681–690 of 1001 posts
I don’t remember who stated this but basically there is this thought that Musk was in fact mad about how on Twitter the “common man” could indeed vocally and effectively share their disagreement with his decisions. It also might have been an impulsive decision to become relevant in “new tech” at the same time (why would he care so much about this, boredom?). Ultimately he probably just wanted to get out of that impul…
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I've been mostly ambivalent about the Musk-era at Twitter—mostly because I just don't care enough to have an opinion. This, though. This one makes me angry and disappointed. Twitter has had such a solid brand for so long. It's accomplished things most marketers only dream of: getting a verb like "Tweet" into the standard lexicon is like the pinnacle of branding. Even with all of the issues, "Twitter" and its "Tweets"…
Elon is really, really good at a couple of things: - Identifying inefficiencies in an existing technical solution - Making people do what he wants The things that Elon is really good at don't necessarily translate to great success in a long-term strategic vision. In a pure engineering discipline, like automotive production or aerospace engineering, they're very useful, but neither one of those things necessarily lend…
Are they doing a better job that anyone else? Also, anything they make appears to have to be paired with Telsa's, which for mass transportation, is literally the stupidest idea ever conceived.
The Boring Company an Hyperloop are just Gadgetbahns to try to convince State and local governments to not make public transportation.
Now, if The Boring Company could make tunnels for cheap and then install real trains, then it might be a game changer but until then, it is not.
For what I can tell, Elon bought Twitter to take it off the stock market, fix it as a private company, creating growth and profitability, and then list it later to make his money back. He sees the X vision to make Twitter become the Everything App, where people turn to it for more than just messaging, but video calls and commerce. Very much like WeChat where it serves as a platform for things like restaurant bookings…
I hear what you're saying, but I don't think this is remotely the right way to go about it. It would be like Google changing the Google name to Alphabet, or to "A.com" or something. Imagine throwing away "to Google something" in an effort to popularize a big, story-less, meaningless name.
tweet -> excrete
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is the end game. If you haven't read The Founders by Jimmy Soni, I'd recommend it. Musk has had a fascination with "X" for a long long long time. This is just his latest attempt to make a platform that does everything. It's what he wanted PayPal to be. He's not going to sell Twitter as "X.com" because X is his grand plan.
For HN in particular I feel I need to clarify this more often[0] -- but this comment is a joke. It's riffing on the idea that Elon thinks "X" sounds cool but it actually just sounds like a porn site, that the valuation of Twitter would need to drop substantially for a porn site to be able to buy it (and that this rebrand is likely to further devalue Twitter), and that it would still be a terrible waste of money for E…
As an aside, I tend to only like the joke that Elon Musk is Phony Stark, the rest of the jokes just don't land with me for some reason. I've never really liked the guy and I'm happy it's a lot less difficult for me to articulate why now.
But yes, he wants X to be WeChat.
I don’t remember who stated this but basically there is this thought that Musk was in fact mad about how on Twitter the “common man” could indeed vocally and effectively share their disagreement with his decisions. It also might have been an impulsive decision to become relevant in “new tech” at the same time (why would he care so much about this, boredom?). Ultimately he probably just wanted to get out of that impul…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com
It looks like this isn't a rebranding so much as making an "everything app".
> On October 4, 2022, Elon Musk described his acquisition of Twitter as "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app".[28] This has been linked to x.com.[29] In conversation with Ron Baron a month later, Musk said he will execute the X product plan "with some improvements" which will make Twitter "the most valuable financial institution in the world."[30]
Well, it'll be interesting whether he succeeds or fails. But this does not look like it is impulsive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> so Elon can use a domain he's sat on since '99 seems exceedingly foolish. As far as I can tell, it's the domain of the company he co-founded (X.com), that merged with the company that became PayPal (Confinity), that led to him briefly being CEO before Thiel took over and pivoted to focus on the PayPal service. 2000 - 2017, X.com was property of PayPal. Musk then buys it back in 2017... and then here we are. Ref: ht…
Everything Musk does looks a lot like some of my high-level, successful, Mary-Sue-like RPG characters I had. Including desogn rooted in what influenced my childhood, in Musks SpaceX case it seems to be th 50s SciFi. Well, I never had the money to try that in real life, and anyway I outgrew it before I got my drivers liscense. Looking at it from that perspective, it is borderline pathetic and just sad.
I don’t remember who stated this but basically there is this thought that Musk was in fact mad about how on Twitter the “common man” could indeed vocally and effectively share their disagreement with his decisions. It also might have been an impulsive decision to become relevant in “new tech” at the same time (why would he care so much about this, boredom?). Ultimately he probably just wanted to get out of that impul…
Years ago I remember reading something about the Chinese microblogging sites and it was mentioned "these sites also have a character limits. However, b/c in Chinese a character can be an entire word, the 'word limits' are much longer."
Moving to the 4000 character limit feels very much a response to the above.
For what I can tell, Elon bought Twitter to take it off the stock market, fix it as a private company, creating growth and profitability, and then list it later to make his money back. He sees the X vision to make Twitter become the Everything App, where people turn to it for more than just messaging, but video calls and commerce. Very much like WeChat where it serves as a platform for things like restaurant bookings…
I see zero indication he ever intends to sell X/Twitter. He wants to pivot it into the worlds most successful and useful app. He won’t sell that.
I don’t remember who stated this but basically there is this thought that Musk was in fact mad about how on Twitter the “common man” could indeed vocally and effectively share their disagreement with his decisions. It also might have been an impulsive decision to become relevant in “new tech” at the same time (why would he care so much about this, boredom?). Ultimately he probably just wanted to get out of that impul…
Elon Musk founded X.com before it bought one of its competitors and changed its name to PayPal. He bought the domain name back from PayPal in 2017 and had been sitting on it for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com It looks like this isn't a rebranding so much as making an "everything app". > On October 4, 2022, Elon Musk described his acquisition of Twitter as "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app…
For what I can tell, Elon bought Twitter to take it off the stock market, fix it as a private company, creating growth and profitability, and then list it later to make his money back. He sees the X vision to make Twitter become the Everything App, where people turn to it for more than just messaging, but video calls and commerce. Very much like WeChat where it serves as a platform for things like restaurant bookings…
Seems easier to do that without buying Twitter. He has enough reach that anything he talks about gets fanboy traction, there's no value into Twitter's infrastructure for this, and converting tweeters into everything app users is possible, but a stretch.
Plus the ship has sailed for an everything app outside China.