
Square Could Pass Twitter in Value - dangerman
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/technology/jack-dorsey-twitter-square.html
======
stevenj
I'm still shocked, and amazed, that Jack is the CEO of two public tech
companies.

~~~
chk_ur_autism
He's doing an admittedly awful job at Twitter. See:

\- Russian troll accounts/factories (he even retweeted one) \- Inability to
clean up harassment/abuse/threats \- Stagnant product feature set \- Awful
(truly awful) ad product

~~~
zaptheimpaler
He realizes the hysteria around policing online speech and content will be
short-lived. He is trying to keep it neutral and not warp it to consist of
only the things some people would like to see. Its a strong strategy in the
long run.

~~~
diogenescynic
Allowing Russian bots to spread propaganda to meddle in our elections is
hardly being neutral. That’s being an enabler.

~~~
craftyguy
If only people (twitter users) were smart enough to question sources of
information rather than taking them at face value..

------
ng12
How does Square make money? Credit card processing itself is a tight, low-
margin business. Verifone is only worth a couple $B for that reason.

Does Square make that much money off services?

~~~
mitchellst
It's true that processing is low margin, but (1) you make a ton of money on a
low margin as long as you have a lot of volume. Just ask Wal Mart, Amazon, Big
Oil, etc. (2) Not quite the same, because verifone is not a processor. Compare
to companies like WorldPay and TSys.

I'm not sure what proportion of square's revenue comes from processing vs
services, but if I had to guess, I'd say most of the services are loss leaders
for the processing. This is especially true with their rates so far above
market. 2.75% is a fat chunk of change if they're processing 10 or 12 figures.
(Working primarily with smaller clients, you get to charge that much, but it
makes them less competitive with larger merchants who process more volume.)

~~~
bpicolo
> 2.75% is a fat chunk of change

Most of that goes straight to the credit card companies/bank, no?

~~~
ng12
Yes, and scale eats directly into that rate. The Big Box Stores are paying
pennies per swipe.

~~~
umanwizard
If that's true for credit cards, then they're losing massive amounts of money
on cash back and rewards

~~~
mitchellst
The "issuing bank," which issues your cash back or rewards credit card, has
its cut protected by the payment networks. Part of the "interchange," the
wholesale cost of processing a payment, is reserved for paying out the issuing
bank. The interchange rates are set for the payment processors by the card
networks (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Amex). Whether you spend $100 at the
locally owned boutique or Costco, they get paid the same amount. The
middleman— the payment processor— gets squeezed by merchants like Walmart and
Costco, competing to shrink the margin for the promise of massive volume. But
Chase, Captial One, etc. don't have their consumer credit card divisions
affected by who processes the card. (Unless you're Citi's processing side with
Costco, and only accept Visa. Then your competitors get zero volume from
Costco on their mastercards, discovers, and amex cards)

------
moomin
I’d love to create a startup that was a failure like Twitter’s.

~~~
ryandrake
Seriously, every time I read a story about how some company is hitting hard
times, when the company is worth $billions and made their founders and
investors $millions, I think to myself, boy, if only I could do that bad for
myself!

------
brad_chad
For the unaware, the Square stock value tripled in the last year.

------
xkcd-sucks
The surprised are referred to Mr. Vonnegut's description of the "money river":
[http://akkartik.name/post/money-river](http://akkartik.name/post/money-river)

------
cocktailpeanuts
This also means "Twitter could be eclipsed by Square in value".

I'm sure they debated hard whether to go for this headline or the other one,
and decided to go with "Square could pass twitter in value" because it would
generate more page view.

My point is, it's Twitter that's doing bad. I don't understand why he doesn't
just give up his CEO role and let someone else more dedicated take over.

It may make sense if the problem Twitter is facing can be solved by some
creative vision, but it can't. These problems are ones that require a lot of
care and effort and no matter how he spins it, he's pouring half the effort he
can pour into Twitter.

~~~
GuiA
Honestly I’m not surprised that Twitter is doing so poorly. I’ve been around
Twitter and ex-Twitter folks a fair amount, and they all seem to take it
eaaaaasyyyyyy. Things I’ve seen again and again include frequent sabbaticals,
several months of time off a year, short days, 3 day workweek arrangements...
and these are often combined.

To be clear, most of them come across as sharp. But it seems like a very lax,
unfocused work environment, and knowing these things I’m not surprised that
their only meaningful product changes happen once or twice a year and are
minor tweaks and features (round profile pictures! hearts instead of stars!)

If I were looking for a job to just go hang out and get good benefits and pay,
Twitter would be on top of my list.

