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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

#661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll go where the eyeballs are, this is capitalism, in the end. If Twitter manages to attract more eyeballs, the advertisers will come.

At least to advertisers, eyeballs are not all divided equally.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. The signals coming from the "liberal" side are certainly tipping the balance on the "non-liberals" being the more level-headed ones, at least that's what the recent nonsense written by The Verge editor [1] makes me believe.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#662

In the spirit of trying to be high-information and add value: Where Musk is going, there are no maps. So it's very very hard to project. But we can predict likely developments. At a very high level, it's going to involve: bringing back controversial personalities like Donald Trump; increasing Twitter's commitment to 'free speech'; assuaging skittish advertisers; retaining users who might be concerned, while bringing…

> cutting a large amount of staff

I wonder if he needs to do this.

Maybe I've just been working for tech companies in the Bay Area too long. But I don't want to work for a company where I don't have equity that I can cash out.

And now all those engineers are working for a company where equity doesn't exist? An exception could be a Netflix model where you make a buttload of money. But Twitter isn't that.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#664
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we can see Twitter being supported by extreme right foundations. I'm from Brazil and the extreme right is abusing all the communication platforms. it's a complete madness in what people believe right now. Our society is on the verge of crumbling.

Twitter hasn't been burdened by "extreme right" "abusing all communication platforms." If it was, then we would have seen a left exodus years ago and not suddenly coming up now. This comment has me so confused.

There is simply not many places to go. You can’t really keep running t from madness all the time since with social media platforms the destination must be at least somewhat inhabited, and also the exodus must be coordinated. It’s more like moderate left left left, the extreme right were expelled, and extreme left stayed out of grit and also because Twitter was sort of left to them .

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#665

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

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.

Lots of the “bots” are people. The solution is to show high quality content and suppress low quality content, regardless of input.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#666
Based on an interview I saw I suspect Musk will strive to make Twitter a platform for user-to-user messaging and payment services. Community moderation without banning might be possible by establishing "spheres" akin to reddit boards so things people see is to some degree curated.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#667

In the spirit of trying to be high-information and add value: Where Musk is going, there are no maps. So it's very very hard to project. But we can predict likely developments. At a very high level, it's going to involve: bringing back controversial personalities like Donald Trump; increasing Twitter's commitment to 'free speech'; assuaging skittish advertisers; retaining users who might be concerned, while bringing…

> open sourcing the code

Why? Elon is not the guy who gonna do it.

He wants freedom of speench under his control.

Tesla for instance is very much anti open source.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#668
post #638
post #634

Whenever I go on vacation overseas Twitter shows me ads in a language I cannot understand. This is one of many clearly-identifiable problems that are not rocket science to fix. And Elon Musk has a reputation for fixing problems. When Twitter shares are publicly traded again in a few years, Musk's purchase price of $44 billion will look like a bargain. My prediction: In 5 years Twitter's market cap will exceed $150 bi…

> Elon has a reputation for fixing problems. Based on Tesla, he not only isn't good at fixing problems, he actively pushes forward broken products and processes to save his stock price.

Can you be more specific? There are plenty of satisfied customers.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#669

If I was working at Twitter right now I would be looking for a different job, regardless of what I think of Elon's politics/motives. The talk of layoffs and major policy changes creates massive uncertainty and I don't think I'd risk sticking out the transition. I bet many inside the company feel the same. This begs the question: If there is a major exodus, will it even matter? And, if it does, how will the problems m…

As I indicated in my post https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/should-elon-lay-off-all-... : Twitter spends more on R&D as a percentage of sales than 5 other large tech companies, even Facebook, and moreover, the percentage is increasing . Where is this "innovation"? It's not a new platform. Its market is, arguably, saturated; I don't see a "next billion users" (as they say at Google) coming from anywhere. So the answ…

Some of that might be differences in business areas. Have you had to do paperwork for R&D tax deductions? It’s pretty flexible. Like “did you do a design doc for a new thing?” “Did you have to solve a problem for which the answer wasn’t obvious ahead of time?” So a lot of “normal engineer” activities are R&D. So maybe they have too many engineers, or maybe they have less non-engineers and just not a lot of revenue due to their niche market coverage. Aka I’m not sure R&D equals innovation equals revenue.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#670
post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every one of us has run into situations where choosing to be honest has materially cost us. You accidentally scratch a parked car on your way out. Do you stop and leave a note with contact info or not? The richer you are, the more leverage you have and larger the material cost for these situations. A fellow rich friend gives you a little insider info that a stock you hold is about to crater. Do you sell some? In othe…

If anything I'd say it's the opposite. A random person can get away with cons and scams for a long time. Whenever they get caught, they can just set up shop somewhere else. They can change their name (or simply lie to others about their name). Famous people can't do that. If you're famous, you can commit one scam before your reputation is ruined. Even if the story manages to avoid the news, people talk and word sprea…

The names of the CEOs of every major MLM are out there but many of them probably live very easy lives unhampered by the obvious lies.

Alex Jones got away with it for 20 years before his own hubris of not complying with the courts took him down a peg.

Tons of celebrities ran their own pump-and-dump cryptos and their reputations are doing just fine.

Rich people just grift differently imo.

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