
Twitter's Dorsey Rallies Staff Around Independent Strategy in Internal Memo - wslh
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-10/twitter-s-dorsey-rallies-staff-around-independent-strategy-in-internal-memo
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dilemma
This lacks content and looks a capitulation - an admission that he's lost,
wholesale replacing the Jobsian persona he nurtured previously with a
wholesome 'we're all friends' skit.

The end is just bizarre, as if he's being coached to "show appreciation to
your closest associates to avoid more churn" and does so in the most literal,
superficial way possible.

~~~
burkaman
Also feels a little weird that he did those shoutouts in alphabetic order.

~~~
erdevs
To be fair, often one does that to avoid people wondering if the order means
something (ie order of importance). It's sometimes meant to signal that they
are in no political order, but simply listed alphabetically.

~~~
burkaman
That makes sense. It came off as a little impersonal for some reason, like he
was just going down a list of email contacts, but I can see why you might do
that on purpose.

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zelias
There's a lesson for us here somewhere. Twitter undeniably provides value that
is impossibly difficult to quantify by any widely-used economic metric (e.g.
share price). It remains a platform where millions of users can interact
directly with influencers (or, at least, their social media teams) on a
platform that is comparatively less colored by political bias than others.

This doesn't just extend to celebrities and politicians. Twitter can do a good
job of holding public entities accountable. One example -- companies often
react more quickly to customer service complaints submitted via Twitter than
those that are submitted directly to the company, since those complaints are
now part of the public domain. A failure to respond properly could mean a
company gets bad word of mouth at an unprecedented rate.

I rarely find myself actually using Twitter. But despite the financial
shortcomings of the company, I agree with Jack Dorsey. Twitter has inherent
societal value -- but it lacks real shareholder value.

This strikes me as serious cognitive dissonance. We know what kinds of public
goods our society should promote, but our society isn't really structured to
facilitate their promotion. Maybe that's why everyone is so angry about
politics these days.

~~~
roymurdock
There is no cognitive dissonance. Twitter makes plenty of revenue - $2.2B in
2015. But Twitter's costs are nonsensically high.

They spent $1.2B on labor and SGA (marketing, sales, rent). They spent $800m
on R&D (your guess is as good as mine where this money went, most likely
extremely overvalued acqui-hires). They spent $700 on cost of revenue (running
servers, hosting fees, electricity presumably - the actual direct costs of
providing the service). For a net loss of $500m.

Twitter needs to lay people off and stop spending so much on "R&D". I imagine
the company could easily be viable if it downsized.

As citizens we should feel about as bad as Twitter's possible failure as we
would about a mismanaged mattress store failing.

~~~
pkaye
I wonder what is the fewest number of employees needed to run Twitter with
some way to financially support itself. Could it reduce to the number of
employees as at Reddit and still substain itself?

~~~
beagle3
Whatsapp was having comparable traffic and users with something like 20
engineers. It is not directly comparable, as all whatsapp users at the time
were app users whereas twitter's users are web users (more expensive to run).
Furthermore, with everything public, Twitter needs a lot more policing than
whatsapp ever did. But they can probably reduce their stuff to 2-5 percent of
current size and still provide the same service that users get - though it
will have to be better engineered than what they are currently running.

------
firasd
I've been making an app that filters Twitter[1] and I've been realizing, from
the kind of people who are positively reacting to screenshots and want to use
it, that there's an interesting phenomenon in services that aren't necessarily
"mass audience" but still engage an "influencer audience." Let's say you make
an app and it doesn't become like Youtube where random shepherds are on it all
day. But the President and Ellen DeGeneres use it every day.

How do you value that? Maybe not in the Facebook metric of Monthly Active
Users?

[1] Think Nuzzel for tweets
[https://twitter.com/firasd/status/781602728728469504](https://twitter.com/firasd/status/781602728728469504)

~~~
twoodfin
The last episode of The Talk Show[1] spent a while discussing just this point,
that it was a mistake for Twitter to accept MAU as a benchmark of their
success early on, since it didn't capture the value of the specific users they
were attracting.

Guest Matthew Panzarino also made the observation that Twitter's audience goes
beyond active users: Millions of people who will never use Twitter will still
see tweets every morning on SportsCenter. How to use that reach across media
to make money is, of course, an open question for Twitter or a potential
buyer.

[1]
[https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/10/06/ep-169](https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/10/06/ep-169)

~~~
intoverflow2
> since it didn't capture the value of the specific users they were attracting

Can't take feedback like this seriously coming from someone like Gruber with a
disproportionately high follower count from being an early adopter.

