Twitter was down because an employee accidentally deleted data
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
(Mass layoffs across major tech companies)
(Delayed consequences of idiotic management practices arrive)
“We need top talent!”
(2024 is hottest developer market ever, as long as keyword AI appears on resume)
I don't see how the events up to today doesn't tell us that Twitter can indeed survive on a reduced workforce.
There may be growing and adapting pains but, overall, the service is working and not degrading.
The company may very well not survive much longer but I don't think it'll have anything to do with having fired all those devs.
The problematic side was the business side, so if laying of a few thousand people extended the runway to figure things out, it made all the sense. And if it ends crashing and burning regardless, then, who cares?
> The problematic side was the business side, so if laying of a few thousand people extended the runway to figure things out, it made all the sense.
They fired people selling ads and people caring about customers (meaning ad buyers). Which directly caused loss of income.
But the catastrophic scenario that some people painted, where Twitter was basically walking dead timebomb ready to crash irreparably at any second, wasn't true, clearly.
The severe and immediate loss of advertising however was not just a minor messed up part of the takeover. The money making parts of business is something that does matter.
That’s a big if. They took out huge loans for the acquisition, which means big interest payments added on.
Their finances were never that dire; they were profitable in 2018 and 2019.
The finances of a succesful/healthy company aren't usually decribed as 'not being that dire' to be fair.
Ten years of operation and still unprofitable isn't great.
It’s likely more dire now, not less. From all accounts, the savings from staff cuts have been met with lost advertising revenue, Twitter Blue hasn’t made a dent, and they’ve got big interest payments to meet.
IMO Twitter Blue wasn't as much about making a load of money, as it was Musk sticking a stake in the ground and saying 'We are going to change things fast and experiment with things - and I don't want sacred cows'.
Again with the giant ifs.
No they won't, because there are an additional ~1.5 billion the company has to pay in interest, as a result of the takeover. Twitter has fluctuated around profitability the last few years, now they have an albatross in interest payments around their neck. The only way Musk can lead them to a "better track to profitability" is if he unlocks significantly more revenue. He's been going in the opposite direction so far.
And the acquisition itself is the source of the massive new debt.
So, then, once the acquisition went through, the situation was definitely dire.
That didn't happen, and Twitter is now about as terrible as it's ever been, so they're coming back.
Technically also profitable in 2021 - without the $800M lawsuit settlement, they'd have made $580M profit instead of $220M loss.
The user exodus to Mastodon seems to have stopped. The service is still mostly up and working. Most of the big advertisers seem to be there again.
Has it? I'm now seeing relatively mainstream youtubers (e.g. stand up maths as the latest example) plugging their mastodon in videos, and I think most FOSDEM presentations I saw linked a mastodon.
"Only the Engineers" vs "only the Business" is unnecessarily specific.
So the business side is very much in a bad spot, objectively.
Therefore I judge it the probable main culprit if the company fails.
Someone fixed it in time and nothing was lost except some reputation points for Musk and Twitter.