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Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

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Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#11
post #6

What are people's opinions on the most optimistic case for Twitter (the business)?

I think it's difficult to say; my guess is endless layoffs and a slow gradual slide into irrelevancy like Yahoo! - no-one is really interested who is young at arguing with strangers online. Do we know of any companies in tech (apart from Apple) who got big, stopped growing and managed to turn it around? Will it be an amazing purchase that saves them (like Apple did)?

Yeah! But...how hard is it to cut it down to real bare-bones staff and still somehow manage to have $120M in revenue and way less costs? Or is it mostly server and processing costs from how real-time their platform is?

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#13
post #7
post #2

"The whole world is watching Twitter. While we may not be currently meeting everyone’s growth expectations, there is one thing that continues to grow and outpace our peers: Twitter’s influence and impact." https://medium.com/@jack/twitter-q416-earnings-call-4574b01e... I honestly don't see how they are growing in influence and impact. I'd say that if it weren't for POTUS tweets, most people wouldn't even notice any c…

Beyond POTUS, I've noticed a definite uptick in usage almost solely from politics. Lots more politicians engaging in this, and people realising they can talk politics through this medium. I don't know how you take advantage of that to pay your bazillion engineers though

On the flip slide, politicians have been using Facebook increasingly (especially Facebook Live) for the same reasons, which isn't good for Twitter.

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#14
post #5

> It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job -- as CEO of Square Inc. I find it interesting that the CEO of Twitter has two jobs. It's really in line with our future of a "sharing economy" where one job isn't enough to survive. It'd be funnier if it was Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) but this is pretty good too.…

http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-owner...

>Add on the fact that much of the board is new, with little financial stake in the company. It’s possible they are loyal to CEO Jack Dorsey, who essentially appointed them, and don’t have the financial incentive to push change the way older, more frustrated investors might.

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#15
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get acquired by the Executive Branch of the US Government and relabeled "The Voice of Freedom"? :-)

Haha wow. This is already the worst of all possible dimensions but that would be rich

Obviously (I hope) my comment was intended as humorous but given that Twitter now appears to be an integral part of the political landscape I could imagine a scenario where it was bailed out as simply being too important (rather than too big) to fail.

I wonder if there would then be a "revenue" model in charging other governments to use it?

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#16

Twitter's tendency to ban and censor is either part of the problem or a sign of desperation. Either way, not good.

But isn't Twitter's unwillingness to ban unless in instances of overwhelming PR part of the problem? (i.e. the harassment issue that has legitimately driven away users)

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#17
post #5

> It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job -- as CEO of Square Inc. I find it interesting that the CEO of Twitter has two jobs. It's really in line with our future of a "sharing economy" where one job isn't enough to survive. It'd be funnier if it was Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) but this is pretty good too.…

Because they were desperate for someone to save the value it has/had and they figured 50% Jack is better than 100% anyone else

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#18

What are people's opinions on the most optimistic case for Twitter (the business)?

payment and shopping integration and processing, higher quality video, expanded broadcasting, long-form content (a year ago Twitter said there were going to try longer character limits but I don't know what happened to that)

Twitter fills a niche.. it's not growing, but a pretty big one nonetheless. It's like classmates.com yahoo.com and other sites that are large, stagnant, but exist anyway because they fill a niche, have good advertising revenue, and have a lot of users.

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#19
post #14
post #5

> It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job -- as CEO of Square Inc. I find it interesting that the CEO of Twitter has two jobs. It's really in line with our future of a "sharing economy" where one job isn't enough to survive. It'd be funnier if it was Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) but this is pretty good too.…

http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-owner... >Add on the fact that much of the board is new, with little financial stake in the company. It’s possible they are loyal to CEO Jack Dorsey, who essentially appointed them, and don’t have the financial incentive to push change the way older, more frustrated investors might.

I like how the chart in the article you linked to has Steve Ballmer's job title as "Owner, Los Angeles Clippers".

Re: Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows

#20
post #5

> It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job -- as CEO of Square Inc. I find it interesting that the CEO of Twitter has two jobs. It's really in line with our future of a "sharing economy" where one job isn't enough to survive. It'd be funnier if it was Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) but this is pretty good too.…

Hero worship. Jack has done what few else could achieve: he built two multi-billion dollar businesses.

The problem is that doesn't mean he can run both at the same time nor does it mean he's the correct long-term steward of both simply because he was there first.

It really falls on the respective boards to keep the situation honest, but nobody wants to be on the board that fired Steve Jobs again.

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