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Comment by scosman | Hacker News Reader

Be careful conflating "never made a profit" with not having a business. They made $710M in revenue last quarter, up 48% yoy. Their expenses might be high, but they can address that. Companies like Amazon didn't make a profit for years, and are rightfully quite valuable in the eyes of the market.

A $29 valuation per MAU is low if anything. Facebook is almost 10x that (and deserves to be). Early stage startups often get 50x that or higher.

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Why the hell is their expense that high? 350 million users, sure it's a lot. Plus they have to store the messages for a long time and it's not like a text message but more like a group chat. Still, most of their expense can't be going towards their tech stack but headcount. Anyone that takes over the company is going to be doing massive layoffs. They should do it their self and become profitable or else someone is going to do it and run of their good folks in the process. They are about to become the new Yahoo if they don't turn themselves around quickly.

>Why the hell is their expense that high? 350 million users, sure it's a lot. Plus they have to store the messages for a long time and it's not like a text message but more like a group chat. Still, most of their expense can't be going towards their tech stack but headcount.

yep. I don't think the difference between WhatsApp and Twitter in features explain such a difference in headcount and expenses.

Every time I've looked at their reports, stock-based compensation is significantly greater than the total net loss. It seems like the classic tech bubble company where there's a solid large company which is at risk because they're spending like a profitable huge company.

Getting rid of half their staff probably wouldn't hurt. In fact, they might finally be able to turn a profit.

> Anyone that takes over the company is going to be doing massive layoffs.

Rapidly-growing tech behemoths like Google can afford to acquihire hundred of engineers and, eventually, assign them to other work.

Maybe. But at the same time, with over 3,000 employees and a small set of products, that's not only a lot to take on but much of which is likely redundant. With so many surely they hold a fair amount of under performers as well.

What other work? Is there a company out there that actually has 3,000 employees-worth of work to get done, but nobody to do it? I thought we were in general facing the opposite problem: Lots of bodies but not enough work, leading to under-employment.

It depends how fussy employers are about their employees. Employers are always saying there is a talent shortage.

You would think that, but honestly the site is broken more often than not for me. Right this very moment all pic.twitter links are just redirecting to "https//" URLs.

And that's in an incognito tab.

I haven't done a formal study but their t.co url shortener (which is forced on anyone who posts any url) is often broken or extremely slow. Twitter seems like a company where hardcore systems engineers probably take a backseat to "visionary product managers"

One of the best ways to resolve issues in a project is simplifying. You don't need so many if you are going to simplify. Though, anecdotally, I haven't had any issues with the site or service for a few years now. So I can't imagine they have many production issues that affect all the users.

Many of those employees will be on the ad platform. Google already has a good ad platform...

Can we agree as a community to stop comparing every company that is losing money year after year to Amazon.

Amazon was pouring money into infrastructure while growing a massive retail business.

Worlds different than some company that's trying to figure out how to sell ads better.

Not all users are equal. A newsmaker, world leader, reporter, gatekeeper is worth MUCH more than $29.

How about bots? Isn't there number of users tainted by bots? I figure theit value is near $0.

> Be careful conflating "never made a profit" with not having a business.

At 10 years in, this isn't a conflation--these are just equivalent.

> Early stage startups often get 50x that or higher.

...and this makes sense for some early-stage startups. But Twitter isn't an early-stage startup.

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