[kelseydh]

If you think profits are still the driving force of what matters, then you will never build an Instagram or WhatsApp at the exit values they achieved.

This sounds like 90's bubble talk, but "eyeballs" do matter. Investors and the market care about the current social value of a product in terms of the value / growth of their user base.

Ask many millenials/teens and they say they more meaningfully interact with Instagram than Facebook. That fact about social trends is worth its weight in gold in terms of its user base.

[toomuchtodo]

> Ask many millenials/teens and they say they more meaningfully interact with Instagram than Facebook. That fact about social trends is worth its weight in gold in terms of its user base.

Ask how many millenials or teens have bought something or spent money because of an ad on Facebook or Instagram.

[i386]

That is the exact cargo cult bullshit thinking that got Twitter and many other companies into this situation in the first place.

[kelseydh]

Was Google cargo culting by turning down efforts by its early investors to have them show banner ads like Yahoo?

Their willingness to hold off for many many years without revenue was now brilliant in hindsight, given they found a much better way to make money on advertising than how Yahoo ever imagined it. But they wouldn't have got there if they caved into short-term thinking obsessed investors who think you need to post immediate revenue.

Twitter's issues are more to do with a lack of product innovation or evolution, not that it has gotten too large. Its problem is that it has gotten too large without expanding its product base to support or justify that growth.