I think the problem is, that if Twitter has already grown-up, then it has turned out that they don't have a viable business model. They lost almost $500 million last year and I don't think they have ever been profitable. That's only acceptable if investors see future growth.

Twitter's business model is totally viable - their problem is that they're wasting loads of money they don't have to.

Where?

How about their massive payroll?

Is that really enough to safe Twitter? They are currently losing $500,000,000 per year, and they have 4000 employees.

Even if the average employee make $125,000 per year, they would have to fire EVERYONE. While it may not hurt to cut the number of staff, they'd also need to rethink pretty much every other aspect of their operation.

Twitter employs 3,898 people according to Wikipedia. Assuming everyone makes $125K (a stretch, according to Glassdoor that's the bottom of their range), their payroll is $487M. Benefits on top of that is another $122M, conservatively. You do NOT need 3,898 people to run an outfit like Twitter. They could easily lay off 3500 people and have more than enough left over to operate a sustainable, profitable product for years.

Twitter had more than $2 billion in revenue last year. You don't think that's enough money to run a service like Twitter?

Well yes, but apparently it's not. $2 billion in revenue and they still manage to lose $500 million. So the cost of running Twitter is $2.5 billion.

Do people not understand that revenue isn't the same as profit?

When Facebook bought Instagram, there were fewer than 20 people working there. Twitter has 3,000 employees. I'm thinking Twitter can do a lot to cut their SG&A expenses.

No it can't, but it can be targeted by these negative articles indefinitely, so their stock might get to fall faster, and those who are shorting them can buy their new yacht sooner. ;)

The people shorting Twitter got together to buy a new yacht? Cool!

> and it does it well

Well that's a matter of opinion! ;)

I use it everyday, its great, it also has 2 billion revenue (?).

I don't understand the hate for them.

I'm often rather hard on Twitter, but it's not the company as such that I hate. I hate that they are perceived as a valuable and successful Internet company, when they are clearly neither of those things. At this point Twitter should be the shinning example of the fact that users don't always translate into profit.

At this point Twitter is, as the original comment states, a mature company, but they aren't behaving like one. There is very little reason that Twitter hasn't gone bankrupt. A 2 billion dollar revenue, no profit and no plan for the future.

My best guess is that the people who invest in Twitter are all using it so heavily that they have become blind to the fact that it is a failing company/product.

There are lots of subtle and not-so-subtle design aspects that mean Twitter nudges people into arguments and bullying (not by accident per se, but rather as a result of optimising for "engagement" and not thinking about what that translates into). I don't mind there being sites out there on the Internet that are not for me, but twitter is contributing to the polarisation of society, especially when politicians start taking it seriously.

> twitter is contributing to the polarisation of society

seems a bit harsh, polarisation how ?

In the sense of politics shifting towards the extremes and people having less productive discussion but getting more polemical.

What could be a productive discussion in today's political situation? There is no 'common good' answer to conservative vs liberal choice. It depends - good for who? Conservative is good for passive majority (remember Luddites - you could laugh at them now, but they never recovered to pre-mechanisation living standards. it took 4 generations to do so, until post-WWI times). Liberal is good for active minority. There can't be agreement - it is either us, or them win. That's a polarization, and Twitter can't make it better, or much worse.