7 ms·

Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

109 points by shasa 13y ago

ahknight 13y ago
Duh? Who really thought Twitter would suddenly become profitable after the IPO? The VCs cashed out and walked away laughing at the imploding building. THERE (STILL) IS NO PROFIT MODEL.
- CompleteMoron2 13y ago
  maybe it's time for them to start acquiring companies so they can make money... hmmm.. time to fire up the code!
- antics 13y ago
  No profit model? Completely wrong. According to the IPO docs they make about $2/1000 views in America (which is good) and were projected to make $1 billion in revenue this year (also good). This article reports that their first quarter revenue is about $250 million, more than double the previous year, which makes their prediction definitely feasible. The remaining question is whether they can turn this revenue into profit, and my answer is yes, because (1) the growth of their operating costs is dramatically outpaced by the growth of their revenue, and (2) most of their losses are due to acquisitions (and they are smart acquisitions). So overall this is a pretty strong portfolio and I'd say it's a completely reasonable bet they're going to be significantly profitable soon. Now. Serious question: did you read this article? If yes you should be embarrassed at your misapprehension here, because in spite of the title, this data in this article actually paints a pretty damn rosy picture of Twitter's future. If no, then why are you commenting here? Here I am sounding cranky, but if you're going to do the ALL INTERNET SHOUTING CAPS thing then you'd better take care not to say something silly. Just my personal opinion, but next time I'd start by both reading the article and understanding the article, and I'd follow that up with taking care to make it sound like I don't think that everyone who disagrees with me is, blanket statement, stupid. Because some of us have done our homework and still disagree with you.
  - zaidf 13y ago
    If you read the article, you should know the primary concern is not the profits or revenues but rather the decline in product engagement/growth. What is your response to that? Your comment doesn't even make a single mention of the #1 reason to be very concerned about twitter.
    - antics 13y ago
      Thanks for the spirited reply, Zaid, but I never said I disagree with any of these points. I'm responding specifically to the ridiculous notion that profit could not possibly be in the future of a post-IPO Twitter, not this stuff about whether Twitter is actually in trouble. If you want to take issue with my position you should probably respond to something I actually said. It is less productive to pretend I am debating a different set of issues and then complain when I don't address these other issues. (I also don't appreciate your assertion that I didn't read an article from which I cited specific factual statements. Obviously I did. This is all particularly annoying, since you seem to believe something that I think is mostly true, and not on something which I concretely disagree; it makes it seem like you're hunting for a disagreement and not conducting this conversation in good faith.)
      - zaidf 13y ago
        Timeline views were down nearly 7%, suggesting users were refreshing their feeds less often. (1) Twitter makes most of its revenues from timeline views (2) Timeline views are declining (3) When a recently IPO'd company's biggest money making product is on the decline in terms of usage, that is hardly a rosy picture.
        antics 13y ago
        Sure, it is certainly debatable that "rosy" was the right choice of words here (it probably was a bit bombastic). But unless your plan is to claim that it is impossible to be optimistic about this situation (which is more or less the position I have taken issue with), then I'm not interested in having this discussion. I'm open to the possibility is wrong; I'm not open to the idea that this debate about the semantics of "rosy" is the most interesting thing to be said here. Sorry if this is a bit blunt.
- billsix 13y ago
  its only been, what, 7 years? give them time
- dclara 13y ago
  As we learned from Amazon's performance, VC and Wall Street don't care about profit, they only care about sales. As long as the sales and customer based is strong, that's ok. There rest can be adjusted.
- AznHisoka 13y ago
  They actually do have a profit model. The sad thing is they're giving it away to other companies (ie Gnip, Datasift). Here's a suggestion: Twitter. Take away every single middleman out there. Sell your data for an arm AND a leg.
TomGullen 13y ago
18% drop in after hours trading... ouch https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=68TyUrjPF4PCwAOWxwE https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=68TyUrjPF4... Anyone who knows more about Twitter, how exactly can they make such a big loss? What exactly are they doing?
- notatoad 13y ago
  They're a big company with lots of employees and infrastructure and not a whole lot of revenue stream. The question isn't so much how can they make a big loss, it's how could anybody have expected different.
  - VintageCool 13y ago
    Per the article, everyone expected a big loss. The stock price dropped because their user growth is slowing.
- UVB-76 13y ago
  > Net loss - GAAP net loss was $511 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a net loss of $9 million in the same period last year. The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP. — https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=823321 https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=...
