This is something I don't understand. Pardon me if this sounds pie in the sky but how much does it cost to RUN Twitter without any expectations of profit? It seems like the people here in the conversation have knowledge that I lack about Twitter's expenses. It probably is public information but I can't find anything satisfying from a cursory Google search. Anyone want to help me out?
If Twitter were to tighten it's belt today, how would it's operating expenses look like?
I remember talking to Justin TV (precursors to twitch) folks and they said operating a live streaming site wasn't expensive and that one ad every couple of hours was enough to keep the lights on. I imagine running Twitter should be cheaper except for maybe dealing with SMS providers but Twitter is big enough that it could ask for special treatment from telecom providers to get a favorable rate if not to not have to pay anything entirely.
I understand that I'm asking two different questions here. One is how much it costs to operate Twitter at a profit versus what it costs to run Twitter at all (and I'm thinking like a highly upscaled https://mastodon.social than anything Twitter is today, none of this augmented reality play). I do understand that to make a profit, Twitter must be spending heavily to pour over analytics day and night to find s breakthrough but if you remove the need to make a profit, things should be less hectic, right?