Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#41

Post by j4yav » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #5

Is there some reason articles like this doesn't include profits? Revenue is specified along with a number of other key metrics, but not profit. The overall conclusion seems to be the same as with Meta last week: It's going well, but not as well as predicted. The slower than expected growth is only a problem, because the stock market likes predictability and will punish any company unable to correctly foresee the futu…

TWTR investors seem unfazed, at least so far. Stock is essentially flat on the news.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#42

Post by aeturnum » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

sydthrowaway wrote: post #12

It beggars belief that people don't think the numbers from any of these companies are completely fraudulent. Has anyone been on Twitter? Bots, spam, etc.

Sure - no one thinks Twitter (or anyone) knows the exact count for real users, etc. But fraudulent activity and bot development is also driven by the underlying success of the website (scammers don't scam where there's no one to scam) so there's reason to pay attention to relative changes (or lack of change) in overall patterns.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#43

Post by ProAm » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #24

Like Instagram and others they have gotten quite hostile to visitors without an account. I guess tracking and monetizing your users earns a lot more than displaying ads for everyone.

> I guess tracking and monetizing your users earns a lot more than displaying ads for everyone.

During a gold rush, sell shovels.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#44

Post by hedgehog » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

ynac wrote: post #26

I feel so naive / out-of-touch when Twitter comes up. How is it we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. Like we do for email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did Unix for that matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great things, but why don't we move from innovation to standardized protocols to enhance the user experience of the internet. Is it just great marketing driven by profits. As I said, I'm probabl…

Technology isn't the hard part, for example Mastodon exists and works fine. Funding a sustained product delivery effort is expensive, developing a value prop big enough to overcome network effects is really hard, etc.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#45

Post by mrweasel » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #15

mrweasel wrote: post #5

Is there some reason articles like this doesn't include profits? Revenue is specified along with a number of other key metrics, but not profit. The overall conclusion seems to be the same as with Meta last week: It's going well, but not as well as predicted. The slower than expected growth is only a problem, because the stock market likes predictability and will punish any company unable to correctly foresee the futu…

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…

That's is an interesting take, because the company I work for is the exact opposite. Revenue is useless, because you can just create all the revenue you want.

Among other things, we resell hardware and software. The basic idea is that customers can get a Dell, or Oracle server and a license for an Oracle database from us, when buying hosting. This saves them the trouble of dealing with multiple suppliers. The hardware and software business is just sort of a side thing, but we can generate crazy amounts of revenue by losing money on hardware. The idea is that we make the money back longterm on hosting. We never use revenue as a meaningful KPI, because we know that some years it will be inflated like crazy by hardware or software sales (which aren't profitable).

So I don't really see revenue as useful figure either, not without also knowing if you're profitable.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#46

Post by tablespoon » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

ynac wrote: post #26

I feel so naive / out-of-touch when Twitter comes up. How is it we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. Like we do for email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did Unix for that matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great things, but why don't we move from innovation to standardized protocols to enhance the user experience of the internet. Is it just great marketing driven by profits. As I said, I'm probabl…

> How is it we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. Like we do for email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did Unix for that matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great things, but why don't we move from innovation to standardized protocols to enhance the user experience of the internet.

I read an interesting point somewhere: empirically, platforms can change an innovate far faster than protocols. The example given was encryption: email doesn't have it, even though people have been talking about it for literally decades, but WhatsApp added it in a relatively short time (a year? less?).

It makes sense. With a protocol, once it gets popular, change becomes really hard. It's like herding cats to get everyone to update, so things stagnate at the lowest common denominator for interoperability reasons. When all the software and installs are controlled by one entity, that entity can make a decision to change and just execute it, no herding needed.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#47

Post by BitwiseFool » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

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 a paltry 2,000 mentions, which seems absurdly low.

But also, in terms of non-politics, I am so tired of seeing "JUST ANNOUNCED".

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#48

Post by samwillis » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

johndfsgdgdfg wrote: post #31

FB deservedly gets a lot of criticism. I personally feel Twitter doesn't get its fair share of blame. IME Twitter is the most toxic social media platform out there. Twitter deserves a fair share of blame for the divisive political culture we live in right now. I hope these companies go bankrupt and it'd be nothing but a blessing for humanity.

I think the difference is that the toxicity on Twitter is much more visible, it overflows onto everyones timelines, trending topics and in reply’s to celebrities and politicians. On Facebook it’s all “behind closed doors” in groups and on pages.

They are both bad, but in very different ways.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#49

Post by blihp » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #5

Is there some reason articles like this doesn't include profits? Revenue is specified along with a number of other key metrics, but not profit. The overall conclusion seems to be the same as with Meta last week: It's going well, but not as well as predicted. The slower than expected growth is only a problem, because the stock market likes predictability and will punish any company unable to correctly foresee the futu…

Because profit doesn't matter as much for a growth story, growth does. They do it to themselves... in the face of this 'miss' the CEO continues to pitch the growth story: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/10/22925114/twitter-earnings... So it should be no surprise when the financial reporters and markets flog them when they miss.

Re: Twitter misses ad revenue and user growth estimates

#50

Post by DixieDev » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #24

Like Instagram and others they have gotten quite hostile to visitors without an account. I guess tracking and monetizing your users earns a lot more than displaying ads for everyone.

Yeah, if you click too many links without an account it'll bring up a sign-up pop-up that takes you to the previous page when you close it. You can get around it by opening the link in a new tab, or save yourself constant hassle by disabling cookies on twitter altogether.

While we're here, take another pro-tip: Set yourself up with an RSS/Atom reader and "Follow" accounts you are interested in through Nitter. No account, no random "We thought you might like", and no ads, just posts and retweets from the accounts you're interested in.