How would they generate ROI on the investment? Google has no track record with social media, if anything they lack creativity more than Twitter does. There is also no argument for a supplementary role to their other product lines.
Twitter just has to be allowed to be Twitter and not some amalgamation that competes with Facebook in usage metrics when it's an entirely different experience. I know, whatever was on those slides promising the world to early investors are going to make for a hard pill to swallow, but Twitter is reasonably successful imo.
Same way as Youtube.
1. Make advertising massively more efficient by using adwords
2. Cut IT costs dramatically by leveraging existing infrastructure and knowledge
3. Make search more effective to increase user engagement
4. Continue to use Twitter's firehose to improve Google search results about new items and therefore drive revenue to Google's flagship product (they have an agreement in place with Twitter to do since 2015 so but if MSFT buys TWTR that's not going to last and suddenly Bing gets an advantage in generating relevant search results on rapidly emerging issues).
Seems like all they'd have to do is add value to advertisers using the existing ad-word engine. The plan is always the same for any internet holding - build up user base, then invest heavily in the advertising engine to add value for the true customer, advertisers. If you listen to FB conference calls, it's always "we want to build the service to over a billion users, then we'll work hard to create the ad engine to get advertisers as much value as we can."
Why does everyone assume they need growth? I'd be plenty happy to have a company with a 2B revenue stream, call options on other assets in Fabric and Periscope and there's like 0 secular decline.
Yup. Plus they have negative 2 billion in retained earnings, a lot of long term debt, about 20% of total assets are goodwill and intangibles, and if they eventually have to do a stock offering to raise capital it will be a bloodbath for current holders.
Twitter just has to be allowed to be Twitter and not some amalgamation that competes with Facebook in usage metrics when it's an entirely different experience. I know, whatever was on those slides promising the world to early investors are going to make for a hard pill to swallow, but Twitter is reasonably successful imo.