Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#121

Post by imagist » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

gxs wrote: post #95

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

People always write them off, but I do wonder if it's more of an emotional write off or the fact that as non twitter users, they refuse to see value because they personally don't see value. I'm not a twitter user or advocate but: 106.31M 316.93M 664.89M 1.4B 2.22B That's their revenue over the past 5 years. Their R&D cost last year was over 800M. I'm not saying they are Google, I'm not saying they are LinkedIn, but t…

The only reason revenue, users, scale, investor love, patents, staff, infrastructure, etc. matter is that they usually are indicators of potential for profit. Profit is the entire point of investing in a company.

But the greater indicator of potential for profit here is that Twitter has existed for 10 years and has never turned a profit.

Given this, I think that revenue, users, scale, investor love, patents, staff, infrastructure, etc. have all become disconnected from Twitter's actual profit potential. They haven't made a profit, they aren't going to make a profit. I think that the only logical choice is to dismiss the idea that Twitter has value.

But, as I noted, perceived value can be as profitable as real value for an investor. Just don't be naive and mistake the perceived value for real value--naivety will lose you money.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#122

Post by bdcravens » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

gxs wrote: post #95

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

People always write them off, but I do wonder if it's more of an emotional write off or the fact that as non twitter users, they refuse to see value because they personally don't see value. I'm not a twitter user or advocate but: 106.31M 316.93M 664.89M 1.4B 2.22B That's their revenue over the past 5 years. Their R&D cost last year was over 800M. I'm not saying they are Google, I'm not saying they are LinkedIn, but t…

Are you saying that they will attain profitability at some point?

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#123

Post by bdcravens » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

intsunny wrote: post #104

0x37 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this inane trend here on HN of referring to companies with the names they are registered to stock exhange?

For many of us its sheer laziness and its been this way for a long time. GOOG is faster to type than Google. (This is especially true for MSFT.)

I remember MSFT being a common reference on Slashdot way back when.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#124

Post by erickhill » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

I think Twitter's recent foray into becoming a content streaming source (see: NFL) is very interesting and a natural next step, albeit a late one. The user base is already there to essentially compete with Twitch and other streaming providers.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#125

Post by poopsintub » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #82

Can someone actually explain to me how the situation came to this point where it practically looks as if Twitter's fate is being decided and played out in the media via endless speculation? It is not like Twitter is a tiny company with an unknown brand, few users and no possibility of improving its profit margins. I am not aware of what they are trying to do, but at the same time it is not as if they could have exhau…

Facebook was due to flop after going public also, but they have managed quarter after quarter of user growth and profits. Twitter has been public about a year less and investors (3 years) are getting antsy because it can't turn a profit, user growth has dropped to very little, people are tweeting far less, and they don't have any glimpse of monetizing what they have. The main thing is that people invest in a companies growth and betting on future profits, but there isn't any. Hence the stock price, and bringing back Dorsey to try and save the company.

Facebook tanking into MySpace wouldn't impact Twitter when they can't turn a profit on the hundreds of millions of users they already have.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#126

Post by jldugger » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #82

Can someone actually explain to me how the situation came to this point where it practically looks as if Twitter's fate is being decided and played out in the media via endless speculation? It is not like Twitter is a tiny company with an unknown brand, few users and no possibility of improving its profit margins. I am not aware of what they are trying to do, but at the same time it is not as if they could have exhau…

> Can someone actually explain to me how the situation came to this point where it practically looks as if ... Is this just impatience from stockholders?

Money doesn't grow on trees, and Facebook has lost a half billion dollars every year. They have maybe four years left at that rate before they run out of cash on hand. The numbers are improving by about 20 percent a year, which, if projected forward, means they'll stop losing money in ... four years.

I don't think it's impatience to question if your investment will go bankrupt or not. Impatience was taking the company public before it was profitable.

> For example, let us just say, hypothetically, something really damaging comes out about FB (e.g. the news about the fake video view metrics) and advertisers start fleeing from it. Wouldn't Twitter be the beneficiary of at least some of that exodus? Do they really have no option of an end game?

Why would you invest in Twitter if the only reason to expect a positive outcome was if Facebook horribly fucked up?

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#127

Post by imagist » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #97

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

> If you find yourself thinking that Twitter is a company with any real value What about non-monetary value like playing a key role in 'Arab Spring'[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri...

Given Twitter's complicity in freedom-of-speech curtailing activities in the US, France, Israel, and Turkey, Twitter's non-monetary value only goes as far as that non-monetary value provides them monetary value. I don't think this is worth considering from either an investment or ethical perspective. Twitter, like most corporations, is an amoral entity.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#128

Post by packetized » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #113

trentmb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's some back end tech, talent that would be useful for tackling Salesforces problems.

Salesforce's back end is AWS. They ran their own cloud for a while, but ditched it.

Incorrect.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#129

Post by briholt » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

imagist wrote: post #85

IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have never made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but pe…

Agreed on poor finances. But Twitter has one thing that no one else has - they are in the center of the zeitgeist. Every political candidate is on Twitter. Every news network discusses Twitter happenings everyday. NFL broadcasts list players' Twitter handles. Half the commercials on TV advertise hashtags. South Park just did a whole episode about Twitter. The cost to embed your brand in the minds of Americans like that would be far greater than $10B. The question is can some larger company capitalize on that mindshare.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#130

Post by kuschku » Fri, Sep 23, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

hornbaker wrote: post #13

My bet is GOOG. They need a streaming newsfeed product in which to insert ads.

What else do you want Google to take over?

Maybe ATT? Verizon? Comcast? TWC? All other ISPs? How about Walmart? And maybe Google could even buy local governments to make things more streamlined.

And we all could pay with Google dollar, and have Larry Page as world dictator.

Google already has faaar too much power and should be broken apart, giving an entity organized like a dictatorship – which all non-coop companies are – even more power basically would mean Google would become more powerful than most small to middle governments.