  - justincormack 13y ago
    So everyone should have known?
    - twoodfin 13y ago
      I don't think anyone cared about the loss, so much as the revenue and user growth/engagement figures.
MechanicalTwerk 13y ago
I like how the article introduces Twitter as "Microblogging site Twitter..." as if you haven't heard of Twitter but are familiar with this thing called microblogging.
- Jare 13y ago
  I think it's more about making Twitter sound less relevant, as if it is "one of many".
  - dublinben 13y ago
    Isn't it though?
    - staunch 13y ago
      Yes, in the same sense that Google is just "one of many" available search engines.
      - sgustard 13y ago
        Photo-sharing site Facebook...
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
- swordfish0321 13y ago
  Lol. Also +1 re mechanical twerk
capkutay 13y ago
I'm not of those people who thinks all tech valuations are insane, but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m revenue). I understand twitter's valuation reflects the fact that it's a growing company, but even a company like facebook is only valued at 60x their quarterly revenue ($158b/$2.5b quarterly revenue). But at least the consensus on wall street and the financial press seem to agree that TWTR is clearly overvalued.
- steveplace 13y ago
  Growth investors don't invest off of current revenue or earnings. It's how they expect these numbers to grow in the next few quarters/years. So if you're going to be bearish on TWTR (which is fine) you probably want to go after their guidance or growth metrics. Their revenue growth is still growing, so you'd have to make the case that it will flatline sometime soon.
  - cordite 13y ago
    It seems like speculation is a game everyone wants to play. Until a bubble pops.
- 27182818284 13y ago
  >but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m What do you think is easy to justify for Twitter? (I'm actually pretty confident in Twitter, I guess. They took ten years-ish to IPO and not a day goes by where I don't see a hashtag on several products be it a local political group or a super bowl commercial)
  - lubujackson 13y ago
    It used to be AOL keywords. Times change quick.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      I was going to make this point, but more than just "things can change" - AOL keywords didn't start getting massively used in adverts/etc. (in the UK at least) until pretty much when AOL were losing relevance, for search and most other things. Really, marketing trends shouldn't be used as a signal for much more than "marketing people like doing this"
mbesto 13y ago
Before we jump the gun on this "loss", read this first:[1] Net loss - GAAP net loss was $511 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a net loss of $9 million in the same period last year. The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA - Adjusted EBITDA was $45 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to $18 million in the same period last year. Non-GAAP net income / loss - Non-GAAP net income was $10 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a Non-GAAP net loss of $0.3 million in the same period last year. Oddly enough the "The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP." seems be tucked away in "Research and Development" part of the P&L. It's worth noting they have $2.2b in cash: > Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities - As of December 31, 2013, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were approximately $2.2 billion, compared to $321 million as of September 30, 2013. TL;DR - This $645m "loss" isn't what you think it is. [1]https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=823321 https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=...
- downandout 13y ago
  Stock based compensation still costs investors money. They are effectively using investors' money to pay their employees, and that should and always will be priced into the stock. With its 18% decline in after hours trading today, Twitter's market cap is still $36.63 billion. Even if you analyze it based on the shell-game of adjusted EBITDA, and assume that it will stay at $45 million/quarter, you come out with a P/E ratio of 165. Twitter is not Facebook. Their growth trajectory isn't remotely close. Personally, I am staying away. I don't want to party like it's 1999.
  - chrisgd 13y ago
    I don't follow your math.
JumpCrisscross 13y ago
The stock fell 18% because "monthly active users" grew "less than 4 per cent...between the third and fourth quarters," with US user growth at just "3 per cent quarter-on-quarter". "Facebook," by comparison, "increased its user numbers at the same 4 per cent rate from a much larger base in the same period" [1]. The GAAP loss highlighted is due to one-off accounting charges related to stock compensation. Note that revenues came in 4% above expectations and 110% higher than last year's. [1] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1ecfc6e-8eab-11e3-b6f1-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2sV3UgwVB http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1ecfc6e-8eab-11e3-b6f1-00144feab7...
- minimax 13y ago
