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

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

#201

Post by heydenberk »

segmondy wrote: post #199
scosman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful conflating "never made a profit" with not having a business. They made $710M in revenue last quarter, up 48% yoy. Their expenses might be high, but they can address that. Companies like Amazon didn't make a profit for years, and are rightfully quite valuable in the eyes of the market. A $29 valuation per MAU is low if anything. Facebook is almost 10x that (and deserves to be). Early stage startups often ge…

Why the hell is their expense that high? 350 million users, sure it's a lot. Plus they have to store the messages for a long time and it's not like a text message but more like a group chat. Still, most of their expense can't be going towards their tech stack but headcount. Anyone that takes over the company is going to be doing massive layoffs. They should do it their self and become profitable or else someone is go…

> Anyone that takes over the company is going to be doing massive layoffs.

Rapidly-growing tech behemoths like Google can afford to acquihire hundred of engineers and, eventually, assign them to other work.

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

#202

Post by whatthesmack »

gaius wrote: post #174
packetized wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect.

O RLY?? http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2016/06/03/salesforce_aws_m...

Things are in flux, but the original statement that it's in AWS now is still incorrect. The core app (and some acquired apps) is/are still on their own gear. Moving everything from their hosting environment to AWS (if that's even what is planned) would take many years.

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

#203

Post by BinaryIdiot »

heydenberk wrote: post #201
segmondy wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the hell is their expense that high? 350 million users, sure it's a lot. Plus they have to store the messages for a long time and it's not like a text message but more like a group chat. Still, most of their expense can't be going towards their tech stack but headcount. Anyone that takes over the company is going to be doing massive layoffs. They should do it their self and become profitable or else someone is go…

> Anyone that takes over the company is going to be doing massive layoffs. Rapidly-growing tech behemoths like Google can afford to acquihire hundred of engineers and, eventually, assign them to other work.

Maybe. But at the same time, with over 3,000 employees and a small set of products, that's not only a lot to take on but much of which is likely redundant. With so many surely they hold a fair amount of under performers as well.

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

#204

Post by astrodust »

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…

$29 per human user or per account? There's a big difference here.

$29 per human is a steal, however if 9/10 accounts are bots, spammers, or dead, that's $290 per human which is a total ripoff.

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

#206

Post by taeric »

refulgentis wrote: post #35
taeric wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google learned from Google+? Where is the evidence? Also, Twitter is unprofitable, but my understanding was that they were heavily trusted by the public.

There's copious evidence that's public, look for how it's talked about externally. I think you're substituting a particular group of Twitter users for the public - the general perception is Twitter is full of hateful trolls and management can't be bothered to control them.

I actually just don't see much news about twitter. I see a ton of quotes from twitter, though. It is still far more reliable for news like things than facebook.

Curious if you have any particular stories in mind.

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

#207

Post by imagist »

onewaystreet wrote: post #178
imagist wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But they haven't turned a profit, which after 10 years is a strong indicator that they can't turn a profit. In those 10 years Twitter has changed leaderships multiple times. Twitter has never had stable and competent management.

That's symptomatic of the problem, not causal. Despite leadership changes, Twitter has build a solid infrastructure, raised money, etc.--all the things that would make them a profit if their business model were at all profitable. Leadership keeps changing because nobody knows how to make it profitable, and we've tried enough approaches now that I think we can conclude it won't be profitable.

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

#208

Post by partiallypro »

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…

To be honest, I would much rather Microsoft buy Twitter than Google. Microsoft actually is showing they have learned from their mistakes...while Google quietly continues to make theirs.

Though to me it would make more sense if Twitter were a joint venture between various media outlets, sort of like how Hulu was funded initially. News Corp, Viacom, Disney, etc all buying large stakes in the company and taking it private to me is the best possible outcome.

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

#209

Post by javiramos »

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…

Sure, but they are also growing incredibly fast at ~50% yoy with over $2 billion in revenue. I think that they have a fantastic revenue generating capability which justifies the valuation.

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

#210

Post by imagist »

astrodust wrote: post #204
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…

$29 per human user or per account? There's a big difference here. $29 per human is a steal, however if 9/10 accounts are bots, spammers, or dead, that's $290 per human which is a total ripoff.

The number I cited was their claimed active users.

I'm not sure why you consider $29 per human user a steal. There are two sides to a transaction--what you pay and what you get for it. What exactly do you think investors are getting for their money here?

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