How Twitter Made The Tech World's Most Unlikely ComebackA bird emerges from the ashes.Posted on June 21, 2018, at 12:14 p.m. Alex Kantrowitz, BuzzFeed News Reporter
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/how-twitter-made-the-tech-worlds-most-unlikely-comebackTwo years ago, people were writing eulogies for Twitter.
Rudderless and without product direction, the company was losing users and advertisers, and seemed unable to contain a metastasizing trolling crisis that was destroying its credibility. Employees left by the dozens and then got laid off by the hundreds. It tried to sell, and failed at that too.
The press, Wall Street, and the public were merciless. The New Yorker declared it “The End of Twitter.†Analyst Michael Nathanson said that at $14 per share there was “no compelling reason to own the stock,†and his counterparts applied “sell†ratings in bunches. Over a single weekend in February 2016, more than one million people tweeted “#RIPTwitter.â€
But then, even as those eulogies were being published, things started changing. Twitter began beating earnings expectations. Star ex-employees trickled back in, finding a new, more positive internal culture than the toxic one they’d left. Advertisers came back too, as did users. The company finally began addressing its trolling problem. And its stock, once unappealing to analysts like Nathanson at $14, is now trading above $46.
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Twitter’s unlikely resurgence can be attributed to four major factors: Its acceptance it would never be Facebook, leading to a decision to focus on news as Facebook pulled back. Its move to aggressively add premium live video to its service. Its CEO Jack Dorsey’s directive to its product team to rethink everything. And a key component of many great comebacks: luck.
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