  They actually mentioned the stock-based compensation and it's impact on GAAP profitability in their S-1. Following the completion of this offering, the stock-based compensation expense related to Pre-2013 RSUs and other outstanding equity awards will have a significant negative impact on our ability to achieve profitability on a GAAP basis in 2013 and 2014. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513400028/d564001ds1a.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/0001193125134...
rhizome 13y ago
I saw a provocative question on Twitter this afternoon: "What exactly does Twitter need 2300 employees for?"
- Touche 13y ago
  Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.
  - alphakappa 13y ago
    But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)
    - extesy 13y ago
      They are not selling accounts. They are selling advertising opportunities to businesses.
    - hoka 13y ago
      Yes most signups are done online via a self-serve system; however, there is a lot of money to be made if you can produce custom deals, content, and ad placement with bigger partners.
    - Touche 13y ago
      Sales isn't about doing the paperwork of getting you signed up for a service. Sales is about convincing you to buy the service. Twitter doesn't have an automated system to convince companies to spend millions buying ads, they have salespeople, like every other sales company.
    - judk 13y ago
      Guess how many salespeople Google has.
zaidf 13y ago
Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth. I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that: * makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this) * filters out noise, such as retweets or same links showing up 5 times from 5 different people * remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same
- Greenisus 13y ago
  If you want Twitter to be more like Facebook, why not just use Facebook? I agree that I'd like for it to be easier to dive into a conversation. It's a lot better than it was years ago, but I still struggle with the UI for that sometimes. As for the 140 char limit, I think that should never change. Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel.
  - zaidf 13y ago
    I do already use facebook pretty much all day. But twitter has a different audience and has more conversations relevant to work. Except the UI sucks and makes me work my ass off to engage in those conversations. If facebook or linkedin ends up eating twitter's lunch at some point, I won't complain.
  - Grue3 13y ago
    > Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel. Funny, because that's exactly what it is right now. When was the last time there was something worth reading on Twitter?
- Vik1ng 13y ago
  > remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same I disagree. I think that is the only reason Twitter still exists. 140 allow you to look trough the stream very fast. Try to follow a hashtag with the same amount of posts on Facebook or Google+ would be impossible
batiudrami 13y ago
The thing that I don't quite get with Twitter is that I genuinely do not know anyone in real life who actually uses it. Some people I know have accounts so they can use it as an aggregator, and the occasional person tweets a question at a pseudocelebrity who isn't otherwise accessible, but I do not know anyone who uses it for its intended purpose. For comparison, all my (24, m, Australia) friends use Facebook, most have Snapchat, half have Instagram, some have Pinterest, few use G+ or tumblr). No one uses Twitter. With that in mind, the kind of valuations Twitter has seem insane to me. It seems like the only people who like it are celebrities and media companies who desparately want me to 'join the conversation'. Both of those groups are more than happy to move onto the next big thing, as we saw with Myspace. It could be me who is just an outlier (this is, after all, completely anecdotal), but I have a feeling that the outlier might actually be Silicon Valley.
- prawn 13y ago
  Male in Australia also, and I know a fair few Twitter users. A lot in PR (wife's trade) use it and a lot of athletes (brother's trade) plus fans also.
- grinich 13y ago
  Do you watch sports?
  - batiudrami 13y ago
    Yeah, I'm a season member of two sports - cricket and AFL.
goblin89 13y ago
> Twitter brings in money largely by selling advertising space and data on tweeting habits. It's the first time I hear about Twitter selling "tweeting habits" of their users. I don't know what that means, does anyone?
- corin_ 13y ago
  I don't know much about the specifics of what Twitter are selling, but there's two possibilities: 1. They're just selling raw feeds of data that people can pay for and analyse as they wish. This is something they definitely are doing, it's called the "Twitter Firehose", and isn't cheap to get access to. 2. They're selling their own, presumably anonymous, analysis of users for external advertising purposes. For example if I've tweeted about wanting to buy a car, maybe some car company's agency wants to buy data that will allow them to (re)target me outside of Twitter - I put (re) in brackets as it's the same concept as retargeting, but technically just targeting as I wouldn't (necessarily) have already visited that car seller's website. I've no idea if Twitter do anything like this, and I'm not entirely sure how it would work from a technical point of view, I've done marketing based around very targeted data, but only ever through companies that specialise on figuring out who to show adverts to, so I've never had to worry about how they were doing it.
  - ivv 13y ago
    An ad deal with Twitter comes with an analytics dashboard and an ability to run surveys on users targeted across various dimensions.

