The last sentence of this article has an obvious typo - it says "...the company argues that they don’t add enough value for its users." That sentence only makes sense if you replace "users" with "Twitter's bank account."
The key thing about things like Twitter and, especially, Facebook that makes them get such hate, I think, is that as a user, you are their product -- not their customer. They don't get money from you, so their interests are not aligned with yours. This leads to a lot of perverse behaviour in the interests of extracting value from your use of their site.
This is in contrast with other services (like Github, which someone mentioned), whose interests are aligned with yours. They want your experience to be good so that you continue to give them money.
We have a love/hate relationship with Google and Apple. Does that count?
Sometimes we just don't like where a company is going or what it has done to try to actually cough make money. I think with Twitter it's watching what used to be a very open platform slowly, but surely, becoming yet another walled garden.
This. Using tools in creative and unexpected ways is what human beings are. When a service no longer permits that, it has officially made itself Part Of The Problem, regardless of how much money it's bringing in.
I think it's more that HN automatically hates any tech company as soon as it goes public, because going public tends to shift the company's focus from its users to its bank account. Decisions based on growing the latter almost always come at the expense of the former.
HN is not a single mind. It's composed of different users with different opinions. Some like Twitter, others hate it, and some others like me are just very much indifferent towards it.
Is Twitter successful? Last I knew they still had no real path to profitability. They've got a bunch of people using something, but as far as I understand, it's just a drain, and now they're trying to figure out how to actually bring in some profit. I don't call things like that "successful".
