
Twitter: Years After the Alphabet Acquisition - kaws
https://medium.com/@karan/twitter-years-after-the-alphabet-acquisition-3f5b5b168fb5#.60mrti2fe
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ghshephard
Someone should append a (2019) to the title.

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codingdave
Or a (fanfiction).

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riffic
Way overpriced. All the cool kids are using GnuSocial/OStatus anyways
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus)).

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wslh
This is an unreal post: "When Alphabet bought Twitter back in June 2016 for
almost $29 billion", you can easily check Twitter valuation at $10 billion
here:
[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=gHO_VpH9GsnB...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=gHO_VpH9GsnBe-
iwiZAN) so... spending 3X the public market valuation will be crazy.

And speaking about science fiction, what will Alphabet/Google do to turn
around Twitter?

Also the posts saying: "I quit Facebook" are nonsense, how many people around
you removed themselves from FB? Most probably, very few.

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karangoeluw
> spending 3X the public market valuation

Just last year, Twitter’s market cap was more than double what it is today.
Since then, they have managed to grow revenue by 48% while reducing the losses
by 9%. So, with all that, I think $29B is a steal for the acquisition.

EDIT: my last response here was uninformed.

> And speaking about science fiction, what will Alphabet/Google do to turn
> around Twitter?

Clearly you have not read the post, and are jumping to conclusions.

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wslh
> 3x is not a crazy multiple for a company that has grown revenue by 48% and
> decreased losses by 10% (yoy)

Tell me please of other public companies which also were acquired by public
companies for that multiplier.

> Clearly you have not read the post, and are jumping to conclusions.

I read the post and it offers a childish reason why Twitter should be acquired
by Google.

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karangoeluw
See my edited response in the parent comment.

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joe_the_user
I don't know about childish but the argument seems very 2012 or something.
Twitter is going to keep bigger 'cause social is the thing! That's it?

It seems like there's good evidence that Twitter is limited by the Twitter -
most people don't like to scream at the world (post a stream of public crap)
and for those that do, Twitter is kind of the lowest quality pedestal to stand
while you do so.

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acslater00
$29b in cash and stock?? Man, I'm really looking forward to the 150% run up in
TWTR before Alphabet makes that $43 tender offer. brb calling my broker

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Animats
From the article: "Twitter is live".

Now that's a useful concept to focus the business. That tells Twitter what not
to do. Twitter should do only things that are happening right now. All
retrospective uses of Twitter data would be via Google and Google accounts.

Monetization of Twitter might not involve ads on Twitter. Google could data-
mine Twitter for ad-targeting data. That might be more useful than "paid
tweets".

Google's AI capabilities could be used to digest the Twitter flood and create
news alerts. A Google Maps overlay of where things are happening on Twitter
right now, for example. Enough activity, and a Google satellite (yes, Google
has their own spy satellites [1]) would focus on the target area as soon as
possible.

This could work out.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-10/google-
buy...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-10/google-buying-
satellite-company-skybox-imaging-for-500-million)

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archlight
I really hope google will buy twitter so it can put back real time search in
twitter stream a few years ago as an experiment.

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melted
I hope they buy it for a different reason: so they could drain this useless
sea of vapidity and narcissism, and drive the company into the ground within 3
years tops. Or maybe Dorsey will do it on his own, who knows. Twitter's chance
of death goes up dramatically if it's not a standalone entity.

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mschuster91
> Twitter's chance of death goes up dramatically if it's not a standalone
> entity.

Currently the whole TWTR management is looking to please short-term "investor"
and "speculator" scum.

Companies don't exist for 3-month intervals and maximum gains, they exist for
creating LONG TIME wealth (and that's the mistake Capitalism does).

Existence inside a huge, rock-solid company frees management from the
cognitive and financial round to be hyper-effective for capitalists instead
for their users (who actually create the work that makes Twitter exist).

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melted
It also frees the management from "fear of God", which results in ridiculous
investments and initiatives, accelerated (and unnecessary) hiring,
proliferation of middle management, empire building, politics, etc, etc.

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mschuster91
> It also frees the management from "fear of God"

It doesn't really matter if the "God" is Wall Street or a holding company like
Alphabet.

Only that I'd trust a holding company to be forced to maintain the company in
order to not risk its value. A stock holder on Wall St just wants as much
profit as possible as fast as possible, and if it goes bust then you can
always sell shorts and still profit.

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melted
It does. Alphabet would care a great deal more if Twitter lives or dies. Wall
St doesn't care in the slightest.

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mschuster91
On the other side, Google doesn't always follow this rule and I wouldn't trust
them much more to look after Twitter than Wall St.

Google has killed off (or left to rot, and then kill off) projects with _huge_
user counts/business outlooks in the past... remember Google Reader and Google
Code?

Both could have kicked Feedly's and Github's/SF's asses multiple times over
with a bit of investment, and Google basically let them rot until the backend
of Google's infrastructure changed too much to justify the needed adaptions on
the projects.

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melted
User counts were so pitifully small in those projects that they were destaffed
for years before they were shut down.

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mschuster91
Reader had iirc at least a million users, that's only small when you compare
it with FB/Instagram/Twitter/Youtube/Snapchat.

Most startups would kill for a million highly engaged users.

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melted
I believe G+ had 300M+ users at the time, and G+ was still considered a
failure. 1M is a rounding error by Google standards. They can get 1M users by
releasing _anything_ that does _anything_ at this point.

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PhilWest
Why is there an earnings call if it's wholly owned by Alphabet?

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taylorhou
OP states that Google keeps Twitter as its own entity that reports, runs, and
operates independently.

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fchollet
So Periscope and Moments would be the saving grace of Twitter? On what planet
does the author live?

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sigmar
Moments is pretty amazing. Have you used it? Seems to me like it is miles
ahead of snapchat's stories

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azinman2
Apples and oranges. Snapchat is personal, moments is more like news.

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sigmar
>snapchat's stories

I was referring to the stories that are local or worldwide events that are
curated. much like moments.

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azinman2
While I don't have hard data, my understanding of stories is that they're a
huge part of snapchat usage now -- as a private story.

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0x0dea
In a similar vein: [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-
death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-
javascript)

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Spivak
You have a typo, in the section about Twitter's business tools you said they
have '"millions of" of users'.

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karangoeluw
Good catch. Thank you

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qj4714
Ha ha...April Fools came early this year

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jasonkostempski
I think you mean it came early next year.

