
Twitter is the Benjamin Button of startups. - hyfen
https://plus.google.com/109834643338395014064/posts/A9Fk7bsCA1B
======
smacktoward
_Dusk approaches when Twitter sheds its desire to leave a mark on humanity_

Look, I understand the sentiment, but here's the thing.

Twitter only exists as we know it today because a lot of people have poured a
_lot_ of money into it. Without that money, Twitter would be an impossibility.
It simply would not exist, at least not at anywhere near the scale it exists
at today.

My guess is that, for the people who poured in all that money, "leaving a mark
on humanity" was not the primary reason they opened their wallets. They opened
their wallets because _they expected to make more money by doing so._ They
were making _investments_ , not charitable contributions. And at some
increasingly near point, those people are going to want to see a return on
their investments. That means that, barring an acquisition, Twitter needs to
find a way to turn a (hopefully large, from the investors' viewpoint) profit
-- and sooner rather than later.

Why would you ever have thought things would be otherwise? Twitter is a
company. Companies that don't make money usually don't survive. The best case
scenario is that they get bought out and operated as a vanity project by a
deep-pocketed patron, the way a lot of magazines are. But a magazine is a much
smaller and cheaper-to-run enterprise than a centralized, global real-time
communications network. Whose pockets are deep enough to run Twitter at a loss
indefinitely?

If you organize yourself as a for-profit corporation, and take on investors,
at some point you have to bring in more money than you burn. Otherwise you
_will_ at some point have to scale back your ambitions, because _you simply
will not be able to afford them anymore._

Twitter, in other words, is meeting its destiny. Maybe that destiny is not to
make as big a "mark on humanity" as people wish. But without all the money
they took from those investors who are breathing down their necks now, Twitter
would never have been able to scale up to where it is today at all. And that
money came with the condition that Twitter would at some point figure out a
way to pay it back, with interest.

That point is now.

~~~
OzzyB
Yes, but the problem with Twitter is they took _too_ much money.

You don't need to have $1Billion dollars in financing to offer a service like
this -- this is what the likes of app.net are teaching us.

A $50million Twitter could have "easily" sustained it's vision/objective
without having to cannibalise it's entire ecosystem.

However someone promised the moon to a bunch of financiers and now they have
to deliver above and beyond of what Twitter could have been, or should have
just been.

As far I'm concerned _that_ is the story of Twitter, a company that took the
money and ran.

~~~
gavinlynch
1) How do you know how much money it takes or does not take for Twitter to
offer it's service?

2) Don't you think it's a little early to compare app.net and twitter? App.net
is in it's infancy and is nowhere near the product twitter is

3) What could Twitter have been exactly? How did closing a few API's off
prevent it from getting there?

4) Have you ever imagined that perhaps your vision for Twitter and Twitter's
vision for Twitter just do not mesh?

~~~
OzzyB
1) No, but I know that the difference between $50M and $500M+ would change my
outlook in terms of who I need to satisfy dramatically.

2) Don't like App.net? Pick Reddit vs Digg, same case. One managed to "get by"
with a core team, the other took a ton of money, hired a bunch of folks, made
a bunch of promises, and tried to shoehorn their original vision, the one that
got them established in the first place, into something completely different.
Reddit, makes money and is sustainable -- it just didn't need to make _that_
much money -- as a user that's fine by me, and the reason why Reddit "won". If
only Digg was happy to "just" be a $50mill website...

3) Twitter is what it's users/supporters made it to be. Its service/value was
understood from the get-go, and in turn, it's popularity grew for that same
reason -- ppl understood it's vision and supported by building upon it --
hence cannibalizing your core base by knee-capping your API, probably isn't
the best way to go.

4) My vision of Twitter is fine, like many others, I think it's got something
to do with SMS-web-mobile-140-characters-distributed-micro-messaging-or-
summin? Does it need to be more than that?

~~~
smacktoward
The wrinkle in #2 is that once you decide to take conventional venture funding
(as opposed to bootstrapping, or fundraising through angels, incubators,
etc.), you really don't have the option to just be a small, sustainable
business anymore. VCs don't want to invest in small, sustainable businesses,
they want to invest in aggressive plays that have the potential to blow up
into something huge.

