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Comment by unprepare | Hacker News Reader

>The problem is that Twitter has taken ~$2.8 billion of investors' money and has never made a profit.

I see this type of thing all the time about various companies, i really dont understand the thinking behind it.

Why is it Twitter's fault that people handed them 2.8 billion dollars?

The investors were the ones who created the terms of the agreement, they wrote the check - how could it possibly be anyone but their fault that their investment didn't work out?

If i bet on 33 black and lose a hundred bucks - is it because 33 black did something wrong?

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>Why is it Twitter's fault that people handed them 2.8 billion dollars?

It's not about "fault" as if it's some kind of moral argument. E.g. When the Twitter founders asked Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal to invest an additional $300 million in 2011[1], they had a set of revenue & profit projections to convince him to write that check. Obviously, their financial predictions didn't happen. Therefore, Twitter is judged harshly for not delivering.

The parent poster framed Twitter's criticism in terms of "Facebook envy". Instead, we should just look at the real underlying problem: Twitter has never made any money.

It's ok to be a much smaller company than Facebook if you're making profits and/or growing. Twitter doesn't seem to have an obvious path to profits. They also are not growing.

Linkedin is making profits. Snapchat is growing; it's reportedly losing money but at least it's still growing. Both are smaller companies than Facebook and yet they don't get the doom and gloom writings from the press.

[1]http://pitchbook.com/news/articles/twitter-goes-public-hatch...

>It's not about "fault" as if it's some kind of moral argument.

It seemed to me that a moral argument was being made, that twitter took too much money and that that is bad because they aren't profiting (i.e. earning the investors money)

Of course a business wants to make profits, but i dont see how its immoral for twitter to have taken so much investment.

Would it be fine if they weren't making profits, but had only taken 10 million in investment? if so, why?

Unless the argument is that twitter somehow purposefully deceived investors in order to get money, i dont see how the amount of money they've taken makes a difference.

i wasnt trying to speak so specifically to this exact case, but more generally the idea that its a company's fault that they took so much investment and arent seeing the expected success. (i see this about uber and tesla a lot as well)

Are you seriously wondering why some people might think (although it hasn't been said once in this thread by anyone other than you) that taking people's money with an argument that you'll use that money to make more money, then failing to make any money might have a moral component?

Saying that Twitter expected success is just both a projection and an anthropomorphization on your part. As you are not psychic, and as Twitter is made up of a large number of people, not a person with expectations, you have no way of knowing if any of them expected success as they marketed themselves for more cash.

They either deceived investors or are failures. Take your pick. It's just odd that you can't even understand how someone could see a moral component to it.

First of all, not sure I understand why you're being so hostile.

Next, why would a business failing to make a profit be immoral? What exactly is immoral about a business failing? If it is so obvious, maybe you can explain how it is immoral and exactly who is being immoral.

Next, it seems like you didn't understand what I meant when I said they failed to meet expectations. I meant the investors expectations.

Nothing is immoral about failing to make a profit.

However I think you're mistaking harsh criticism of Twitter's execution and return on investment, for a moral criticism.

Just as it is "ok" for a business to fail, it should also be "ok" for people to criticize that failure, especially if they believe that critical mistakes were made by the leadership they entrusted with their money.

They are failures because they didn't meet the goals they had set themselves and sold investors on. Either that or they are frauds because they never had any intention to meet the goals.

When did failing become immoral?

When did it become immoral to criticize failure?

A certain personality type sees failure as the only sin.

Then that personality type should also believe that "they were either defrauding their investors or they failed at what they wanted to do" doesn't prove immoral behavior -- they could have been defrauding their investors.

>It's just odd that you can't even understand how someone could see a moral component to it.

I'd assume they tried and failed. It's the simplest explanation. On the other hand, attributing a moral component to it implies deliberate malfeasance (such as deceiving investors), which would require evidence.

So, in the absence of that evidence, attributing a moral component to it would seem hard to differentiate from conspiracy theory.

If I say that a piece of software has a fault, am I implying a moral failing? If twitter have raised $2.8billion but show no signs of giving a return on that investment, then there is a fault somewhere, either in the valuation, the execution, the business model.

As many pointed out in this thread, if twitter had raised 50 million or so, and where operating with the efficiency of a Snapchat, they would be considered successful and profitable (though probably bought by a bigger company a long time ago). Whether there ever was scope to deliver on their actual valuation is a much harder question to answer.

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