
Twitter’s User Growth Goes Nowhere as It Meets Revenue Expectations of $710M - coloneltcb
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/twitters-user-growth-goes-nowhere-as-it-meets-revenue-expectations-of-710m/
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curiousDog
Why on earth is wall street so hung up on user growth? Don't they still have a
ton of monetization opportunities? I see no where near the amount of ads as
facebook and I hear their ad targeting is pretty bad right now and despite all
this, their revenue isn't bad at all.

~~~
bonaldi
The price reflects the future prospects of Twitter, and a poorly-monetised
Twitter with a shrinking user base is worth less than a poorly-monetised
Twitter with a booming user base.

Put another way, they used to be hosting a huge party and just had to work out
how to turn that into cash. Now people are starting to leave the party, making
cash less of a concern at that point.

~~~
diab0lic
I think this pretty much nails the wall street perspective. Interestingly
enough I left the party because their attempts to monetize were really
invasive; Emails, many notifications on my phone, etc... I think some subset
of their users (to which I belonged) appreciated the simplicity of the
product. Their attempts to increase engagement decreased it with what appears
to be a significant portion of their user base.

~~~
aswanson
I never quite _got_ Twitter. It just seemed like a giant celebrity circle
jerk. Especially for celebrity tech people. And I just don't give enough of a
shit about famous or prominent people for it to matter much.

~~~
colmvp
Honestly, I'm positively perplexed by this comment.

Twitter allows me to follow writers and influencers like Malcolm Gladwell,
William Gibson, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, to niche industry influencers
ranging from Rails engineers to industrial designers to photographers in a way
that is digestable and at times personal. To me, it's been edifying to read
thoughts from them, discover work they've created as it happens, or find out
about a book they recommend.

Twitter is literally what you make of it. Follow interesting people, you get
interesting content.

~~~
incepted
Your comment is very reasonable but I've found that celebrity or wits or
intelligence hardly correlates to interesting Twitter stream. Basically, most
people who tweet are a waste of time to read. Even at 140 characters at a
time.

It's surprisingly hard to find people who consistently say interesting things
in such a restricted space.

Overall, I've decided it was so hard that it just wasn't worth my time, so I
no longer read Twitter at all.

Obviously, your mileage may vary.

~~~
MollyR
I too have felt the same way. I occasionally check John Carmack's twitter or
some other developers, but that's it. and when he was around I loved
[https://twitter.com/devops_borat](https://twitter.com/devops_borat)

------
Zikes
I know there are theoretical alternatives to Twitter, but until the
appropriate userbase is out there then they're not truly viable alternatives.
I know that's a Catch-22, or a paradox, or whatever you want to call it, but
that's the sad reality for those of us that would like to leave the platform.
So, in lieu of leaving, here are the features I feel like would help Twitter
retain me as a user:

1\. Bring back custom apps! Twitter is a _service_ , and I want control over
how I access that service. This would also take such a huge burden off of
Twitter: don't care about the super bowl? Use an app that lets you filter
hashtags, piece of cake! So many features can be implemented on top of a
service, with no extra effort from Twitter. I get that this could conceivably
enable filtering timeline ads, but seriously they can just pull API keys for
apps that do that, it's a non-issue.

2\. Let me subscribe to ideas, not just people. If I _do_ care about the super
bowl, maybe let me turn on push notifications for tweets about it from people
within my network for whom I otherwise do not have push notifications enabled.

3\. Make chronological timelines a setting. Not an option, not a tab, a semi-
permanently enabled _setting_. It's the most annoying thing about Facebook
right now, having to explicitly re-enable chronological timelines every week
or so when Facebook has "forgotten". As it stands, even that much is an
improvement over Twitter's proposed always-on non-chronological timeline.

4\. Don't nanny me unless I ask you to. There have been reports that Twitter
has blocked notifications for @replied tweets because Twitter suspected the
tweet would be offensive. I get that harassment is an issue and that Twitter
was trying to be proactive, but make it an option. The user in this case was
failing to be notified of tweets they _wanted_ to see, and had no way to
disable the "feature".

