They’ve made a decent turnaround in the last two quarters. They made over $700M in Q2 alone, hardly a house of cards anymore. After what happened with Milo, I don’t blame him for walking back from that position, especially if his company is making money now. But I don’t think anyone is in a position to discern motivations other than what he claims.
I'll rephrase: the main challenge that twitter has solved is scaling. Their targeted marketing and business analytics offerings are weak compared to other channels available to marketers, at least that's what I've been told by the marketing folks I've worked with who engage with these platforms.
Their adoption, ubiquitious integration, and branding are the biggest hurdles any competitor has to overcome, assuming someone of similar size doesn’t try. You could have the best BI toolset on the planet, but if nobody has heard of or are using you, it ain’t worth shit.
I mean yeah, but we're discussing an absurd hypothetical in which "twitter, but like, really racist" is a viable enough business on its own that the only remaining hurdles are technical.
Voat? Every time a pedophile sub gets banned a bunch of dudes with anime avatars declare the start of the glorious Voat Revolution but it never goes anywhere.
With all due respect, I don't think you understand the basics of investing in or the adoption of technology, never mind social media technology. I highly recommend that you read a book called "Crossing the Chasm", by Geoffrey Moore. https://www.amazon.ca/Crossing-Chas...1533945281&sr=8-1&keywords=crossing+the+chasm Right now there is no sense in any investor throwing money into a Twitter clone... never mind with the hopes of beating it at it's own game when it is clearly the 800 lbs gorilla. The revenue model becomes less and less attractive when there are more than one user base to sell info on... and unless the clone totally buys out or kills off Twitter, then the value to the consumer (the purchasers of the BI), won't be there. What investors are looking for is the new thing that comes AFTER Twitter... and that's what people are trying to figure out. Funnily enough, Digg's v4 update was an attempt to become more Twitter-like with subscribable/followable streams from websites... and everyone bailed. The push behind that change was an attempt to monetize the site so that the investors could begin to recoup their investment, and it failed. But now Reddit is in the same boat... they're losing money to keep their user base together while they try and figure out how to monetize the site... especially hard since the site is built on the free work done by that user base. If they bail out of Reddit, they're not going to go to a clone of Reddit, they'll look for the thing that comes after Reddit... just like they did from Digg. Twitter has accomplished something that I, personally, didn't think they could pull off... they have found a way to be profitable, without being intrusive to or pissing off their user base. It will be almost impossible for any upstart to spend enough money to become a big enough, new platform that they can then monetize the data from it, and it will cost a SHIT TON of money to even try. I can't imagine any modern day tech investor will jump on that against such a heavily entrenched opponent. The trick is to go find new technology that is at the pre-chasm stage of adoption, invest in it, and then grow that bitch so that it kills Twitter. I don't think anyone's found that silver bullet just yet.
Another bridge collapse, this time a full-blown suspension bridge in Italy. Right now they’re saying “dozens dead” but to my knowledge that’s unconfirmed.
Sounds like its due a combination of poor design, weakening from maintenance, and sub-par concrete mixtures.
As far as suspension bridges go, it’s quite possibly the worst-looking one I’ve seen (in stock photos, not the disaster). This is the same country that has had gorgeous buildings standing for well over 2000 years. Didn’t Italy have/has issue with local infrastructure funding going into total free fall? They always have such deep corruption issues with any level of government. EDIT: a board member (x-Ray?) posted photos of one of Italy’s most prolific cities after its infrastructure shut down because of local corruption. It’s beautiful millennium-old fountains were covered in graffiti, mountains of garbage piled in cobblestone streets because nobody is collecting it, and overrun with apes in pink t-shirts and Inuit glasses verbally assaulting any woman in sight. It may have been Milan or Nice. Not sure. But it was a horrifying realiztion of how ugly things are in that country.
It goes so much deeper than that, too. Italy is a case study for a dysfunctional government and a model for a "loser" nation in the EU system, succeeded only by Greece. EU imposed austerity caused an economic rout in Italy. Outside of tourist meccas, unemployment is over 10% and corruption is rampant at all levels. The country is starting to trend more far-right, nationalistic and isolationist.
