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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

#721
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>managing the exodus of users (size:?) that will happen regardless In the same vein, the influx of new users who had avoided Twitter due to its censorious, hostile community norms.

That's a reality-free comment. Search right now for any insulting, racist, negationist trope and you'll find tons of tweets.

The thing you said and the thing I said are both true imo.

>Search right now for any insulting, racist, negationist trope and you'll find tons of tweets.

Sounds like the hostile community I'm describing, which turns a lot of people off from Twitter!

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#722
post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like Musk is going to tell advertisers to kick rocks and try to monetize the platform. Where are people gonna go if not on Twitter? The left isn't gonna have better luck with their own truth social or parler. The network effect is too big with Twitter. It's not fun if you're not dunking on your enemies. That's the fun of Twitter.

> Where are people gonna go if not on Twitter? I think you may be over-estimating how much most people "need" something like Twitter. For the vast majority of users, a news feed and private messaging (WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.) are good enough.

I think you're underestimating how much actual users of Twitter use Twitter.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#723

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 encou…

> his goal is the Everything App (which he calls X). The Everything App has news, social media, games, videos, and a payment infrastructure so, WeChat?

Having used WeChat, LINE and the like I shudder. Not just because they naturally become bloated slow ugly behemoths to use but also because they more generally become de-facto monopolies. Not having to compete with anyone is the ultimate killer of innovation.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#724
post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an account and every time I hit that signup/in wall I just close the page rather than sign into my account

You can get a much better experience by using nitter[0]. Easiest way to do it is by replacing twitter.com with nitter.it (or some other nitter instance) in your link. 0: https://nitter.net/about

I use it but it's slow at times. Other than that it's great.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#725
post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an account and every time I hit that signup/in wall I just close the page rather than sign into my account

You can get a much better experience by using nitter[0]. Easiest way to do it is by replacing twitter.com with nitter.it (or some other nitter instance) in your link. 0: https://nitter.net/about

Nitter is so much better. It successfully loads every time, is faster, and has less junk.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#726

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…

Saying it is some country’s WeChat is like a curse… as WeChat is notorious for its closed mindedness and probably hated by most of its users… and they won’t even have any other option because Tencent is actively striking down all potential competitors…

This. As someone living in China and having used wechat for years I've always found it ultra cringey when American businessmen/influencers are like "omg have you guys seen what Chinese are doing with wechat! They have this all in one app where..."

First of all this idea of a superapp is nothing new. In fact iOS or Android is also a "superapp". Basically a software that has an ecosystem inside of it. Wechat has just created their own ecosystem within a ecosystem, because they want to control everything.

Second, when compared to most other Chinese apps I do have to admit that wechat is much more finished, but when compared to other global messaging apps like Telegram, Slack etc. I'd say wechat is about 10-15 years behind in everything and lacking the most fundamental features. The social media aspect of wechat which is called "Wechat Moments" is also extremely limited: Basically like Instagram without you being able to see or follow people you don't know personally. If your friend posts a photo and his friend (who you don't know) makes a comment on it, you cannot see this comment but you can see your friends replies to him/her. Yes, super confusing. Also no images, videos, gifs in the comments etc.

Third, a lot of people like to mention that "you can do everything with wechat". You can do a lot of things, but I don't know anyone who only uses wechat. There are a lot of other apps that you need to live comfortably: Alipay (this is another superapp), Taobao (like ebay), Jingdong (like amazon), Dianping (like Yelp), Eleme/Meituan (like Uber eats), Baidu maps, banking apps etc. etc.

Wechat does have it's internal "miniprogram" system (alternative to native apps) where you can have some of these apps I previously mentioned, but there are severe app size, memory and performance limitations, proprietary API and the performance and functionality is from early 2010s internet. Laggy and slowly opening pages, collapsing and bouncy layouts etc. Also wechat does not support multitasking: When you are using for example Tim Horton's miniprogram to order coffee, you can't chat with your friends, you can't open a Starbucks/some_other_coffee_company miniprogram on the side and compare prices. You have to close and kill the current "app" and then open a new "app" for new action. This is somewhat understandable due to the iOS/Android limitations of a single app (in regards to performance and memory), but it highlights why this kind of a "superapp" idea is fundamentally flawed.

So basically IMO "superapp" is a solution looking for a problem. We already have iOS, Android or web browser. We don't need another forced ecosystem but we need good apps for existing ones.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#727
post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is going to discover (and maybe admit?) that fixing Twitter is harder than he thought. Yeah I think he's going to intensely focus on Twitter for ~6 months, not change much, get bored, and then move onto something else.

The way he got bored running Tesla and SpaceX for ~20 years? I really don't get where this meme of "impulsive, erratic, hotheaded Musk" comes from given he demonstrated ability to stick with a business in the toughest of times. Tesla was literally days away from bankruptcy at one time and Musk made it work. After first 3 failed launches he was about to run out of money and yet he financed another launch, which worked…

The Boring Company is a failure. He's had many other failures within companies: automated driving, Tesla solar panels

Though he's the CEO of SpaceX, it's really run by Gwynne Shotwell.

You look at his wikipedia, and there's like 10 different things he's currently involved with, so yes, he looks like a guy that gets bored and moves on the other things.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#730

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 encou…

> his goal is the Everything App (which he calls X). The Everything App has news, social media, games, videos, and a payment infrastructure

so, AOL?

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