TWTR • Hacker News Board

Re: TWTR

#301

Post by jcalvinowens » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #85

generj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this world of quant-bots, I don't know how anyone can argue that we have a fully rational market. My understanding is that much of the progress in economics has been merging economics with psychology to identify rational failures.

Quant bots make the market better by increasing liquidity.

I've always thought that's a sketchy claim. The market would have sufficient liquidity without the bots.

More importantly, they're a huge waste of resources that produces nothing of economic value.

Re: TWTR

#302

Post by ars_technician » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 3:14 AM UTC

larrys wrote: post #273

mathattack wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One comment... Google and Facebook each tried to stick it to the bankers in their own ways. In the end both struggled as a result. Google tried to cut out bankers and make them play by special "Just for the Google IPO" rules and rates. By creating a custom-IPO process, they saved on banker fees but wound up leaving an awful lot of money on the table. Facebook went the other way. They tried to grab every last penny on…

"Google and Facebook each tried to stick it to the bankers in their own ways." This is a good example of a situation where you should stay close to what you know and stop thinking you can outsmart people who make a living a certain way everyday and know as much or more than your advisers. And definitely more than "you" (meaning the google guys) who made decisions based on things they read or what they were advised as…

mathattack is wrong though. Both Google and Facebook improved the amount of money the company got instead of lining the underwriter's pockets with that money.

Re: TWTR

#303

Post by koiz » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 3:36 AM UTC

I fear the day that the service decreases in quality. Hell bad dreams of Digg v4 flash into my mind when I saw how things went today. I wish twitter all the best but this IPO seems to be pushing their problems down a few years.

Re: TWTR

#304

Post by Keyframe » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 3:37 AM UTC

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #255

tedunangst wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm amazed how much they're spending. What are they paying for?

2000 employees.

I'm more interested to hear why does twitter need 2000 employees?

Re: TWTR

#305

Post by nly » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 3:41 AM UTC

aryastark wrote: post #218

dangero wrote: post #173

Serious question: Why does the Hacker News crowd seem to be so cynical about big tech IPOs? Considering for most startups this is the dream, why aren't there more congratulatory high fives? Is it just a case of jealousy? This IPO is going really well. The stock is being well received in the marketplace. I know twitter employees who just got rich are reading this, but can't comment due to SEC rules, so congrats Twitte…

Advertising platform + Web does not equal "tech company". I've never really been excited about Twitter's tech, since it's mostly just inverted IRC. You "join" people, rather than channels. And channels become hashtags. Then they centralized the entire thing and put a dot-com face on it all. The only way Twitter makes money is by buying out or eliminating competitors, mostly mobile apps. Any high fives for getting cru…

The whole point of Twitter was you could tweet from an SMS wasn't it? SMS was supposed to be the primary platform...

Re: TWTR

#306

Post by Kranar » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 4:04 AM UTC

vizzah wrote: post #204

What's funny is that anyone with a bit of a forward thinking could have doubled their money today by buying TWTR Inc (which is not Twitter) trading for $0.03 with an identical symbol TWTR, but on another market exchange. As already happened several weeks before (after it was announced Twitter will be trading as 'TWTR'), the wrong stock exploded due to traders mistakenly placing their buy orders. It should have been p…

Not really. First it's not sold on an exchange, it's only available over-the-counter, meaning very few brokerages are going to grant access to it. And even for those who do you can't just submit your order anytime you feel like it and get executed against, you have to apply to buy the shares and the brokerage has to find a market maker willing to facilitate the exchange, it can take days for a trade OTC to go through.

Third, the volume for that stock is only 1.5 million shares a day, that's only 40,000 dollars worth of stock traded a day. To give perspective that's less than the average amount of Microsoft stock traded in a single second.

So no... you really couldn't have done this strategy.

Re: TWTR

#307

Post by olefoo » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 4:24 AM UTC

silverbax88 wrote: post #247

olefoo wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Think about all of the paywalled news outlets out there. Think about how many journalists tweet their stories to drive their personal brand. Think about immensely popular twitter accounts and sought after domain experts. Think about the fact that someone who is very entertaining on twitter needs to leave twitter to ( consult, sell t-shirts, produce media, etc. ) if they want to make money. Think about how t.co m…

I don't want to sound dismissive, but this is very similar to the 'eyeballs' strategies that were bandied about prior to 2000. If a million people use a link to go to a paywall site, that's awesome - except as of now the data shows that Twitter users don't become buyers as a general rule. Can they make money? Sure. Can they make money with ads? Sure. Can they make money with massive vertical media funnels? Well...wha…

That isn't the direction I was going with it.

I think there's a big opportunity for twitter to be middleman allowing authors to charge for their services. Twitter influencers might get articles for free publicity. But most people would pay to twitter to pay authors proportionately; and if you logged in with twitter on any news site; it's covered.

If I could pay 1 outfit and have it distributed fairly to everyone whose stuff I read... So that I don't have to get a subscription to all of [ nytimes, latimes, chronicle, guardian, bloomberg, j.random.techblogger etc. ] But never got paywalled and knew the authors were getting paid; I would find that a compelling offering. Now Amazon could probably make a play for that position, but they have some structural issues that limit them and twitter has a better story for independents.

Re: TWTR

#308

Post by wrice314 » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 5:23 AM UTC

greeneggs wrote: post #224

dev_jim wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Wall St always seem to end up with the blame on these threads? They priced the Facebook IPO too high and they get the blame, they priced the Twitter IPO too low and they get the blame. The company just went public and raised $2B+ at a higher valuation initial valuation then anyone expected. IPOs are tricky things to get right. Give it a few months for the hype to settle down before you start screaming about…

I am not an expert, but it seems like there should be a better IPO mechanism that sets the price just right. Why not have an auction?

Pricing an IPO is more or less an auction. When pricing an IPO they set a range and then meet with institutional investors to sell their book (in this case 70M shares. The original price was 17-20 per share, and there was excess demand at this price, so the bankers and company, pushed the price to $26 per share.

Re: TWTR

#309

Post by wrice314 » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 5:28 AM UTC

bolder88 wrote: post #241

pbreit wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to determine which part your most concerned about. When $25b of wealth is being created, there are going to be some folks making money. And you might not think some of those folks earned their take. First, you're too fixated on "loss-making". IPO companies are almost by definition loss-making. IPOs are fundraising events. Growth companies use money to invest in the business for growth, not profits (yet). Second,…

> When $25b of wealth is being created Woah there. I think this is the fundamental issue. $25b of wealth hasn't been created. It's not free money. It's a scam.

How has $25B of wealth not been created? The market believes that the price of the stock is a price such that the total company would be valued at $25B. What asset can you own other than the dollar that is not based on market pricing? Is $25B worth of gold today worth $25B of wealth? What if the world woke up tomorrow and thought gold was worthless.

Re: TWTR

#310

Post by wrice314 » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 5:36 AM UTC

arjunnarayan wrote: post #3

If it stays at $46, that's a gigantic fuck up. They left a billion dollars on the table, and that's borderline breach of fiduciary duty. Of course, we have to wait and see what it settles at, and it's a little premature to heap scorn just yet. But the initial reaction is it looks like they overreacted to the Facebook IPO debacle (in my book, Facebook did the best thing possible for the company and extracted as much v…

I agree that Facebook did the best thing, that is raising the most money with the least dilution, though you can see culturally how downward pricing pressure and momentum has forced them to be much more focused on driving revenue than in the past. Revisiting the price in ~3 months will be a much better gauge of the accuracy.