[defen]

If you think you could have replicated Twitter with 300K of hardware and software 2 years ago, surely it would be even cheaper now. Why wouldn't you go to Twitter and offer to do it for them? Even if they paid you three million dollars it would give them massive savings in headcount and operational costs.

[beagle3]

I'm sure there's at least one technical person high enough there who is aware of how inefficient their implementation is, and how much better it can be. And I suspect that person is unable to do anything about it, despite being in a way better position than anyone on the outside.

But ... the real question, is even if I brought it in a turn-key and backward compatible setup for them (that is, they pay $3M, I install stuff, we flick a switch, and everything just works) - would it be worth $3M to them?

I suspect the answer is: Not worth any kind of risk or hassle to save $10M/year (or however much it would save them; if it is more than $10M/year, I'd be surprised).

I don't know how they spend their money, but I'm willing to bet that running the service is less than 10% of their expenses. (Of the money spent to get e.g. win95, or a new drug, to market, r&d costs are usually no more than 5-10%)

I think Twitter hasn't been a lean organization in years, and they took too much money to "reboot" themselves as a lean.

I think Twitter is already dead, it just won't acknowledge.