
Twitter Shares Plunge 17% as Monthly Users Decline - uptown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-27/twitter-projects-users-to-decline-profit-short-of-estimates
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throwaway77384
_Twitter’s user woes are similar to those of Facebook Inc., which also has
been plagued by manipulation, robot accounts and unrest about the growing
influence of social media in the culture. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey
has said his priority is to reduce abusive conversations on the platform and
the company said its machine-learning algorithms are identifying more than 9
million potential spam or automated accounts a week._

I honestly don't understand what these shareholders want.

Same with Facebook.

Are they selling because "user" numbers are down a sliver? (Both Facebook and
Twitter coincidentally seem to have experienced a 1 million active user
reduction per month in the last month). It feels as though respective drops of
20% and 17% are absolutely disproportionate to that tiny number of users
leaving.

So, then, is this the impact of Cambridge Analytica et al? Does money care
whether CA helped pave the way for Trump and Brexit? I don't think so. Doesn't
seem likely at all.

In fact, I could see "money" / "capital", whatever you want to call it,
cheering them on. The rich have nothing to lose from this short term.

So, what is it actually? Is it in fact "the rich" withdrawing their money as
part of some sort of punishment for these platforms, as they clean up their
act?

It's not like Twitter or Facebook haven't tried absolutely EVERYTHING to avoid
doing this. They harbored bots, spam and fake accounts until the very bitter
end, when the PR scales just about tipped in favour of cleaning up their acts,
because some governments (mostly the EU) started rattling their sabers.

I wish, oh do I wish for this to simply be "they treat their customers like
the data-cows that they are, ripe for milking by every shady organisation,
government and security agency imaginable, they are confessing to their sins
and suffering the consequences rightfully, which will turn society back onto a
path of common goals and shared prosperity".

But that's not it. Is it...

~~~
uptown
The MAU metric has a value as Twitter earned $1.79 from each user in the last
quarter. Financial models, which are used by many to guide investment
decisions, use the expected MAU as one input used when modeling the expected
future earnings. When MAU deviates from these models it causes these
projections to change, causing the perceived worth of the company to be re-
evaluated. If the perceived value of the company is now less than the market
cap implied by the current share price then you’ll see downward pressure on
the price.

Twitter and Facebook are largely measured by their growth. If that slows
you’ll see investors head for the exits.

