4 ms·

Why Twitter is underhyped and is probably worth five to 10 billion dollars

7 points by raghus 17y ago

sirech 17y ago
yeah, I think that what the world really needs is more hype about twitter...
rscott 17y ago
Absurd. I love how he randomly throws out a ridiculous number, $5-10 billion, but never breaks down the justification numerically.
p01nd3xt3r 17y ago
The deification of twitter continues.
jwesley 17y ago
Well, now that FriendFeed is a lame duck he has to have something to rave about. This is textbook Scoble. How he ever became "a thought leader" is beyond me.
srwh 17y ago
Beyond the hype, Twitter is significant because you can crawl their complete social network graph of millions of users. Delicious et al offers a similar crawling but they don't have the same user base, and facebook doesn't permit to do this. Why it's important? from a business perspective you can quickly analyze the customer sector of companies: look at dell followers, compare it to the apple ones, what's the difference? (don't know if apple is on Twitter so take this as an example)
- patio11 17y ago
  And this tells you what, exactly? How does knowing which social marketers, spam bots, and celebrities a nonrandom sampling of 50,000 technically inclined hipsters follow help me sell computers to them?
hamidp 17y ago
There's no answer to the "why" in the article beyond celebrity mentions and saying that businesses will pay. A valuation of $5 billion would mean about $200 per user at the 25 million users mark, which would be reasonable were it a porn-site with paying members. But it's not, it's Twitter.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ivankirigin 17y ago
I think a lot of his points are somewhat true, but he is a bad judge of degree, and a worse judge of valuation. I'd bet money that if they raised another round it would be valued at far less than $5B. That kind of number is incompetant from a journalistic perspective because it will never be openly validated. I fucking hate that pundits can bloviate without consequence to their reputation.
tptacek 17y ago
Who is this guy, and why do we keep listening to him? Really? Who the hell is he?
- patio11 17y ago
  He's famous for being famous which, if you think about it, means he is a perfect match for Twitter. In more ways than one.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I use Twitter for all sorts of stuff. It's been awesome for me. I filled up a cryptography class I wanted to give, I ran 2 different surveys, I crowdsourced the content for a poster, I've started innumerable conversations on things, I've directed people to blog posts I wanted to highlight, and I've got 3 months of marketing plans that all hinge on getting the word out over Twitter. Twitter is useful. Now, can someone explain how Scoble is useful? Because again I don't know why the hell we've ever listened to him.
    - foenix 17y ago
      I'm curious, do you know about http://identi.ca http://identi.ca ? If so, why would you consider Twitter to be more advantageous?
      - unalone 17y ago
        Because more people use it, it's simpler, and it's prettier. identi.ca serves a very niche audience.
      - tptacek 17y ago
        Nope. Don't know anything about it. I use Twitter because my Twitter network is large enough to do cool things with.
- Tichy 17y ago
  I think he is somebody who bothers to write.
TweedHeads 17y ago
Underhyped? scoble is wrong 10B dollars? scoble is wrong again I guess we are used to scoble being wrong all the time
nsfx 17y ago
"The experiences I'm having with business owners in every city makes me understand some things: .... 2. Twitter is underhyped. I'm now convinced that Twitter has locked up a whole raft of businesses and that Twitter is actually worth five to 10 billion dollars. .... Anyway, this all leads me to understand that Twitter is way underhyped and is worth more in the marketplace than anyone has estimated yet." So the author "understands" that Twitter is underhyped because, citing item number 2, "Twitter is underhyped." What kind of silly argumentation is this?
pavs 17y ago
He is Michael Arrington's best buddy, so its only fitting that he sensationalize things and pull numbers out of his ass.

7 points by raghus 17y ago

yeah, I think that what the world really needs is more hype about twitter...

Absurd. I love how he randomly throws out a ridiculous number, $5-10 billion, but never breaks down the justification numerically.

p01nd3xt3r 17y ago

The deification of twitter continues.

jwesley 17y ago

Well, now that FriendFeed is a lame duck he has to have something to rave about. This is textbook Scoble. How he ever became "a thought leader" is beyond me.

srwh 17y ago

Beyond the hype, Twitter is significant because you can crawl their complete social network graph of millions of users. Delicious et al offers a similar crawling but they don't have the same user base, and facebook doesn't permit to do this. Why it's important? from a business perspective you can quickly analyze the customer sector of companies: look at dell followers, compare it to the apple ones, what's the difference? (don't know if apple is on Twitter so take this as an example)

patio11 17y ago
And this tells you what, exactly? How does knowing which social marketers, spam bots, and celebrities a nonrandom sampling of 50,000 technically inclined hipsters follow help me sell computers to them?

hamidp 17y ago

There's no answer to the "why" in the article beyond celebrity mentions and saying that businesses will pay. A valuation of $5 billion would mean about $200 per user at the 25 million users mark, which would be reasonable were it a porn-site with paying members. But it's not, it's Twitter.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ivankirigin 17y ago

I think a lot of his points are somewhat true, but he is a bad judge of degree, and a worse judge of valuation. I'd bet money that if they raised another round it would be valued at far less than $5B. That kind of number is incompetant from a journalistic perspective because it will never be openly validated. I fucking hate that pundits can bloviate without consequence to their reputation.

tptacek 17y ago

Who is this guy, and why do we keep listening to him? Really? Who the hell is he?

patio11 17y ago
He's famous for being famous which, if you think about it, means he is a perfect match for Twitter. In more ways than one.
- tptacek 17y ago
  I use Twitter for all sorts of stuff. It's been awesome for me. I filled up a cryptography class I wanted to give, I ran 2 different surveys, I crowdsourced the content for a poster, I've started innumerable conversations on things, I've directed people to blog posts I wanted to highlight, and I've got 3 months of marketing plans that all hinge on getting the word out over Twitter. Twitter is useful. Now, can someone explain how Scoble is useful? Because again I don't know why the hell we've ever listened to him.
  - foenix 17y ago
    I'm curious, do you know about http://identi.ca http://identi.ca ? If so, why would you consider Twitter to be more advantageous?
    - unalone 17y ago
      Because more people use it, it's simpler, and it's prettier. identi.ca serves a very niche audience.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      Nope. Don't know anything about it. I use Twitter because my Twitter network is large enough to do cool things with.
Tichy 17y ago
I think he is somebody who bothers to write.

TweedHeads 17y ago

Underhyped? scoble is wrong 10B dollars? scoble is wrong again I guess we are used to scoble being wrong all the time

nsfx 17y ago

"The experiences I'm having with business owners in every city makes me understand some things: .... 2. Twitter is underhyped. I'm now convinced that Twitter has locked up a whole raft of businesses and that Twitter is actually worth five to 10 billion dollars. .... Anyway, this all leads me to understand that Twitter is way underhyped and is worth more in the marketplace than anyone has estimated yet." So the author "understands" that Twitter is underhyped because, citing item number 2, "Twitter is underhyped." What kind of silly argumentation is this?

pavs 17y ago

He is Michael Arrington's best buddy, so its only fitting that he sensationalize things and pull numbers out of his ass.