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Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by sambobeckingham on Sunday October 09, 2016 @04:24PM (#12673248)
50 people to maintain a site the size of Twitter?
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by sputknick on Sunday October 09, 2016 @04:31PM (#12673289)
Serious question (because I've never worked on a site that large) does the size of the site mean anything as to how many engineers are needed to maintain it? I would think it would be more a function of complexity?
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by adventured on Sunday October 09, 2016 @04:42PM (#12673351)
There is a loose correlation, yes.

Security, abuse / harassment, fraud, community interaction, developer relations, 24/7 maintenance & ops, APIs, marketing & PR, legal, advertising, physical security / cleaning etc (whether outsourced or not it's a cost), secretarial, accounting, human resources & recruiting, sales, engineering, various management and so on.

The notion that you could run a $2.5 to $3 billion sales business with 100 people is a very bad joke. To deliver on that kind of sales level, you need more than a hundred people working in your sales organization alone. There are only a few types of businesses that can operate that thin at that size of sales, most of which are in the financial world.

Twitter doesn't need to cut down to 100 people to become nicely profitable, they need to cut down to 1,000 - 1,500 (while reducing infrastructure costs). Facebook delivers $1.5 million in sales per employee. Twitter's overall business is less complex and easier to operate than Facebook, they could deliver a higher ratio.

Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by luhn on Sunday October 09, 2016 @04:39PM (#12673340)
I don't have any experience with large-scale sites either, but here's my view:

It is a function of complexity, but complexity is often necessitated by scale. More users means more problems with scale, which leads to increased complexity to address the problems, which leads to a larger team needed to maintain the software.

That being said, 50 engineers seems enough to me for maintenance.

Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by blakeyrat on Sunday October 09, 2016 @06:36PM (#12673948)
I doubt 50 people is enough to even field the various legal requests Twitter gets during a normal month.
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by ghaff on Sunday October 09, 2016 @06:50PM (#12674010)
Whether or not it's 50 people to field legal requests, it's certainly more than zero. And I'm sure that you don't need to look hard to find complaints that, even given current staffing levels, it's hard to reach a human who can deal with a hijacked account/harassment/etc. Scaling up from narrowly scoped technical support takes a lot more people.
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by icebraining on Sunday October 09, 2016 @05:58PM (#12673744)
Whatsapp only had 50 engineers even when they reached 900M users. Now, granted, Twitter may be a more complex system, but assuming they would just be maintaining it, they could be enough.
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by dagamer34 on Sunday October 09, 2016 @06:13PM (#12673830)
WhatsApp isn't real-time, and there's no reason for traffic 2 weeks ago to be any bigger than tomorrow.

However, there's a Presidential Debate tonight so you know Twitter's traffic is going to be off the charts.

Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by seizethecheese on Sunday October 09, 2016 @06:22PM (#12673880)
WhatsApp isn't real time?
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by mullen on Sunday October 09, 2016 @08:23PM (#12674320)
Twitter and WhatsApp are both Real Time. However, if they could save a lot money going from Real Time to Near Real Time, they should do it.
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by GFischer on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @08:10AM (#12683573)
I don't know where you live, but people use Whatsapp groups a lot during and after an event.
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by GFischer on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @08:09AM (#12683570)
As many mentioned, Whatsapp runs on 1/20th the number of Twitter employees.

It does have less features, but many of Twitter's are of dubious value.

Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by funkyy on Sunday October 09, 2016 @06:33PM (#12673934)
Look at WhatsApp.
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by nothrabannosir on Sunday October 09, 2016 @06:54PM (#12674022)
And see what? Mostly 1-to-1 events, no search, no broadcast, no history, not badgered with legal matters on any comparable scale, ...

I don't think it's comparable.

Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by funkyy on Sunday October 09, 2016 @08:16PM (#12674294)
Legal would be outsourced, marketing same, spam control - yup, the same. That leaves developers and critical function staff. Twitter could easily work with 200 staff from 2 locations.
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by sanderjd on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:15AM (#12675190)
I'm curious: do you have experience running an organization like this, or are you speculating?
Re:Could Twitter Be Better Off as a Nonprofit? by funkyy on Monday October 10, 2016 @07:51AM (#12676503)
Working for. I was working for an outsourcing company that catered for companies like that. My hourly rate were ridiculously high, but still companies would be better off hiring us, than employing.