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Comment by swilliams | Hacker News Reader

To boil it down, a generic answer: "The timing wasn't right."

I still think it was a very prudent decision. Gruber said it best: "I’m not sure I’d sell a sandwich in exchange for Facebook stock." (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/11/24/twitter-facebook)

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Yeah, but with no business model to speak of, Twitter has yet to prove they are worth as much as a sandwich.

You could say the same thing about Facebook, they're currently losing $50m a year.

But it costs a lot more time and money to create Facebook than it does a sandwich. You could roughly build Twitter in the time that it takes to make a good Ruben or grilled cheese.

You can't build a user base.

Yes, but Facebook could replicate it by putting a link on Facebook to Facetwitter and then hiring both Twitter users who do not have Facebook accounts.

True, but Twitter isn't even trying yet. I think it would be easier to generate revenue with it than Facebook. I'd rather be in Twitter's position than Facebook's.

It's weird, they're both now credible mainstream sources with huge brands.

I was a bit put off on how they spent a whole five minutes on CBC newsworld looking at the buzz in Twitter, and it gets frequent mentions in newspapers.

Another point in Twitter's column is their relatively small staff. How many employees does Facebook have?

I don't know, at least as far as profits go. They've got significant SMS expenses to overcome. Facebook's per user cost of delivering service has to be much cheaper.

I think Facebook has a pretty solid path to revenue (re-legitimize apps and they provide a dead simple payments platform) though they don't seem like they're going to take it.

It's interesting that neither Facebook nor Twitter, which appear to be integral parts of this developing Web 2.0/social network-y thing, are making money or really have any idea how to do so. I wonder how it'll all play out.

Facebook has a couple of hundred million in revenue, as I recall. They're just using it to finance growth. They could be profitable tomorrow just by laying off half the people there.

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