Twitter China head Kathy Chen leaves company
reuters.com
reuters.com
http://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-china-heads-past-ties-to...
Relevant portions:
> Twitter said its strategy in China hasn’t changed and that Ms. Chen’s main job is to sell services like advertising, data analytics and developer platforms to companies in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
> Underlying the messages were concerns that Twitter, which casts itself as a champion of free speech, was motivated to hire Ms. Chen as part of a strategy of compromise aimed at getting Chinese authorities to lift the block.
> A Twitter spokesman said on Tuesday that wasn’t the case and that Ms. Chen had been hired to take advantage of increased interest among Chinese companies in advertising on the platform to reach a global audience. “We have no plans to change anything about our service in order to enter the market,” the spokesman said.
> Twitter has consistently said it won’t compromise its service in order to operate in China. It described former CEO Dick Costolo’s first visit to China in 2014 as the executive’s attempt to learn more about the local culture and technology industry. His successor, Mr. Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter, has emphasized a dedication to the company’s values and mission, including freedom of speech.
This is supported by the Reuter's article which mentions her work on courting "potential Chinese advertisers for the social media platform" and growing "its Greater China advertiser base nearly 400 percent over the past two years."
I'm not sure what 20161112 was talking about.
It puzzles me why so many people in the West are trying to chase after the elusive dream of making it big in China. I can't name any white person that made it in Chinese startup scene in the way immigrants have IPO'd in the US. I use race as an important metric to compare the two cultures. One, where anyone regardless of race can make it and have made it (even if it's extra harder for a non-white person depending on the industry) and the other, where only Chinese speakers and ethnic Chinese have a far higher advantage and restrict outsiders.
In addition, I don't know a single American using Weibo instead of Twitter.
Made in China just isn't good for branding and China isn't "cool' yet. Hell, even Chinese buyers will pay premium for western names and avoid locally produced good, if they have the money to spend.
China is an unique example. The truth is China is in a totally different world with totally different culture(maybe not as different as before) and purchase habits, so localization is hell important in China! That's probably why software tends to be compete less well than hardware like Apple and General Moto, since it needs more localization to gain popularity.
Immigrants... Every citizen in USA was an immigrant 300 years ago... if you are talking about new immigrants, most of them had higher education in USA before they built a startup, which definitely makes it easier to have success since they know they country more. Also English is a more well-accepted language, that's probably the biggest reason why not so many Americans willing to study in China.
I am a Chinese so my opinion is likely to be biased.
Twitter is an example of a company that has had poor performance and may have been to immature to go public.
What exactly do you expect of companies that go public? What you wrote, and seemingly reflective of a common sentiment, is an extremely loaded statement of what anyone should expect of "glorious publicly traded unicorns".
Unless Twitter committed fraud by not disclosing something, then there should no really no other expectation or aberration in their publicly traded status. The banks, board and the CFO priced the shares and they've been printing money for all their employees using the deep liquid market that all these people fawning over tech companies perpetuate.
So I'm a little confused at what is so interesting about their poor performance. Have you seen the stock market, some companies' shares go up, others go down.
That said, a public company that has an incomplete product roadmap-- or poduct, shows no profit and has a poorly understood revenue strategy is immature. GM has been public for a comparable amount of time. It is well understood what they do-- they make and sell cars. Twitter aggregates and dynamically prices advertising and monetizes information. It is much harder to understand a new business model and one that is not making money. It was not ready to IPO.
Yes, the market goes up and down. Twitter was a shitty company, still is a shitty company and will be a shitty acquisition. I understood that and I didn't buy it. Thats how the market works.
Edit: While the market goes up and down, Twitter has pretty much just gone down. It was in the 50s 2 years ago and has pretty much just fallen.
Do we expect to be able to invest in Koch Industries or Cargill, which continue to be private? To me that's underlying sentiment.
Yes, that law is trying to protect people with <$1M; but it does consequently deny them a class of opportunity - even if both company and would-be investor want it.
Pointing that out does not mean JumpCrisscross thinks people should have a right to invest in a company which doesn't want their money.
But here's the thing:
1) Angel investing is break even at best (I quote Paul Buchheit on this)
2) in a VC lead round, the VC firm will fight to keep out individuals as much as possible if said individual is not a professional investor of sorts (ex: you're Marc Benioff).
3) Access is a greater barrier to entry than funds or accredited investor status.
So when you combine the above, retail investors won't have access to great investment opportunities anyways, even when accredited investor status becomes defunct.