5\. Inconsistency foments distrust. If you want that blue check mark to mean
something then you'd best lay out a solid and strict process for them. I've
seen at least one person have theirs removed over unsubstantiated claims, yet
more egregious offenders have kept theirs throughout. I've seen others go
through the process for acquire their blue checks and they always seem to have
different requirements. Some reported having to change their profile name to
their real name, others said they had to put their actual photo on their
profile.

~~~
hkmurakami
Out of curiosity, what would your counterargument be to those who say,
"Facebook does all the things you list _wrong_ , yet look where they are
today. Why should Twitter do any differently?"

~~~
Zikes
I would say "Do you want to be the dominant platform because your users like
you, or because they're stuck with you?"

I totally get it that a social media platform can do things that the majority
of their users outright hate. Facebook even admitted that they intentionally
caused their mobile app to crash randomly, just to test user retention!

But people can always find better options. MySpace was on top once. Digg was
on top once. User loyalty is an important part of a social media platform,
doubly so when there's someplace to jump ship to.

------
danharaj
the sentiment i've gathered from people who use twitter professionally, namely
journalists and the like, is that an algorithmic timeline would completely
destroy the value proposition for them. twitter is such a nice little social
media app that i find it disturbing to see it bullied by wall street. such is
the fate of a publicly traded company. if it were a private company that could
focus on being profitable without growing extravagantly and taking over the
world like Facebook or Google, it could focus on providing its unique value to
its most important users.

i think of all the social media platforms i use, twitter is the one that most
tremendously contributes to society. twitter, far more than facebook in my
opinion, democratizes the dissemination of ideas and information.

~~~
mschuster91
> twitter, far more than facebook in my opinion, democratizes the
> dissemination of ideas and information.

Not any more since the last wave of closing "alleged ISIS" accounts. I can't
stand those religious retards either, but banning people just because they
follow a religious cult of killers who spread hate and murder threats?

You could use the same argument to ban practically everything... including
followers of Donald "Muslims out!!!" Trump, Frauke "Shoot refugees at the
border" Petry, Recep Tayyip "Kurd Killer" Erdogan or whoever is the King of
Saudi Arabia.

None of these groups are in any danger to be banned from popular social media
sites despite their ideology being very similar (or, in case of Saudi Arabia,
identically) to the IS and their followers equally murderish and morally
depraved (Erdogan, Saudi Arabia, the neo-Nazis burning refugee camps down in
Germany).

It's inconsequent and the mere possibility of banning someone over anything
that members of another (whiter? religious-er?) group are allowed to do opens
up highly complex moral issues.

~~~
niccaluim
_banning people just because they follow a religious cult of killers who
spread hate and murder threats_

I dunno man—when you put it like that, it sounds like a pretty great idea.

~~~
mschuster91
Well then, why is @RT_Erdogan, @SaudiEmbassyUSA or @FraukePetry still a thing?

Because they're white, because they're allied with the West or what?

Political bigotry at its finest. Either you tell ALL the radicals to fuck off
or none at all.

~~~
bqe
No, it is perfectly acceptable to ban the most extreme members. Just because
they don't ban everyone with extreme views doesn't mean they need to keep all
of them.

I am tired of these all-or-nothing discussions that seem commonplace nowadays.
The world is not as brightly defined as you think it is. We can make forward
progress progressively.

------
firebones
US YoY numbers are down--this is true. Q4 has historically been a bad growth
month for them.

If you're focused on MAUs, then Q4 in a non-election year is going to be bad.
It's like "peak boring Twitter". Everyone is rocking Amazon and the online
retailers. There are no new TV series or movies dropping. Bowl season hasn't
started. World Cup 2014 (Men) and 2015 (Women) are past.

Granted, the US annual YoY numbers aren't good, but:

* International is up 11%.

* 2016 is an election year.

* And there are Olympics this year.

* And Q1 is historically the strongest growth month.

I kind of think that if you're strictly MAU-focused, it's not a bad time to
get in.

That said:

* I have noticed casual users dropping off their interaction volume based on my puny timeline.

* I attribute some of that not to anything competitive, but to the economy picking up and everyone being so freaking busy. More lurking, less of a need to self-validate. Call it social proof fatigue. (I really suspect this is the canary in the coal mine for Facebook engagement.)

