Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 107 posts

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#41

Post by TeMPOraL »

smachiz wrote: post #34
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #26

Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. It really is an incredible public utility provided you liberally mute/block/unfollow all the petty fighting and find good people. Jack seems to understand that. I hope it doesn't devolve into a narrow reveneue maximizing ad-filled trashfire, but thats probably what the hedge fund will push for. I t…

> Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. Is that really true though? They've been a huge beneficiary of fake news, astroturfing and bots. They've only relatively recently started to do something resembling policing of these things.

Also the regular cycle of "release an API, encourage companies to build on top of it, then pull it out", essentially resembling Reapers from Mass Effect.

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#42

Post by dman »

brogrammernot wrote: post #14
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

Elliott gets a board seat as part of the deal. The people leading the charge to get rid of Jack Dorsey are more embedded on the inside now. This looks like a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) for Jack Dorsey. Maybe they're trying to steer him the desired direction. Or maybe they're just trying to gather enough evidence to really oust him in 12 months.

Sorta. This feels more like Jack/activist investor coming to common ground on the direction of the company and also a proper succession plan for Dorsey to walk away from Twitter. He only owns 2% of the company, and at this point I’d imagine his only options were to strike this truce & have control over how he exits as opposed to be outed right now with a power vacuum causing Twitter to destabilize a bit. I’d expect t…

Any guesses of who they could pick? fwiw I think of all the networks Twitter seems to be the one that actually delivers tangible social utility.

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjc50 wrote: post #17
awinter-py wrote: post #15

It's always been confusing to me what twitter is as a company -- it feels more like a utility, or like the public service part of 20th century journalism without the profit model In many ways it's more important to society than FB & G (picking them as the 2 of the big 5 that are pure information plays), in that it hosts semi-public conversations and helps experts stay informed Would be interesting for some small coun…

Network effects are pretty huge for these things. A country could e.g. spin up its own Mastodon instance, but good luck getting people to use it. The country-based LinkedIn might work, since that's inherently local, and lots of countries have some kind of state job advert service tied to their unemployment benefits. It would be a bit nasty to make "you have to be on BritLinkedIn to recieve unemployment benefit" a con…

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's nice to have many more localized or focused platforms, as it protects against some of the nastier side of the modern market economy. On the other hand, whenever I need to move between or interact with multiple such platforms, I badly wish for a unified interface merging them all.

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#44

Post by RIMR »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #26

Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. It really is an incredible public utility provided you liberally mute/block/unfollow all the petty fighting and find good people. Jack seems to understand that. I hope it doesn't devolve into a narrow reveneue maximizing ad-filled trashfire, but thats probably what the hedge fund will push for. I t…

Nothing you said here was true.

Twitter's #1 goal is to generate profit through advertising. You can pay for a slot on the "trending" list. They have custom "emojis" for paying customers' trends. They aren't putting free speech first - they actively suspend accounts for making jokes about their largest advertisers.

Remember the Starbucks / Steve King debacle where Steve King thought that a Starbucks store manager was firing people for saying "Merry Christmas"? Twitter banned the satirist who made the joke, saying he had "impersonated the Starbucks brand" by falsely claiming to be an employee. (https://www.newsweek.com/steve-king-starbucks-merry-christma...)

It isn't a "public utility". It's a privately-owned social media website that operates in whatever way it has to to produce profit for shareholders. The public doesn't own the platform and has zero governance of how it works.

Your ability to mute/block/unfollow accounts does not change this.

Twitter is already a "revenue-maximizing ad-filled trashfire" in every way that matters.

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#46

Post by smachiz »

actionscripted wrote: post #39
smachiz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. Is that really true though? They've been a huge beneficiary of fake news, astroturfing and bots. They've only relatively recently started to do something resembling policing of these things.

Growth for growth's sake doesn't have anything to do with fake news, astroturfing or bots.

Except for all those bots counting as users for growth, and the fake engagement by bots counting as growth, and the fake news driving real clicks from real people counting as growth........

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#47

Post by slg »

actionscripted wrote: post #39
smachiz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter is awesome because it doesn't operate under the growth for growths sake mentality plaguing many other companies. Is that really true though? They've been a huge beneficiary of fake news, astroturfing and bots. They've only relatively recently started to do something resembling policing of these things.

Growth for growth's sake doesn't have anything to do with fake news, astroturfing or bots.

Growth is the implied motivation for not cutting down on fake news, astroturfing, and bots. When you are selling yourself on engagement and user numbers, you have an incentive to continue allowing fake engagement and users.

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#48

Post by halibutt »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

Elliott gets a board seat as part of the deal. The people leading the charge to get rid of Jack Dorsey are more embedded on the inside now. This looks like a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) for Jack Dorsey. Maybe they're trying to steer him the desired direction. Or maybe they're just trying to gather enough evidence to really oust him in 12 months.

* Does twitter need to make money?

* Does twitter sell ads?

* Do ads work better with high-engagement content?

* What does creating a platform optimized for high-engagement content look like?

Therein we have the problem of twitter.

Perhaps Im reaching here but conceptual defense of anything left-leaning is always emotional appeal and not weighing the totality of incentives.

Stated more simply: The left has low-resolution arguments and claims always degrade to shame-attempts -- misogynist, xenophobe, nazi. Memes easily 'parroted'.

So in order for the sh!t-storm to continue, the lefties need someone who'll grant them handicaps. Because the most informed among them is some short-male syndrome with a manbun.

And the left-leaning, socially-docile males employed in tech are happy to parrot their dogma.

Protect the stupid, so that the rage-machine can perpetuate ad-sales.

All the while the average male still seeks something to defend in their life, so they adopt the most accessible social-narritive.

PROTEC THE WAMEN!

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#49

Post by sjg007 »

brogrammernot wrote: post #14
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #6

Elliott gets a board seat as part of the deal. The people leading the charge to get rid of Jack Dorsey are more embedded on the inside now. This looks like a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) for Jack Dorsey. Maybe they're trying to steer him the desired direction. Or maybe they're just trying to gather enough evidence to really oust him in 12 months.

Sorta. This feels more like Jack/activist investor coming to common ground on the direction of the company and also a proper succession plan for Dorsey to walk away from Twitter. He only owns 2% of the company, and at this point I’d imagine his only options were to strike this truce & have control over how he exits as opposed to be outed right now with a power vacuum causing Twitter to destabilize a bit. I’d expect t…

Jack tweeting to users to ask for the next feature to implement did not inspire confidence.

Re: Twitter, Elliott Strike Truce That Leaves CEO Dorsey in Place

#50

Post by jiveturkey »

CoryAlexMartin wrote: post #45
NelsonMinar wrote: post #35

And so Twitter looks set to enter its fifth full year without a full time CEO.

I'm not familiar with the situation. Is it different from Elon Musk dividing his time between several companies (seemingly with success)?

or Steve Jobs?

Yes, it is different. Dorsey is not Jobs nor Musk.

Post reply on HN