[PublicEnemy111]

I think the writing is on the wall for Twitter. The younger generations are increasingly flocking to snapchat, yik yak, and similar apps. I never hear of anyone using it anymore(college student here). I would have stopped facebook a while back as well if I didn't use OAuth for damn near everything

[themagician]

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc… they are all just iterations of the same basic things: messaging, file (photo) sharing, identify, news. The writing is on the wall from inception. The value is in the community, but community is amorphous and not really ownable or defendable.

The only real difference I've noticed in the last, lets say 15 years, is that people have grown up with things now and so they seem "easier" and more "accessible." To some extent that's true, but it's mostly the people that have changed not the products or services themselves.

I don't really believe that any "internet company" is sustainable. The value they add exists at a point in time and decays. Get in and get out. The basic functions are too easy to copy and there's no guarantee you keep your community unless you do so by force.

At some point you either become a media company that caters to specific demographics (the lookalike audience you acquired), or you disappear.

[alphapapa]

I think your comment is quite insightful. Just think about how many times instant messaging has shifted from one most-popular platform to another. IRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN, Skype...SMS?...Facebook?...WhatsApp? It's just a constant shift from one service to the next. Obviously this cycling will continue forever. Therefore it would seem unwise to invest in any one platform too heavily, if at all--as a user or an investor.

[themagician]

It makes sense to invest, I think. Notice, I'm not saying that these things aren't valuable—they are. It's just that their value is time limited. They add the bulk of their value between date X and Y, and it just decays after that. And after their value has been delivered, if they disappeared entirely the world really wouldn't be any different.

If tomorrow their was no more Facebook I don't feel like it would be a big deal for more than a week or so. After a few hours everyone would have a new solution for photos, messaging, etc.. After a month no one would care anymore.

As an investor I think the thing is to get in early, help built that valuable moment in time in peoples' lives, and then just get out.

[cft]

Skype - was released in 2003, and is very popular among teens 12 years later. These users were 2 years old when Skype was released.

[alphapapa]

Kind of an anecdote, but still interesting, thanks. The question is, then, for how long will Skype be as popular as it currently is? And, will these teens keep using it as they age? If so, will Skype's demographic tend to follow them?

Of course there are a million variables. I mean, AIM is still around, right? But it's no longer the "default" IM system, while a few years ago, it seemed to be (to me, anyway).

[nemothekid]

Is this a trait of "internet companies" or of advertising-backed media companies in the post internet world? They all seem to sell product and its not like the New York Times has anything inherently more "defensible" than Twitter does (Brand & Scale).

And I'm not sure Facebook or Google (with its current revenue makeup) is anything other than a media company, nor have they ever not been.

[themagician]

I don't think there's anything wrong with media companies. They are sustainable over a longer period of time, they just aren't particularly interesting.

I can easily see Facebook going the way of AOL. In a few years a new generation will grow up with something new that seems easier and more intuitive to them, and Facebook becomes a legacy platform. Maybe they buy a few small media companies that keep the newsfeed interesting.

I just can't see Facebook, Twitter or anything else being "the thing" on a sustainable basis. There's no precedent for that, and it really doesn't make sense to me intuitively.

[rsync]

You're forgetting craigslist.

Year after year, same old "ugly" site, same old boring use case.

I wish I'd thought of it.

[themagician]

I forgot a few things. CL is definitely one of them.

Another thing I left out, which I feel is novel, is the wiki. IMO the wiki is one of the few "new" things. When you really think about the wiki it's pretty different form a message board or co-editing a website. It's something else.

[jghn]

Granted I'm an old fogie no longer in the target demo for hip stuff (turning 40 imminently) but I don't know what I'd do w/o Twitter. I communicate with friends, use it as a defacto news aggregator, an aggregator for chatter on various topics that interest me, a way to discover new things, keep up semi-professional acquaintances (largely w/ people I've never met in person) and even met a handful of friends w/ it.

I've no interest in the visual based media that's slowly replacing it, but I've always been more of a text person than a picture person anyways. Also I like being able to quickly scan dozens of messages instead of the large amount of real estate a picture would take up in relative terms.

And speaking of the compact size, I find the 140 char limit to be feature, not bug. At least for the people I follow they generally use that as a way to hone their thoughts and not just blather about.

I have my complaints, nothing is perfect but while I enjoy using FB losing Twitter would put a giant hole in my day to day life.

[robbyking]

I'm an iOS engineer, and the company I work for recently started using Twitter's analytic tool Fabric for mobile crash debugging.

Until then I had also written Twitter off, but if they can monetize Fabric and leverage some of what they've learned about big data and how (not) to scale technical infrastructure, they may be able to position themselves as a technology solutions company that also has a limited character notification system.

[philippnagel]

So much this.

Selling B2B has proven itself to be so much more sustainable. Businesses do not like to switch platforms as everything is integrated into their stack and workflows. For consumers everything is just a click away. Not so much for lots of businesses.

[mayneack]

I'm a recent college student and most of the people I know still in college use twitter. It seems our anecdotes are conflicting.

[toomuchtodo]

More importantly, has anyone you know ever clicked a Twitter ad?

[Thimothy]

I don't know anyone that has ever cliked an ad in the internet, anywhere. And yet multibillion bussines are sustained on top of that industry. Anecdotes can only take you so far.

[snowwrestler]

I think Twitter and Snapchat/Yik Yak are in different industries.

Snapchat and Yik Yak are messaging applications, so they attract kids and friends who want to communicate with one another privately. Problem is, messaging apps don't seem to be revenue generators anymore.

Because Tweets are all public and searchable, I would argue that Twitter is a publishing platform. They attract content producers who want public attention: press, celebrities, politicians, brands, etc.--and the audiences who want to hear from these folks. So they should be able to drive a lot of revenue from ads.

[istvan__]

This is one dimension of the problem. I think from the technical point of view having a more efficient stack that cost you less and the change in the system is cheap (aka software engineering time) can make your product more profitable even though your competitors offer more features. This sort of angle is missed quite often in the startup scene, while older mature companies care about it a lot more. A good example would be Amazon.

[exacube]

i think the problem is in generating revenue. According to their numbers, Twitter's user base is still trending upwards no?

[onewaystreet]

Revenue hasn't been a problem, Twitter will do over $2 billion this year. Wall Street has been fixated on user growth though. Probably thanks to Facebook touting its ever increasing user base.

[PublicEnemy111]

It is still growing, but the momentum has been slowing for over a year. I googled, "twitter user growth" and every result points to disappointing user growth

[ams6110]

Well at some point growth has to slow. There are a finite number of people interested in what Twitter has to offer.

[cft]

yik yak is declining this year compared to last school year (see appannie graph). Kik and Skype are big and rising among the teens

[onewaystreet]

Twitter has always skewed older.