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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#581

Post by recursv_thnkng »

fleddr wrote: post #547

Random thoughts. 1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude. 2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus…

I expect #3 to be true to an extent. Elon is very good at attracting very high performing, industry leading engineers to join him but they never last long. He burns out the high performers just as much as the low performers.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#582

Post by GMoromisato »

My predictions:

1. Musk is going to discover (and maybe admit?) that fixing Twitter is harder than he thought. It will be just like self-driving, which seems straightforward, but which actually has thousands of edge cases which are hard to solve with a single general system. Nevertheless, he will persist, because that's what he does.

2. Current Twitter makes a profit on advertising, which means Twitter needs to encourage high levels of engagement, which means they need controversial (emotional) content, but not so emotional (toxic) as to drive people away. They need to be as close to the line as possible, which is why they spend so much effort on moderation. Musk's solution is, I predict, to try different revenue sources so that engagement with the feed is not the primary metric.

3. Musk has already stated that his goal is the Everything App (which he calls X). The Everything App has news, social media, games, videos, and a payment infrastructure (both to pay for content and to get paid). He wants Twitter to replace Facebook, Instagram, Google News, YouTube, Twitch and PayPal, etc. Will he be able to pull it off? I expect he will deliver the 20% of those services that are high-value, but pitch it as a complete solution. That might actually be good enough for most people.

4. If he accomplishes #3, then the revenue source is obviously: they will take a cut out of every transaction going on in the network. Maybe ads are a component, but they don't have to be a major component. If engagement is no longer the most important metric, then it's possible to allow every person to have a radically personalized feed. Even something as simple as only showing you tweets from people you follow (what a concept!) would revolutionize the experience and drastically reduce the need for moderation.

5. Since Twitter is private, Musk can front-load #4 even before the Everything App is ready. If he hasn't already burned the current team, he can make the experience better relatively quickly and worry about profit later.

6. Now for my safest prediction: No matter what he does, some people will hate him for it.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#583

Post by koonsolo »

lupire wrote: post #171
chamakits wrote: post #161

I understand that he has been publicly combative with all the executives; but is it a practical to fire all those key executives right away? Specially, do they not contain any specifically useful knowledge or experience that you should make an attempt at creating a collaborative transition? Is this how these kinds of acquisitions of public companies happen? Isn’t this effectively freezing all significant activities f…

Musk is CEO now. He doesn't need another one.

He's also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and is involved in some other projects. Are you sure he doesn't need someone to run the business... somewhere? He needs to have a limit at some point, right?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#584

Post by memish »

strangattractor wrote: post #568
fleddr wrote: post #547

Random thoughts. 1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude. 2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus…

Free speech argument is BS. Free speech cannot repay his investors. He plans to launch a TwitCoin or some other scammy type endeavor.

How do you know?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#585

Post by fleddr »

dub wrote: post #571
fleddr wrote: post #547

Random thoughts. 1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude. 2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus…

Class A players don't work for controlling managers who overload them with near impossible targets. Class A players have plenty of options in tech, and have no need to tolerate having their skills called into question or disrespected by pointy-haired middle managers. When Bill Coughran was asked how he was able to successfully manage so many famously high performers (engineers like Jeff Dean), Bill explained how that…

You're wrong.

This is exactly how he runs things at Tesla and SpaceX. Class A players are well compensated and love working on challenges that are extreme and/or world relevant. They live and breath what they do.

If you're that type of player, Musk will respect you and your opinion.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#586

Post by ben_w »

strangattractor wrote: post #568
fleddr wrote: post #547

Random thoughts. 1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude. 2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus…

Free speech argument is BS. Free speech cannot repay his investors. He plans to launch a TwitCoin or some other scammy type endeavor.

Does he really need to make it repay anyone, so long as the investors are on board with this?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#587

Post by recuter »

dub wrote: post #571
fleddr wrote: post #547

Random thoughts. 1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude. 2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus…

Class A players don't work for controlling managers who overload them with near impossible targets. Class A players have plenty of options in tech, and have no need to tolerate having their skills called into question or disrespected by pointy-haired middle managers. When Bill Coughran was asked how he was able to successfully manage so many famously high performers (engineers like Jeff Dean), Bill explained how that…

"Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don't think anyone should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical product design problems."

Elon Musk texts Parag Agrawal (now fired)

https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1585804674170355712/ph...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#588

Post by fleddr »

IgorPartola wrote: post #572
fleddr wrote: post #547

Random thoughts. 1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude. 2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus…

To your point number 2: perhaps part of the reason why Twitter is the town square is because it is not super profitable. If it was as chock full of ads as Facebook I think it would cease to be usable. In reality if we want a public square, we ideally want it to be a public utility not a for profit corporation.

I'm not sure if that really is the reason. I do agree though that Twitter's ads are hilariously irrelevant.

I would absolutely not want a social network to be ran by any government, no thanks.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#589

Post by peppertree »

fleddr wrote: post #547

Random thoughts. 1. I think any effort to figure out rational motives for this buy are in vain. It seems things just pop into his head and if considered a fun challenge, then why not? A child-like YOLO attitude. 2. Town square. The one thing that keeps Twitter standing is its cultural relevance. It is the town square for the elite (politicians, celebrities, experts). There isn't really anywhere else to go. An exodus…

"Class A" players answer call to rid the world of fossil fuel and explore deep space. There's nothing meaningful or productive about Twitter.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#590

Post by NaughtyShiba »

_fat_santa wrote: post #312
cutenewt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

The problem isn't the bots, the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts. I say open up the API and let people make whatever bots they wish, but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed.

That’s not the bot issue everyone is talking about. It’s bunch of fake/empty accounts posting/replying something what pushes some fakenews, propoganda, etc.

It has been especially noticeable this year, since February 24th

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