Twitter Is 'Toast' and the Stock Is Not Even Worth $10, Says Analyst (cnbc.com)

Twitter is "toast" as a company and the stock is not even worth $10, according to a research note published Tuesday, following the departure of another top executive at the social media service. From a report on CNBC: The microblogging platform's chief technology officer, Adam Messinger, tweeted that he would leave the company and "take some time off", while Josh McFarland, vice president of product at Twitter, also said he was exiting the company. Both executives announced their departure on Tuesday. Meanwhile, last month, Adam Bain stepped down as chief operating officer last month to be replaced by chief financial officer Anthony Noto, who has yet to be replaced. Twitter has also lost leaders from business development, media and commerce, media partnerships, human resources, and engineering this year. The departures prompted Trip Chowdhry, the managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research, and a noted "uber-bear" on tech stocks, to issue a note on Tuesday claiming Twitter is "toast" and "not even a $10 stock." "Many investors were foolishly building (an) investment thesis based on complete stupidity," Chowdhry wrote. The analyst said that Twitter's data quality is "horrible". Chowdhry said that many pollsters used Twitter data to predict a Hillary Clinton win in the U.S. election but the fact that Donald Trump won shows that data quality is poor. One reason for this is too many fake users on the platform, Chowdhry claims.

Comments

Re:I can hear crying

[dontbemad]

Regardless of your opinions of Trump, it seems pretty ignorant to suggest that Twitter shutting down would completely de-fang him.

It is almost like you're implying that the shutdown of Twitter equates to the shutdown of social media as a concept.

Yes, yes, let the hate flow through you

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us return to the times when a stock's value depended on the P/E ratio and not the mythical confidence fairy.

Re:I can hear crying

[lgw]

Donald Trump has (well, will soon enough) the presidential alert system, so he can message everyone's phone instead. With a piercing alarm, at 3AM, and you can't disable this (unless you root your phone). Trump will be fine.

But where will the Twitter hate mobs go to get their outrage on? What if a scientists wears the wrong shirt - how will they know to be outraged? How will they live if Twitter goes under?

Re:I can hear crying

[Altus]

We should be so lucky

Providing an SJW platform is not a viable business

[urbanriot]

It's been clear to a number of us that Twitter's primary users are more on the social side of the spectrum, lean more to the left, are engaged more in arts and all that, but all of the news snippets over the past year or so seem to come out after the company articulated publicly that they are more or less an SJW platform, that they're going to selectively ban questionable comments under the guise of anti-racism, etc., etc.

Maybe I'm wrong but the timelines literally suggest that Twitter's failure was its political alignment rather than providing a neutral grounds for socializing.

Re:Providing an SJW platform is not a viable busin

[mujadaddy]

I think the unprofitable nature of the thing is what is not "a viable business," identity politics or no.

Lol!!!

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

The analyst said that Twitter's data quality is "horrible".

Using "twitter" and "data" and "quality" in the same sentence made me laugh.

Hate twitter but alternatives seem just as bad

[butchersong]

I've tried several Twitter alternatives some in beta some not and unfortunately, most of the things I dislike about Twitter I dislike about them as well. You can join a network that has a strong anti censorship stance and this seems like progress but then you end up with almost unending amounts of hate and vitriol in excess even of Twitter. Even on platforms populated by people on my side of the political isle (libertarian republican types)... it is just unpleasant and unhealthy and gets old fast. I don't know how you take a global broadcast like platform and make it into something palatable.

The election is a poor barometer of relevance

[Lord Kano]

Virtually everyone predicted a big Hillary win and virtually everyone was wrong.

I have a theory about that.

There was a palpable Anti-Trump PC thing happening. Anything that could possibly be interpreted as a Pro-Trump or Anti-Hillary statement could have ended in an online dogpile of people shouting "Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Transphobic, Islamophobic, Xenophobic" so people kept their thoughts to themselves until they got to the one place where they could express themselves without external pressure, the voting booth.

You can't fault Twitter for misreading the tea leaves just like pretty much everyone else.

Twitter as a protocol

[hipp5]

I say this as a non-user, so I acknowledge that I might be ignorant on the subject. But...

I never understood how/why Twitter (or really any messaging platform/app) is a business. I mean, tweeting does actually seem like a useful tool for certain communication needs, but I don't understand why it's handled through a single service. Why isn't the tweet simply a protocol, like email? People would then just build different clients/apps/platforms that utilize that protocol, just like we do with email.

Re:Twitter as a protocol

[grumpy_old_grandpa]

In "The Internet Is Not the Answer" by Andrew Keen *, he points to some of the problems with today's web services: As opposed to the Internet's golden days of public standards and open protocols, today they are mostly centralized proprietary "winner takes all".

And the reason is simple: When Paul Baran, Bob Taylor, Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, et.al. invented their respective contributions, they were often government employees and as such not seeking or able to pursue monetary gains based on their inventions, or vehemently opposed to do so. They also understood that their protocols had to be public and open in order to be widely adopted.

In today's Internet economy, the goal is not universal standards or federated networks (e.g. email, PSTN), but rather reaching critical mass in walled gardens. If you can show you have amassed enough users, your company gets valued billions. IPO, vest, rinse and repeat. So if there was a public social network protocol, you could jump ship, just as you can with a domain and email today. That would not be in th interest of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp . Much better ride the curve till the next bust.

*) Skip the book; it's a long rant, a gets a bit dull, even if Keen is a good writer.

Re:I can hear crying

[inhuman_4]

The carrier jobs was possible because Mike Pence (the VP-Elect) is currently the Governor of Indiana, where those jobs are.

As fuck fucking up relations with China, the fact that they are building military installations off the Philippine coast suggests that ship sail long ago.

Re:Enough politics, back to the subject

[hodet]

I'm not even sure it has value as a service. Have you ever tried to engage meaningfully on twitter? It's a good platform for celebs to push their endorsements, political candidates to spout their dogma and all matter of people trying to become famous and important by chasing followers, but meaningful interaction is almost nil. Everyone talks but nobody listens. A social network should be social, and twitter really isn't. The most popular only send tweets and don't really respond. In many cases they are paying others to actually do it for them.

Re:Also, there's Gab.ai

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny that you call it segregation. Most users call it freedom to move to greener pastures.

From your self-righteous perspective you might think those "evil bigots" are corralling themselves away somewhere to wither, but in reality, they are flourishing. Brexit, Trump, it will keep happening. They don't need twitter. And when they return, online or in the real world, they will be far more organized and powerful then you ever expected, because you were too stupid and deluded in your little safe space to realize they were growing.

Nationalism is on the rise. Self-destructive political correctness and surrender to foreigners is being challenged more and more every day. The mainstream media, and the sheep who believe them and their cries of fake news will not enjoy control forever. Misandry, anti-white racism, heterophobia, cisphobia, "born-this-way perversions", Islamophilia and Marxism will end as a result of your blind hubris.

True freedom and decency will rise again.

Re:Also, there's Gab.ai

[Z80a]

Most of the power of the alt-right actually comes from liberals running away from the social justice insanity, and as soon this liberals find some good footing, both alt-right and control-left are screwed beyond imagination.
I imagine the alt rights will indeed go the KKK way, while the control left will shrink and get more and more insane at a point they will became an actual terrorist group.