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Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

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Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#111

Post by abrodersen »

mason240 wrote: post #41
madengr wrote: post #10

You'd think they would have figured out targeted ads by now. If I follow people who post about RF/Microwave, antennas, SDR, and ham radio, one would think I'd see ads from Keysight and Tektronix, but no, it's garbage like football and pop music. FAIL! I also don't like that I don't see all the tweets from a person. They are pruning the timeline. Good riddance to twitter.

I've spent about $100 trying to promote my history podcast curation site on Twitter, and only got about 5 hits.

I love history podcasts! What's your site?

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#112

Post by inimino »

traskjd wrote: post #90
riteshkpr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"why do so many companies feel like they have to grow perpetually?" -> Capitalism - growth, year over year, leads to higher stock price (market valuation) which in turn justifies higher payouts to ceo's, bonuses to employees... as growth == innovation If you din't keep growing and managed to keep the business profitable (hit the ceiling), then you weren't 'innovating' and should be replaced ... ... that's the mindset…

You need some growth, even if just to battle inflation. Inflation is nibbling away at the value constantly.

Keeping up with inflation isn't growth.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#113

Post by niftich »

Rapzid wrote: post #98
mrcsparker wrote: post #95

I wonder why Twitter doesn't do consulting. They have developed a lot of the big data frameworks that we use today and understand how to scale. They have the talent and are in a unique position of being Twitter.

Just out of curiosity, which ones have they developed?

Some software that Twitter has put out:

[1] Heron, a realtime, distributed, fault-tolerant stream processing engine - https://github.com/twitter/heron

[2] Finagle, a fault tolerant, protocol-agnostic RPC system - https://github.com/twitter/finagle/

[3] FlockDB, a distributed, fault-tolerant graph database - https://github.com/twitter/flockdb

[4] Gizzard, a flexible sharding framework for creating eventually-consistent distributed datastores - https://github.com/twitter/gizzard

[5] Twemcache, a Twitter fork of Memcached - https://github.com/twitter/twemcache

[6] Twemproxy, a fast, light-weight proxy for memcached and redis - https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#114

Post by fuqted »

aub3bhat wrote: post #89
AtheistOfFail wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is one simple item: "When you take someone's money, their priorities are now your priorities" If you can bootstrap your business with 30k and make a 20k profit every month, then why do you need 1 million dollars from investors? When you take the money, it's just a golden handcuff and ties you to that person for the future. If your business lasts longer than 20 years, that may as well be an additional marria…

Because your competitor can raise those million dollars, and eventually your 20k profit per month becomes 20k loss per month. You can build all your imaginary arguments about magical businesses that make 20k profit per month while being self-sustained with holocracy, cruelty free, authentic, organic etc. etc. But the reality is that doing big things at bigger scale requires huge capital. If you are willing to pass up…

No imagination necessary, check out Basecamp. I believe they've actually cut their freemium offering recently.

Slack hasn't put them out of business yet.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#115

Post by meddlepal »

danieltillett wrote: post #101
aub3bhat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your competitor can raise those million dollars, and eventually your 20k profit per month becomes 20k loss per month. You can build all your imaginary arguments about magical businesses that make 20k profit per month while being self-sustained with holocracy, cruelty free, authentic, organic etc. etc. But the reality is that doing big things at bigger scale requires huge capital. If you are willing to pass up…

I run a bootstrapped SAAS business and I make far more than $20K a month profit and have done so for years. The key is choose a niche that is large enough to make the level of profit you want, but too small to attract VC funded competitors. The sort of market size you want is in the range of $5 to $20 million per year. Big enough to be worth the hassle, but too small to attract the big guys.

This. There is always a niche. Some people just don't want to use the other offerings for XYZ reasons.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#116

Post by inimino »

nadezhda18 wrote: post #19
artursapek wrote: post #6

I've always sort of had this question that continues to feel naive - but I'm not sure I know the answer: why do so many companies feel like they have to grow perpetually? Why can't Twitter just be happy being Twitter, knowing its limits and making a stable profit? Instead it's more users, more VC money, more staff... constantly burning as quickly as possible. There's a ceiling on every business; it's all bound to com…

usually, the business that does not grow is just one step away from going into decline. Do not remember where I heard it from. The idea is that a business has to grow; if a business is stagnating, it's too easy for it to slip into a decline and then oblivion.

You can open a bakery and run it for a hundred years selling the same bread to the same folks.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#117

Post by josep2 »

Twitter is by far the #1 service I use everyday. It's been the most valuable to me from a networking perspective where I've made friends and professional connections. I also happen to be a shareholder. It's been disappointing to watch Twitter try to become a business and completely falling flat.

The acquisition of Vine and Periscope haven't led to much and the user growth from Live video is still t be seen.

The product is immensely complicated compared to something like Instagram or Snapchat. It manages to be everything and nothing at the same time. I've been a fan of Jack Dorsey's work at Square but monetization is a complete different animal in that industry.

To summarize I just don't know what the future of Twitter as a business will hold but I guess I'm here for the ride.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#118

Post by CardenB »

danieltillett wrote: post #101
aub3bhat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your competitor can raise those million dollars, and eventually your 20k profit per month becomes 20k loss per month. You can build all your imaginary arguments about magical businesses that make 20k profit per month while being self-sustained with holocracy, cruelty free, authentic, organic etc. etc. But the reality is that doing big things at bigger scale requires huge capital. If you are willing to pass up…

I run a bootstrapped SAAS business and I make far more than $20K a month profit and have done so for years. The key is choose a niche that is large enough to make the level of profit you want, but too small to attract VC funded competitors. The sort of market size you want is in the range of $5 to $20 million per year. Big enough to be worth the hassle, but too small to attract the big guys.

What's your point? Twitter isn't in that niche, obviously.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#119

Post by tedunangst »

jdavis703 wrote: post #38
planteen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a that stock over time covers inflation and pays a dividend, absolutely.

At that point wouldn't bonds make more sense? Seems like the risk vs. reward balance is skewed the wrong way if you own a piece of stock that stays flat.

If inflation shoots up, your bond will have the same payout but one can at least hope that dividends rise accordingly.

Re: Twitter Plans Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week

#120

Post by wsc981 »

branchless wrote: post #94
mxuribe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone is like a cannonball wanting to burn so hot as to melt themselves. I would also like a patio-11 type of software business; so you're not alone! As far as twitter, they unfortunately took a bite of "poison apple" of public investment, and as such are beholden to investors, so must perform (and grow) to ever more higher levels. What would happen - i wonder - if twitter became private again, or better yet s…

what is patio11 ! Is it this guy? http://www.kalzumeus.com/ ?

Yes, he started his business with Bingo Card Creator (IIRC). He wrote some interesting blog posts on his business. His HN handle is patio11.
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