that I'm not sure is fixable. The fact is that the vast majority of people on Twitter get no feedback at all when they post something. This is a combination of 2 things: 1) Tweets disappear quickly from a user's timeline 2) Most people have few active followers 1 and 2 work against each other to form a negative feedback loop. The result is the vast majority of users use it passively to read celebrity tweets, nothing more. Twitter must know this as their growth is already peaking and they're not making much money. Expect to see more drastic measures to try and turn what they already have into something profitable. They've peaked.
- jedc 13y ago
  Twitter can have value to people that post nothing. (This is the case for a number of my friends on Twitter.) And what you're describing has existed since Twitter was created as Twttr.
  - Touche 13y ago
    Right, it has value, but that value is not going to go up, is my point. Twitter users don't become more engaged over time because only a small percentage of users can use it the way it is intended.
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      Seems to me most of the value in Twitter is as a broadcast medium for established media entities.
- guelo 13y ago
  500 million tweets a day means that users are getting some kind of positive reinforcement for posting, and that it's more than celebrities.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    How many are retweets rather than original tweets? How many are spam? How many are shady i.e. pay folk in the Philippines or Pakistan to send out tweets all day, to boost the numbers?
  - bolder88 13y ago
    500m tweets a day is nothing. That's only 5,700 tweets a second. An average IRC network for example does more than that.
    - cscheid 13y ago
      The number your comparison is missing, and one that happens to be crucial to both business and technical differences, is that you should be looking at tweet impressions, not tweets.
      - hboon 13y ago
        Also interesting is if impressions should be counting followers of the tweet author or only if the follower reads it. Many users are following so many accounts that they can only read only a small subset of their timeline. I wonder if Twitter's apps and services also have to evolve substantially like Facebook's did to include more elaborate filtering and ranking options.
stormbrew 13y ago
Their revenue growth is pretty solid, so there is clearly potential there. Doubled revenue between first half 2012 and first half 2013, 10x yearly since 2010.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Past performance is not an indication of future... you know the rest. They're also on track to almost double their from 2012 to 2013. Why don't people ever look at the costs? There's a reason why they are on track to lose over $100 million this year.
austenallred 13y ago
I agree with you regarding Twitter's monetization opportunity; they're barely scratching the surface of what's possible, hiring like crazy (most of the expense), etc. What seems odd to me is that they're filing for IPO right now. Do they honestly expect public markets to buy their "but it's becoming ubiquitous" story? 2000 wasn't that long ago.
- dm8 13y ago
  Doing IPO means raising money from public markets. So with IPO money, they believe they can buy lot of companies, hire people and make it really profitable business. FB/Google/LinkedIn didn't have to go public but they had to due to SEC regulations and/or their existing investors.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Haven't they already raised over a billion dollars have have over 1000 employees?

by dm8 13y ago

umsm 13y ago

Exactly. It feels like they are not concentrating on their profitability yet. When they do, I believe they will have a lot more income.

yapcguy 13y ago
Oh my god. They're bleeding money. If they don't IPO now, how much longer could they last for?

Touche 13y ago

I doubt it. Twitter is fundamentally flawed in a way that I'm not sure is fixable. The fact is that the vast majority of people on Twitter get no feedback at all when they post something. This is a combination of 2 things: 1) Tweets disappear quickly from a user's timeline 2) Most people have few active followers 1 and 2 work against each other to form a negative feedback loop. The result is the vast majority of users use it passively to read celebrity tweets, nothing more. Twitter must know this as their growth is already peaking and they're not making much money. Expect to see more drastic measures to try and turn what they already have into something profitable. They've peaked.

jedc 13y ago
Twitter can have value to people that post nothing. (This is the case for a number of my friends on Twitter.) And what you're describing has existed since Twitter was created as Twttr.
- Touche 13y ago
  Right, it has value, but that value is not going to go up, is my point. Twitter users don't become more engaged over time because only a small percentage of users can use it the way it is intended.
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    Seems to me most of the value in Twitter is as a broadcast medium for established media entities.
guelo 13y ago
500 million tweets a day means that users are getting some kind of positive reinforcement for posting, and that it's more than celebrities.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  How many are retweets rather than original tweets? How many are spam? How many are shady i.e. pay folk in the Philippines or Pakistan to send out tweets all day, to boost the numbers?
- bolder88 13y ago
  500m tweets a day is nothing. That's only 5,700 tweets a second. An average IRC network for example does more than that.
  - cscheid 13y ago
    The number your comparison is missing, and one that happens to be crucial to both business and technical differences, is that you should be looking at tweet impressions, not tweets.
    - hboon 13y ago
      Also interesting is if impressions should be counting followers of the tweet author or only if the follower reads it. Many users are following so many accounts that they can only read only a small subset of their timeline. I wonder if Twitter's apps and services also have to evolve substantially like Facebook's did to include more elaborate filtering and ranking options.

stormbrew 13y ago

Their revenue growth is pretty solid, so there is clearly potential there. Doubled revenue between first half 2012 and first half 2013, 10x yearly since 2010.

yapcguy 13y ago
Past performance is not an indication of future... you know the rest. They're also on track to almost double their from 2012 to 2013. Why don't people ever look at the costs? There's a reason why they are on track to lose over $100 million this year.

austenallred 13y ago

I agree with you regarding Twitter's monetization opportunity; they're barely scratching the surface of what's possible, hiring like crazy (most of the expense), etc. What seems odd to me is that they're filing for IPO right now. Do they honestly expect public markets to buy their "but it's becoming ubiquitous" story? 2000 wasn't that long ago.

dm8 13y ago
Doing IPO means raising money from public markets. So with IPO money, they believe they can buy lot of companies, hire people and make it really profitable business. FB/Google/LinkedIn didn't have to go public but they had to due to SEC regulations and/or their existing investors.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Haven't they already raised over a billion dollars have have over 1000 employees?