Twitter (1 Viewer)

[massraider]

I don't know if anyone was on Twitter in the very early days. I was there in the beginning and it was FULL of impersonators to the point that it was very difficult to figure out if it was a real public figure or not - especially given the relatively low overall number of users you couldn't necessarily go by number of followers. I think that is why they instituted the blue check so that you knew if a public figure was actually the person or someone impersonating them

I imagine asking for donations as a celebrity under a shiny new check mark will be profitable for a while

 

[Sammy3469]

He's sort of caught here. The real value is to know the customer and be able to use that knowledge to make a customer's money movements and other Internet interactions as seamless as possible.

His customers are not the users. His customers are the advertisers, the users are the product.

That's true today, but the real value is making the users the customer; it's just that it's very hard to do and almost impossible if you have lost your users trust. Once that happens your business is purely one-off transactional which doesn't work for a social media company. Ultimately what it seems like he wants to be is a Twitter Cash App (or something like that), but getting the Cash App part down is much harder these days than it was when he was running Paypal for a whole host of reasons.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

This seems like an odd decision. It appears like Musk is trying to both increase profitability (increasing subscribers, mass layoffs) and radically change the product (the everything app). I don't see how he accomplishes the 2nd goal with mass layoffs.

The everything app?

Seems like all he needs to do is get people to stop using Apple Pay and Google Wallet, and credit card apps, and Amazon app for shopping.

What's the problem?

And their secured bank websites....no biggie

Is this the plan for Twitter or just people speculating?

I mean Elon would need this level of ambition for this investment to pay off but this seems like pipe dream type stuff. Twitter would need some major rebranding and features no one else has to make this even remotely possible.

I've never met Elon Musk or anything, but he's put enough out there about himself to know that he's not normal. A normal person probably wouldn't invest in PayPal. When PayPal was successful, a normal person would just take their profit and spend the rest of their life on an island with supermodels or something. They certainly wouldn't sink all of it into an unrelated venture involving an electric car company. And they definitely wouldn't "diversify" their portfolio by starting up a private space exploration company in their spare time. None of this is normal. All of it strongly indicates a person who a) has a vision that he believes in to an almost pathological degree and b) a nearly-pathological indifference to risk.

In an alternate universe, I could imagine Elon Musk trading places with that guy who solo'ed El Capitan and nothing else would be different. I suspect those two guys are wired almost the exact same way.

Where I'm going with this is that I kind of doubt that Musk bought Twitter because he wanted to change the way they allocate imaginary checkmarks. My guess is that he has some idea of what he wants to do here that would strike all of us as being kind of crazy but he has a track record here.

Elon is definitely smarter than me when it comes to business strategy. And equally obvious, if I somehow paid $46B tomorrow and became the new owner of Twitter, I would be pretty clueless about how to fix it, too. But I don't think you have to be a business genius to look at everything that's happened over the past six months and conclude he's flying by the seat of his pants and doesn't have much of a grand strategy. Let's start with the decision to lock himself into a massive overpay for the company, then wage a futile battle to get out of the deal. From a management perspective, the way he has handled all these layoffs has been self-evidently dumb. And from a marketing perspective, he is scaring off the people who make up the bulk of Twitter's revenue stream (even as he seems to be spending most of his time focusing on building a new revenue stream that, best case, will make up like 5% of current revenues).

Also, the business graveyard is filled with people who were runaway successes in one business and got slaughtered in another. I mean, Daniel Snyder was successful enough to buy the Washington franchise, right? The skills Musk used to build Tesla and SpaceX from scratch won't necessarily help him execute a turnaround at a failing media company like Twitter.

You may well be right that he has a strategy, or maybe he will eventually stumble into one. But based on the past six months, I'm not sure he's earned the benefit of the doubt.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

This seems like an odd decision. It appears like Musk is trying to both increase profitability (increasing subscribers, mass layoffs) and radically change the product (the everything app). I don't see how he accomplishes the 2nd goal with mass layoffs.