Only people Twitter as a company and Twitter the service/apps/concept seems to
actually benefit are these early adopters and journalists.

Average person has a completely different experience with the service than
these people.

------
MaysonL
Best analysis of the Twitter situation I've seen is by a hedge fund manager,
John Hempton. "Some comment on the Twitter buyout rumours".

[http://brontecapital.blogspot.com](http://brontecapital.blogspot.com)

~~~
alphadevx
Looks like an interesting blog in general, thanks for sharing.

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gjolund
"It's why we are here."

Meh, I'm pretty sure now that Twitter is publicly traded it no longer exists
to meet some perceived societal need and is now just a profit engine.

I don't like it when CEO's flavor their koolaid with lofty missions, while
simultaneously looking to maximize profits.

Twitter deserves the skepticism it is receiving, and I hope a downgraded
evaluation waterfalls to further downgrades in the tech sector. Specifically
in the SV messaging app space.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _I don 't like it when CEO's flavor their koolaid with lofty missions, while
> simultaneously looking to maximize profits._

Why not? In a capitalist society, it's the only real hope for linking economic
output to "the greater good".

As long as companies think it good PR to even _pretend_ to have a loftier
goal, then there is incentive for creating and operating companies that
actually do. This can only be good. Shouldn't we want them to have this
incentive?

Or, would we prefer a society wherein we give social license to all
corporations to behave like blatantly psychotic entities--whose _only_ goal is
profit--imbued with corporate personhood, and wielding the bulk of the
economic, political, and societal power?

If you have evidence that contradicts what these CEOs have said, then please
raise it. But, it's socially counter-productive to issue a blanket
condemnation of any CEO at the helm of a for-profit enterprise who expresses a
desire to do social good.

~~~
xtian
> Or, would we prefer a society wherein we give social license to all
> corporations to behave like blatantly psychotic entities--whose only goal is
> profit

I would prefer a society where we all accept that this is the _only_ thing
corporations are capable of being and then structure the legal systems in
which they operate to ensure that their actions don't contradict "the greater
good". "Psychotic entities whose only goal is profit" will do fine in any
environment, despite lamentations to the contrary.

The PR incentives you're talking about only incentivize companies to _look_
like they're doing nice things. Sometimes the easiest way to achieve that goal
is to actually do nice things, but not always.

~~~
cloverich
(Thought experiment) I think its easier to frame what that legal structure
should be if we agree on what Profit actually means. If I define profit as:
Provide goods and / or services people want in a sustainable fashion -- does
that impact the story? E.g. if its not profitable (generally), is it
sustainable? (I think no). But the converse is clearly not true as profits can
be sought at the expense of something less obvious (say, environment).

~~~
xtian
Profit is the accumulation of capital. What you've described is a _way_ of
pursuing profit. Outside of economics, I think the word "profit" is
meaningless.

As you've demonstrated, however, there are two conflicting senses of the word
"sustainable". Sustainability for a business means that it accumulates more
capital than it expends. Sustainability for human beings is a much fuzzier
notion that is tied up in the idea of health: the health of the individual, of
our species, and of our environment. We can sacrifice health from these areas
to reach different goals, but if our actions continuously deplete it, then
they aren't sustainable.

Is it possible to express the human sense of sustainability systematically?
I'm not convinced it is, as I think it requires vision and sensitivity to
understand health. So I think we need a legal structure which is sensitive in
this way in order to create a sustainable society.

