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

Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#341

Post by mrweasel »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #320
mrweasel wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue is meaningless for a company that has never been close to covering the cost of building it. Monthly active users, fair, but it also depends on the type of users that remain. My take still is that the users X cares about are politicians, journalists and the general elite. They are still on X. It doesn't matter that some random tech worker switched to Bluesky or Mastodon, those were never profitable anyway, com…

> for a company that has never been close to covering the cost of building it Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019

I was going to argue that they lost most of the 2019 profit in 2020, but you are technically correct (the best kind). Twitter probably made around $1.5B in profit ever, maybe a little more. That actually should just about cover the cost of building the company.

I was wrong.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#342

Post by big_toast »

sergiotapia wrote: post #279
Hoasi wrote: post #50

X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.

X saved free speech online. Without Musk acquiring it, we would have continued to slip into this franken-Resetera level of discourse. Thank God! X is the platform where everyone can speak as long as it doesn't break the law. That's fantastic. If you don't like a particular subject, you can just move on. That's what the internet was in the 2000s!

Saved?

Seems like it harmed the migration to more free protocol oriented services. One company controlling the algorithm and API to a global conversation. Verified badges getting ranked priority in replies and For You. A DM function that barely functions. Private chats as a promise instead of cryptographic guarantee?

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#343

Post by [deleted] »

mrweasel wrote: post #130
Hoasi wrote: post #50

X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.

More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there. The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember tha…

[deleted]

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#344

Post by spankalee »

cschep wrote: post #275
woah wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight. Maybe a formerly-brilliant but drug-addled rich guy just bought a social media platform with bad fundamentals at the height of its valuation and then mismanaged it while flailing around with other ventures and political adventures. Occam's razor.

I'd love to hear why this is being downvoted? Not agreeing is one thing, but it seems like a reasonable thing to suggest?

> It's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight.

Because the original comment isn't doing this. It's not talking about everything, it's talking about one specific thing in a very plausible scenario.

It wouldn't even need to be a very complicated or widespread "conspiracy": Just Musk and a few VC guys in a Signal or Telegram thread saying

> someone should just buy Twitter and downrank all these crazy leftists

> Hmm

> I'll help line up financing.

> Ok!

This isn't flat earth, chem trails, lizard people, or weather weapons. It's not even Illuminati, Masons, or Skull and Bones. We've seen some of these chats already.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#345

Post by sdegutis »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #29
CyberMacGyver wrote: post #4

One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster. She never had any say and worst part is she was not even a good fall guy, it was clear who’s pulling the strings. The most immaterial and inconsequential hire ever. I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept.

It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude? Anyway she volunteered to be a puppet for a man who is clearly off the rails and her legacy will forever be stained.

> her legacy will forever be stained

I would like to believe that people can change over time.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#346

Post by egorfine »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #244
egorfine wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same opinion. I absolutely hate what he did to Twitter and never in my life I will call it "X" - BUT - it looks to me as if the engagement is thriving. Edit: clarified that the engagement is thriving

Estimates are that its revenue has decreased by half. Even if Musk decreased operating expenses enough to keep or even increase profits, a 50% drop in revenue is not at all a good sign for the health of business.

My bad: I have now edited the comment and clarified that I have meant engagement thriving, not financials.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#347

Post by archagon »

mrweasel wrote: post #180
threetonesun wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure if you give up on moderation, and close the platform to people who aren't signed in, and shut off the API then yes you didn't need the people supporting those parts of the platform. And I guess if you consider "the place with the MechaHitler AI" as good branding there's no arguing with you that it's doing just as well as Twitter.

I don't agree with the direction Musk has set for X, but businesswise it's not doing worse. Twitter was a financial catastrophe before the take over, so you didn't need much improvement. Moderation was a financial drain, the API didn't make them any money and none of the users seems to care all that much about the platform not being open to users without an account... because they all have accounts and wasn't able to…

The job of journalists and politicians is to broadcast to as wide an audience as they can. It is not particularly surprising that many retain Twitter accounts for the marketing value.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#348

Post by devnullbrain »

xnx wrote: post #46
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude? Anyway she volunteered to be a puppet for a man who is clearly off the rails and her legacy will forever be stained.

> her legacy will forever be stained Where can I sell my legacy for $6 million/year?

Meta

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#349

Post by olalonde »

feoren wrote: post #289
olalonde wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not like Elon Musk but he's doing remarkably well for someone who is "clearly off the rails".

Yes, corruption pays. Although if "doing remarkably well" means being addicted to ketamine, having many exes and children who refuse to speak with you, tanking multiple businesses to the point that your products get sabotaged just for being associated with you, getting booed off stages, licking the boots of fascists in the hope they'll let you call them "daddy", paying people to play online games for you to impress n…

You have a distorted view or reality. Elon seems pretty happy to me and is undeniably successful in business - arguably the most successful entrepreneur of our time. I don't know much about his personal life but I suspect that him having babies with multiple women is due to personal choices rather than a sign of misfortune. He certainly doesn't seem "off the rails" to me. That said, I can understand that his lifestyle is not for everyone.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#350

Post by breppp »

mandmandam wrote: post #126
josefresco wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both things can be true: Valuation did drop during her tenure, AND she was not to blame. Therefore the praise is weird, because she seemingly neither helped nor hurt the business.

> she was not to blame. Fall guys bear some of the blame in the fall. My long-held [0] personal theory - borne out by everything Musk has done, and by who bought Twitter - is that it was bought to curb the possibility of large positive social movements along the lines of OWS or BLM. Enabling that can entail being useless at your supposed job, while doing your actual job (which deserves some amount of blame, from a nu…

My conspiracy theory was that because of Musk's involvement in OpenAI he had foreknowledge of the impeding release of ChatGPT. In that context, Twitter as a source for AI training can be far more valuable than a rage filled social network. However he still failed horribly to time the market
Post reply on HN