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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

#251

Post by voronoff »

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…

They have invested in their tech team which is both infrastructure and expense. How much of the ~$10 billion it's worth is up for debate, but zeroing it's value is absurd.

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

#252

Post by jshevek »

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.

> the general perception is Twitter is full of hateful trolls and management can't be bothered to control them.

Do you have some respectable polling data to support this claim? I also visit some of the biased websites that constantly beat that drum, but that doesn't mean this opinion is held by the general public.

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

#253

Post by fauigerzigerk »

golfer wrote: post #223
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Google to buy Twitter would be a reversal of a very entrenched strategy that can be summed up as "No niches!". That's why they scrapped Google Reader. There are very few exceptions to this strategy (Google apps for work and some cloud offerings) Twitter is not for everybody and never will be. Twitter is for those who publish information and for those who are interested in shaping their own information consumption…

Twitter is not as big as Facebook, but it is not a niche service in the sense that Reader was. Twitter has 300M worldwide users and can count as users most global celebrities, politicians, artists, and journalists. People that make news. Reader is not a good comparison at all.

Whether you define a niche as 0.5% of the population or as 5% of the population is not important. Google doesn't do 0.5% and it doesn't do 5%. It only does stuff that is potentially useful for almost everybody (with a few exceptions that are targeted at IT professionals).

I don't know exactly what the potential of Reader might have been. Maybe something between 1% and 3%? It's the same ballpark as Twitter in my view, but that is admittedly rather speculative. It's also not the point I was trying to make.

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

#254

Post by trhway »

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…

>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.

yep. I don't think the difference between WhatsApp and Twitter in features explain such a difference in headcount and expenses.

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

#255

Post by jshevek »

AJ007 wrote: post #41
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…

Trying to acquire a social network with flat or declining user growth while competitors continue to grow is certainly a sign that perhaps the wrong lessons were learned. Frankly, I think there are some "lessons learned" that are critical and are relevant, but looking backwards only accurately tells you how to successfully create something in the past.

I agree that Twitter is in decline, but I think that is because of poor leadership and management at the company. Google might reasonably believe that they can turn that around.

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

#256

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

edbaskerville wrote: post #226

By any normal metric, Twitter is a huge success. 300 million people find their service useful. But it was already huge success when it had no business model. Moreover, what is fundamentally valuable about Twitter to its users--sharing and discovering little bits of textual expression over a publicly visible social network--is not very expensive. From the perspective of the users who find it valuable, why does it need…

Out of those 300 million monthly active users, I wonder how many are actually people. As far as I can tell, Twitter still has a big problem with bots.

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

#257

Post by jshevek »

SixSigma wrote: post #114
nvk wrote: post #6

Twitter should be a public utility.

Not with these guys in charge I hope : “I believe we need to build a platform that respects and amplifies every voice in a way that the world needs to hear it . I trust that the world will amplify and retweet and have conversations where appropriate .” [1] Which means "Kill the cops" is ok but "#StopEnslavingSaudiWomen" gets your account banned. [2] [1] http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/06/02/jack-dorsey-blms-de...…

You are not wrong, but linking to Breitbart probably damages your credibility.

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

#258

Post by trhway »

jmfayard wrote: post #162
speeder wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the same Arab Spring that sparked 4 or 5 civil wars (depending how you count), led to the rise of IS, and in the civil wars aftermaths caused more civil wars in neighbor countries that were invaded by foreign guerrilla fighters? When I made some napkin calculations some time ago, Arab Spring and its fallout so far killed about 300.000 people and displaced millions. Is the positive non monetary value enough t…

Sorry but I call bullshit on saying that "the arab spring" is the cause of ISIS and the syrian war. The sectarian corrupt violent syrian state and the U.S. invasion of Irak are much better suspects

>Sorry but I call bullshit on saying that "the arab spring" is the cause of ISIS and the syrian war.

do you see a lot of difference between Iran's revolution and Arab Spring?

>The sectarian corrupt violent syrian state and the U.S. invasion of Irak are much better suspects

Granted similar elements - a major group of population dissatisfied with the governing power as well as US hand cooperating with the side/power opposing to that group - were present in Iran too. One can see how religious extremists hijack that dissatisfaction and use US' involvement to fuel it. So the US' involvement is a catalyst, not the root cause.

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

#259

Post by dragonwriter »

speeder wrote: post #143
dominotw wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

You mean the same Arab Spring that sparked 4 or 5 civil wars (depending how you count), led to the rise of IS, and in the civil wars aftermaths caused more civil wars in neighbor countries that were invaded by foreign guerrilla fighters? When I made some napkin calculations some time ago, Arab Spring and its fallout so far killed about 300.000 people and displaced millions. Is the positive non monetary value enough t…

> You mean the same Arab Spring that sparked 4 or 5 civil wars (depending how you count), led to the rise of IS

The rise of the group now called the Islamic State as an armed force controlling substantial territory started well before the Arab Spring, and is a pretty direct result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and particular policy choices made during that occupation.

Admittedly, then it was just called the "Islamic State in Iraq". If you want to blame the Arab Spring for contributing the situation in which occasioned its next two name changes and its expansion into Syria, sure, but if it hadn't felt secure enough in Iraq to form separate groups to go fight in Syria rather than worrying about holding on to its (at the time) core territory, it couldn't have exploited that opportunity.

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

#260

Post by jshevek »

intsunny wrote: post #104
0x37 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this inane trend here on HN of referring to companies with the names they are registered to stock exhange?

For many of us its sheer laziness and its been this way for a long time. GOOG is faster to type than Google. (This is especially true for MSFT.)

I like that it is more accurate than saying Google ( it's Alphabet now after all), while still using a reference we are familiar with.
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