Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#61

Post by stingraycharles » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

nharada wrote: post #14

"may become profitable for the first time next quarter after ... ramping up deals to sell its data to other companies" Cool, so any indication on who is buying all my data?

They’ve acquired the company Gnip a few years ago, which then became the exclusive reseller of Twitter firehose data.

Their biggest competitor is Datasift, which has similar exclusive deals with Facebook and Linkedin.

There’s an incredibly big market here, with customers ranging from social media analytics companies to investment firms.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#62

Post by beager » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

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?"

I believe they attributed this to MAU/DAU of Digits[0] who are not otherwise MAU/DAU of Twitter. Ostensibly, users who use Digits to sign into 3rd-party apps ride in the same DB as bona fide Twitter users, and they just didn't discount them.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/22/twitter-launches-digits-a-...

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#63

Post by ProAm » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

a13n wrote: post #47

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

Oh boy, another Hacker News commenter with zero experience running a large corporation telling experienced folks how they should run a large corporation. Better yet, with no explanation for why. The sheer arrogance.

But Im not wrong. Twitter was in dire straits a year ago. Saved by a reality show presidential candidate and might have their first profitable moment after 10 years of existence.

Twitter is easily overstaffed by looking at what they have produced over the years. Even if you shaved the bottom 25% of employees they could still be operational and extremely profitable. They are a public company, growth is stagnant, and expenses are extraordinary. It's not rocket science even for someone with sheer arrogance and zero experience running a large corporation.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#64

Post by knappe » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #41

randomblob wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: What data is being bought? Publicly available information bundled up so there's not hassle with gathering it would be ok IMO. Private data would spark my interest as well. They can't be selling DMs, can't they?

They used to sell the “firehose,” which I believe was a real-time feed of every single tweet (something not available from the normal API). I don’t know if that still exists.

Gnip used to do this. But twitter purchased them and now runs the product. This is still a thing.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#65

Post by jonknee » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:16 PM UTC

jack6e wrote: post #51

nharada wrote: post #14

"may become profitable for the first time next quarter after ... ramping up deals to sell its data to other companies" Cool, so any indication on who is buying all my data?

I wonder if FBI/Secret Service swoop in to prevent the President's data from being sold in these cases. Or if they restrict its use/sale by other platforms as well.

He's made it clear that he values his phone more than he does national security, they don't have the ability to intercede.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#66

Post by mesozoic » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #60

samstave wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we know that twitter maintains "celebrity handlers" --- who is on the Trump handler team?

Someone did a linguistic analysis and demonstrated that there are two writers of Trump's tweets. Trump's were all the crazy ones, his handler's were all of the moderate ones and the ones that walked back what was said previously.

Or maybe the opposite?

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#67

Post by JohnTHaller » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #60

samstave wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we know that twitter maintains "celebrity handlers" --- who is on the Trump handler team?

Someone did a linguistic analysis and demonstrated that there are two writers of Trump's tweets. Trump's were all the crazy ones, his handler's were all of the moderate ones and the ones that walked back what was said previously.

You didn't even need to do that previously. Just hit the API and look if it originated on iOS or Android.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#68

Post by huac » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #60

samstave wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we know that twitter maintains "celebrity handlers" --- who is on the Trump handler team?

Someone did a linguistic analysis and demonstrated that there are two writers of Trump's tweets. Trump's were all the crazy ones, his handler's were all of the moderate ones and the ones that walked back what was said previously.

those are from a campaign staffer; twitter is not actually writing tweets for trump, or anyone else.

a handler is somebody who makes the blue check feel comfortable on the platform, e.g. banning people who disagree with them

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#69

Post by perseusprime11 » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:21 PM UTC

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.

Fully agree. Also, a good time for Jack to step fully into Twitter boat. Square is doing quite well, he can easily find somebody to run it. If he takes the fulltime role at twitter, expect the stock to go up another 20-30 %

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#70

Post by praneshp » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 5:21 PM UTC

yannyu wrote: post #39

praneshp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I see, thank you for the reply. I guess someone might want to make similar claims about an engineering team, but eng teams probably don't have hard numbers to judge with.