The everything app?

Seems like all he needs to do is get people to stop using Apple Pay and Google Wallet, and credit card apps, and Amazon app for shopping.

What's the problem?

And their secured bank websites....no biggie

Is this the plan for Twitter or just people speculating?

I mean Elon would need this level of ambition for this investment to pay off but this seems like pipe dream type stuff. Twitter would need some major rebranding and features no one else has to make this even remotely possible.

I've never met Elon Musk or anything, but he's put enough out there about himself to know that he's not normal. A normal person probably wouldn't invest in PayPal. When PayPal was successful, a normal person would just take their profit and spend the rest of their life on an island with supermodels or something. They certainly wouldn't sink all of it into an unrelated venture involving an electric car company. And they definitely wouldn't "diversify" their portfolio by starting up a private space exploration company in their spare time. None of this is normal. All of it strongly indicates a person who a) has a vision that he believes in to an almost pathological degree and b) a nearly-pathological indifference to risk.

In an alternate universe, I could imagine Elon Musk trading places with that guy who solo'ed El Capitan and nothing else would be different. I suspect those two guys are wired almost the exact same way.

Where I'm going with this is that I kind of doubt that Musk bought Twitter because he wanted to change the way they allocate imaginary checkmarks. My guess is that he has some idea of what he wants to do here that would strike all of us as being kind of crazy but he has a track record here.

The track record is certainly there.

I would mention he also has had projects like tunnels underneath cities that will change the way we travel using Hyperloop trains and pneumatic tubes that are in actuality just holes you can drive cars single file through slowly under the Vegas Strip.

I was told my Tesla was supposed to drive itself and be an Uber when I was sleeping when I bought it a few years ago.

He’s definitely an organizer of talent, project manager, marketer combination in his own class. We’ll see if he can do it again by getting engineers to work 80 hours a week for years on end to make a better app that replaces all the ones we already have.

I hope he does would make my life easier and be another great American company so I am pulling for it.

The other thing to consider is that social media isn't just an engineering problem to be solved. Firms like Facebook, IG, and Twitter all face network effects that tend to make dominant incumbents look like their market position is more secure than it really is. Twitter is valuable because "everybody" is on Twitter. But anything that sparks an exodus, even if it's a fairly subdued exodus, lowers the value of the product to everyone else. This can snowball quickly.

For example, I aggressively don't care who owns Twitter. I didn't care that Jack owned it, I didn't care that he passed off management duties to the other guy, and I don't care that Musk owns it now. Twitter is interesting to me because of the other people on it, not its ownership. So I'm not leaving just because the ownership changed or just because they're cutting staff. But if enough other people leave, I'll leave too because it won't be worth hanging around.

Companies that build rockets don't have to worry about this kind of thing. That's just rocket science -- this is more complicated.

Not a brilliant insight or anything. Musk is surely aware of this and everybody in his little orbit is as well. It does seem like it requires a very different approach to innovation in manufacturing industries. Then again, PayPal dealt with some of this kind of thing too, albeit to a lesser extent.

I've been thinking the same thing. If Twitter dies, it will be with a whimper not a bang. It will bleed value, maybe we'll all find a new platform that offers a better experience (or maybe we won't), and by the time it shuts down we'll all be like, "Oh yeah, I remember I used to spend a lot of time on there."

 

[IvanKaramazov]

My Twitter feed right now is basically what the FFA was whenever we had one of our occasional blowups over moderation. It's just unreadable because of all the whininess. (Which I'm here whining about, because I like irony).

 

[IvanKaramazov]

This seems like an odd decision. It appears like Musk is trying to both increase profitability (increasing subscribers, mass layoffs) and radically change the product (the everything app). I don't see how he accomplishes the 2nd goal with mass layoffs.

The everything app?

