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Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#51

Post by hoka »

alphakappa wrote: post #47
Touche wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)

Yes most signups are done online via a self-serve system; however, there is a lot of money to be made if you can produce custom deals, content, and ad placement with bigger partners.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#52

Post by toomuchtodo »

klochner wrote: post #44
mbesto wrote: post #25

Before we jump the gun on this "loss", read this first:[1] Net loss - GAAP net loss was $511 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a net loss of $9 million in the same period last year. The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, unt…

Too bad Twitter can't issue RSUs to pay for server costs as well, they could take their expenses down to zero.

Depending on who the hosting provider was, they could :)

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#53

Post by Touche »

alphakappa wrote: post #47
Touche wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)

Sales isn't about doing the paperwork of getting you signed up for a service. Sales is about convincing you to buy the service. Twitter doesn't have an automated system to convince companies to spend millions buying ads, they have salespeople, like every other sales company.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#54

Post by swordfish0321 »

zaidf wrote: post #39

Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth. I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that: * makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this) * filters…

Remove the 140 char limit and you remove the one thing that makes twitter twitter, brevity. You want it to look like Facebook??? Facebook's UI is a hot mess resulting from trying to pack every feature under the sun into one platform--no thanks. Moreover it sounds like you don't really know how to use Twitter and I think that is the real problem the company faces. Most of the people out there on twitter don't really understand how to leverage the platform to benefit them which is a larger educational-level issue they need to attack head on. The genius thing about twitter is that they've created a sort of psuedo protocol in a sense that works best when rapidly disseminating information. While you certainly can, it is not the tool to use for any sort of lengthy conversation, save that for Facebook, email, or whatever you prefer.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#55

Post by rhizome »

Touche wrote: post #43
rhizome wrote: post #36

I saw a provocative question on Twitter this afternoon: "What exactly does Twitter need 2300 employees for?"

Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

The result of this appears to be the occasional Coca-Cola promoted tweet that I scroll past. Maybe it takes that many people to convince large companies that this experience is worth whatever they're being charged?

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#56

Post by zaidf »

swordfish0321 wrote: post #54
zaidf wrote: post #39

Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth. I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that: * makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this) * filters…

Remove the 140 char limit and you remove the one thing that makes twitter twitter, brevity. You want it to look like Facebook??? Facebook's UI is a hot mess resulting from trying to pack every feature under the sun into one platform--no thanks. Moreover it sounds like you don't really know how to use Twitter and I think that is the real problem the company faces. Most of the people out there on twitter don't really u…

Facebook UI might seem like a hot mess to you, but I can promise you it is getting more engagement and growth for facebook than twitter's. At a time that twitter is struggling with those two things, they should do more to be like the guy who is nailing growth and engagement.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#57

Post by nimble »

Touche wrote: post #43
rhizome wrote: post #36

I saw a provocative question on Twitter this afternoon: "What exactly does Twitter need 2300 employees for?"

Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

Can't we automate sales?

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#58

Post by rcoder »

samsolomon wrote: post #15
pdq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons of employees + tons of machines + tons of bandwidth - very little advertising revenue = big loss Have you purchased anything or viewed many ads on Twitter?

I've said this before, but if Twitter added a tier of paid accounts that offered analytics, scheduling and other features, I'd upgrade. Maybe there would be enough revenue to keep the servers running.

Full disclosure: I used to work at Twitter, and this conversation came up all the time. I even proposed it myself as a naive new hire, and after a few good-humored suggestions from coworkers to run the math, ended up with roughly the following scenario:

Say 1% of Twitter's active users would be willing to pay for such a service. (That's extremely generous, I think, but it makes the math easier.)

At 240 million MAUs, that gives ~2.4 million paying users. Say the price was comparable to Flickr at $50/year. (Again, very generous, and probably out of reach of most users outside US/Japan/EU, but we'll try it for the sake of argument.)

After up-selling each and every one of those users, the company could have annual revenue of about $120 million...or roughly _half_ what they cleared in Q4.

Even with 2-3x organic growth in the next couple of years, it would be a dead-end in terms of revenue, and better-financed competitors would be able to push them around, poach their best staff, etc.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#59

Post by judk »

alphakappa wrote: post #47
Touche wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)

Guess how many salespeople Google has.

Re: Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013

#60

Post by judk »

27182818284 wrote: post #26
capkutay wrote: post #20

I'm not of those people who thinks all tech valuations are insane, but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m revenue). I understand twitter's valuation reflects the fact that it's a growing company, but even a company like facebook is only valued at 60x their quarterly revenue ($158b/$2.5b quarterly revenue). But at least the consensus on wall street an…

>but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m What do you think is easy to justify for Twitter? (I'm actually pretty confident in Twitter, I guess. They took ten years-ish to IPO and not a day goes by where I don't see a hashtag on several products be it a local political group or a super bowl commercial)

Hashtags aren't just twitter. Every service has hashtag plumbing now.
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