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A comment on Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google. Parent comment

Re:Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include S... by danohu on Friday September 23, 2016 @04:31PM (#12567719)
Their annual revenue is about $6 per user [1]. The problem isn't absolute failure to monetize, it's massive costs. If you thought you could run twitter without their ~4000 employees, you might have a chance of pulling some cash out of there.

The problem is, it's hard to simultaneously clamp down on costs and push for growth. In SV, anything other than growth is an admission of failure. If you aren't flinging money into R&D, everyone will assume it's the start of a downward spiral.

[That, and you can't buy twitter without outbidding all the True Believers]

[1] http://www.viewproxy.com/twitter/2016/2/annualreport2015.pdf

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Re:Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include S... by ryandrake on Friday September 23, 2016 @05:28PM (#12568104)
Have an up-vote. That's the big problem isn't it? It's no longer acceptable to simply get control of costs, make the ink black instead of red, and milk your product for a nice steady profit--then, once that happens, figure out if it's appropriate to grow from there.
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