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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

#91

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

ben_jones wrote: post #33
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 reco…

Twitter is ALL ABOUT who you follow. I hated it for years, until a popular post here on HN a couple months ago.

A user compiled an absolute SUPER LIST of the best people to follow, and now my feed is full of really interesting information, diverse viewpoints, and stuff I wouldn't find anywhere else.

This one account was kind of the tipping point for me, finding GOOD TWITTER

https://twitter.com/humanprogress

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#92

Post by rainythunder »

eradicatethots wrote: post #25
samstave wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know if any Twitter execs (like Jack) have been donating to any Trump "foundations"?

They’re very supportive of anti trump crowd on twitter. Could be a front, but I would expect them to be anti trump in general.

Yep, they're biased towards leftists.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#93

Post by jonwachob91 »

jack6e wrote: post #83
jonknee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am not saying they would take his phone or remove his account, but that they would restrict Twitter from using/selling his data.

I doubt they'd single out his data, but twitter may restrict the sale of data for everyone with a lil check mark. (Just speculation).

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#94

Post by muzani »

cyberpunk0 wrote: post #2

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

What most investors fund is something that creates value, and then convert that value to cash later. Creating value is the hard part.

It's not always about a company's profitability either. Startups focus on exponentially growing their assets rather than cash flow then selling it all to someone else. Like Facebook can make more wealth from WhatsApp than they could do by themselves.

Of course, profitability is often close to the actual value something creates. Twitter is a really odd case in that it's a big part of many people's lives, but they won't pay for it.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#95

Post by hvmonk »

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.

Yeah, i'd not be surprised if he holds TWTR stocks :)

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#96

Post by jczhang »

ProAm wrote: post #63
a13n wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Hahaha I don't have a cow in this race but I find it hilarious that someone would admit to having `sheer arrogance` hahahaha

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#97

Post by thomasthomas »

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

i think their past issue was having to hire more sales people to scale revenue in a manual fashion talking to companies rather than having a robust programmatic platform they can rely on to bring in revenue with fewer headcount. not sure if this is still a problem for them or not.

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#98

Post by throwaway0255 »

ProAm wrote: post #63
a13n wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

No you're probably wrong

According to my Wikipedia research, they had ~2.5 billion in revenue last year and ~450 million in net losses

If they shaved the bottom 25%, to reach ramen profitability they'd need a savings of $450,000 per employee cut, and do that without having any negative impact on the productivity of the org as a whole (be it through hours worked or employee morale or additional churn)

Corporations are giant container ships moving in one direction, you can't just snap your fingers and turn 90 degrees

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#99

Post by stingraycharles »

bayonetz wrote: post #89
stingraycharles wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When they bought GNIP they ended their partnership with DataSift. It was a major blow to DataSift. It was a shrewd move on Twitter's part. My company switched over to using GNIP and our DataSift sales rep told us tons of other customers switched too and that he was leaving because of it.

Yep, that’s correct. The recent lawsuit against LinkedIn about crawling [1] is interesting, though. It sets the precedent that third parties cannot be blocked from crawling, which technically means anyone could do this with Twitter as well.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16148250/microsoft-linked...

Re: Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

#100

Post by jonknee »

jack6e wrote: post #83
jonknee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am not saying they would take his phone or remove his account, but that they would restrict Twitter from using/selling his data.

The feds don't have that ability either... Twitter could out of courtesy, but that would create a bad precedent.
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