109 points by shasa 13y ago

Duh? Who really thought Twitter would suddenly become profitable after the IPO? The VCs cashed out and walked away laughing at the imploding building. THERE (STILL) IS NO PROFIT MODEL.

CompleteMoron2 13y ago
maybe it's time for them to start acquiring companies so they can make money... hmmm.. time to fire up the code!
antics 13y ago
No profit model? Completely wrong. According to the IPO docs they make about $2/1000 views in America (which is good) and were projected to make $1 billion in revenue this year (also good). This article reports that their first quarter revenue is about $250 million, more than double the previous year, which makes their prediction definitely feasible. The remaining question is whether they can turn this revenue into profit, and my answer is yes, because (1) the growth of their operating costs is dramatically outpaced by the growth of their revenue, and (2) most of their losses are due to acquisitions (and they are smart acquisitions). So overall this is a pretty strong portfolio and I'd say it's a completely reasonable bet they're going to be significantly profitable soon. Now. Serious question: did you read this article? If yes you should be embarrassed at your misapprehension here, because in spite of the title, this data in this article actually paints a pretty damn rosy picture of Twitter's future. If no, then why are you commenting here? Here I am sounding cranky, but if you're going to do the ALL INTERNET SHOUTING CAPS thing then you'd better take care not to say something silly. Just my personal opinion, but next time I'd start by both reading the article and understanding the article, and I'd follow that up with taking care to make it sound like I don't think that everyone who disagrees with me is, blanket statement, stupid. Because some of us have done our homework and still disagree with you.
- zaidf 13y ago
  If you read the article, you should know the primary concern is not the profits or revenues but rather the decline in product engagement/growth. What is your response to that? Your comment doesn't even make a single mention of the #1 reason to be very concerned about twitter.
  - antics 13y ago
    Thanks for the spirited reply, Zaid, but I never said I disagree with any of these points. I'm responding specifically to the ridiculous notion that profit could not possibly be in the future of a post-IPO Twitter, not this stuff about whether Twitter is actually in trouble. If you want to take issue with my position you should probably respond to something I actually said. It is less productive to pretend I am debating a different set of issues and then complain when I don't address these other issues. (I also don't appreciate your assertion that I didn't read an article from which I cited specific factual statements. Obviously I did. This is all particularly annoying, since you seem to believe something that I think is mostly true, and not on something which I concretely disagree; it makes it seem like you're hunting for a disagreement and not conducting this conversation in good faith.)
    - zaidf 13y ago
      Timeline views were down nearly 7%, suggesting users were refreshing their feeds less often. (1) Twitter makes most of its revenues from timeline views (2) Timeline views are declining (3) When a recently IPO'd company's biggest money making product is on the decline in terms of usage, that is hardly a rosy picture.
      - antics 13y ago
        Sure, it is certainly debatable that "rosy" was the right choice of words here (it probably was a bit bombastic). But unless your plan is to claim that it is impossible to be optimistic about this situation (which is more or less the position I have taken issue with), then I'm not interested in having this discussion. I'm open to the possibility is wrong; I'm not open to the idea that this debate about the semantics of "rosy" is the most interesting thing to be said here. Sorry if this is a bit blunt.
billsix 13y ago
its only been, what, 7 years? give them time
dclara 13y ago
As we learned from Amazon's performance, VC and Wall Street don't care about profit, they only care about sales. As long as the sales and customer based is strong, that's ok. There rest can be adjusted.
AznHisoka 13y ago
They actually do have a profit model. The sad thing is they're giving it away to other companies (ie Gnip, Datasift). Here's a suggestion: Twitter. Take away every single middleman out there. Sell your data for an arm AND a leg.

TomGullen 13y ago

18% drop in after hours trading... ouch https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=68TyUrjPF4PCwAOWxwE https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=68TyUrjPF4... Anyone who knows more about Twitter, how exactly can they make such a big loss? What exactly are they doing?

notatoad 13y ago
They're a big company with lots of employees and infrastructure and not a whole lot of revenue stream. The question isn't so much how can they make a big loss, it's how could anybody have expected different.
- VintageCool 13y ago
  Per the article, everyone expected a big loss. The stock price dropped because their user growth is slowing.
UVB-76 13y ago
> Net loss - GAAP net loss was $511 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a net loss of $9 million in the same period last year. The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP. — https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=823321 https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=...
- justincormack 13y ago
  So everyone should have known?
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    I don't think anyone cared about the loss, so much as the revenue and user growth/engagement figures.

