Cash-blackhole Twitter will shower itself in gold by 2015, investors told Twitter has never been able to secure any profit from its operation since its inception in 2006, but investors claimed today that the would-be ad platform's finances could change seriously over the course of the next two years – to the tune of $200m. According to a report from USA Today, two investors, talking on condition of …
They have to make more money this year than they did the year before. And that means adverts as a revenue source. Facebook is getting horrible to navigate due to the "Featured Posts". Twitter, which I use and love today, will be plastered with ads soon after stock is sold. They will have no choice and it will be crap.
Greed will ruin one of the better ideas of the 21st Century.
Nah, EBITDA still in use by a lot of companies who try and use it to smooth out kinks and show "underlying" performance.
The Economist reckons that even $ 17 is probably too expensive. I wouldn't mind but I know that somewhere down the line one of the companies I expect financial probity from (my bank, insurance company, pension fund, etc.) is bound to be sinking some of my savings into this IPO. :-(
I'm not a fan of 'social media' generally, but I'm willing to concede that they may be useful for some people, nay that some people even live their lives through them. But floods of adverts will really piss people off. If Twitter is that important to people then how much would they be willing to pay for an ad-free stream? They claim 150 million active users, so even $10 a year from half of them would raise $750million. Advertising income is currently about $500m a year, losses are running at about $250m a year, so even if they lost half their advertising income by offering 'premium' they'd still be $250m a year in the black, all without having to go public.
I'd have thought it was worth a try, but then the owners wouldn't get a mega-payout.
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