
Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows - kpeel
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-09/twitter-inc-falls-as-revenue-growth-slows-to-1-percent
======
koolba
> It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer,
> increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other
> job -- as CEO of Square Inc.

I find it interesting that the CEO of Twitter has two jobs. It's really in
line with our future of a "sharing economy" where one job isn't enough to
survive. It'd be funnier if it was Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) but this is
pretty good too.

Now joking aside, why the heck do investors allow the CEO to have a second
job? If I were an investor at either of those companies I'd be pretty pissed
off. Unless there's some magical synergy that can be had between them (and for
the record I don't think there is), this is bad news on both ends.

~~~
rtpg
[http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-
owner...](http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-ownership-
takeover-acquisition-challenges)

>Add on the fact that much of the board is new, with little financial stake in
the company. It’s possible they are loyal to CEO Jack Dorsey, who essentially
appointed them, and don’t have the financial incentive to push change the way
older, more frustrated investors might.

~~~
koolba
I like how the chart in the article you linked to has Steve Ballmer's job
title as " _Owner, Los Angeles Clippers_ ".

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taytus
"The whole world is watching Twitter. While we may not be currently meeting
everyone’s growth expectations, there is one thing that continues to grow and
outpace our peers: Twitter’s influence and impact."

[https://medium.com/@jack/twitter-q416-earnings-
call-4574b01e...](https://medium.com/@jack/twitter-q416-earnings-
call-4574b01e4cef#.w75ie5hl0)

I honestly don't see how they are growing in influence and impact. I'd say
that if it weren't for POTUS tweets, most people wouldn't even notice any
change on Twitter's impact.

~~~
argonaut
I mean, that's exactly what they're talking about. You can't just exclude one
of the most impactful topics of global discussion (US politics). The fact of
the matter is Twitter has a tremendously disproportionate impact on US
politics and US journalism, and by extension world affairs.

~~~
taytus
Let's say that for some reason POTUS decides to start using facebook instead.
Then what? Yes, I'm not denying the impact of those tweets, all I'm saying is
that is just only ONE user driving the impact.

~~~
argonaut
Not just POTUS. You'd also need Congressmen/women, non-profits, journalists,
etc.

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gigatexal
Twitter is in the news all the time with POTUS, or something else. Talk show
hosts like Fallon use it as a bit on his show. And yet it just can't grow.
It's time to start charging the twitter faithful a WhatsApp style fee of say
something small a year or monthly. I'd hate for twitter to go under.

~~~
tdkl
Grow where ? Do people realize there are actual limits on growth because
humans aren't infinite ?

~~~
bananarepdev
I don't think growth necessarily means growing the user base.

~~~
gigatexal
Exactly I'm thinking growing revenue so as to not fold. Maybe though they
never should have gone public. Maybe the business model just doesn't exist for
them to be profitable and maybe people have moved on from twitter to Facebook
and Snapchat.

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petercooper
I'm not surprised. Their ad product is just not that good. I spend $ on FB and
it works. On Twitter.. gee, you can pay $2 per follower you end up getting.
Organic is so easy on Twitter that you don't need the ad product.

~~~
gk1
I've spent thousands on Twitter ads (for my clients) in the past but am
spending less and less these days.

Their new card design (ie, design of the ads) apparently is a magnet for
unintentional clicks. Around 90-95% of clicks for my last campaign were
accidental.* The crazy thing is that their support team knows about the
problem yet they still charge you for those clicks as though they are
legitimate, AND they still let people create ads in that format. I've since
taken my (clients') advertising dollars elsewhere. No wonder their ad revenue
has gone down.

*I can only assume they were accidental because Twitter showed, say, 100 clicks, and Google Analytics showed just 3 visits. Yet Twitter support insisted the clicks were legitimate. That means people clicked the ad (unintentionally) and, upon realizing it's loading a new page, left the page before it finished loading.

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edpichler
I was reading Twitter financials.

The income from operational activities is growing a lot (The news usually
don't comment this), really good numbers, but as also the expenses.
Selling/General/Admin. Expenses doubled, I suppose they are trying to find a
way to make money, and they are doing it, but the expenses needs to stop
growing. It also seems years ago they borrowed a lot of money to invest on
firm, now they are paying constantly.

Impossible to know if this will be a good company to invest or not, but it is
still very risky, as major disruptive IT companies.

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&ei=1X...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&ei=1XucWPioD4W2e-Tnl-
gD)

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paulpauper
Twitter's tendency to ban and censor is either part of the problem or a sign
of desperation. Either way, not good.

