Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Matt Shuff — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:15:13 -0000

Twitter won't generate profit. It will be bought by someone who will envelop Twitter and make it a part of their brand-building and customer experience content...Google or Microsoft? The value of Twitter is not the intrinsic value of Twitter.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Steve Fisher — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:06:57 -0000

It's interesting how Twitter can be so highly valued with no real sales or advertising revenue.

It will be more interesting to see how Twitter will evolve in the future the profit arena.

Sooner or latter sales will need to be generated to pay investors.

But what a return on investment so far, it's just simply amazing.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Mere Mortal — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:33:30 -0000

Isn't this exactly the same sort of hype that's gotten the economy into trouble in the first place? a runaway train called h.y.p.e. and it just runs down the same track as before...it doesn't matter what you name it or what sector it is but universally it's known as BS.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Naomi — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:57:16 -0000

I wonder why they didn't start off like this site did, with the idea of everyone making money from day one:
http://www.sokule.com/BNJEn...

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Jeremy Campbell — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:11:48 -0000

Wow those are certainly some interesting stats, thanks for digging those up Ben, there sure aren't many companies that can raise over $150 million without making a cent in profit. They must have some very impressive future projections to show investors.

I wonder how many new users Twitter is adding/day right now?

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Steve Pohlit — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:12:29 -0000

I suppose it is possible for funding of this magnitude without a positive cash flow and profit strategy, but I doubt it. I really hope a sound one is in place and the fact that it is not know is not relevant. Twitter is enjoyed and loathed by so many. Continuous growth and value is more likely with positive cash flow.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Brad_Williamson — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:40:06 -0000

The most intriguing story of Twitter's history will be the day people begin to realize the fad is fading FAST.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Roger Toennis — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:33:30 -0000

"No ADs"? What ads are you talking about? The ads tweeters post to their streams for the businesses they work for or own?

Kind of tough to sort what is an ad and what isn't.

I think they will start offering advanced content filtering and follower connection capabilities as part of the service and charge a premium subscription fee for those.

Apple has it's Genius service for recommending music to me and also setting up smart playlists. If twitter had a Twitter Genius feature that did that and made it easy for me to get right to content and tweeters I am likely to be interested in and I would pay for that.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

jiberjab — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:17:17 -0000

Interesting post Ben.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

EdHartigan — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:48:49 -0000

Interesting stuff. Thanks Ben.

One question - Are the dates correct for the series A and B rounds? If so, they took $97,500 on 11th July 07 and then $5.5m 6 days later?! Must be the shortest gap between rounds of all time!

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

sharin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:44:56 -0000

Interesting breakdown. Thanks for the great info.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Anand — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:52:58 -0000

Wow..super cool..exactly the kind of numbers that caused the housing boom, recession, etc...all notional..

at least this time I am happy..only those investors with no idea where they been flushing their millions into will be gone...I'm happy for earth..

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

rajagiri4 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:24:45 -0000

this story is interesting. nice.

http://www.seodoom.info/200...

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

mykey1 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:15:22 -0000

You are right on the money! Let's hope the burn rate is small enough for this party to last for awhile. In the meantime, marketers should get their followers onto an email list that they own! At least that won't go away in case Twitter does!

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

mykey1 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:12:33 -0000

It's not unusual for a company to show no profits in the early stages of growth. If you look at Amazon.com, they had no profits for years but grew a huge distribution channel and now they are raking it in. Hopefully that's what will happen with Twitter.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

wolfmanjeffrey — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:56:29 -0000

Twitters founders are beginning to remind me of a unemployed 38-yesr-old living in his parents basement. They barrow money from there folks and say “yeah, I’ll pay you back when I get a job” and the parents just chuckle knowing they’ll never see that happening anytime soon.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

wolfmanjeffrey — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:51:57 -0000

What concerns me is what’s going to happen when twitters VC start calling them on the returns. Who are these guys spooning with that they can get this kind of money without an investor exit plan or even a profit projection? If they cant product a profit soon there going to ruin the VC market for the tech industry for the rest of us for a very long time!

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Ryck Lent — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:25:44 -0000

How about a Twitter Buy Out clock? Great iPhone app! It would need multiple dials:
- $ Daily Burn Rate
- $ Venture Funding + $ Revenue - $ Total Burn = $ Available Funding
- $ Valuation / $ Available Funding = Wishful Thinking Ratio (e.g. $1B / $100M = WTR of 10)
- $ Available Funding / $ Daily Burn Rate = Days of Survival Left
- $ Daily Burn Rate / Daily Tweet Volume = $ Cost per Tweet (or revenue per tweet needed to break even. How much would that annual sub cost?)

OK ... who's got the burn rate? We can model the rest.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Mark — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:39:03 -0000

Yeah. $1 Billion.

If I could convince half the people I am following to get onto Identi.ca instead I would drop Twitter over night.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Sidharth Dassani — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:34:00 -0000

You said "Twitter has yet to make a single cent in profit" > Leave profit aside but have they even made a single cent of revenue ?

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Helen Stepchuk — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:56:35 -0000

What the heck!? 1 billion!!! Jeeez.... I wonder what their plan is on making $$$ finally ... Are they just going to sell it .... seems like the easiest solution .... wow...

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Brock — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:08:33 -0000

Why does anyone think Twitter is worth shit? Twitter is blogging platform with an open API and a 140 character posting limit. Only it's worse than blogging because it's got a 140 character limit and it's on a centralized service, rather than de-centralized protocol like RSS. That's why Twitter goes down and "the blogosphere" does not.

As the post says, Twitter has not made a cent of profit - and it won't. Not as long as it remains what it is today. And now with RSSCloud and Pubsubhubbub it doesn't even have a monopoly on "real time." Any blogging platform (like Blogger) is just as real time, and I get "push" updates in Google Reader.

There's always the possibility that Twitter will reinvent itself somehow, in the same sense that Google reinvented itself from "a search engine" to "exclusive ad wholesaler to a search engine". That still might happen, but it hasn't happened yet.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Tom Guard — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:57:08 -0000

How will Twitter make money?
What people fail to see is that Twitter has a "real-time" search. How long does it take for Google to pick up on something after it is posted unless it is aggregated news it takes a long time.
The twitter search is amazing. I use it to find out what people are saying about certain movies or restaurants.
I can honestly see Twitter using their search to generate a massive amount of money in no time.
There are millions of Twitter users who don't even know that Twitter has a separate page for search.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Carlton Flowers — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:52:31 -0000

Many pple think that Twitter is a waste of time or something to amuse the self-absorbed. The fact that it has not turned a red cent of profit seems to reinforce these beliefs. But if this were the case, we've got a truckload of stupid people with nothing better to do with their money than to throw it down the Twitter rabbit hole. I don't think this is the case. The valuation of Twitter at the $1 billion tells me that there is value here, and those betting on Twitter believe that it will become an integral part of the way we communicate in the future. That doesen't seem like such a stretch to me, since it has already become a vital part of our society. I'm confident that the company will make the transition to a profitable outfit in the near future.

Re: Twitter’s Value: 5 Eye-Popping Stats

Tammy Camp — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:24:39 -0000

Well said Jason. I completely agree with you.