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Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

nytimes.com

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Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#41

Post by Alupis »

Macsenour wrote: post #34
Alupis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company (like many many others) have tried advertising on Facebook, and other social networks (Twitter included). You pay a bunch of money to them, and get almost nothing in return. It's not nearly as effective dollar-for-dollar as using, for example, google advertising... or just investing in using Email Marketing and building a list. (I don't see how any social networks will be profitable long term).

I think specific social networks will be profitable. Such as a doctors social network, or golfers network. I think a larger catch all network has issues as we're all talking about here.

We came to the conclusion that people (customers) don't visit social networks (of any kind) with the goal of being sold to.

They visit social networks with the intention to be social. Reading an advert, clicking on it, and buying some product is the last thing on their mind.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#42

Post by far33d »

numair wrote: post #33

I'm sorry, but you can't blame a talented operations guy (among the most talented in our industry -- he led the Pixar IPO) for Twitter's failure to innovate and grow. Especially when you factor in the constant absence of the guy who is supposed to be in charge of product, who spends more of his time tending to his overhyped payments company. The lack of a transformational acquisition probably didn't make him very hap…

Nitpick - Ali wasn't at Pixar @ the time of the IPO, though I'm sure he was instrumental during the Disney acquisition.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#43

Post by izacus »

Alupis wrote: post #25
sosborn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is the new water cooler. I don't use it, but I can see why some people do. Having said that, I really don't see how they will be profitable in the long term.

My company (like many many others) have tried advertising on Facebook, and other social networks (Twitter included). You pay a bunch of money to them, and get almost nothing in return. It's not nearly as effective dollar-for-dollar as using, for example, google advertising... or just investing in using Email Marketing and building a list. (I don't see how any social networks will be profitable long term).

Why are you surprised that people didn't react to advertising on a medium they use for personal communication?

We don't go to Twitter to read ads.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#44

Post by numair »

far33d wrote: post #42
numair wrote: post #33

I'm sorry, but you can't blame a talented operations guy (among the most talented in our industry -- he led the Pixar IPO) for Twitter's failure to innovate and grow. Especially when you factor in the constant absence of the guy who is supposed to be in charge of product, who spends more of his time tending to his overhyped payments company. The lack of a transformational acquisition probably didn't make him very hap…

Nitpick - Ali wasn't at Pixar @ the time of the IPO, though I'm sure he was instrumental during the Disney acquisition.

Thanks, my bad. Just annoyed that anyone thinks this about cashing out, rather than actual problems at Twitter right now.

I'm not hating; I hope Twitter figures itself out. We need a strong #2 in this space.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#45

Post by rco8786 »

numair wrote: post #33

I'm sorry, but you can't blame a talented operations guy (among the most talented in our industry -- he led the Pixar IPO) for Twitter's failure to innovate and grow. Especially when you factor in the constant absence of the guy who is supposed to be in charge of product, who spends more of his time tending to his overhyped payments company. The lack of a transformational acquisition probably didn't make him very hap…

Jack Dorsey is not in charge of product at Twitter.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#46

Post by rco8786 »

dmcy22 wrote: post #15
valarauca1 wrote: post #3

>Twitter had 255 million monthly users in March, a 5 percent increase from the previous quarter. It was the second quarter of disappointing growth for the service, and Wall Street was hoping for an increase in the double digits. Growing at a rate of 12.5 million users per quarter is slow?

Not a direct comparison, but when Whatsapp is adding 1 million users a day [1], 12.5 million per quarter doesn't seem like that much. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/20/technology/social/whatsapp-1...

You're comparing signups to active users. Very different.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#47

Post by tg3 »

tlrobinson wrote: post #29

> It was up about 4 percent in midday trading Thursday. It's got to be somewhat depressing to know the market thinks your presence at a company is worth almost negative $1 billion.

I was going to say that his VORP [1] was -$1b, but since they won't be replacing him, I think your original assessment is correct.

And extraordinarily depressing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_over_replacement_player

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#48

Post by jonathansizz »

m0nastic wrote: post #39
ForHackernews wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I've never understood the appeal of Twitter. Maybe many other people feel similarly? I read somewhere that the vast majority of Twitter accounts are bots or completely inactive.

I think people use Twitter for different things, but for me Twitter has completely replaced RSS, IM, and news. Unlike Facebook, where none of the people I follow have relevant interests to me, on Twitter I only follow people who post things I'm interested in. Over time, I've learned to unfollow actual news sources, but instead I follow a collection of editors (who wind up performing a very useful curation function).…

How many people are you following? How long did it take you to build a really high-quality stream?

My stream has around 60 accounts, and I also read my whole timeline. It already feels like this is approaching the maximum that I'll be willing and able to give proper attention to. I'll probably prune some of the lower quality ones out before I add any more.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#49

Post by m0nastic »

jonathansizz wrote: post #48
m0nastic wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people use Twitter for different things, but for me Twitter has completely replaced RSS, IM, and news. Unlike Facebook, where none of the people I follow have relevant interests to me, on Twitter I only follow people who post things I'm interested in. Over time, I've learned to unfollow actual news sources, but instead I follow a collection of editors (who wind up performing a very useful curation function).…

How many people are you following? How long did it take you to build a really high-quality stream? My stream has around 60 accounts, and I also read my whole timeline. It already feels like this is approaching the maximum that I'll be willing and able to give proper attention to. I'll probably prune some of the lower quality ones out before I add any more.

I just checked, and it looks like I follow 500 people (which is actually way more than I would have guessed, and I'll admit is kind of ridiculous). Most of them aren't super high-output though, which helps.

I've had to unfollow lots of people who tweet a lot.

I've been using Twitter since 2007 (my account id number is in the 6-figures range). I feel like it took about a year or so to figure out how I wanted to use the service (and for there to be people I was interested in following), and it's only maybe the past year that I've discovered the benefit of unfollowing news accounts and following specific editors instead.

I also have pretty varied interests (I think the mix of people I follow is pretty evenly distributed between fashion people, photographers, news editors, functional programming people, infosec people, and comedians). That mix gets adjusted periodically as my interests shift (I unfollowed a lot of infosec people about a year ago as I've tried to extract myself from that community).

It's a work in progress.

Re: Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer Steps Down

#50

Post by snowwrestler »

Alupis wrote: post #25
sosborn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is the new water cooler. I don't use it, but I can see why some people do. Having said that, I really don't see how they will be profitable in the long term.

My company (like many many others) have tried advertising on Facebook, and other social networks (Twitter included). You pay a bunch of money to them, and get almost nothing in return. It's not nearly as effective dollar-for-dollar as using, for example, google advertising... or just investing in using Email Marketing and building a list. (I don't see how any social networks will be profitable long term).

Social networks are entertainment. Entertainment ads are not great for directly driving sales. No one really expects people to see a TV ad, then buy the product or service 10 seconds later. Well, Twitter is the same way. So if you try to measure its effectiveness the same way you measure a search ad, it's going to look terrible.

Twitter is good for brand marketing, which is inherently harder to measure. It's also great for reaching audiences that are heavy users of Twitter--like tech folks, "thought leaders," and reporters.

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