According to TechCrunch the only money Reddit ever raised was $100k of seed
funding (<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/reddit>). That's a very different
trajectory than Twitter, who (again according to TC:
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter>) have raised $1.16 _billion_ (with
a B) in funding.

Taking in that sort of money raises the stakes dramatically. Nobody loans you
a billion dollars to build a $50 million/year business.

~~~
jdbernard
> Taking in that sort of money raises the stakes dramatically. Nobody loans
> you a billion dollars to build a $50 million/year business.

That was OzzyB's original point: Twitter should not have taken big VC money.
They took _too_ much money. From his first post:

> someone promised the moon to a bunch of financiers and now they have to
> deliver above and beyond of what Twitter could have been, or should have
> just been.

------
rblion
Facebook is the Jurassic Park of startups.

Founded by a hacker-idealist who wanted to bring people and technology
together like never before. The experiment worked wonderfully at first as
millions of people flocked to Facebook's revolutionary platform from around
the world. Soon, questions of profitability came into the picture, forcing
executives to compromise ethics for additional revenue. Chaos erupted and
millions began to question their loyalty and wonder about their
safety/privacy. Over time, the platform has become overgrown with ads (that
are rarely clicked), spam (that embarrasses it's victims), and scandals (that
frighten even the most loyal users). Fear of extinction due to unexpected
competition has pushed Facebook to become even more aggressive by inflating
the value of the company to astronomical proportions, acquihiring dozens of
startups, and raising billions in an IPO. Today, the future of Facebook is in
the air. No one knows how the variables will compound and what this corporate
gene sequence will evolve into...﻿

~~~
MartinCron
It's a good story, but I think you're remembering both the plot details and
the themes of Jurassic Park differently than I am.

~~~
rblion
I perceived inGen trying to re-create complex organisms and arrange them into
a simple system, and not being prepared when the consequences of chaos
unfolded. I love the movie but it leaves out much of the discussion of
complexity and chaos found in the book. You ever read the books?

~~~
MartinCron
I actually just re-read the book with my son. It holds up really well
considering it's age. The complexity and chaos stuff maps, I just don't see
the parallel between the idealistic Zuck wanting to change the world and inGen
trying to make a dinosaur theme park.

~~~
rblion
The parallel is both were trying to do something considered 'impossible' and
doing it on the grandest scale possible. John Hammond wanted to clone extinct
animals, Mark wanted to create a network for millions of people. Both projects
are incredibly complex with a lot of variables and the consequences of
miscalculation could be disastrous. Chaos is the underlying theme of it all...

~~~
code177
To be fair to John Hammond, I'm not sure creating a (albeit massive) social
networking service is in the same league as reverse engineering 65+ million
year old, fragmented DNA strands, then bringing the dinosaurs not only to
term, but healthy adulthood, and finally housing them in a multi-billion
dollar facility on a leased island.

Facebook has roughly 4x as much source code as Jurassic Park did, and probably
can't be run from a single room for up to three days with minimal staff.

Also, if say, Facebook Profiles breaks down, the profiles don't eat the users.

~~~
rblion
Keep in mind, it was a movie and the metaphor was constructed around
chaos/complexity. If you read the books, Hammond actually needed an entire
other island, Isla Sorna, to produce batches of dinosaurs and allow them to
mature. Most of the embryos did not reach maturity. He also had a much larger
control room on that island to oversee the main island.

If your Facebook data gets exploited, it could affect you in big ways.

------
patrickaljord
Twitter already said that most people access Twitter through their web ui and
mobile apps. So even if they were shutting their whole API down, it wouldn't
have such a negative effect on their usage growth. The only thing that's
happening is that devs won't be able to build toys around Twitter, but Twitter
doesn't care as most people don't use nor need these toys.

Some of us devs just have to admit that we are not that important to the
success of Twitter, at least, not anymore. It's also not a charity so they
need to make money somewhere, I don't really see the problem here.﻿

~~~
gatordan
Does anyone know the actual percentage of users that access Twitter through
third party client applications? And what users are currently getting out of
these apps that would make them annoyed enough to quit the service if they
were forced to switch to Twitter's app/web interface?

