Sure, but the statement that they were unable to monetize the product is incorrect. They have successfully monetized the product. They (so far) have been unable to keep the user base growing at a rate that a public company generally requires.

I didn't say they would be exactly the same company. They would just be in the same position.

As a few dozen people managing a webapp on AWS from home while eating udon noodles, it'd be a cash cow.

I know people who have worked at Twitter. Twitter's systems cannot be run, even in maintenance mode, by only a few people on AWS. Not only would Twitter crash / crawl to a halt on AWS, but that's not even enough people.

Exactly. Twitter earned nearly $600M last quarter. Claiming that it has not successfully monetized is simply false.