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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

#761

Post by ericd »

colinsane wrote: post #593
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

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…

> They need to re-free up the API. it's not easy to regain that trust once you lose it. how long would Twitter's API need to remain open until you decide they're not going to reverse course and that it's worth building on? 2 years, minimum? and even then there'd be a bitter taste when i do: it would always be in the back of my mind that "what i'm building is only temporary, they're going to take this away again at _s…

Even though all the top leadership was fired and swapped for new people?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#763

Post by bagels »

edmundsauto wrote: post #682
julianeon wrote: post #57

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…

One of his challenges will be to pay $1.2B in interest payments every year while also making good on the principal. That's quite a bit of debt for a struggling financial situation. Cutting HC will help in the short term; it is unclear if those cuts will be well executed. HN opinion that twitter could run with 200 engineers is woefully naive for a massive company that is under FTC consent order - they probably have >2…

The consent decree requires that the company be 5x as large as it otherwise would. It really, really, really slows down development. For every engineer, there is also a corresponding engineer whose job is to slow them down.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#764

Post by NorwegianDude »

twblalock wrote: post #245
Animats wrote: post #129

OK, so far, not much. Musk is getting stretched rather thin. Space-X seems to be doing OK with Gwynne Shotwell running things. Tesla, which Musk apparently does really run personally, is doing OK, but their side ventures are not. Self-driving is a mess. Solar panels (yes, Tesla has a solar panel business) are not doing well. The Cybertruck is years late. (Maybe next year.[1]) So is the Tesla Model 2, the low-end vehi…

I don’t think many people are cross-shopping Teslas with Bolts or Leafs. The difference in performance and technology is big enough to put them in a different vehicle class. Most of the people I know who are buying Teslas are coming from Audi and BMW, and never would have considered buying a Chevy.

That really depends on where you are. I'd say that Tesla is the cheap kind of car that "everyone" have, at least in Norway. Polestar 2 has gotten quite popular too. A BMW i4 M50 with equipment is around ~1.5x the price of a Model 3 Performance.

I would definetly put BMW and Tesla in a different class, with Tesla being the budget option.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#765

Post by cvwright »

kyle-rb wrote: post #496
not2b wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is that some of these objectives conflict with each other. Backing off on moderation is likely to drive advertisers away; bringing back banned people could in some cases cause legal problems in countries where publishing, say, pro-Nazi speech is against the law. Making major changes will require more people, but stopping the financial bleeding will require fewer people.

Twitter already has implementations for the Nazi stuff; e.g. images with Nazi flags are allowed in general but if you try to view them from an account with location set to Germany, it will give you a "this content is blocked in your country" error message. I'd definitely be worried about driving advertisers away though. They forced YouTube's hand at least to some degree with the whole adpocalypse thing.

No post body was provided.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#766

Post by x0x »

This is all good, but unlss @realDonaldTrump unblocked I will never use Twitter again. I don't care if you agree or disagree with what was said. But if even a pressident of united states can be banned, best not use such platforms. Period!

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#767

Post by dorkwood »

MarkMc wrote: 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…

> 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.

I like this feature. For a brief moment, I can't be marketed to.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#768

Post by planetsprite »

As much as people dislike Musk, he draws excitement and captivation not only to himself, but to whatever he touches. Now for the first time people actually care about the "future" of Twitter, or in a sense, have a vision for its future that isn't defined by its frequent moderation-related controversies.

Is Musk's financial success and unparalleled cultural relevance a science that can be replicated? I mean, as much as people don't like him he has gotten to a financial position where anything he wants seems easily achievable. Is it the fact that he always carries the implied promise of "bold new future that will change your life" more than any other cultural entity?

Obviously Mark Zuckerberg is trying the same thing with Meta, but that's been a failure.

People hate Musk's personality, but no companies occupy the reverence in people's mind as much as SpaceX and Tesla. Even a man for a while much richer than Elon, Bezos, couldn't muster much in terms of cultural relevance for Blue Origin than a PR stunt with William Shatner.

Does Musk have a internal "toolbox" of guiding principles and behaviors that tremendously advantage him in his current position as outgoing tech CEO, or is he just extremely lucky? Is it merely because of his seeming utopian ambitions that make him more than a guy merely obsessed with financial success that he has ended up much more wealthy than if he were a much more grounded, brass-tacks CEO?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#769

Post by DanHulton »

x0x wrote: post #766

This is all good, but unlss @realDonaldTrump unblocked I will never use Twitter again. I don't care if you agree or disagree with what was said. But if even a pressident of united states can be banned, best not use such platforms. Period!

Let's look at this from another angle.

If even a president of the USA can behave so poorly and break rules so flagrantly that a service like Twitter -- that has tremendous incentive to keep him on the platform -- sees that they have to block him from the platform, best not to rely on such presidents.

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