Yes, I think a large part of the hate that Twitter gets is from people who see Twitter as a silly product, like Snapchat or something.

Yes, Twitter has challenges in monetizing, and yes, Twitter is weird, and yes, Twitter hasn't made a profit yet. But fundamentally, Twitter is still the preferred platform for following media, celebrities, politicians, internet-famous-people, and quick ad-hoc public communication with those people. And just like how Facebook's success is that all your friends are there, Twitter's success is that every public figure you're interested in is there, even the geeky small nuts-and-bolts types like writers and programmers and artists.

It has become the public plaza of the Internet.

If I want to post pictures of my kids, I'll do it on Facebook. If I want to pick a fight with my city councillor about a decision he made or get in touch with a script-writer of my favourite movie, I'll do it on Twitter.

Hell. Most of tech-support is through Twitter. My tweet carries a large amount of power compared to a phone-call to tech-support.

Yup. Twitter carries the implicit threat of "satisfy me or I'll make a public stink". It's the closest we non-journos can do to putting a mic in their face and demanding answers on camera.

The only reason revenue, users, scale, investor love, patents, staff, infrastructure, etc. matter is that they usually are indicators of potential for profit. Profit is the entire point of investing in a company.

But the greater indicator of potential for profit here is that Twitter has existed for 10 years and has never turned a profit.

Given this, I think that revenue, users, scale, investor love, patents, staff, infrastructure, etc. have all become disconnected from Twitter's actual profit potential. They haven't made a profit, they aren't going to make a profit. I think that the only logical choice is to dismiss the idea that Twitter has value.

But, as I noted, perceived value can be as profitable as real value for an investor. Just don't be naive and mistake the perceived value for real value--naivety will lose you money.

Twitter has existed for 10 years, as you say. How many 10 year old companies have 300mm users and revenue at $2.2 billion and growing at this pace?

This is the wrong question to ask if you're investing, and I've already explained in the parent comment why this is the wrong question to be asking. Usually these things are indicators of profit potential, but they aren't in Twitter's case.

There is no way Twitter couldn't turn a profit on $2B in revenue. But that's not their focus at the moment. Instead they really want to grow the revenue numbers even higher, worrying about the profit later. However they may not be able to increase revenue much higher, and investors aren't really interested in a profitable but stagnant Twitter. But if they wanted a profit they certainly could, starting by right sizing the company rather than pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D that is barely moving the needle.

I think Salesforce have never had profit. Neither Youtube for Google. The problem with twitter is that people do not believe they could make big money alone and for a long time without be destroyed for someone else in a garage. They still see a company that needs a cash cow that could financial the cost of innovation.

You make a great point, Twitter's revenue has been growing for the last five years. The market cap of Twitter is supposed to reflect its future value and this is where things get complicated. With a no longer growing user base, limited additional real estate to show ads, strong 3rd party ecosystem which doesn't display ads, they're in a much tougher position than they were 3 years ago.

Are you saying that they will attain profitability at some point?

Why wouldn't they? It would seem like they could downsize below $2 billion in costs, no?