Inertia
Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
11–20 of 20 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#12From my perspective, Twitter is better than it used to be - it now seems more dynamic with more of a "Wild West" feel than it used to have, and it seems to have more diversity of political opinions than it used to have. On the other hand, I've heard that some advertisers have pulled out and I don't know how Twitter has weathered that storm.
Im going to guess your politics are probably right of center. My experience is very different. I'm not very political and it used to be that I could mostly avoid politics. Now my feed seems to mostly full of right-wing trolls and relentlessly so even though I hardly engage. If I was a conspiracy nut I would go as far as saying Elon is trying to force a 'diversity of political opinion' or at least his version of it on my feed.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#13From my perspective, Twitter is better than it used to be - it now seems more dynamic with more of a "Wild West" feel than it used to have, and it seems to have more diversity of political opinions than it used to have. On the other hand, I've heard that some advertisers have pulled out and I don't know how Twitter has weathered that storm.
Im going to guess your politics are probably right of center. My experience is very different. I'm not very political and it used to be that I could mostly avoid politics. Now my feed seems to mostly full of right-wing trolls and relentlessly so even though I hardly engage. If I was a conspiracy nut I would go as far as saying Elon is trying to force a 'diversity of political opinion' or at least his version of it on…
My politics are pretty moderate, neither left nor right for the most part. I would be annoyed if Twitter turned into a right-wing echo chamber but I like that it is now at least not dominated by the censorious side of the left. And I am probably a bit more into reading about politics on Twitter than you are, by the sound of it, and I am pretty used to seeing hardcore left-wingers and right-wingers yell at each other, so it does not bother me much. Another difference is that I do not use the feed, I pretty much only use Twitter when I follow links from other sites and then maybe jump around a bit browsing related threads. So if the feed is full of spam, it does not bother me.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#14When a site is as entrenched in the culture as twitter/x is it usually takes a loooong time to die - craigslist, yahoo mail are still very much around. That said Id be curious to know what the numbers are. Elon seems to be experimenting and he might yet pull this off
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#15It's this simple: Twitter is where most of the people I want to follow are. When they move on I may well follow them there. I did stop going there for a few years, found that I missed them and went back. With the Control Panel for Twitter extension all I see is just what I asked for, no ads, no random hot takes. And that makes for a very information dense news break that I look forward to once a day.
I'm an invisible Norm sitting at the bar in Cheers, except the place is full of many of the smartest, wittiest people I know of. You don't replicate that by just building another bar.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#16I have bases set up on Bluesky and Threads etc for when Twitter does implode, but in the meantime, the network is still valuable.
There is something to be said about seeing the downfall of a company or service in real time.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#17Who are you asking?
Are you asking the people who quit logging in and assume it's dead but haven't seen for themselves?
Or are you asking the people who will pop up and say they're still there and it's better than ever?
Do you expect group "B" to tempt group "A" to log in again?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#18From my perspective, Twitter is better than it used to be - it now seems more dynamic with more of a "Wild West" feel than it used to have, and it seems to have more diversity of political opinions than it used to have. On the other hand, I've heard that some advertisers have pulled out and I don't know how Twitter has weathered that storm.
It seems to be in a position where you can't tell how well it's doing without logging in, so getting inactive users to try again, b/c it's thriving seems like a bootstrapping problem with no obvious solution.
If it's just a private company with a website that takes a dozen people to run, owned by the richest person in the world, then it could go on forever with any number of active users from zero to infinity.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#19From my perspective, Twitter is better than it used to be - it now seems more dynamic with more of a "Wild West" feel than it used to have, and it seems to have more diversity of political opinions than it used to have. On the other hand, I've heard that some advertisers have pulled out and I don't know how Twitter has weathered that storm.
It seems to be in a position where you can't tell how well it's doing without logging in, so getting inactive users to try again, b/c it's thriving seems like a bootstrapping problem with no obvious solution. If it's just a private company with a website that takes a dozen people to run, owned by the richest person in the world, then it could go on forever with any number of active users from zero to infinity.
Wealth != liquidity
Especially when free cash flow or an owner's liquidity is required quarterly by creditors. Even that is a big simplification: Elon has co-investors in what, to them, is a prestige investment. Getting diluted in down rounds dissipates a lot of prestige, so it is likely that any of Elon's money to prop up Twitter comes in via loans. That money comes from margin loans on TSLA which has a precarious P/E ratio. SpaceX's valuation, which is based on the post money valuation after a Saudi wealth fund bought 0.5% of the cap table, is very high but it's all illiquid. Starlink should have been ready to spin off at a fabulous valuation had it met subscriber goals, but it is about 10% of the way to 2023 goals.
Elon is an extremely rich man, and people like that have hobbies. The Washington Post, for example. But that cost about 0.2% the price of Twitter. Probably less than Bezos's yacht.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to be in a position where you can't tell how well it's doing without logging in, so getting inactive users to try again, b/c it's thriving seems like a bootstrapping problem with no obvious solution. If it's just a private company with a website that takes a dozen people to run, owned by the richest person in the world, then it could go on forever with any number of active users from zero to infinity.
Wealth != liquidity Especially when free cash flow or an owner's liquidity is required quarterly by creditors. Even that is a big simplification: Elon has co-investors in what, to them, is a prestige investment. Getting diluted in down rounds dissipates a lot of prestige, so it is likely that any of Elon's money to prop up Twitter comes in via loans. That money comes from margin loans on TSLA which has a precarious P…
It sounds like you are arguing that buying Twitter probably had a substantial negative financial impact on Musk. That sounds plausible, but I didn't intend to minimize it.
What I meant was that, aside from sunk costs, keeping the website nominally operational doesn't have to cost any significant amount going forward. Things are now arranged such that admitting defeat vs sinking more money in it are independent options.
Therefore as outsiders, we are unlikely to have useful information about whether it is now a "going concern" if he remains committed to keeping up a facade. It seems opaque, now that it is a members only site run by a private company.