[kimmiller]

opmininion, As a mass market service, Twitter has many more stakeholders than just management. And all these stakeholders have their own metrics.

Unfortunately at this point for Twitter, it's not just about optimizing this metric or that. They have millions of groups of people they need to satisfy (basically, everyone) at the same time as turning a buck.

Think of miners in SE Asia: digging up jungle to get to gold (Papua New Guinea). They have shareholders, management, employees, the local population, the local governement, the government where they are incorporated etc etc etc

Being a mass media consumer play like Twitter means the number of stakeholders you have is huge. And you have to keep them ALL happy to stay relevant (well, the majority... or a big number).