"may become profitable for the first time next quarter after ... ramping up deals to sell its data to other companies" Cool, so any indication on who is buying all my data?
Also: What data is being bought? Publicly available information bundled up so there's not hassle with gathering it would be ok IMO. Private data would spark my interest as well. They can't be selling DMs, can't they?
They used to sell the “firehose,” which I believe was a real-time feed of every single tweet (something not available from the normal API). I don’t know if that still exists.
It's not mentioned in the article, but I really think President Trump has been a savior for Twitter. Without those controversial tweets, Twitter would rarely be in much of the public's mind, and the company would have continued its slow slide into irrelevance. As it is, barely a day goes by without "Twitter" being mentioned in national news.
Also, we know that twitter maintains "celebrity handlers" --- who is on the Trump handler team?
>San Francisco-based Twitter also disclosed that it had discovered an error in how it had measured its user base since 2014 and revised its estimates downward How is this possible? They can't just do like fetch_all_users, filtered by "not banned?"
Monthly actives is generally the primary metric and it's not so easy to calculate.
Do you mean it’s not easy to define? It shouldn’t be difficult to calculate any particular metric going forward, but it’s inportant to define what it means to be “active.”
Twitter just posted that it has inflated its user values for the past 3 years and lied to constituents, and now there stock price has risen. Why aren't more investors fleeing from these companies? It seems endemic that social media platforms are not just lacking in transparency, but completely trying to obfuscate it for profit.
"may become profitable for the first time next quarter after ... ramping up deals to sell its data to other companies" Cool, so any indication on who is buying all my data?
Twitter's partners build audiences around shopping decisions, lifestyle, and other online and offline behaviors.
Tailored audiences
Tailored audiences are often built from email lists or browsing behaviors. They help advertisers reach prospective customers or people who have already expressed interest in their business."
>San Francisco-based Twitter also disclosed that it had discovered an error in how it had measured its user base since 2014 and revised its estimates downward How is this possible? They can't just do like fetch_all_users, filtered by "not banned?"
I bet an engineer noticed and told a manager that the numbers were technically lower, the upper management finds out and decides to release that info when they already have massive mindshare and it won't hurt them as much.
They would be profitable in an instant if they'd get rid of half their employees? Im not sure why they need SO many people for Twitter. I believe they have over 4000, they could easily get by with 1000
Oh boy, another Hacker News commenter with zero experience running a large corporation telling experienced folks how they should run a large corporation. Better yet, with no explanation for why. The sheer arrogance.
Sales Departments have way too many people. I like that they employ people, but that’s a separate conversation. On a team of 8 sales people, typically 2 people together sell enough for the team to break even. The other 6, usually because of poor sales territory luck, sell maybe half their salary worth of services, but since growth is everything, an employee who makes 100k but only sells 50k is considered valuable.
Yes, but it makes sense for things that like to occur because when you think about it, firms care about the total contract value - meaning it might be a 50k contract per year for 2-3 years. Companies are looking at the longer term. At least that's how it is at my company. Clients generally sign a 2 year contract at $X per year. So if a sales person only sells 50k in a given year but every contract averages 2 years th…
Right. As you said, companies aren't optimizing just for this year's sales; they're going to be balancing acquiring customers this year, the cost of each sale, and the retention of those customers year over year. So if a sales guy gets a huge commission and salary for the first year for his acquired customers, but the company's retention rate is high, then that sales person's salary could be paying multiples in revenue over several years.
More and more these social media platforms feel like scheme's. Round after round of funding without ever reaching profitablity
There's always the option to simply not invest. For those platforms still in a pre-IPO state, you probably can't invest, even if you want to. For Twitter, it's easy enough to not buy the stock, and, indeed, if you bought in Jan 2014, you probably wish you hadn't. But if you bought yesterday, you're probably happy enough right now.
There are currently possible ways to access and invest in those pre-IPO companies.
It's not mentioned in the article, but I really think President Trump has been a savior for Twitter. Without those controversial tweets, Twitter would rarely be in much of the public's mind, and the company would have continued its slow slide into irrelevance. As it is, barely a day goes by without "Twitter" being mentioned in national news.
Anyone know if any Twitter execs (like Jack) have been donating to any Trump "foundations"?
Implying Trump uses the same shady "foundation" style bribery kick-back schemes as the people he uses his Twitter to slaughter daily.