* The sharp divide between folks who claim to "get" Twitter and those who claim to "don't get" Twitter is sharpening. Rather than seeing this as a negative, I see this as a bifurcation that can be studied and exploited.

Twitter still has a unique and important niche. There are so many ways they
can innovate around this niche without destroying it.

My take:

* Twitter _search_ is an unexploited global resource.

* Buffing up search and offering it _orthogonally_ to the Twitter user experience is a HUGE potential upside that is untapped. They can monetize the hell out of that and not screw up the experience! Why limit engagement with their data flow to the timeline! I'd _gladly_ accept more ads in a search than in my timeline.

* Restating that: content creators--the people who tweet--low barrier to entry. Market search and Moments in a broader way. The pulse of the country. You can laden that with the ads. Those are the MAUs you want.

They'll be fine. This feels more like a narrative created by competitors or
potential acquirers to get them on the cheap before they can execute on their
core value. Maybe they're run by weak-willed dullards who will cave because
they can't see it, and it will be Google or someone else with a lick of sense
that leads them to their promise, or who acquires them to kill them off.

------
davidpatrick
There is such a unique opportunity Twitter has attempted but not fully
captured with Moments. When big events happen, people take to Twitter. With an
aggregate of Periscope, Vine, and Twitter, we could have interactive LIVE
events. Tune in on your phone, and don't just join the conversation, be part
of the event. Unfortunately, Moments feels too static. They hand pick some
decent tweets and there you go... Give me the car chase feeling of the 1990s!
Where is a white bronco when you need one...

~~~
HappyTypist
Twitter seems to advertise to possibly "offensive" UGC to make its platform
shine. It's not an invalid consideration, but I feel they're overdoing it.

When I search a hashtag, I want to see what people are talking about. I don't
want to see what CNN or HuffPost is tweeting about. Because I'd to to Google
for that.

Twitter needs an automatic curation / reputation system, auto language
filtering, and then a greater focus on the tweet firehose like you said. Why
their product team doesn't grasp this is beyond me.

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cft
Q4 was the first quarter ever with negative growth:
[http://twitter.com/JasonAbbruzzese/status/697532872824070144...](http://twitter.com/JasonAbbruzzese/status/697532872824070144/photo/1)

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sjg007
I think a deeper integration with periscope and timelines will help Twitter.
The real time direct global conversation is important.

~~~
doublerebel
I didn't understand Periscope until I saw a mini-celeb use it. People love it.
It's like Snapchat in live group form for celebs. Like why people love to call
into a live radio or TV show. Regardless of what happens to traditional
Twitter, I think Periscope has a lot of room to grow.

