51–60 of 87 posts
> what the company is best at, which is being the platform where people weigh in on live events. This is odd to me, since from what I see, the people who are most engaged with twitter don't use it for live events at all. They use it for jokes.
I know quite a few people who use it for making jokes about live events. The other day my wife's mocking of the new BBC drama got quoted by the Mail's TV reviewer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This mismatch between expectation and reality is why so many internet companies "die". It's not that their business model failed, necessarily, it's that management, or the board, has set expectations for growth that defy reason. The company then has to embark on an ever-more-doomed set of initiatives to try to meet growth targets, which inevitably fail. Many companies could still be thriving today (e.g., Yahoo), if n…
If you push 10 companies for reason defying growth and 9 of them die but the 1 survivor grows enormously is it worth it? Maybe?
Do you prefer a tiny chance of becoming the next Facebook, or a good chance of building a stable business?
Do you prefer to fail 9 companies before finally founding the one that will have "reason defying growth" (or not) rather than build one solid business?
I'd say it depends on your character, but it's important to know what you want rather than blindly following Paul Graham and other VC prophets.
Can't companies and products simply hit a natural limit? There are inherent limitations to any given "thing" and perhaps Twitter has found its own terminal velocity.
> And, by nearly every metric, he had achieved remarkable success. Under his tenure, the company had grown from 300 employees to around 4,100. Eurgh. I never understand how the number of employees you have can be a success metric. By that logic, becoming more efficient would be a bad thing.
What do 4,100 employees even do at Twitter? It's not that complicated.
But (so as not to contradict myself) just having all those people doesn't count as an achievement. It's just a cost of doing business that you want to keep as low as possible.
Twitter has an incredibly powerful brand and appeal. How many companies can say they triggered revolutions? Yet it's puzzling how much it fails to improve its basic product, 1 year in Dorsey's comeback. On mobile, the search/explore screens are mostly irrelevant. On desktop, they could position themselves as quasi TV channels with live content update. Yes, they lost the social wars and that's fine. They won the media…
> How many companies can say they triggered revolutions? United Fruit Company, British Petroleum?
> British Petroleum?
For those not familiar with Iranian history: the first revolution that happened on Twitter was the Green Revolution in Iran (2009)[0][1].
If you trace British Petroleum (BP) all the way back to its roots, it began as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1908. That company's formation was the basis for the series of political upheavals and revolutions that resulted in the current political leadership in Iran today[2], which in turn was the basis for the 2009 Green Revolution.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_presidential_elec...
[1] Named the 'Green Revolution' in the long Persian tradition of naming their revolutions after colors ('white', 'red', 'green', 'black')
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company#Nati...
> And, by nearly every metric, he had achieved remarkable success. Under his tenure, the company had grown from 300 employees to around 4,100. Eurgh. I never understand how the number of employees you have can be a success metric. By that logic, becoming more efficient would be a bad thing.
What do 4,100 employees even do at Twitter? It's not that complicated.
> And, by nearly every metric, he had achieved remarkable success. Under his tenure, the company had grown from 300 employees to around 4,100. Eurgh. I never understand how the number of employees you have can be a success metric. By that logic, becoming more efficient would be a bad thing.
What do 4,100 employees even do at Twitter? It's not that complicated.
Plus sales and marketing budgets are huge.
Whether any of these systems or human resource needs are required to be running at that scale is probably the question hitting Jack directly in the face. I think the ballsiest move he could make would be to shrink it all down to core services. But Wall Street would shit itself with that sort of contraction.