Slashdot Mirror
Maybe It's Time For Jack Dorsey To Pick a Company (theoutline.com)
To Jack Dorsey, running two high-profile companies -- Twitter and Square -- at the same time doesn't seem like a problem. In an earlier interview with The New York Times, he said, "I can split my time and be present at both companies every single day." But despite how confidently Dorsey seems about his leadership roles at both the companies, investors and journalists keep asking him this question. And there's a reason why, both the companies are unprofitable (for now, at least), and pretty much every social media app that emerges on the face of the Earth is able to gain more users and figure out a better business plan than the decade-old Twitter. In a column on The Outline, Adrianne Jeffries writes: This question popped up again this week on Twitter's earnings call. Twitter missed its fourth quarter revenue targets. The stock is down and advertising revenue is down. User growth plateaued a year ago. Bloomberg estimated that Twitter has about 140 million daily active users, which was recently surpassed by the much-younger Snapchat. [...] Unlike Twitter, Square has real competitors, including PayPal, Intuit, and Stripe. "Twitter's got a niche where it owns that niche," said Jay Ritter, a professor at the Department of Finance at the University of Florida who specializes in IPOs. "Square, on the other hand, has competition. It is not something where it owns a niche. There are other ways to have easy electronic payments. And consequently, investors are more concerned about, is Square going to be able to get sufficient size that it then becomes profitable? Or is a competitor going to wind up dominating the market?" That's one reason why investors, and probably Dorsey himself, are still seduced by Twitter. While Twitter has seen user growth stall -- a very bad sign for a social network -- it's still able to capture a lot of mindshare, and some investors believe that that means there is still a windfall to be made. Facebook, after all, saw its stock cut in half after its IPO only to rebound and march steadily upward. At this point, it's clear that Facebook has a solid business and terrifying staying power. That's what Twitter investors want: to dominate a market, trap advertisers, and conquer the world. The possibility that maybe Twitter has no competitors because there is no money to be made in microblogging is sidelined. As Ritter said, "Just because it's a winner-take-all market doesn't mean it's a profitable winner-take-all market."
It's Twitter has jumped the shark, big time.
People are fed up with their confusing selective enforcement of banning people and tweaking the feeds.
The only people left are spammers, Trump and haters. And by haters I mean haters of everything, doesn't matter what.
Reminds me of that sinking feeling on Digg a while ago, and the current sinking feeling on Reddit and Facebook.
Slashdot is still somewhat relevant as long as they aren't political and stick to tech, it's great.
There is no coming back from their stance on free speech. Even if they changed today, a lot of users would remain skeptical. I rarely use twitter anymore unless it's to complain to companies that still think Twitter is the next big thing...
I know a lot of people like to turn in Russian bots to Twitter for fun, so it's difficult to extrapolate user growth from abuser shrinkage.
And they have very tiny bot hands, so you know it shrinks bigly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When you're talking about a guy running two different companies, it might make some sense to specifically mention both of them by name in the first sentence or two.
#DeleteChrome
Twitter has reached peak tweet.
They tacitly admitted it when they established the "trust and safety council". Fucking thought police.
It doesn't matter who the CEO is. He's not the one killing Twitter. SJW convergence is the cancer eating it from the inside, and it needs to be cut out promptly to save the patient.
1) Print up flyers for a huge social justice meeting.
2) Fire everyone that shows up.
3) Undo everything that any of those people initiated.
See that "Preview" button?
Pretty much. If nothing else they should have picked a less Orwellian-sounding name.
And never served a purpose that was compelling. I'm surprised it hasnt been sucked up it's own ass
Maybe It's Time For Jack Dorsey To Pick a Company
In a time when a businessman can be elected president of the U.S without revealing their tax returns or divesting their ownership of their companies, Dorsey can do whatever the frick he wants to do.
Dorsey can do whatever the frick he wants to do.
Whatever the frick??
Is frick the new frak, now that fracking means fracking instead of frigging?
I think I'm two swear words behind the gimes
He should concentrate his critical mass on totally fucking one of them up, and only then switch to absolutely wrecking the daylights the other.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And it all goes down hill from there.
Pretty soon the disputants get dragged into an actual confangled courtroom where you're not allowed to address the judge as "your esteemed ball sack".
Fucking language police.
The stock is down and advertising revenue is down.
Last year I spent some money on advertisement on online platforms. 80% of spent went to Facebook, 15% to Google properties, and whatever remaining to Twitter.
The ad platform of Facebook is *the* most sophisticated - the sort of filtering and targeting you can do is detailed, you can build an audience. Twitter is the worst, even the interface is from 1999.
Facebook is not making significant missteps. And Twitter is not taking any steps...forget about missteps. Whoever who's running Twitter should rework their ad platform, then it may or may not make profits.
But the core issue of Twitter...why push for profits? If the inventors were not greedy they could have used the model of Craigslist, remain as a useful public service. There will be enough money for your needs, not your wants.
Tat Tvam Asi
Something makes me feel like all these anti Twitter news things are hit pieces. How many times do you hear about other companies almost on a weekly basis that are doing poorly? This has been covered in all angles. They have 140 million users and are a name brand pretty much. What are you trying to accomplish by constantly reporting that they are dying? I don't care either way but its just funny how often this is reported on.
> pretty much every social media app that emerges on the face of the Earth is able to gain more users and figure out a better business plan than the decade-old Twitter.
Hardly. Even the almighty Google barely managed a tenth the number of active users that Twitter has. Now, Oompa Loompa in chief is putting Twitter in the headlines every day.
Their business model is a different issue, but they have users.
Twitter is out of control and it's obvious that there is no leadership at the helm. They're banning accounts left and right, and typically without any serious reason. Or when they do it's over something mildly offensive. Meanwhile Twitter leadership acts like 12k calls to assassinate the President don't constitute unimpeachable grounds to bring down the banhammer.
So remember kids, you can't say "I hate n----s" on Twitter if your account comes off as white. That's a violation of their community standards, but committing a federal felony in what you write, that's Twitter's idea of protected speech.
The only question at this point is who is dumber, the board or shareholders, as no one is bring Twitter into court to explain why Twitter is letting inmates run the asylum and just as important... how many tens of millions of wasted engineering manhours have been wasted on this bullshit.
I agree wholeheartedly.
to stop telling other people what to do.
Does he need to turn the knobs of the company every day?
What if Twitter merged with Square?
Think about it.
Jack Dorsey is the CEO of both companies.
They're both hemorrhaging cash.
Their investors are a bunch of hype hungry desperate idiots.
And combined they wouldn't be half-bad.
Hell, if Twitter and Square merged it would be the greatest micropayments company of all time.
Not to mention Twitter is basically a blockchain. Boom, more hype than you know what to do with.
I for one would totally tweet some birdbit to pay for stuff.
Not to mention Venmo is a great precedent for something similar, yet has nowhere close to the popularity that the combined forces of Twitter and Square could command.
All together, you have a major merger that takes two companies with negative profitability and turns them into a powerhouse for social payments, micropayments, blockchains, and slurping up investor hype money like no tomorrow.
"Squarebird: It's what's happening for business."
Don't half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.