Are there any “winners” in the EU besides Germany? Because they seem to be the only nation that benefited from it since it’s inception. It’s so white glove-black glove over there when it comes to the big bosses. Finland has possibly the best functioning, least corrupt government in the entire world. Besides miserable weather people are generally very happy there due to that. Not far from them you have Ukraine. A country re-birthed in Oligarchs and a bunch of mid-level sleazebag bankers who one day right around when grunge rock started to hit the airwaves said “USSR just folded? I guess that somehow makes me a billionaire!”... and there has been peace and prosperity in Ukraine ever since. A country run by straight-up thugs that soulmate with previous Serbian leadership. Back to your comment on Italy, uh, YEAH dude. That country is basically pulling a giant “Detroit” on itself right now, flapping its wings with cinder blocks tied to each one. My mom had me rolling on the floor when her and dad got back from Milan last time: “That was the first time in three trips to Italy that there was something more disgusting than the men!” ...referring to mountains of maggot-festooned curbside garbage not getting collected in the hot Italian sun. Because that’s what you fly to Italy to see. Cluster. Fuck.
Guess what, kids? It’s tuesday, and the Catholic Church is still a rape cult: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/...e-pennsylvania.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes ...that’s over one thousand children, just in the state of Pennsylvania alone. Anybody feel like playing Devil’s Advocate for these fucks this time? Take that beautiful art out of the Vatican to real museums, and burn the fucking place to the ground. These people still don’t even pay taxes. Le sigh.
Cops setup “bait truck” full of Nikes, arrest people for stealing. Chicago residents become furious because they claim the criminals were “setup.” The mental gymnastics required to feel sorry for these people makes my brain hurt.
Maybe France, depending on how you look at it. The EU really wants to be a dominate superpower in that region (over Russia) if not globally. Most of their legislation is passed to that ultimate end. The problem is, its run by unelected officials and just over half of the member states feel like they have no say in what they are being forced to do. Germany and France run the roost while smaller nations are forced to fall in line and feel the tug of the economic leash every time the more powerful ones decide they want to do something. This is further compounded by the US is now in a position to start yanking the leash on all of its trade partners, including the EU. This ties into the real underlying motivation of why the Trump admin is taking such a hard line with the US's economic allies. The evidence is there, people just dont read past the sensationalism. The US is about to become the world's largest energy supplier, surpassing Russia. This is why the Middle East has been relatively quiet the last year or so and why Russia is kind of shitting its pants. The petrodollar has been widely adopted and the USD is used more and more to stabilize currency in many countries, particularly China. The US has already started using both of those factors as leverage over OPEC, Russia, China and the EU to get favorable trade deals for itself because none of them have much choice if the US controls the global price of oil. (All of this is due to the US companies making massive, yet hardly reported innovations in shale to crude oil conversion technology.). This is why Europe and China are begrudgingly accepting the new agreements that are heavily in the US's favor (and why claims that the US's influence is waning is laughable). Tying it back, the EU does not have the same kind of economic leverage, but its pretending it does. Unfortunately, since the EU isn't one nation, its disproportionally impacting the larger nations with more stable economies favorably, while having the opposite effect on ones like Greece and Italy. This in turn causes a repulsion against "globalization" and internal corruption. Eastern Europe has migrated to the west in search of economic prosperity. Combined with terrible immigration policies, you are seeing the EU become more and more turbulent. It was no accident that when Brexit occurred, the EU was starting to announce a unified military force. It was about forcing cohesion rather than facing some neo-Soviet threat.
I love how he blames the high crime rate in the neighborhood on the police. The story also gets better: The freight company apologized and promised never to do it again. I guess that's good to know if a person is looking to break into a truck....the cops won't be watching it. Also, BLM and the ACLU have been allowed input on the new consent decree policy for the Chicago police. One of their suggestions is a cop would need permission from a supervisor before arresting anyone for certain crimes. One of those crimes is assaulting a police officer.
How about needing permission to arrest anyone assaulting a BLM or ACLU member? As long as we are making suggestions on when the Police need permission to make arrests.