[atticmanatee]

It never ceases to amaze me how Twitter is so unprepared for anything they do.

This was something Facebook did a few years ago Even Google+ (rest in peace) had a similar feature. How could they have forgotten that dead people may have used their platform, and living relatives would be upset?

Either Twitter is completely run by amateurs - since its inception - or by people who just don’t care. Which one is worst, I wonder?

[undefined3840]

It’s pretty disappointing. Their share price has been completely flat since IPO. I’m surprised shareholders have not revolted against Jack being a part time CEO. Clearly there needs to be some dedicated focus to clean up the app. So much potential to be so much better.

[adventured]

> It’s pretty disappointing. Their share price has been completely flat since IPO. I’m surprised shareholders have not revolted against Jack being a part time CEO.

It's not disappointing, it's amazing that it's worth $24 billion now. A fair value is less than half that, and even at a 50% reduction that'd be at a obscenely generous 30-40 PE.

The premise of the outcome being disappointing supposes that there is anything that could have reasonably been done to meaningfully bolster the share price during that time. As opposed to Twitter in reality being a mature, slow growth, second tier social network (which is what it will always be no matter who is running it).

Dorsey has done a great job fixing the operational disaster that Twitter was previously. The reason the Twitter stock has been flat since the IPO, is because it was comically overvalued at the IPO, not primarily because it has been operated poorly since then. Based on its operating results contrasted with now, Twitter should have been worth a minimum of 3/4 less at its IPO than it was (probably more reasonably it should have been worth ~90% less at IPO, and worth a minimum of 50% less right now).

2015 | revenue $2.2b | op expenses $1.9b | op income -$450m

2018 | revenue $3b | op expenses $1.6b | op income $453m

The disaster that Dorsey inherited, he fixed. Flipping operating income by a positive $900 million in three years. A spectacular outcome for a business doing $3b in sales.

Twitter is still an independent business today solely because of the operational improvements that Dorsey made to push Twitter into sound profitability. If not for that, Twitter would have already been forced into selling itself (which was a common discussion prior to the dramatic improvement in operational results).

Boost sales $800m and drop operating expenses by $300m. That's as good as it is going to get for Twitter as a business conceptually. There is no scenario where it's going to be the next giant social network or a juggernaut like Facebook, there is no high growth scenario waiting to be discovered. The very nature of Twitter guarantees that can never happen, it can't attract enough participants to that style of social broadcast & consumption.

[ghaff]

Yeah. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part but it feels like Twitter pretty much is what Twitter is. It's a broadcast medium for people for whom that has value, which is very useful for some of us and not at all useful for many others. People understandably get up in arms when Twitter tries to make the timeline too heavily sponsored. There's no reason to believe subscriptions would work without tanking the user numbers.

Twitter has actually already made changes that make it more useful for its core audience. Increased character counts etc., for example, has allowed Twitter to essentially replace microblogging--or even short-form blogging generally.

[ganzuul]

Twitter, Facebook, and similar might be of interest because of power and knowledge. If you are already super rich then making another billion or two may be less important than say analytics of how some popular uprising goes.

My pet theory is that Imgur is actually what the NSA needs all that diskspace in Utah for. :o)

[echelon]

Vine could have easily beaten TikTok. It was already well positioned.

[rahuldottech]

TikTok didn't even exist back then. It's essentially a Vine replacement + extras.

[fphilipe]

It has always amazed me how one can be a part time CEO, let alone CEO at two companies simultaneously. How would a board even allow that?

[emptybottle]

Part time board

[caymanjim]

CEOs aren't that busy. That's what they hire people for. The most successful people aren't running around like maniacs all the time. They are organized, they delegate, and they focus. How much of your day is spent actually working? How much is spent on pointless meetings, status updates, and busywork? CEOs don't have to waste their time on other peoples' priorities. Board members work far, far less. To them, it's the CEOs that look like they're busy all the time.

[C1sc0cat]

I think You mean Chair - the CEO absolutely should be busy

[dmix]

It’s still possible to delegate a lot of the CEO day to day stuff and be available for all important directional and strategy stuff.

Co-CEOs is also a thing.

Having half a talented persons attention is better than zero. Whether they should still be the show piece CEO vs the background mastermind is up for debate though.

[matwood]

People think that thinking through technical issues is hard, but thinking through issues dealing with people can make technical issues seem like child's play. This isn't just Twitter that botches thinking through the people aspect of changes. We see this happen to all sorts of companies across all industries.

[softwarelimits]

I am absolutely sure a pro like you can provide a much better site with a better service - please do!

[nindalf]

This is uncharitable, IMO. It is not fair or reasonable to accuse a group of people of amateurism without knowing or understanding the constraints they’re working under.

You compare Twitter with Facebook but Facebook has 9X or so employees. Presumably that means that while a feature like memorialisation gets worked on at Facebook, there isn’t enough manpower to work on it at Twitter. They’re too busy working on the core parts, keeping the lights on. But again, there could be even more constraints that I’m not aware of and you’re not aware of.

Please please please let’s not sit on our ergonomic chairs and ask “why don’t you just” without understanding their perspective. Let’s assume good intent and reasonable competence. Of course we look smarter and more competent by accusing someone of being the opposite, but we should resist the urge.

[kkarakk]

After 7 years in tech, i've learnt it's not like dealing with real humans. You're dealing with a business engine - never assume good intent or competence when trying to reason out why a product arrived at it's current level of success or failure

[nindalf]

Ah yes, the Littlefinger approach. “What’s the worst reason someone could have for doing the things they do and acting they way they act?”

Notice you still haven’t said how Twitter is supposed to do everything Facebook does but with 1/9th the number of employees. You and everyone else have directly assumed that Twitter has decides not to work on memorialisation because they are malicious or incompetent ... when it’s possible that they just didn’t have enough people to work on it.

[adambyrtek]

With product development it's not about having "enough people" to do everything, it's about having the right priorities and choosing what to focus on.

We could discuss if this feature should have been prioritised or not, but claiming that Twitter is this little understaffed company that cannot be expected to implement something like that is a bit disingenuous.

[nindalf]

You’ve misinterpreted what I said. I didn’t make a positive assertion that it was impossible for twitter to pick this up. I merely disagreed with the comparison with Facebook. The GP pointed out that Facebook could do it while Twitter couldn’t. I pointed out that sure, Facebook did it but they also have 9X the number of employees so it’s not a fair comparison.

[puszczyk]

Twitter has a single app