
Investors Grumbling, Twitter CEO Struggles to Define Vision - atupem
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teaneedz
Twitter's best feature is 140 characters of content. Also, Twitter has always
amazed me by being the first place that I discover breaking and often historic
news - an experience that has never been replicated on Facebook or elsewhere.
The signs though seem to indicate that it struggles with product vision and
leadership. Seriously, "to build the world’s largest audience" is not product
or user centric thinking and is a step toward failure in my opinion. I think
core users can still find value and a unique experience on Twitter, but
Twitter needs to better understand and articulate what makes it so great. Yes,
it is still great in my eyes.

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jonathankoren
Personally, I think Twitter is struggling because they're married to the
greatest short coming of the product: the 120 character statically allocated
array. Sure they've tried to shoehorn other things into it (photos, replies,
tags), but always at the expense of these precious characters -- a product
decision that came from aping SMS. The updates are often frustratingly
limiting. As long as you artificially limit yourself, you're stuck and can't
innovate.

I use Twitter, but I don't know what I exactly get out of it. I guess I use it
out of habit more than anything.

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Touche
I think the fact that Twitter is overwhelming a negative place is a bigger
issue.

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joe_the_user
I think Twitter's overwhelming negativity is strongly related to it's
character limit.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook and the ability to back-up one's opinions in
greater detail with (relatively) longer arguments is pretty crucial tool for
having constructive interaction.

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Touche
I don't think it's the character limit, it's the fact that the stream moves so
quickly that unless you tweet loudly more than likely no one will read what
you write (unless you happen to be a celebrity).

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bwooce
I've dropped Twitter. Their iOS client regularly pushed so many ads down my
throat (in stream) that (a) I noticed and (b) I noticed it every day.

When I got to the point of blocking every advertiser (confirmed views +1!) but
they popped back up under different special handles I resigned myself to
defeat.

I will miss the serendipitous discovery of tidbits of information that it
enabled, but the signal/noise (or rather, content/ads) ratio was overpowering.
It needs to make money, but I think it's killing itself or at least
transforming itself into the equivalent of TV -- content producers
broadcasting to a largely passive audience.

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x0x0
They've made it increasingly annoying to use their site, particularly as a
logged out user.

Their mobile site on android breaks -- forwarding me to an error page -- about
1/3 times I attempt to use it. This is the stock os and browser on a nexus 5.

The desktop site no longer allows me to view sensitive content by clicking the
button: not on chrome w/ ghostery, not on ff with no plugins, and not on
safari with no plugins.

I'm prompted to login at least 1x day, and you can't see who someone follows
without creating an account.

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shaggyfrog
I'm once again flagging an article because of a registration/paywall.

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x0x0
this sounds rough:

    
    
       Last week, he named Twitter’s fifth head of product in as many years. Its 
       most recent vice president of product, Daniel Graf, who came from Google 
       Maps and was handpicked by Mr. Costolo, lasted less than six months in the 
       post.
    

What was Daniel supposed to accomplish in 6 months? That's barely 1-2 months
of strategizing then a 3 month dev cycle worth of work...

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jonnathanson
Six months is hardly a fair shake for anyone, let alone someone in such a
crucial role. That said, six months is two quarters on Wall Street's clock.
That can feel like a lifetime for an embattled CEO. When CEOs come under fire
from investors, they like to shuffle around the executive deck.

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rrggrr
Twitter has already built the most important audience on the internet - the
news media and news makers. The only missing link is a strategy that caters to
this audience with active sourcing of news worthy content and additional
mediums for short burst one-to-many real-time broadcasting. Tools that let
media and news makers exploit the stream are monetizable. Ad carry-through is
entirely unexplored ad revenue awaiting Twitter. Mesh networking solutions are
monetizable as are private and encrypted sub-networks. Twitter's chief problem
is a lack of identity. It will never be Reddit, Facebook or Instagram -
mercifully.