However, Twitter's algo timeline makes it nearly useless to me. It was already
a mess and the linear timeline was the only thing I liked. The linear timeline
would have been manageable if they still allowed third party clients... but I
digress. I'm sure I'll still use it anyway to announce software releases and
get customer support from slacking companies.

~~~
cft
The problem is that Periscope is a startup. Wall St will not like Twitter to
be run as a startup, and yet Dorsey is trying to position Periscope as the
savior for Twitter. I think that Periscope is an awesome product btw, but
sinking Twitter may take it down with it unfortunately.

------
Theodores
If Twitter ceased to exist, would it really matter?

That is the fundamental problem with it. The world gets by perfectly fine
without Twitter (and all those that 'tweet'). It is not a communication medium
of record in the way that email is. I do not ask people 'did you get my
tweet?' in the way I might ask people if they got my email. I never say 'I
will tweet it to you' in the way I might text/skype/email someone.

I know some of my colleagues and family members say great things about
Twitter, but these guys commute and Twitter is just another thing they read on
the journey. I actually have no clue what my sister's Twitter handle is, I
have no idea what any of my current colleagues Twitter handles are either. It
simply has never occurred to me that I should ask any of them how to follow
them on Twitter. I don't care and neither do they.

Twitter also fails the 'other people's screens test'. What is this? Well, walk
through a large enough office at lunch time and see what NORMAL people have on
their screens whilst working and whilst on lunch. Nobody is reading Twitter
because they have to as part of what their job or out of choice in the few
moments they have of 'free time'. The recently slagged off LinkedIn and the
oft-criticised Facebook do pretty well on the 'other people's screens test'
even if it is only the HR department that do LinkedIn. Twitter isn't even
worth blocking from corporate IT networks!!!

I feel that with Twitter some people have bought into the hype and personally
invested time and effort into believing that hype, for them to say it is
useless is not going to happen. Yes it does allow me to have a window in on
the programming community I am part of, however, one 'vital' news story feed
in my micro-world-of-programming stopped and life went on for me, despite not
having Twitter to brief me of what I thought were important developments. RSS
fulfilled this requirement beforehand, life went on when RSS stopped and life
will go on when this stupid Twitter thing stops, which I hope will happen
sooner rather than later. Really it is like CB radio of the 1970's.

------
rajacombinator
Does Twitter break out the numbers on Vine? The valuation is starting to get
tempting at these levels. I think Wall St is missing the big picture, as
usual.

------
suprgeek
I think Twitter can really pivot to become the first aggregated MicroPayments
platform.

An all-you-can eat option: $10/Month - Read any news, blog, whatnot, follow
anyone, tweet to anyone, upload anykind of media

A-la-cart: pay 0.01$ after reading the 140 character summary for full article
access, pay 0.05$ for full tweet stream access to some really useful accounts,
etc

Free: Every fourth tweet is an ad, You get only previews of articles, and only
a portion of the Tweetstream of really useful content.

Twitter can then kick-back some dough to the content publishers.

Twitter maintains and controls the payment info already anyway. If they get
ambitious they can hook into buying and selling as well.

~~~
HappyTypist
There is a huge jump in $0 and $5, which is the minimum funding amount for cc
fees to not be huge. You'd see a mass user exodus.

------
xufi
TWitter seems to be having this issue for a while now. I wonder if it'll do
what FB is doing by going in to other ventures

------
reality_czech
I never used Twitter because the product's name implicitly refers to its users
as twits (a characterization which is usually accurate.)

------
eruditely
Can we stay away from quarterly earning reports and wall street style
newspaper reportings? This industry is supposed to be a little different.
Let's not go along with their rhythm as that way they still mold us in their
image.

Let's not be like them.

~~~
adventured
Sure. You just need to stop going public after diluting ownership down so far
you have no control over your own company via endless rounds of VC to pay for
not having a business model (causing you to bleed red ink and ultimately be
overly dependent on outside money), and stop giving all the power to
institutional investors accordingly.

Then you can get away from the pressure of quarterly results. Otherwise, no,
there's no scenario under which you can get away from that influence while
owning 3%-5% of your own company and being public.

Twitter made a mistake by not having its ownership structure set up like
Facebook and Google.

~~~
petethomas
Here's an archive.org link to Dan Bigman's May 2012 Forbes post on those
ownership structures (published a few months after Facebook's IPO):
[http://web.archive.org/web/20120527223753/http://www.forbes....](http://web.archive.org/web/20120527223753/http://www.forbes.com/sites/danbigman/2012/05/23/facebook-
ownership-structure-should-scare-investors-more-than-botched-ipo/)

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altonzheng
I'm looking forward to this algorithmic feed, as much as I like the simplicity
of the firehose of tweets. The reason I avoid twitter right now is because I
end up following a few people that I only care a little bit about, yet they
dominate my feed disproportionately. It'll be a lot harder for Twitter to
figure out relevance for their users though, compared to Facebook, considering
the lack of user actions they have in comparison. (It's a much more passive
platform)

------
brianstorms
"Goes nowhere"? I see 2 million new users.

As I blogged about this recently ([http://brianstorms.com/2016/02/twitter-
executives-are-like-l...](http://brianstorms.com/2016/02/twitter-executives-
are-like-louis-cks-whiny-air-travelers.html)), Twitter execs fiddling with the
product and the wall street banksters complaining about Twitter's growth
remind me of whiny air travelers as described by Louis CK. As he might say
about Twitter, people! Twitter is a technological marvel! Over three hundred
MILLION people connected all over the world in real time! There's never been
anything like it. And it is growing each month! What a wonderful world!