My gut reaction is to agree with you that the Hacker community is overreacting
to getting screwed over and that Twitter will go on fine without us. But
without any facts about how popular and widely used these third party apps
are, my opinion is really just a guess.

~~~
ChiperSoft
This is just my own testimony, but there are numerous features in tweet bot
which Twitters own app doesn't even attempt to provide. Such as conversation
threading in both directions (twitter only let's you see In Reply To). The app
is also quite a bit more polished and better behaved (Twitter Mac triggers my
discrete gpu, Tweetbot doesn't). Twitter Mac doesn't even support gestures.

As for the website... Twitter loses all its value to me if I have to open a
browser every time I want to read content.

------
therealarmen
I wonder what impact all this Twitter-hate is having on Twitter's HR
department. I say this because I don't think shutting off third-party clients
will hurt the company that much. If it makes it difficult to attract the best
talent, that's a different story. Look at what happened to Y! over the last
decade.

~~~
themckman
They still have huge engineering challenges and as long as that's true they're
going to be able to find people willing and interested.

~~~
akkartik
If you think all hiring requires is a 'challenge' I have a bridge to sell you.

~~~
blhack
Excuse me? My hacker friends and I have all discussed this at _length_ and
agreed that the largest motivator for us is working on hard problems.

This is how some of us justify working for the military; they offer really
tough problems to solve.

Twitter is the same; if twitter offered me a job, I would practically move to
the bay and live out of my jeep to do it.

~~~
shadowmatter
I think there's a faction of engineers who want to work on interesting (which
can be hard) problems, and those who want to work on interesting products.

I believe this is demonstrated clearly by the jobs pages for both Apple and
Google. From Apple:

* Every detail matters… It matters all of the time. That’s how we do things at Apple. The result is some of the best-loved products in the world.

* Simplicity isn’t simple... It means rethinking every customer experience until the clutter has fallen away — until all that remains is what’s essential, useful, and beautiful. That might be a new product feature that delights even die-hard fans.

From Google, specifically an interview with Google employees about work there:

* ”... love to work on challenging projects”

* ”... love being faced with problems that were not ever solved before”

* ”... you hear people talking about algorithms and coding and programming languages”

* ”... it was just a pleasure being interviewed by smart people and being given a lot of puzzling questions”

I discussed this in a blog post I wrote which you can find here:
<http://mgp.github.com/2012/02/13/problems-and-products.html>

I used to work at Google, and I joined there during a period when I wanted to
work on interesting (i.e. hard) problems. I left to work on interesting
products.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"I think there's a faction of engineers who want to work on interesting
> (which can be hard) problems, and those who want to work on interesting
> products."_

In my experience this only describes 10% of the programmer population. The
rest don't really want either, they just like the benefits and the paycheck.

They also don't work at Twitter, Google, or Apple, not many do anyhow.

Actually, I don't think the distinction really exists. Some people like to
crack hard algorithmic problems, some people like to crack hard systems
problems, others like to crack hard markets, or hard product verticals. It's
all part of the same thing - people like to accomplish things that are hard to
do and interesting to try.

~~~
shadowmatter
Agree that this only matters to 10% of the population. And yes, I'm totally
oversimplifying it by creating only two categories. As to whether the
distinction really exists, I personally believe that it does -- and the best
anecdote I have is looking back on my reasons to leave Google. When I joined I
wanted to work on hard/interesting problems, and when I left I wanted to work
on interesting/impactful products.

