Measuring How Bad Twitter Is

Company cannot find a buyer

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Oct 17, 2016
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My last blog post (exposing Twitter's excessive costs) prompted horror story emails on Twitter (TWTR, Financial).

But the best thing sent to me was a financial history of Facebook. The first copy came from Twitter.

Here are the numbers.

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When Facebook (FB, Financial) had $1.974 billion of revenue it had $1.008 billion of income before taxes.

Twitter is kind of different.

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When Twitter had $450 million of operating losses and $533 million of losses before tax.

There was about $1.5 in difference in costs.

Facebook does more, had more growth runway and had much lower costs.

I received a lot of anecdotes of wild parties and profligate spending, and the plural of anecdote is data - but few things are as convincing as the raw numbers.

The conclusion is inescapable. Jack Dorsey - the Twitter CEO - should be fired.

This should happen regardless of whether Twitter is bought or not. He simply does not deserve the job.


John

PS. Twitter staff - I am not exaggerating. Look at the young man on your left and the young woman on your right. Only one of you three will keep your job.

Don't worry. It should be worse in the C-Suite.

Prepare resumes.