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Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#121

Post by aetherson »

xienze wrote: post #17
menzoic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats a naive assumption, there could be a lot of hidden scaling issues when you think deeper about how it works

I don't doubt it's challenging to keep the thing up, but 4100 employees? And meanwhile WhatsApp has 50 or so employees in total.

Twitter is doing something vastly more technically challenging that WhatsApp. WhatsApp just delivers messages. It doesn't store them, and it certainly doesn't, say, try to make them available in a searchable away to everyone in the world.

This isn't a knock on WhatsApp -- I use WhatsApp and don't use Twitter -- but Twitter's scale challenges are vastly more complex than WhatsApp's, which doesn't have many features that can't just very simply horizontally scale.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#127

Post by w1ntermute »

untog wrote: post #62
jsprogrammer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter what WhatsApp made in revenue? The owners got a $16 BILLION payout. Are you suggesting that WhatsApps business model was based on annual revenue?

> Does it really matter what WhatsApp made in revenue? The owners got a $16 BILLION payout. Silicon Valley mentality at its finest.

> I don't want to make a little bit of money every day. I want to make a fuck ton of money all at once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo&t=15

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#129

Post by BinaryIdiot »

scurvy wrote: post #101
wyclif wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's sad for employees being let go, but it's good news for Twitter. I don't think Twitter is going anywhere; it has a huge user base and a lot of people think of it as a branch of the internet. By cutting surgically (removing, as you put it, the "fluffiness"), Jack might very well be able to bring some fighting spirit back.

Not trying to be snarky, but when have you ever seen a company do "surgical" layoffs? Anything across the board is not surgical by definition. This is just a plain, simple RIF to stem the losses. There's nothing surgical about it. Surgical would imply killing off specific teams and products. This is across the board.

> Surgical would imply killing off specific teams and products. This is across the board.

Perhaps I missed it but no where did I see any specific mention that this was either surgical or across the board. Care to elaborate? If they didn't specify it certain could go either way.

Re: Twitter Expected to Begin Layoffs and Stop Headquarters Expansion

#130

Post by exstudent2 »

jacobwcarlson wrote: post #117
rdtsc wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is out of the ordinary is the public markets' reaction? But is it? Maybe the public is realizing that tweets were just a cool fad for a while. For twitter to be profitable, I am guessing, there has to be people that want to use it, and (very important) people believing that people want to use it (so they'd pay Twitter for advertising). Compare with Google. Google provides something momre back (gmail, search, c…

> Twitter provides 140 status messages. There is nothing wrong it, that is very cool. But I think there is a realization that it just isn't as cool as it was in 4 years ago. And it just became 3% less cool. I can't tell if you're being ironic or facile, but Twitter has become quite a bit more than "140 status messages"(sic). It's a medium where politicians, dissidents, celebrities, the hoi palloi, brands, and anarchi…

They no longer allow sign ups via Tor, so I don't think it's as dissident friendly as it used to be.
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