At the very second Twitter stock hit a new, all-time low of $13.90 per share today, a brief moment observed by CNet and others from which the share price has partially recovered according to Bloomberg, about 6,000 tweets were sent out, as they are pretty much every second according to the website Internet Live Stats.
Sadly, it's a #trend. While Twitter remains socially valuable to a great many loyal users, it lags in growth, has struggled to monetize itself, and its stock continues to slump. Last month, Twitter's earnings call disappointed investors — the company hauled in $595 million rather than an anticipated $607.8 million — prompting the Verge to catalogue the scattershot variety of changes instituted under CEO Jack Dorsey, a company co-founder who replaced Twitter's previous CEO, Dick Costolo. Its summary: None of them have worked.
Meanwhile, here on the ground San Francisco, Twitter's stock symbol doesn't capture its full symbolic status. As a beneficiary of the "Central Market/Tenderloin Payroll Tax Exclusion," it's been a touchstone for the local tech economy. Recently, the idea has been floated that Twitter's slowdown is a kind of tech bellwether that's brought office and apartment rents down with it as it's sent fear through VC firms and startups alike.
But is the symbolic worth of "TWTR" its actual worth? In the latest episode of HBO's Silicon Valley, a tech world comedy of manners, the new CEO of startup company Pied Piper delivers a great little epigram about the market to the company's founder, Richard Hendricks. "Do you know what Pied Piper's product is, Richard? Pied Piper's stock."
But Pied Piper hasn't even had an IPO.
Related: Has Twitter's Slowed Growth (And Layoffs) Brought Apartment Rents Down?