~~~
minimaxir
But isn't Twitter's unwillingness to ban unless in instances of overwhelming
PR part of the problem? (i.e. the harassment issue that has legitimately
driven away users)

~~~
jerf
It may be the case that it is simply impossible to serve too large a diversity
of users out of one central service. Even ignoring the proximal political
issues that people are thinking of right this second that are centered in the
US, there's a lot of cultures in the world, with a lot of social norms in
active conflict with each other, and a lot of nations who have various
interests in enforcing those social norms and whose interests appear to be
growing rather than shrinking. For a similar example, it is increasingly
difficult if not impossible to run an international backup service housed
entirely in any one country... you _must_ have the data housed in an
acceptable jurisdiction for your customers and there is no one jurisdiction
acceptable to everybody. It may the case that Twitter's current issues are not
an anomaly, but a fundamental aspect of trying to run an impossibly large
service. Going back to those "proximal political issues", they may not be an
anomaly... they may simply be a specific instance of an inescapable general
problem.

Facebook is facing similar pressures. Their valuation still seems to assume
they've got a lot of growth potential, but what if this circle can't be
squared? It isn't hard to imagine the possibility that not only has Facebook
more-or-less grown as much as it can, give or take some stragglers, but that
it may even have grown _more_ than it can sustain, in which case it is grossly
overvalued.

------
qwrusz
"Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference -- everyone is used
to Twitter’s troubles by now.”

Could easily replace "Twitter" in this quote with a scary number of other
public tech company names where investor indifference is going on.

I don't know all the reasons why we read this same fucking article every 3
months. I do think passivity in public markets and the rigged proxy voting
schemes are letting bad things go on for too long. There is a fiduciary
responsibility here. How long should a company and it's management get before
you pull the plug and replace them. Maybe the next guy or girl will be worse
than Jack. Who knows. But that doesn't mean he should have stayed this long.

Maybe we should learn from the President. 8 years max for CEOs. For better or
worse. CEOs are people and other people can do the job. Get out. Stay on the
board if you miss it.

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swingbridge
Twitter probably gets more free PR (with the news about famous people
tweeting) than just about any tech company out there. It's sort of found its
niche as a nano-blogging platform for people others like to listen to. It's
never going to get to the true social network like Facebook and others have
achieved, but that's fine.

The issue is just that's it's a very bloated company. I still question why
Twitter isn't just like 100 people in a basement somewhere. Their revenue
isn't great but it's also not terrible--it's their costs (which is mostly
people related) that's complete out of whack. In my interactions with the
company they always felt very bloated relative to what they do.

~~~
paulcole
>I still question why Twitter isn't just like 100 people in a basement
somewhere.

Interesting idea. Has this ever been discussed on HN before?

~~~
ianleeclark
ad infinitum

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lhnz
I think, in a sense, Twitter is living up to its potential -- and it has a lot
of potential.

What happens, however, when it doesn't live up to its benefactor's
expectations?

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thebiglebrewski
What are people's opinions on the most optimistic case for Twitter (the
business)?

~~~
arethuza
They get acquired by the Executive Branch of the US Government and relabeled
"The Voice of Freedom"? :-)

~~~
thebiglebrewski
Haha wow. This is already the worst of all possible dimensions but that would
be rich

~~~
arethuza
Obviously (I hope) my comment was intended as humorous but given that Twitter
now appears to be an integral part of the political landscape I could imagine
a scenario where it was bailed out as simply being too important (rather than
too big) to fail.

I wonder if there would then be a "revenue" model in charging other
governments to use it?

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samfisher83
Why don't they just put ads on their page like every other company? With all
the embedded tweets as well as what the user subscribes to they know who the
user is so they can show them relevant ads.

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alecco
Funny how this thread is out of the front page. Either flagging or admins.

This is something that makes this industry look bad. Criticism is suppressed.

