151–160 of 372 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Of course Twitter as a business did not have this choice - they had to go big or go home. For the founders though it might have been better to have built something else.
While Twitter revenue grew $664M, $1,403M to $2,218M over the past three years, it is going to be a lot flatter than that at the end of this year - and despite that growth they've consistently been losing about $500M p.a ($645M, $577M and $521M respectively)
3,800 people work there - and equivalent cuts last year can barely be noticed on the financials.
The good times are over - they've spent billions over the last few years and not done anything to save them from flat user growth. They really need a wholesale shakeup and doing it over time, like Yahoo did, will just make it worse.
edit: here's a more brutal analysis [0][1]:
> PS. Twitter staff - I am not exaggerating. Look at the young man on your left and the young woman on your right. Only one of you three will keep your job.
[0] part 1 - http://brontecapital.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/some-comment-on...
[1] part 2 - http://brontecapital.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/measuring-how-b...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why can't Twitter just be happy being Twitter, knowing its limits and making a stable profit Your assumption, that Twitter is profitable, is unfortunately wrong.
It is not, but it could if twitter would stop spending huge piles of money that makes them go nowhere.
I actually don't think anybody values the later.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter employs around 3900 people total, 2300 in San Francisco (numbers are from some random google sources, so may be off by a bit/time). In the first quarter, Yahoo laid off 3,135 people in the Bay Area. Twitter going under would be newsworthy, but I don't think make too much of a splash in the job market -- at least not any more than the normal tides.
What's the rent decline curve correlation per-100 persons laid off I wonder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 reasoning feels safe for services, and risky for software: * Big companies start small. VCs will tell startups to find something their tech can make them the best at and grow into nearby verticals. * Software goes to zero. Academia, side projects, whatever. Either you keep up, and reach some sort of scale that you have a moat, or your risk goes up.
The downside is the parties aren’t as good :(
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.
Is there a third party app which would not show promoted tweets? they are so annoying and un related
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…
I am sure the VC and growth path can be good for some, but if you think this is the only realistic way to make decent money, you drink too much the VC kool-aid.
I still maintain that screwing over client developers had something to do with it. At the very least it didn't help them "control the twitter experience". Every time I see one of their new ads about how much Twitter loves developers I laugh out loud. There is zero chance I'll ever integrate Twitter into anything I do, period. I'll fight against it anywhere I work and encourage all my peers to do the same. Did everyon…