Hasn't Twitter racked up 2.5B in losses and yet to turn a profit (though reportedly close to doing it for the first time ever). 2.5B in losses for a platform you could build and scale for what, $10M now. Very questionably successful - some people got rich so yes, i suppose?

That's why I added (questionable).

I've made the mistake at one company of thinking that my job was to architect solid software that was sustainable for the long term.

What they really wanted was to have software that was "good enough" and had all of the checkbox features to be attractive to potential acquirers so the investors would stop breathing down their necks.

Twitter "made 2.5B losses". Yeah ... that's bad ... but not from the perspectives of investors.

Jack Dorsey became a billionaire from those losses. The same is true for probably all other early investors. For an investment in Twitter to have done really badly, there was a "bear" period of about 2 years.

And before you say it, remember that even Google stock dropped 60%, Facebook's 70%. Twitter's drop actually looks pretty reasonable in comparison.

So firstly, I don't think twitter is bad, and secondly, I don't think people have given up on twitter, and thirdly, that seems pretty justified.

A business model is by definition "bad" if it doesn't make sustainable profits. Of course you have to allow for time, but Twitter isn't a startup.

Well I would be very happy indeed if I ever make a business for myself 10x as bad as twitter.

Wouldn't you ?

As a founder - yes, if I could convince VCs to give me enough money to fund a money losing venture long enough to take public to get the market to value my company at a few billion.

As an employee who has a job because the company exists? Yes

As a retail investor - I wouldn't be quite as happy.

It's now the platform for official communications from the US Government's Executive Branch, so you can expect it to worsen based on red tape alone.

That has little to do with their architecture, methinks.

People have been asking for years why Twitter is so bloated with employees. A lot of people think that the bloat is partially caused by a poor architecture that they have to maintain.

Contrast that to the small staff that Instagram had before getting acquired. It's still run on a relatively small staff now.