Ask HN: If you were in Musk's position, how would you improve Twitter instead?

I wouldn't charge the content creators for one, they are the lifeblood of the platform. I would do the opposite, I would let them charge their fans with membership tiers and such. I would also provide an API for content creators to be able to authorize their fans to access content outside of Twitter, basically turning the site into a membership portal. Like Patreon, but with better discoverability, as the paid content would be an add-on on top of Twitter as it is now.

I would keep the short text format, but I would also venture into short video.

I would start catering to the adult industry.

He should be out of day to day running of twitter. Hire someone. Hire an adult. He can use twitter (he did buy it) but pay an adult to deal with it. He is clearly out of his element.

Bring back vine or some other short video type thing.

Back out the dumb pay for a check mark idea. Or at least change it. As it sits anyone can get a check mark. Blue check marks should mean the person is verified not that they paid 8 dollars.

Support creators. Give them a way to use the platform to extend their reach. I would have to think more here

Journalists love twitter. Given them useful tools and you can charge them money.

That is where I would start.

- Make no changes to moderation policy.

- Expose the true number of bots and expose the deception of past leadership. Be specific on who knew what and how they obscured it.

- Fire more than 50% - this is not enough and I suspect another tranche of layoffs is not far off.

- Focus on user growth, acknowledge that revenue will take a hit in the short term.

- Slash all advertising costs. The cost per click on Twitter is insane relative to the outcome. You wanna woo advertisers? Cut their CPC in half.

I would accumulate shares slowly, not be an asshole, and work to get a seat on the board and communicate with the other big institutional / activist holders who control the board seats. I would use my experience and reputation as a technologist and entrepreneur to do deep dives with the CEO, who was the former CTO, to get a feeling for what has been tried, what has been rejected, and what future strategies are being considered.

it is possible that twitter isnt really amenable to being a growth company, and this is borne out by the stagnant stock price and the lack of top line revenue growth. in that case I would definitely try to gradually reduce the workforce to support more of a lean mode of operation, and try to entice young, smart programmers and product managers into kind of an incubator to see if anything really new with a wider or different appeal (like TikTok) could be built and rolled out on the cheap. the new ideas that take off are not necessarily different in kind than the existing social apps, they just have something that makes them ergonomic and addictive, and you have to try a lot of things and maybe they will take off.

I think instead of trying to add new products into existing apps, it might sometimes be a better idea from a marketing POV to instead roll out or aquire a new idea as a distinct app. See insta vs Facebook. You cant make Facebook cool by just cramming instagram inside of it.

This measured approach would allow him to pay maybe half what he did in terms of valuation, and gradually increase his stake from the 10% range to something controlling if and only if the internal governance situation was suited to it, and the business prospects could be ascertained.