
Is Twitter Successful? - tortilla
http://bokardo.com/archives/is-twitter-successful/
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RyanMcGreal
They may be growing oranges, but they're not _selling_ any oranges. Say what
you want, but sooner or later that's going to present a problem for the
company's viability.

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Semiapies
Exactly. This is dotcom bubble logic - we don't need an income stream, we have
_investors_.

Amazon ran a loss for a long time, but at every point in time, they were
actually selling product and getting money. This Porter guy may say Twitter is
wildly successful because they're a business that's not _about_ such peasant
concerns as making money, but of Amazon and Twitter, which is more likely to
be around in 10 years?

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gsmaverick
The Amazon comparison is terrible. They were still losing money! Whether they
are doing it by giving something away for free or by selling on ridiculously
tight margins they are still losing money!

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gloob
The difference is that Amazon had a clear way to make money: make their
revenue stream bigger. That doesn't and won't work for Twitter, because
Twitter doesn't have a revenue stream to make bigger.

Saying they're the same thing is like saying that the U.S. and Afghanistan are
the same, because they both had elections. Well, true, but in one place the
elections were not rigged, and in the other there's a good chance they were.
"They still had an election!" of course, but there are significant practical
differences.

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alexandros
What worries me with 'growth over revenue' is that they are presented as a
tradeoff. The implication is that they are essentially operating a loss leader
to trap users in and then they will degrade the free produt to extract
revenues. As a twitter user, this makes me look to the exits.

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jeremymcanally
But for a service that's 100% social (i.e., they offer little to no value
without the content that their users offer), it's very very difficult to put
revenue on the same level or above growth. The growth is essential to gaining
the momentum required to monetize a social service like that.

I don't think you have to degrade a product when adding premium features. For
example, I'd pay a few bucks to have lists or user groups in my stream. But
adding that feature at a pay level doesn't degrade the service I already have.
I really think Twitter is smart enough to avoid degrading the service while
adding value. They've done well with that so far, at least.

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redorb
You can't be successful until you have some sort of finality; a cash out, a
merger... something that adds to the bottom line (besides investors). Twitter
is building a huge base on which to make a pretty good size company that does
some pretty cool things... So my answer is "So far; they are successful"

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herval
they are most definitely VERY successful as a brand...

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Semiapies
Wasn't Pets.com, too?

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herval
I'm not sure people heard of pets.com outside USA. I never did, for instance.
As for Twitter, people have heard of it in EVERY single country I've been
lately (including some in Europe, Asia and South America)...

But relatively (to it's time and the size of internet), yes - pets.com was
probably successful at that too... :-)

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bad_user
I've heard of Pets.com and I'm in Europe :)

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herval
did I ever say you wouldn't...?

