Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Stock Plunges 21 Percent After Earnings Show Effects of Fake-Account Purge (marketwatch.com)
Twitter shares fell 21% on Friday as the company reported that user growth had turned negative, even as its quarterly results beat Wall Street expectations. The decline was even greater than Facebook's almost 19 percent plunge in shares after the social media giant reported disappointing results. MarketWatch reports: Twitter posted a profit for the third consecutive quarter, with its $134 million in net income equating to 13 cents a share. Adjusted per-share earnings came to 17 cents. The FactSet consensus estimate had been 16 cents. Twitter's revenue climbed 24% to $710.5 million to beat the FactSet consensus estimate by about $2 million. Even as executives talked about Twitter's bright future on the earnings calls, investors appeared to react to Twitter's slowing user growth, as its monthly user count went south, falling by 1 million to 355 million, as compared with the year's first quarter. The decline was expected after recent reports had the company purging about a million fake accounts a day.
I honestly think one of the main reasons Trump won was the media's refusal to call him out on obvious lies and his shady business record. And that refusal was fueled by a desire to see a horse race and to suck up all those ad buys. Trump should never have been a serious candidate. He refused to release his tax returns, has a string of failed businesses and a court case where he admitted under oath his net worth isn't near what he claims and a long history of extra-marital affairs of the sort that don't go down well with the base he was trying to appeal to. That baggage should have wrecked him. But the media continually went easy on him even as they piled on Hillary.
Of course if they'd buried Trump in his own bad press early on folks would have stopped paying attention and the guys bank rolling his campaign would stop; meaning no more free eyeballs and no more free ad money. Trump got something like a billion in free coverage most of it positive. But then again if the media was doing it's job we'd be calling Bernie Mr President.
Okay, just so I'm clear here.
You think the media *wasn't* incessantly harsh on Trump in the run-up to the election.
You think most of the media coverage was positive.
I am at a loss as to how, exactly, the media could have been more harsh...
Using Twitter is like playing Russian Roulette. Every time you tweet, you pull the trigger. Most of the time, nothing happens, but sooner or later you'll get unlucky and the Internet mob will destroy you for what you tweeted (latest case in point: James Gunn).
Maybe, just maybe, people are finally beginning to realize just how toxic Twitter really is. It only took a few thousand ruined lives and careers to get the point across.
What's interesting me about this news, also extended to Facebook, is the interplay between the corporate value that's actually based on network effects versus the delusional stock prices that drive the market cap. To review, the idea of network effects is that more users of the network increase the value of the network, often more than linearly. However, what happens when lots of the users become fake identities that are not actually contributing any real value? The tiny bit of the stock price that is related to actual value (rather than gambling machines battling to the death) is going to have to adjust when the network appears to shrink.
From a fundamental level (as if anyone cared anymore relative to technical speculation), I don't see any value in Twitter from the git go.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Not disagreeing with you at all.
Trump would have won.
People wanted change.
Hillary self-identified as Obama 2.0.
The Democratic party rigged their whole primary process. Bernie was not supposed to be there to dilute the vote.
Clinton had too much baggage and Sanders was too radical to the left.
Trump promised whatever it was that his immediate rally-goers needed to survive.
Back to your point:
Businesses don't care about anything except money.
America is not a Republic or a democracy.
It's a Capitalistic society.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
During the primaries all the left wing msm went easy on him and treated him with kid gloves. The moment he won the primaries the MSM barring Fox news completely flipped the script.
During the primaries all the left wing msm went easy on him and treated him with kid gloves. The moment he won the primaries the MSM barring Fox news completely flipped the script.
During the election CNN tripped over themselves to give Trump air time. The one that stands out was when they all, CNN included ignored a Hillary Clinton speech to show an empty podium while they were waiting for Trump. link
Trump was good for ratings. Unfortunately ratings is a shitty way to elect a president.
Most didn't take Trump seriously early on, since they though for sure he would implode at any time, but he never did. Cruz in particular seemed to be positioning himself to take Trump's voters when he did implode, though it was Cruz that actually eventually went on a rant. link While I also loath Cruz, that rant makes some really good points.
I suspect Trump will get a primary challenger if he doesn't get impeached before. I just don't know if the spineless republicans will choose a sane alternative. Trump will certainly seek to destroy all challengers, usually with lies, insults and schoolyard bullying, and of course never forget projection.
Sure current CNN and all the rest is going after Trump now, but then that is simply because he is truly awful in almost every way imaginable and sure when Trump calls CNN fake news and denigrates them, well it might, just might be providing some motivation for those at CNN to work just a bit harder. If world war 3 ever begins, it won't be due to some brilliant generals planning. No it will be because of people like Trump making too many mistakes, pushing bombast and bullshit too far until one mistake too many is made.
Most likely sooner or later we will crash the economy. Think about it. We have basically injected heroin into the bloodstream of America with all the insane tax cuts that are direct borrowing. We did this at a time the American economy was doing well. Then we start fucking up everything with tariffs left and right. Mix in a bit of random destruction of the environment and wrecking of the accomplishments in improving healthcare. Don't forget loss of any norms and decency. Let simmer and see what happens.
I'm guessing we will eventually see a crash, but this time we will be so broke. Furthermore we will have alienated many of our allies.
Will there be any country willing to help America when the crash occurs or will they look on us much like a normal person looks at a drug user thrashing outside in the cold while America squeezes some more drugs into its system? Of course at some point you have to cut the users off. If it starts looking like we can't pay back all our debt, well we will get cut off. The fact that we are led by a person who has welshed on his debt multiple times can't help matters.