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prawn
I agree. Their best route is to position increasingly as a tool for media and
those reacting to it or sharing it. Instagram and Facebook have them beaten
for personal updates. But tweets are still being shared on TV broadcasts, and
Twitter handles are accompanying TV and newspaper profiles.

I wonder if they've considered making available something beyond 140
characters to media partners. Like nested tweets, or chained tweets, or
interactive tweets, or better galleries or listicles. Or tried revenue sharing
as a trial with particular partners?

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silentmars
Remember when Gmail used to have that ticker for how much space you get that
would update live? You'd watch for a few seconds, and instead of 3.104649 GB
of free email storage you'd have 3.104672 GB!

I think what Twitter needs is a similar ticker indicating the maximum number
of characters in a tweet. I can scarcely imagine the excitement of watching it
slowly creep upwards. Think of the celebratory triumph we can all share when,
after months of build-up, it finally crosses over to 141 and everyone gets
another character to use!

No more worries about vision after that.

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osehgol
I was on a Twitter Singapore office visit once, and asked the panel "what's
next after hash tags?", the hall fell silent.their panel stunned. Granted this
isn't where their product strategy discussions take place but somebody should
know.

The panel avoided answering. This question should be keeping Dick up at night.

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mikeyouse
Twitter's a $25B company with $4B cash in the bank and is at revenue run rate
of more than $1B/year. There are some existential questions about whether or
not they could be doing more with their reach and influence, but it seems
decently managed from my perspective.

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_almosnow
Twitter has a $25B market capitalization which is not the same as saying that
the company is worth $25B. $4B ($3B, actually) cash in the bank are not so
cool if they're loaned and you have to pay them back eventually, with
interest. And finally, having revenue does not imply being profitable.

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mikeyouse
> Twitter has a $25B market capitalization which is not the same as saying
> that the company is worth $25B.

Tautologically, that's exactly what it means.

> $4B ($3B, actually) cash in the bank are not so cool if they're loaned and
> you have to pay them back eventually, with interest

$3.6B with $350M in receivables actually. Their debt is convertible debt
(which won't impact their cash) at 0.25% and 1%.

> And finally, having revenue does not imply being profitable.

It certainly doesn't but Twitter has positive Operating Cash Flows and the
market thinks they'll return $25B in PV to equity, so I think I'll side with
the market on this one.

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_almosnow
Ok you win, haha. Still, I believe that Twitter will not make it. We'll see
what happens.

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wslh
It's so obvious what Costolo should do that I feel shame of Twitter: sell the
firehose data to small and medium size companies! There are a lot of companies
who want to analyze data from the firehose but can't afford the entry price.

Google revolutionized the advertisement world in this way. Before Google the
entry level for putting ads in Yahoo was very high and involved human
assistance.

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psychometry
Seach the article title on Google and click on the first result to read it
without an account.

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billconan
I have never believed in the twitter idea. Time will kill it.

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mallocsizeof
a website for posting small snippets of text is not a business

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mikeyouse
A website for posting small snippets of text that makes over $1B/year _is_
certainly a business though.

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ulfw
A website for posting small snippets of text that makes $1/year and yet still
isn't able to generate profits out of that billion is a bit of a different
story.

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mikeyouse
Has there ever been a service with 250M MAUs that couldn't make a profit?
Twitter's been focusing on growth (+100M users in past 1.5 years) and
increasing margins (they're strongly operating cash flow positive). I don't
have a position in the stock but it seems like they're going to be just fine.

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silentmars
Twitter is already the premier platform for cyberstalking and harassment. The
question they're struggling with is, how do they monetize that?

Maybe if they charged for rape threats. Perhaps use something like the
Facebook model, and charge a fee that scales based on the number of the
target's followers to make a "Featured Rape Threat" that appears more
prominently on the feed.

Or they could actually make a real effort to do something to stop the
harassment, but obviously there's no money or "Big Vision" in that.

