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Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

No one seems to have mentioned the really interesting aspect here:

Twitter must be bleeding DAUs.

There are other indicators too.

After the takeover they dropped the login wall, but it is back, and way more aggressive than before. You can't even scroll down to see more tweets now, or view replies.

The ads are also really weird and odd. Either their ad targeting system is broken, or they just lost so many advertisers that they have nothing good to show.

I bet the initial influx of previously turned away users is over, as well as the returning users just there for the show, and now the effects are compounding.

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> After the takeover they dropped the login wall, but it is back, and way more aggressive than before.

At least in one small aspect it's better now: the X in the corner is back, so you can dismiss it. Shortly before the takeover, the X in the login wall was hidden unless you somehow found out the trick (you had to click as if you were going to login with an username and password, and that second form had the X in the corner to dismiss it).

> second form had the X in the corner to dismiss it

Woah, I've never gotten that far. Tried to avoid all twitter links but if I did need to view one I'd just use nitter.

> Twitter must be bleeding DAUs

Secondary indicators seems to indicate DAU is surging. I don't know why you'd think it would drop from controversy this kind of shit is what people live on twitter for. Real question is is it sustainable and can they actually monetize it.

> The ads are also really weird and odd.

Twitter has always been an embarrassment in terms of targeted ads.

What secondary indicators are you referring to?

And yeah Twitter ad targeting has always been confusing to me. Some people here are saying it’s because they fired that team, but it’s been weird for years. The automatically determined interests listed in the settings were 85% completely irrelevant to me. At various points I’ve been given ads for restaurants on a different continent, HIV medication (I’m not HIV positive), and nuclear engineering consultants (not my industry at all).

> Secondary indicators seems to indicate DAU is surging

Which ones?

Secondary indicators like the number of times Twitter is mentioned on HN, or in the news in general?

> Twitter has always been an embarrassment in terms of targeted ads.

I now seem to be getting lots of ads from Saudi Aramco, and I have no clue what part of my Twitter activity would indicate interest in them. Running out of ad inventory seems like the most plausible explanation.

their entire ad backend is in a state of crisis. i have friends who were on the monetization (read: ads) teams at twitter and every single one of them has been asked/ordered to return to work if they want to collect their severance

I would like to hear more about this. I haven't seen any reputable news about employees who were severed and then asked to come back.

Severance claw back? For real?

Whoa, is this possible? is this even legal?

By the time they get it in front of a judge, Twitter probably won't exist anymore.

When you hear about layoffs these days, you will usually see terms like "2 months of salary" as part of the severance package. What this actually is, is paying the employee throughout the entire "notice" period of the WARN Act. The WARN Act says that any company doing layoffs must give 60 days notice to employees, so to comply companies layoff employees but keep them on payroll for 2 months to meet the obligations of the law.

Technically, if the employee is still on payroll, the company is within it's rights to ask them to continue working, and violating company policy during this time (ie, not even showing up for work) could be grounds for regular termination which would not require any severance payments at all.

IANAL, but this doesn't make any sense. You can't fire someone but actually not really fire them. What if they find another job in the meantime?

It’s really gardening leave, because you don’t have a contract. They decided to pay you without requiring work; they can change their minds.

In a union job or banking gig where you have a contract, this doesn’t happen. The law in the US doesn’t protect you from this sort of thing. Sometimes they can run afoul of state law though.

You fire them as of a date two months from now. For those two months they are technically still employed, but do not have to come to work unless asked. Just like when you resign with two weeks notice, you tell them you're going to end your employment in two weeks and you're still employed until then.

If the employee finds another job, they should tell them when that job asks "when can you start?" a date after the two month severance period is over. It's not that complicated.

That's really informative, thank you.

That makes the whole layoff thing even more ridiculous. Turns out Twitter really did need that many people.

Wasn't there something about Elon trying to sell Twitter stock privately? I think in the financial times. They have probably lost a lot of advertisers, and Elon might be in financial trouble.

It was in several places, Bloomberg among them: https://archive.ph/0P9i7

The entire thing is a joke.

Not just sell stock, but sell it at the meme-o-rific $54.20 price he paid. Just unbelievable.

> Twitter must be bleeding DAUs

My thoughts exactly, he was in some random meeting last week and learned that traffic is falling and this is his dopey “solution.”

this isn‘t totally true. Today I also noticed that we login wall takes more screen space - but you can click it away and it didn‘t return for me anymore on iOS

Wait for the code freezes everywhere to be over. Can't imagine any new features at Twitter reasonably launched

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