~~~
lstyls
Wut. Time off does not correlate to dev quality. I, and many others, do their
best work outside of the normal parameters.

It sounds like you think if Twitter engineers worked harder Twitter would be
doing better. Besides your anecdotal observation about laid back engineers, is
it not plausable that the company doesn't have a vision that contributes to
monster growth?

~~~
burnte
It certainly does have a level of correlation. The less time you spend "at
work" (for whatever definition you care, including work from home/the moon)
the less work you get done. Now, no, that doesn't translate to a perfect
linear growth rate where working 20 hours a day is twice as good as 10 hours a
day, there is a limit you can push people. People need vacation and time away.
However, it's a rock star who can be as/more productive in three days a week
than a similar guy working 5 days a week most weeks. I'll even grant some
people can cram for three days a week and be as productive as a 5d/8h guy, but
in the end you still need to put in the hours.

Note, this comment doesn't allow for absurd comparisons such as "Forrest Gump
coding 8 days a week will never match Donald Knuth coding 1 hour a month" or
whatever. Ass comparisons should use reasonable definitions.

~~~
lmm
I think the breakeven point is much earlier than you suggest. I'd guess
something like 28 hours/week is peak productivity; more than that and you're
spending more effort on looking productive and being in the office and getting
less done.

------
dzonga
Jack is my idol. man took two companies to IPO. And is CEO of both.

~~~
skinnymuch
Jack screwed over Noah Glass with Twitter really badly. His behavior in that
is really troubling. I can't get past that even with him doing great things
with Square after Twitter.

------
avitzurel
s/could/should

I am very impressed with Square constantly. It's really amazing to see what
they accomplished.

------
HugoDaniel
How do i replace twitter with square cloud ?

------
CrankyBear
Could? It's really a matter of when.

------
AcerbicZero
A company selling an arguably better service than the existing solutions might
be more valuable than a company selling ads to a dwindling user base?

I'm shocked, utterly shocked.

~~~
chimeracoder
> a company selling ads to a dwindling user base?

Twitter's userbase isn't "dwindling" (diminishing gradually in size, amount,
or strength.) It's not growing as fast as shareholders might like, but its
monthly active users _are_ growing in number:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-
monthly...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-
active-twitter-users/)

~~~
pyromine
I feel like while twitter user base may not be growing, it's effects on the
average person's social life has diminished.

I feel like 5 years ago Twitter was really popular among st friends and we
talked about things people tweeted, etc.

Since then I don't have a single friend who actively uses twitter, maybe it's
that my preferences simply changed, but the overall visibility of twitter
seems to be diminished.

~~~
dpeck
Feel the same about every social network, and honestly the net has become
"lonelier" for lack of a better word. Facebook is just people selling their
junk, whether fingernail addons, kids clothing, or diet regimes. Twitter is
really just people shouting into the ether, I enjoy it during college football
games of collective "yay" or "nooo" moments with a few real life friends but
otherwise its a high noise news feed. LinkedIn has a bizarre social aspect to
it that confuses me.

I don't know, maybe its me getting older, but more digitally connected than
ever and feel much less personally connected than ever except with the friends
that I keep direct/group imessage conversations going with for months and
years at a time.

~~~
skinnymuch
I really feel this way too. People talk about using FB groups or Twitter or
some niche social network to be connected to a community, but I haven't felt
that way in ages. Not since being active on a few phpbb and vbulletin boards.
More connected in a way, but it feels so impersonal or I just can't figure out
how people are finding their communities in these huge networks.

Another personal example, IG direct messages aren't used that much from my
experience (could be different for others or in the odd one). That few times
I've been hit up or hit someone up on it, response or messages back and forth
usually take forever. It kills the conversation. The only time a conversation
has survived and a friendship began was when the convo quickly moved over to
another medium (FBM in that case).

~~~
speedplane
I honestly feel more at home commenting here than on FB. On FB, you're
speaking to everyone that you know, and whatever you say will likely show up
in their face. I don't want to be talking to my college buddies, great aunts,
and girlfriend's friends at the same time.

~~~
skinnymuch
I'm guessing you won't see this anymore. But your profile is empty here. I was
talking about feeling like a community plus potentially making acquirances or
friendships. I've never had any of that happen on HN. My profile is filled up.
I'm guessing you haven't either. That doesn't really feel at home to me in the
same way as the older days I'm describing.

I do get your point though of feeling at home in a general sense.

