[slyall]

I'm sure you can run a version of twitter or Facebook with just a couple of hundred people but it will be a struggle.

Both companies have to work with 100s of governments, government agencies, advertisers and large organisations across the globe. Hard to do with just a handful of people.

You could automate all moderation and spam filtering and maintain that system with a team of a dozen people. It would work to an extent but with lots of problems.

20 programmers rolling out features? Sure but don't expect too much.