------
joejohnson
From the comments on Google+:

"Very true. Along the same lines, Google+ is the Major League Soccer of social
networks. Other countries have very successful soccer leagues that happened
organically. The US tried to manufacture a soccer league, and it spent a ton
of money in doing so. It so happens that the most talented athletes in the
country prefer sports that are already popular. The most interesting people in
the league are has-beens from Europe. Still, nothing wrong with being the
fifth or sixth most popular sport in the country.﻿" -Diego Basch

~~~
cdelsolar
Third, actually:

[http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1290390-nba-and-nhl-
get-t...](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1290390-nba-and-nhl-get-the-boot-
mls-is-the-3rd-most-attended-sports-league-in-america)

~~~
sureshv
That's an absurd report considering that NBA/NHL arenas hold about 18-20k
people max while most MLS games are played in Football stadiums that can hold
65k+. The fact that MLS still barely wins in attendance per game is pretty
sad.

~~~
Evbn
And that TV audience for NHL is 20x MLS.

~~~
streptomycin
And that TV audience for the NBA is a few times greater than even the NHL.

------
ardillamorris
is it? or maybe, unlike other startups, Twitter is willing to make the changes
necessary to adjust course and reinvent itself? Google cut Buzz and Wave. They
were both great initiatives that never took off. You can't throw good money
after bad money. I think developers are important but the users experience is
paramount and if to maintain that they need to adjust their service, so be it.

------
MattSayar
Do the top-level people at Twitter not realize this? Why would they continue
down this path?

~~~
debacle
The money wont last forever.

~~~
imaffett
Seems like the only logical reason they are doing this is because they are in
the start of an acquisition. They have to prove some type of revenue stream
(ads) and restricting users to the twitter site/app will help them guarantee
the made up numbers.

~~~
ceejayoz
I very much doubt Twitter is interested in an acquisition.

~~~
mbreese
A different question is, who would want to buy them? Twitter, who should know
their network better than everyone else, is still trying to figure out how to
best monetize it. Who would want to take that task on?

In the old days, I'd guess Yahoo! would be in the running, but since they have
a history of buying popular sites and then letting them wither, I hope Meyer
isn't going to fall for that again.

~~~
MartinCron
I would be surprised but not totally shocked if either Microsoft or Apple
bought Twitter. Tight integration into OS and devices + the huge critical mass
of active social users + the social and cultural relevance of Twitter would be
assets for them.

~~~
nameiscarl
And as for Microsoft, it would have been more interesting than buying a client
side software (Skype).

------
recursive
I've heard a lot about twitter's support for third party apps. I have never
encountered one of these apps myself. When I see quotes like "the world of
third-party developers", it suggests that there is a large number of
applications somewhere that I'm missing. What are these apps?

~~~
dustyreagan
TwitPic, TweetDeck, Klout, Twitter's own iPhone app was once Tweetie (a 3rd
party app), Hootsuite, Favstar, here's some more
<http://socialmediatoday.com/node/295232>

------
nameiscarl
Twitter is the batman trilogy of startups.

It took an old idea and make it new and relevant again.

In the second movement, it went huge and was the new sensation.

The conclusion of the story will be bland and all over the place. With pundits
failing to see that the emperor has no clothes.

------
csmattryder
Really can't agree with where Twitter is going with their API cutoffs, a year
ago, I would've sat down for an hour or two just to build in a Twitter
tweeting function into whatever software I was writing.

It was an easy, no fuss way of getting social media into software. Facebook
caused me no end of bother, its API was (still is?) an 'it exists, and here's
the calls, good luck buddy' affair.

Now, I'm not sure the functions I used would pass the API ToS.

------
gumbo
Who remenber Color raising 41M for craps? I remember back then someone saying:
"They invested in the team, that still make me laugh. They funded smart
people, now they have enought cash to build something that will make money".
I'm looking forward to seing this.

Twitter is such a disapointment for me and i'm looking forward too to see
their first profitable year.

------
davewiner
Interesting observation. It seems that Twitter might shrink into nothing
eventually, and possibly then be infinitely valuable (assuming all this
shrinkage makes it more valuable).

------
hiddenstage
Twitter is evolving into a media conglomerate rather than a social tool. Too
soon to tell which will be more valuable in the long run.

------
ThomPete
Only problem.

Twitter was originally thought of as a small family/close friends network.

------
lucian303
That's hilarious. Great sarcasm!

