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Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#31

Post by paulsutter »

phyrex wrote: post #22
paulsutter wrote: post #16

I use Twitter to keep up on AI and the new space industry (there really is no alternative). Revenue could shrink further and none of that would be lost. Growing revenue could let them improve things I don't care about (spaces, video, payments, etc). I guess yay for them if they improve revenue, yawn if they don't.

What a shortsighted view! Do you think Twitter operates out of the goodness of their hearts and will continue to let you keep up on Ai and new space in the face of losing money? Do you think what’s there will just do to help working without active maintenance? Do you think the servers that make all this possible are running for free?

Their revenue is massively larger than the cost to run their servers (I used to run 3000 physical servers with a small team, it doesn't cost much)

> advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#32

Post by tyingq »

slmlm wrote: post #29
tyingq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you maybe reply to the wrong comment? I'm agreeing down 60% is unusual.

It's the right comment - it looked like you took the negative viewpoint that down 60% is bad. I'm saying that down 60% looks good against the backdrop of the dramatic cost-cutting that they have done.

That's hard to reconcile with "regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent". They set their own projections.

Sounds roughly like they expected a 30% drop (for the reasons you cited) and got a 60%-ish drop instead.

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#33

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

strict9 wrote: post #20
drumhead wrote: post #2

When the Bluesky and the Facebook competitors launch I can see a lot of big firms moving across to those and leaving Twitter behind. Twitter is going to become the Fox news of social media I think. Lots of hardcore maga, funded by ads from the same people that advertise on Fox News.

I don't know. With Jack confidently predicting a conspiracy theorist will win the presidency, it tells me Bluesky isn't going to be my destination. In fact I'm at a stage in my life where the idea of social media participation just isn't appealing any more.

Not only predicting the presidency, but explicitly providing endorsement for them!

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#34

Post by pixl97 »

drcongo wrote: post #19
hker999 wrote: post #13

[flagged]

Twitter under Musk complies with more government demands than it did previously [0]. It was a Republican governing party making the requests prior to Musk taking over. How do these facts fit with your preconceptions? [0] https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-or...

Some people are getting to see how authoritarians work in real time.

Authoritarian: "The people I don't like are stomping on babies!"

Unliked group: "Hold up, we actually have video of you baby stomping"

Auth: "See, see, see, I told you they were going to make stuff up and accuse me of being the bad guy, this is evidence they are bad"

Middle Ground Guy: "Well, I guess both sides are bad"

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#35

Post by notahacker »

gruez wrote: post #17
BossingAround wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>I am not a Twitter user, and at this point, my idea of "what's Twitter's content" is pretty much "mostly MAGA." what makes you think this?

Apart from the CEO's posturing, it seems like the "More Tweets" shown around other tweets to unregistered users are now heavily skewed towards that demographic even when wildly irrelevant to the actual content being looked at

(the popularity of certain commentators producing that sort of content isn't exactly unique to Twitter, and nor is the other irrelevant tweets mostly being cat pics, but I suspect the fact that nearly all the politics Twitter randomly surfaces to people who haven't cultivated a profile with the opposite preferences is of that ilk probably reflects who buys the blue ticks...)

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#37

Post by dragontamer »

paulsutter wrote: post #31
phyrex wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a shortsighted view! Do you think Twitter operates out of the goodness of their hearts and will continue to let you keep up on Ai and new space in the face of losing money? Do you think what’s there will just do to help working without active maintenance? Do you think the servers that make all this possible are running for free?

Their revenue is massively larger than the cost to run their servers (I used to run 3000 physical servers with a small team, it doesn't cost much) > advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million

Ad revenue is mostly tied to sales people talking with big companies, addressing their issues.

For example: Southwest airlines has a huge number of advertisements across the internet. But Southwest doesn't want these advertisements to appear next to airport disasters. This kind of "custom request" is the bulk of $Millions+ revenues. You need to constantly cater to these company's seemingly arbitrary requests as they try to protect their brand.

Twitter fired the team that did this. And when they did, the big companies that care about their image left.

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#38

Post by slmlm »

tyingq wrote: post #32
slmlm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the right comment - it looked like you took the negative viewpoint that down 60% is bad. I'm saying that down 60% looks good against the backdrop of the dramatic cost-cutting that they have done.

That's hard to reconcile with "regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent" . They set their own projections. Sounds roughly like they expected a 30% drop (for the reasons you cited) and got a 60%-ish drop instead.

That may be correct, but that's speculation.

From my limited perspective given the factually reported cost reductions, -60% seems 'fine'. Right now it seems like the platform has hit rock bottom in terms of public sentiment so even if the projections were optimistic at -30%, as long as things don't get worse, that's about it. Everyone who is holding out to subscribe or who has left the platform, has probably left already.

Would love to see the source document to understand what frequency 'regularly' and 'sometimes' refer to, and to know when in the last months the projections missed so spectacularly - but that would be boring journalism.

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#39

Post by dragontamer »

sokoloff wrote: post #26
dragontamer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then your issue isn't bias but trust. The article is written in a very straightforward manner, if these facts are in fact true. According to this alleged document. This isn't an anonymous source. This is a leaked document from Twitter management. Presumably NYTimes can eventually release more details if pushed on this issue and offer more solid proof.

It seems that it is literally an anonymous (not named) source.

I'm not sure if you're... into newspaper lingo.

But "anonymous source" usually means "Dude who emails reporter", and often someone who is an executive level or above. You know, someone who matters, but for their own sake they need to stay anonymous.

If its just a document, then the "source is the document". You don't need to quote an anonymous person (who likely has their own biases), you just quote the document itself.

These words that journalists use? They have meaning. "Anonymous source" is not how the story is described. It is described, rather precisely, as "internal documents".

Re: Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

#40

Post by bdcravens »

sidcool wrote: post #24

I still blame Jack Dorsey. He seriously has very little to show for what he did at Twitter for a decade.

He created a business, with about $13B in funding, which the richest guy on the planet (at the time) wanted to buy for $44B. I'd say that's a bit more than "very little".
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