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Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#31

Post by mipmap04 »

ProAm wrote: post #3

They would be profitable in an instant if they'd get rid of half their employees? Im not sure why they need SO many people for Twitter. I believe they have over 4000, they could easily get by with 1000

They can easily get by with 1000? Are you sure about that? What does the timeframe look like for reducing 75% of your workforce and what kind of costs would there be in such an initiative? What lay-off laws are tripped when you do this sort of mass firing?

In 2016, they spent $957M on marketing (which is the area I often hear people saying they should reduce), most of which was personnel expense, according to their 10K filing. I suppose it's easy to look at it and just say "cut it in half" (which would nearly make up the $457M profit deficit from 2016), but is that truly realistic? What affect would that have on top line revenue?

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#32

Post by Pica_soO »

cyberpunk0 wrote: post #2

More and more these social media platforms feel like scheme's. Round after round of funding without ever reaching profitablity

The next big scheme is allready in the making - virtual customers:

You order a shoebox appartment, create a home-maker NN that can fake basic human occupancy, register it online as a new citizen and put it on basic income, and set it up to order stuff from company A. Now those NN trade among one another, sending the stuff in a circle until its scrap or they are broke and its impounded.

Finally, the limiting part for eternal growth can be removed.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#33

Post by ben_jones »

samcheng wrote: post #5

It's not mentioned in the article, but I really think President Trump has been a savior for Twitter. Without those controversial tweets, Twitter would rarely be in much of the public's mind, and the company would have continued its slow slide into irrelevance. As it is, barely a day goes by without "Twitter" being mentioned in national news.

I gave twitter another show about ~6 months ago. I enjoyed some feeds, most just felt like "fadspam" where people echoed popular opinion - particularly in tech. I really hated that as a new user I was immediately recommended to follow Trump. I get that algorithmically he's probably seen as a great person to follow, but I really, really, really, had no interest in doing so.

But Twitter derives business value from recommending people follow Trump on their platform, so they'll keep doing that. Strikes me as selling out - would've preferred they not recommend any political leaders.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#34

Post by turc1656 »

Top19 wrote: post #17
ceejayoz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd fully expect many of those 4,000 to be sales staff, each of whom presumably brings in more than their salary in revenue to remain employed.

Sales Departments have way too many people. I like that they employ people, but that’s a separate conversation. On a team of 8 sales people, typically 2 people together sell enough for the team to break even. The other 6, usually because of poor sales territory luck, sell maybe half their salary worth of services, but since growth is everything, an employee who makes 100k but only sells 50k is considered valuable.

Yes, but it makes sense for things that like to occur because when you think about it, firms care about the total contract value - meaning it might be a 50k contract per year for 2-3 years. Companies are looking at the longer term. At least that's how it is at my company. Clients generally sign a 2 year contract at $X per year. So if a sales person only sells 50k in a given year but every contract averages 2 years that's really 100k.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#36

Post by ebola1717 »

criddell wrote: post #9
ProAm wrote: post #3

They would be profitable in an instant if they'd get rid of half their employees? Im not sure why they need SO many people for Twitter. I believe they have over 4000, they could easily get by with 1000

Instagram had around 20 employees when Facebook bought them. I've often wondered how Twitter ended up with so many people as well. I'd love to see a breakdown of what they are all doing.

Instagram’s CEO has said one of the most valuable parts of being acquired by FB is they could just hook into their vast revenue org (probably thousands of employees, and battle tested ad targeting tech and expertise). Twitter has to build its own, and I’m sure that accounts for most of their headcount.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#37

Post by wutwutwutwut »

komali2 wrote: post #35

>San Francisco-based Twitter also disclosed that it had discovered an error in how it had measured its user base since 2014 and revised its estimates downward How is this possible? They can't just do like fetch_all_users, filtered by "not banned?"

And users activates, users logged on last X months, users not deleted, no duplicates caused by some obscure event synchronization issue etc etc. Bugs are easy.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#39

Post by yannyu »

praneshp wrote: post #20
Top19 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales Departments have way too many people. I like that they employ people, but that’s a separate conversation. On a team of 8 sales people, typically 2 people together sell enough for the team to break even. The other 6, usually because of poor sales territory luck, sell maybe half their salary worth of services, but since growth is everything, an employee who makes 100k but only sells 50k is considered valuable.

Are those numbers from a study or something?

Probably just anecdotal numbers from experience. I've seen similar things as well. The division of prospects/accounts is kind of a big deal, and usually defaults to geographical area or industry as the primary dimension, with size/revenue of prospect as the secondary.

Given that, if you're selling something like Github or container management services, you can imagine that the person who's selling in the Pacific West Coast region might be having an easier time of things than the guy who has the mid-west. This isn't universally true for all products, but sales people will complain about leads being bad in any industry (see: Glengarry Glen Ross).

All of that is to say is that empirically, usually there are a few outperformers on any sales team that are crushing quota, and a bunch of others who are skating by at fractions of quota until they get canned. As some evidence, there's a lot of churn in sales teams and for the average sales person, which is partially because of the above, and also because good sales people will kill it as a company is getting a lot of adoption, and then jump ship when a better opportunity arises.

So maybe there's been a study on this stuff, but you could talk to any number of people who work in sales orgs and hear similar stories without the study.

Oh, and yes, when companies get 'serious' about sales, you'll see sales quickly expand to encompass a third or half the total company size. I won't make any guesses as to whether that actually makes sense and how many people are being productive, but large sales orgs are common in my understanding.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#40

Post by yellowbeard »

komali2 wrote: post #35

>San Francisco-based Twitter also disclosed that it had discovered an error in how it had measured its user base since 2014 and revised its estimates downward How is this possible? They can't just do like fetch_all_users, filtered by "not banned?"

Monthly actives is generally the primary metric and it's not so easy to calculate.
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