Twitter Has Lost a Staggering Amount of Money | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Has Lost a Staggering Amount of Money

time.com

$2 billion is not staggering amount. Given it has over 300 Million active users - thats just $6~$7 for user acquisition.

If you want to build twitter today - its definitely going to cost more. It has built a brand - and hundreds of millions of loyal fans.

Question is - is it worth the valuation thats put on the company. Given now they are cash flow positive - that they have lost $2bn in the past is immaterial.

Just $6-$7 isn't a lot, until you multiply by 300 million and realize that they aren't worth $6 each.

$2bn is absolutely material. If their growth is predicated on setting money on fire, future forecasting has to take that into account. Sure, it is a sunk cost, but unless the fundamentals of acquisition have changed then their valuation is not nearly as high.

And the the fundamentals of acquisition have changed. Unfortunately, in the wrong direction.

Facebook's quarterly net income is in the ballpark of $1 billion. $2B is a reasonable amount of money for a social media monopoly.

I envision all of this taking place in the next 10 years.

- twitter hasn't been profitable for the past decade.

- twitter can't turn around, neither can other unicorns.

- wheres the return???

- investors abandon

- twitter announces mass layoff

- Facebook purchases twitter

- Facebook faces same music shortly

- Decentralized Twitter appears!

- Facebook attempts to capture it...it failed!

- Decentralized Twitter uses No Ads, No Tracking.

- It is highly effective!

- Decentralized Facebook appears!

- Cryptoanarchy movement arises

- The biggest wealth equalizer in human history begins.

- Assassination and Weapons market emerges. Decentralized, trustless free for all markets free of law enforcement. Anyone can be touched for the right amount of the single most untraceable anonymous digital medium used to exchange goods and services.

- Governments slowly lose their grip to pockets of cryptoanarchial markets. Government services and jobs are replaced with network contracts executed with zero centralized decision making.

- Anarchy movement settles down as stability is introduced by a decentralized internet.

I will happily bet as much money as you want that this won't come to pass.

If for no other reason than no decentralized communication service has ever been as convenient as a centralized one. And convenience is King for communication.

(NB: the list ended at "- Decentralized Facebook appears!" when I made my comment.)

I think you need to split out the directory function. The internet is decentralized. It is DNS that that makes it convenient, and DNS is centralized. Is there a reason that convenient directories need to be centralized?

What are you trying to gain?

    The biggest wealth equalizer in human history begins.

This is what cryptoanarchists actually believe

Sounds like a good dystopic scifi novel, but honestly I don't see any of that happening any time soon as a real world scenario.

I honestly think another world war is more likely than that scenario.

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