MechanicalTwerk 13y ago

I like how the article introduces Twitter as "Microblogging site Twitter..." as if you haven't heard of Twitter but are familiar with this thing called microblogging.

Jare 13y ago
I think it's more about making Twitter sound less relevant, as if it is "one of many".
- dublinben 13y ago
  Isn't it though?
  - staunch 13y ago
    Yes, in the same sense that Google is just "one of many" available search engines.
    - sgustard 13y ago
      Photo-sharing site Facebook...
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
swordfish0321 13y ago
Lol. Also +1 re mechanical twerk

capkutay 13y ago

I'm not of those people who thinks all tech valuations are insane, but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m revenue). I understand twitter's valuation reflects the fact that it's a growing company, but even a company like facebook is only valued at 60x their quarterly revenue ($158b/$2.5b quarterly revenue). But at least the consensus on wall street and the financial press seem to agree that TWTR is clearly overvalued.

steveplace 13y ago
Growth investors don't invest off of current revenue or earnings. It's how they expect these numbers to grow in the next few quarters/years. So if you're going to be bearish on TWTR (which is fine) you probably want to go after their guidance or growth metrics. Their revenue growth is still growing, so you'd have to make the case that it will flatline sometime soon.
- cordite 13y ago
  It seems like speculation is a game everyone wants to play. Until a bubble pops.
27182818284 13y ago
>but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m What do you think is easy to justify for Twitter? (I'm actually pretty confident in Twitter, I guess. They took ten years-ish to IPO and not a day goes by where I don't see a hashtag on several products be it a local political group or a super bowl commercial)
- lubujackson 13y ago
  It used to be AOL keywords. Times change quick.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    I was going to make this point, but more than just "things can change" - AOL keywords didn't start getting massively used in adverts/etc. (in the UK at least) until pretty much when AOL were losing relevance, for search and most other things. Really, marketing trends shouldn't be used as a signal for much more than "marketing people like doing this"

mbesto 13y ago

Before we jump the gun on this "loss", read this first:[1] Net loss - GAAP net loss was $511 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a net loss of $9 million in the same period last year. The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA - Adjusted EBITDA was $45 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to $18 million in the same period last year. Non-GAAP net income / loss - Non-GAAP net income was $10 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a Non-GAAP net loss of $0.3 million in the same period last year. Oddly enough the "The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP." seems be tucked away in "Research and Development" part of the P&L. It's worth noting they have $2.2b in cash: > Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities - As of December 31, 2013, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were approximately $2.2 billion, compared to $321 million as of September 30, 2013. TL;DR - This $645m "loss" isn't what you think it is. [1]https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=823321 https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=...

downandout 13y ago
Stock based compensation still costs investors money. They are effectively using investors' money to pay their employees, and that should and always will be priced into the stock. With its 18% decline in after hours trading today, Twitter's market cap is still $36.63 billion. Even if you analyze it based on the shell-game of adjusted EBITDA, and assume that it will stay at $45 million/quarter, you come out with a P/E ratio of 165. Twitter is not Facebook. Their growth trajectory isn't remotely close. Personally, I am staying away. I don't want to party like it's 1999.
- chrisgd 13y ago
  I don't follow your math.

JumpCrisscross 13y ago

The stock fell 18% because "monthly active users" grew "less than 4 per cent...between the third and fourth quarters," with US user growth at just "3 per cent quarter-on-quarter". "Facebook," by comparison, "increased its user numbers at the same 4 per cent rate from a much larger base in the same period" [1]. The GAAP loss highlighted is due to one-off accounting charges related to stock compensation. Note that revenues came in 4% above expectations and 110% higher than last year's. [1] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1ecfc6e-8eab-11e3-b6f1-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2sV3UgwVB http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1ecfc6e-8eab-11e3-b6f1-00144feab7...

minimax 13y ago
They actually mentioned the stock-based compensation and it's impact on GAAP profitability in their S-1. Following the completion of this offering, the stock-based compensation expense related to Pre-2013 RSUs and other outstanding equity awards will have a significant negative impact on our ability to achieve profitability on a GAAP basis in 2013 and 2014. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513400028/d564001ds1a.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/0001193125134...

rhizome 13y ago

I saw a provocative question on Twitter this afternoon: "What exactly does Twitter need 2300 employees for?"

