Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#131

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #82

Can someone actually explain to me how the situation came to this point where it practically looks as if Twitter's fate is being decided and played out in the media via endless speculation? It is not like Twitter is a tiny company with an unknown brand, few users and no possibility of improving its profit margins. I am not aware of what they are trying to do, but at the same time it is not as if they could have exhau…

> It is not like Twitter is a tiny company with an unknown brand, few users and no possibility of improving its profit margins.

Investors -- especially for an established firm in a fairly mature market -- don't like "possibility of improving profit margins" (especially, when "improving" means "actually maybe delivering some profit"), they like a plausible concrete plan to do that with some indication that the firm has leadership capable of executing the plan.

"Maybe Facebook will implode and Twitter will pick up some of the debris and, hey, profit!" is not such a plan.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#132

Post by imagist » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #93

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

Your comment actually sort of explains the question I asked. Would you still maintain this view if either a) advertisers reduce their spend on FB because of poor results and the usual problem with saturation of any advertising channel and start looking at other options, or b) more events play out in the future where Twitter's place as the "other social network that people actually care about" becomes more important/r…

In the long run, I don't think that Twitter's problem is one of competition from FB or any other competitor. They have enough users that they could turn a profit even if they could monetize those users, regardless of competition. But they haven't turned a profit, which after 10 years is a strong indicator that they can't turn a profit.

If Twitter is able to time an addition of ads with a major event that damages FB's user base, the influx of users from FB might cancel out the loss of users from the addition of ads, and Twitter might be able to turn a profit. But that effect is a) temporary, and b) fairly unlikely. Even if they managed to eat into their competitors' user bases, they have failed to monetize their existing hundreds of millions of users, so there's no reason to believe they'd be able to monetize future hypothetical users.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#133

Post by fredguth » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

imagist wrote: post #121

gxs wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always write them off, but I do wonder if it's more of an emotional write off or the fact that as non twitter users, they refuse to see value because they personally don't see value. I'm not a twitter user or advocate but: 106.31M 316.93M 664.89M 1.4B 2.22B That's their revenue over the past 5 years. Their R&D cost last year was over 800M. I'm not saying they are Google, I'm not saying they are LinkedIn, but t…

The only reason revenue, users, scale, investor love, patents, staff, infrastructure, etc. matter is that they usually are indicators of potential for profit. Profit is the entire point of investing in a company. But the greater indicator of potential for profit here is that Twitter has existed for 10 years and has never turned a profit. Given this, I think that revenue, users, scale, investor love, patents, staff, i…

Twitter has existed for 10 years, as you say. How many 10 year old companies have 300mm users and revenue at $2.2 billion and growing at this pace?

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#134

Post by godzillabrennus » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

perseusprime11 wrote: post #64

owenwil wrote: post #23

Google acquiring Twitter is actually the best end result here. Salesforce is probably the worst. Lots of people hate the idea of a Google acquisition, but I think it's well suited because: - Google learnt from its mistakes with Google+ and is eager to not repeat them - The company is a very different one now from years ago - Google doesn't want to mess up identity again, so that wouldn't be an issue - Google mostly j…

I think FB acquiring Twitter is actually the best end result. Facebook has patience knows how to give independence and allow for the product to evolve. Instagram and WhatsApp are the best examples.

Those were growing when they were acquired. Twitter is stagnant at best and probably in the decline. Why would Zuck even bother with Twitter, he's clearly won this battle.

Google on the other hand has demonstrated that they have no idea how to compete in social. Buying Twitter gives them a property to play with at a discount.

Aren't self driving cars the next big thing anyway? Who cares what's on Twitter when you can sell ads in the car while I go from point a to point b.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#135

Post by pc86 » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

briholt wrote: post #129

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

Agreed on poor finances. But Twitter has one thing that no one else has - they are in the center of the zeitgeist. Every political candidate is on Twitter. Every news network discusses Twitter happenings everyday. NFL broadcasts list players' Twitter handles. Half the commercials on TV advertise hashtags. South Park just did a whole episode about Twitter. The cost to embed your brand in the minds of Americans like th…

There are plenty of people who use Facebook and don't use Twitter. Facebook is certainly more ubiquitous, it's just not quite as easy to tell you where someone's FB page is the way you can just have "@BarackObama" in the ticker.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#136

Post by pc86 » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #97

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

> If you find yourself thinking that Twitter is a company with any real value What about non-monetary value like playing a key role in 'Arab Spring'[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri...

Why would anyone pay $10B for non-monetary value?

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#137

Post by orblivion » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

briholt wrote: post #129

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

Agreed on poor finances. But Twitter has one thing that no one else has - they are in the center of the zeitgeist. Every political candidate is on Twitter. Every news network discusses Twitter happenings everyday. NFL broadcasts list players' Twitter handles. Half the commercials on TV advertise hashtags. South Park just did a whole episode about Twitter. The cost to embed your brand in the minds of Americans like th…

Oddball idea: If all these news outlets, and other organizations, benefit from it, maybe they could finance it. The same way the Linux Foundation is sponsored by large tech companies.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#138

Post by reitanqild » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #63

reitanqild wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The only thing twitter does better than basically anything is: Has a giant userbase containing many influential Internet celebrities. Except for that it is inferior in almost every single way, starting with the ridiculously low character limit, continuing with the spam everyone all the time etc the list goes on. Hey, even google+ is better in several ways, except for the part about Internet celebrities.

That ridiculously low character limit is one of the reasons I'm active on Twitter much more than anywhere else, as it forces people to be concise. And for everything else, like complex thoughts that can't be expressed as tweets, there are always blogs, whose URLs you can also distribute via Twitter. Twitter basically works like your personal aggregator of interesting stuff. And I freaking hate people using Facebook o…

Eh by spam-everyone-all-the-time I mean that any message I post will be "spammed" out to all my followers even if they just follow me for my Java interest or because I sometimes tweet about local politics.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#139

Post by lossolo » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #97

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

> If you find yourself thinking that Twitter is a company with any real value What about non-monetary value like playing a key role in 'Arab Spring'[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri...

Twitter has its light side (Arab Spring) and dark side because Twitter is also number one platform on which spreading terrorism happen and for terrorist recruiting.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#140

Post by thr0waway1239 » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

imagist wrote: post #132

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment actually sort of explains the question I asked. Would you still maintain this view if either a) advertisers reduce their spend on FB because of poor results and the usual problem with saturation of any advertising channel and start looking at other options, or b) more events play out in the future where Twitter's place as the "other social network that people actually care about" becomes more important/r…

In the long run, I don't think that Twitter's problem is one of competition from FB or any other competitor. They have enough users that they could turn a profit even if they could monetize those users, regardless of competition. But they haven't turned a profit, which after 10 years is a strong indicator that they can't turn a profit. If Twitter is able to time an addition of ads with a major event that damages FB's…

> They have enough users that they could turn a profit even if they could monetize those users, regardless of competition.

That's an excellent point. I started this discussion wondering "Is the company in such bad shape that it needs to find a buyer?" and I think you might have just convinced me that it needs at least some kind of joint venture , if not be bought outright.

Hope Twitter doesn't go the way of MySpace.