- Twitter's (TWTR +2.8%) big selloff has proven quite temporary: After tumbling 17% over two trading days, shares are once more near $70, and the company's valuation once more near $50B.
- With shorts having piled en masse into Twitter since its November IPO (29% of the float was shorted as of Dec. 13), there are many reports of investors either being unable to place new short orders, or of only being able to short a limited number of shares, typically at a high lending rate.
- Meanwhile, Twitter engineering chief Chris Fry has provided an interview in which he shines a light on the company's decentralized engineering culture - he talks at length about giving teams autonomy to control product development, and individual engineers the chance to move between teams - and suggests upcoming products will be focused on "how people experience the information that sits at the heart of Twitter."
- Fry cites Twitter's Event Parrot (provides direct messages that relay news alerts) and Magic Recs (sends direct messages that provide personalized user/content recommendations) projects as examples of such information-focused products. The efforts could help Twitter improve engagement and address the significant churn it's reportedly seeing among new users who become intimidated by the torrent of short-form updates appearing in their timelines.