Touche 13y ago
Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.
- alphakappa 13y ago
  But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)
  - extesy 13y ago
    They are not selling accounts. They are selling advertising opportunities to businesses.
  - hoka 13y ago
    Yes most signups are done online via a self-serve system; however, there is a lot of money to be made if you can produce custom deals, content, and ad placement with bigger partners.
  - Touche 13y ago
    Sales isn't about doing the paperwork of getting you signed up for a service. Sales is about convincing you to buy the service. Twitter doesn't have an automated system to convince companies to spend millions buying ads, they have salespeople, like every other sales company.
  - judk 13y ago
    Guess how many salespeople Google has.

zaidf 13y ago

Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth. I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that: * makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this) * filters out noise, such as retweets or same links showing up 5 times from 5 different people * remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same

Greenisus 13y ago
If you want Twitter to be more like Facebook, why not just use Facebook? I agree that I'd like for it to be easier to dive into a conversation. It's a lot better than it was years ago, but I still struggle with the UI for that sometimes. As for the 140 char limit, I think that should never change. Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel.
- zaidf 13y ago
  I do already use facebook pretty much all day. But twitter has a different audience and has more conversations relevant to work. Except the UI sucks and makes me work my ass off to engage in those conversations. If facebook or linkedin ends up eating twitter's lunch at some point, I won't complain.
- Grue3 13y ago
  > Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel. Funny, because that's exactly what it is right now. When was the last time there was something worth reading on Twitter?
Vik1ng 13y ago
> remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same I disagree. I think that is the only reason Twitter still exists. 140 allow you to look trough the stream very fast. Try to follow a hashtag with the same amount of posts on Facebook or Google+ would be impossible

batiudrami 13y ago

The thing that I don't quite get with Twitter is that I genuinely do not know anyone in real life who actually uses it. Some people I know have accounts so they can use it as an aggregator, and the occasional person tweets a question at a pseudocelebrity who isn't otherwise accessible, but I do not know anyone who uses it for its intended purpose. For comparison, all my (24, m, Australia) friends use Facebook, most have Snapchat, half have Instagram, some have Pinterest, few use G+ or tumblr). No one uses Twitter. With that in mind, the kind of valuations Twitter has seem insane to me. It seems like the only people who like it are celebrities and media companies who desparately want me to 'join the conversation'. Both of those groups are more than happy to move onto the next big thing, as we saw with Myspace. It could be me who is just an outlier (this is, after all, completely anecdotal), but I have a feeling that the outlier might actually be Silicon Valley.

prawn 13y ago
Male in Australia also, and I know a fair few Twitter users. A lot in PR (wife's trade) use it and a lot of athletes (brother's trade) plus fans also.
grinich 13y ago
Do you watch sports?
- batiudrami 13y ago
  Yeah, I'm a season member of two sports - cricket and AFL.

goblin89 13y ago

> Twitter brings in money largely by selling advertising space and data on tweeting habits. It's the first time I hear about Twitter selling "tweeting habits" of their users. I don't know what that means, does anyone?

corin_ 13y ago
I don't know much about the specifics of what Twitter are selling, but there's two possibilities: 1. They're just selling raw feeds of data that people can pay for and analyse as they wish. This is something they definitely are doing, it's called the "Twitter Firehose", and isn't cheap to get access to. 2. They're selling their own, presumably anonymous, analysis of users for external advertising purposes. For example if I've tweeted about wanting to buy a car, maybe some car company's agency wants to buy data that will allow them to (re)target me outside of Twitter - I put (re) in brackets as it's the same concept as retargeting, but technically just targeting as I wouldn't (necessarily) have already visited that car seller's website. I've no idea if Twitter do anything like this, and I'm not entirely sure how it would work from a technical point of view, I've done marketing based around very targeted data, but only ever through companies that specialise on figuring out who to show adverts to, so I've never had to worry about how they were doing it.
- ivv 13y ago
  An ad deal with Twitter comes with an analytics dashboard and an ability to run surveys on users targeted across various dimensions.