------
overcast
Twitter needs to focus entirely on real time news, and forget giving any
attention to the mounds of random garbage tweets on there. Aggregate news
hashtags into something meaningful, and just be a better news source. That's
it's most useful service at this point.

~~~
JamesMcMinn
This has been my feeling about Twitter for years. There's plenty of value in
news, especially real-time news, that Twitter isn't exploiting. I honestly
believe that for Twitter to survive, it needs to make news and real-time
discussion of news and events its single biggest priority.

I don't say that lightly either. I've invested in Twitter in more ways that
one. I've got shares in Twitter, but that's a tiny part of what I've invested
in Twitter: I did a PhD on real-time detection and tracking of breaking news
on social media (Twitter), and started a company that uses Twitter to detect
breaking news [1] before it it hits mainstream media.

[1] [http://scoopanalytics.com](http://scoopanalytics.com)

~~~
overcast
Pretty solid product you have there, Twitter would be directly competing no?

------
gokhan
Given the rocky CEO roller coaster history of Twitter, I would recommend the
board to sac Dorsey, nothing to loose here. He might be a good engineer but
not a good CEO, and he's totally failed to increase the value of Twitter
product for years (He was either the CEO or have a voice to make a
difference).

\- Twitter's user experience is a disaster. It changed very little for years,
but there are many frustrations if you use it daily (small image popups,
inconsistent behavior, scroll problems ...).

\- Twitter do not kick trolls out or give you tools to do it yourself. It does
not make any difference if you report them or not.

\- News are plenty, but Twitter do nothing to ease the consumption. You can
only unfollow to control the firehose, no other tools.

\- Recommendations are graph based, not content based, although they have the
data.

\- Hashtags are not enough to access filtered content, either too much noise
or too little signal.

... and many others.

------
uptown
I think Bloomberg LP is actually a good candidate for buying Twitter.
Bloomberg already dominates the business-data and financial-news space.
Twitter could be their channel for consumers. They could take Twitter private,
and reduce the market pressure for quarterly metrics. Leverage their in-house
technology to cut operational costs. And feed data from Twitter into their
terminals for consumption by financial markets where appropriate.

------
basseq
This morning I read (and just submitted) a _Vanity Fair_ piece on how morale
at Twitter is really low and people are straight-up not coming to work. It
ended with this letter, which makes no mention of a forthcoming acquisition
and seems rather empty in context.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12684114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12684114)

~~~
scurvy
I know a Twitter PM who doesn't work any more. He collects a paycheck, but he
doesn't do anything but travel the world on Twitter's dime. I'd imagine that
there are dozens if not hundreds of other Twitter middle management doing the
same.

------
perseusprime11
We're only limited by our sense of urgency," Dorsey said in the memo. "Life is
short. Every day matters. And the people who use Twitter every day deserve our
best. They are why we're here. So let's show them what we're made of and
deliver a better Twitter faster than they thought possible. We can do this
every day. We can do this!"

Obviously the Twitter I use didn't change for the last 5 years. So clearly
they don't have sense of urgency.

I propose the following steps:

1\. Fire Jack. 2\. Put it up for sale 3\. Bring the costs down to be able to
have at least a 200 million dollar profit in year 2. 4\. Don't tell anyone :)

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neximo64
I was wondering who would leak that they were being acquired. It seemed
ridiculous that suitors were being named even prior to making a bid.

I would contend Dorsey was doing this to making it difficult to make a bid.

------
burger_moon
It's a nice hoorah letter. I'd be interested to hear from some people working
there what they think of a letter like this. Bullshit? Heartfelt? Motivating?

~~~
rublev
I think probably apathy. Most devs I know don't drink the koolaid and just
want to get paid. Maybe it's different with the people that are closer to the
CEO and more affected by their day-to-day decisions.

------
deboboy
Give me the fire hose - don't force me to rely on a feed of who I follow or
run searches for hashtags - then I'll come back to daily use. The 'stream' of
consciousness totality is far more interesting to observe, then jump into when
something 'pops'. TW for news? Yawn...

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Grue3
Is it me, or "we are news", "we are real-time" has been Twitter's mantra for
ages? Why does it sound like he thought long and hard for a year about what
they are, and then came up with an obvious answer?

~~~
teaneedz
I think it has taken Twitter management a very long time to publicly identify
what it is. There have been many attempts under different CEOs though. "The
people's news network" in real-time seems to ring the truest for me.

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thomasthomas
if news was is so important to twitter why did they spend time and resources
on stickers? seemed like a bizarre product decision at the time and told me
they didnt understand how their users were using their product.

------
chrisdbaldwin
It's just mass texting.

