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Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#41

Post by Greenisus »

zaidf wrote: post #39

Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth. I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that: * makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this) * filters…

If you want Twitter to be more like Facebook, why not just use Facebook?

I agree that I'd like for it to be easier to dive into a conversation. It's a lot better than it was years ago, but I still struggle with the UI for that sometimes.

As for the 140 char limit, I think that should never change. Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#42

Post by dclara »

ahknight wrote: post #7

Duh? Who really thought Twitter would suddenly become profitable after the IPO? The VCs cashed out and walked away laughing at the imploding building. THERE (STILL) IS NO PROFIT MODEL.

As we learned from Amazon's performance, VC and Wall Street don't care about profit, they only care about sales. As long as the sales and customer based is strong, that's ok. There rest can be adjusted.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#44

Post by klochner »

mbesto wrote: post #25

Before we jump the gun on this "loss", read this first:[1] Net loss - GAAP net loss was $511 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a net loss of $9 million in the same period last year. The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, unt…

Too bad Twitter can't issue RSUs to pay for server costs as well, they could take their expenses down to zero.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#45

Post by lubujackson »

27182818284 wrote: post #26
capkutay wrote: post #20

I'm not of those people who thinks all tech valuations are insane, but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m revenue). I understand twitter's valuation reflects the fact that it's a growing company, but even a company like facebook is only valued at 60x their quarterly revenue ($158b/$2.5b quarterly revenue). But at least the consensus on wall street an…

>but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m What do you think is easy to justify for Twitter? (I'm actually pretty confident in Twitter, I guess. They took ten years-ish to IPO and not a day goes by where I don't see a hashtag on several products be it a local political group or a super bowl commercial)

It used to be AOL keywords. Times change quick.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#46

Post by zaidf »

Greenisus wrote: post #41
zaidf wrote: post #39

Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth. I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that: * makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this) * filters…

If you want Twitter to be more like Facebook, why not just use Facebook? I agree that I'd like for it to be easier to dive into a conversation. It's a lot better than it was years ago, but I still struggle with the UI for that sometimes. As for the 140 char limit, I think that should never change. Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel.

I do already use facebook pretty much all day. But twitter has a different audience and has more conversations relevant to work. Except the UI sucks and makes me work my ass off to engage in those conversations. If facebook or linkedin ends up eating twitter's lunch at some point, I won't complain.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#47

Post by alphakappa »

Touche wrote: post #43
rhizome wrote: post #36

I saw a provocative question on Twitter this afternoon: "What exactly does Twitter need 2300 employees for?"

Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#48

Post by Vik1ng »

zaidf wrote: post #39

Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth. I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that: * makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this) * filters…

> remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same

I disagree. I think that is the only reason Twitter still exists. 140 allow you to look trough the stream very fast. Try to follow a hashtag with the same amount of posts on Facebook or Google+ would be impossible

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#49

Post by extesy »

alphakappa wrote: post #47
Touche wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)

They are not selling accounts. They are selling advertising opportunities to businesses.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#50

Post by AznHisoka »

ahknight wrote: post #7

Duh? Who really thought Twitter would suddenly become profitable after the IPO? The VCs cashed out and walked away laughing at the imploding building. THERE (STILL) IS NO PROFIT MODEL.

They actually do have a profit model.

The sad thing is they're giving it away to other companies (ie Gnip, Datasift). Here's a suggestion: Twitter. Take away every single middleman out there. Sell your data for an arm AND a leg.

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