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Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

reuters.com

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Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#361

Post by Terry_Roll »

teddyh wrote: post #220
shmatt wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess it started as a reaction to the many botnets used by companies and countries trying to maximize certain opinions On top of the phone number, they also go through purges seemingly once a year, getting rid of up to a million accounts a day. That also doesn't fair well with giving the stock market raw numbers

> reaction to the many botnets Makes no sense. If they wanted to require a phone number to keep out bots, they would simply ask for a phone number at registration. Delaying it like this, claiming “suspicious activity” is hard to see any other way than how I described it.

Because even a phone number is not enough to keep out bots.

Some VoIP providers do a PAYG model, so you can choose from any number of phone numbers, regional, local landlines or from mobile numbers for free and only pay when you make a call or answer their answerphone.

Now obviously Twitter will send text messages so you never incur a cost from the VoIP provider.

So how does a phone number solve bot activity?

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#363

Post by rconti »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #47
rsoto wrote: post #11

Twitter has been an absolute mess over the last few years. Through the explore tab, they aggressively promote topics that I have no interest in: k-pop, fashion, reality TV, telenovelas and birthdays. And there's no way to tell them that I don't really care about those topics, you can't even hide them. The trending topics used to be a very good way to know what's happening. Being the pulse of the planet was achieved.…

I loathe how often BrooklynDad_Defiant!, DutyToWarn, OccupyDemocrats, Palmer Report, Gravel Institute, Jeff Tiedrich, and many others always end up being the top tweet of whatever trending topic there happens to be. I refuse to believe this is a coincidence or the result of organic participation. Their appearance is far too consistent, predictable, and durable. Politically motivated trends also start appearing around…

I suspect these social networks don't really care, but I block any and every "public" facebook page that gets shared in my feed. Of course, you still see "what was your first car? from 93.7 THE OCTOPUS Des Moines, or whatever page you haven't yet blocked, but at least it gets rid of the worst, most-often shared offenders like the ones you cite. I'm assuming Twitter doesn't let you do that, though. I wish Facebook would give you an option "never ever ever show me anything from a public page". I will never care that a friend shared or posted on a public page. I will only ever care about their own content, and the groups I choose to be a member of.

(Incidentally, this is more broadly my problem with the default-public nature of Twitter).

I just wonder at what phase of growth-and-bust the networks will start to care a bit more about serving the demands of their eyeballs.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#364

Post by ahartmetz »

cronix wrote: post #75

So I never created a Twitter account. Over the years, there are a few people that I liked to read their thoughts on Twitter, so I'd manually go to their wall and read occasionally. They're all verified. Over time, it became cumbersome to continue doing this and I thought I'd give in and create an account (on the website) so that these people were all easy to access from a single point. So I did, and went and immediat…

>I have never encountered a more hostile website, or company for that matter, towards innocuous behavior.

Pinterest images in Google image search results would like to have a word with you.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#365

Post by FalconSensei »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #52
oh_sigh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit isn't very meaningful without a lot of context. A growing business could plow all of their would-be profits back into growing their business, making it look like they are losing money. Or a failing business could cannibalize itself to get a couple quarters of profits at the cost of destroying its long term prospects for success. Revenue is a much more concrete figure that sort of tells its own story, unlike pr…

> Revenue is a much more concrete figure that sort of tells its own story, unlike profit. No single number tells any story on its own. You can have $1T revenue tomorrow. Just sell $10 bills for $1.

But then you lost money. If you are selling assets worth $10 for $1, your revenue is literally negative

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#366

Post by martinald »

whoisjuan wrote: post #186

Honestly, Twitter is just a weird product. On the authoring side, it has a tremendous product-market fit with particular outspoken groups (investors, founders, politicians, journalists, activists, etc) and a terrible product-market fit with everyone else. I believe their biggest bet on revenue has always been to grow their passive audiences (people who just use the feed and don't tweet) but their product lacks the im…

Me and my peer group seem to be using Twitter more than anything these days (early 30s) - but not how you'd think.

We seem to all browse it to find interesting news/articles and then share them on WhatsApp groups. Having said that we all follow politics pretty closely so maybe we are a bit niche?

I actually get a lot of value out of twitter. Way more than I used to do with Facebook, which is just total trash now and my habit of checking it all the time has actually stopped simply because the content was so poor I seem to have inadvertently trained my brain out of expecting a dopamine hit scrolling through it.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#367

Post by koolba »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #361
teddyh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reaction to the many botnets Makes no sense. If they wanted to require a phone number to keep out bots, they would simply ask for a phone number at registration. Delaying it like this, claiming “suspicious activity” is hard to see any other way than how I described it.

Because even a phone number is not enough to keep out bots. Some VoIP providers do a PAYG model, so you can choose from any number of phone numbers, regional, local landlines or from mobile numbers for free and only pay when you make a call or answer their answerphone. Now obviously Twitter will send text messages so you never incur a cost from the VoIP provider. So how does a phone number solve bot activity?

Don’t you have to seed the PAYG account with a non-zero amount of money to initially get the number? Even a few dollars multiplied out becomes a significant spend if it’s a unique number per bot.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#368

Post by pcmoney »

acchow wrote: post #359
pcmoney wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It exists so you can know what everyone is talking about 5 weeks before they do. Follow the right people and it will change your life.

How did it change your life?

Gave me good cause to pivot from finance to technology in 2012, resulted in making literally 5x more than I would have likely made.

Got me a strong introduction to multiple jobs. One of which really transformed my career. (Twitter is a much better LinkedIn than LinkedIn)

Exposed me to really interesting thinkers which fundamentally altered what I pursue in life.

Told my COVID was coming in early 2020, shorted the US market and made ~$35k.

Got me off mainstream media and made me deeply pessimistic about both political parties but really optimistic about the future.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#369

Post by AniseAbyss »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #333
beebmam wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not even remotely priced at the magnitude to eat the whole planet. And yet, their market IS eating the entire world (except China, due to insular political reasons). That points to me like they're significantly undervalued.

I think the only thing that keeps them afloat is their importance to political figures who LOVE the short form sound bites. Of course that could just be the conspiracist in me :)

The average voter prefers to base his/her opinion on a soundbyte. And I don't blame them people have actual lives and loved ones nobody has time to waste on democracy.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#370

Post by winternett »

shmatt wrote: post #175
teddyh wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my account locked up and said there was "suspicious activity" and if I wanted to continue I needed to supply my phone number. I have repeatedly heard it said that Twitter does this for every single new account as a matter of course. Twitter wants your phone number, but don’t want you to bounce right at registration.

I would guess it started as a reaction to the many botnets used by companies and countries trying to maximize certain opinions On top of the phone number, they also go through purges seemingly once a year, getting rid of up to a million accounts a day. That also doesn't fair well with giving the stock market raw numbers

The junk calls I ritually get whenever I need to use the app, specifically after about 1 minutes of opening the app while I am reading says otherwise.

Implementing (no opt in) 2FA on sites where that level of security is not really warranted is just a ploy to get data that can be resold in my opinion.

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