Seems like all he needs to do is get people to stop using Apple Pay and Google Wallet, and credit card apps, and Amazon app for shopping.

What's the problem?

And their secured bank websites....no biggie

Is this the plan for Twitter or just people speculating?

I mean Elon would need this level of ambition for this investment to pay off but this seems like pipe dream type stuff. Twitter would need some major rebranding and features no one else has to make this even remotely possible.

I've never met Elon Musk or anything, but he's put enough out there about himself to know that he's not normal. A normal person probably wouldn't invest in PayPal. When PayPal was successful, a normal person would just take their profit and spend the rest of their life on an island with supermodels or something. They certainly wouldn't sink all of it into an unrelated venture involving an electric car company. And they definitely wouldn't "diversify" their portfolio by starting up a private space exploration company in their spare time. None of this is normal. All of it strongly indicates a person who a) has a vision that he believes in to an almost pathological degree and b) a nearly-pathological indifference to risk.

In an alternate universe, I could imagine Elon Musk trading places with that guy who solo'ed El Capitan and nothing else would be different. I suspect those two guys are wired almost the exact same way.

Where I'm going with this is that I kind of doubt that Musk bought Twitter because he wanted to change the way they allocate imaginary checkmarks. My guess is that he has some idea of what he wants to do here that would strike all of us as being kind of crazy but he has a track record here.

The track record is certainly there.

I would mention he also has had projects like tunnels underneath cities that will change the way we travel using Hyperloop trains and pneumatic tubes that are in actuality just holes you can drive cars single file through slowly under the Vegas Strip.

I was told my Tesla was supposed to drive itself and be an Uber when I was sleeping when I bought it a few years ago.

He’s definitely an organizer of talent, project manager, marketer combination in his own class. We’ll see if he can do it again by getting engineers to work 80 hours a week for years on end to make a better app that replaces all the ones we already have.

I hope he does would make my life easier and be another great American company so I am pulling for it.

The other thing to consider is that social media isn't just an engineering problem to be solved. Firms like Facebook, IG, and Twitter all face network effects that tend to make dominant incumbents look like their market position is more secure than it really is. Twitter is valuable because "everybody" is on Twitter. But anything that sparks an exodus, even if it's a fairly subdued exodus, lowers the value of the product to everyone else. This can snowball quickly.

For example, I aggressively don't care who owns Twitter. I didn't care that Jack owned it, I didn't care that he passed off management duties to the other guy, and I don't care that Musk owns it now. Twitter is interesting to me because of the other people on it, not its ownership. So I'm not leaving just because the ownership changed or just because they're cutting staff. But if enough other people leave, I'll leave too because it won't be worth hanging around.

Companies that build rockets don't have to worry about this kind of thing. That's just rocket science -- this is more complicated.

Not a brilliant insight or anything. Musk is surely aware of this and everybody in his little orbit is as well. It does seem like it requires a very different approach to innovation in manufacturing industries. Then again, PayPal dealt with some of this kind of thing too, albeit to a lesser extent.

I've been thinking the same thing. If Twitter dies, it will be with a whimper not a bang. It will bleed value, maybe we'll all find a new platform that offers a better experience (or maybe we won't), and by the time it shuts down we'll all be like, "Oh yeah, I remember I used to spend a lot of time on there."

I was actually kind of arguing the opposite here, that social media companies can implode a lot quicker than people imagine. E.g. MySpace. Very few of these companies have much solid ground under their feet, at least as far as I understand the industry. I could be wrong here but I really don't think I am.

 

[massraider]

My Twitter feed right now is basically what the FFA was whenever we had one of our occasional blowups over moderation. It's just unreadable because of all the whininess. (Which I'm here whining about, because I like irony).

Yep. Looking for objective opinions about this deal right now, Twitter is not the place to find it.

 

[flapgreen]

It’s going to be fascinating to watch how far he goes with allowing people back on the platform and if it results in a mass exodus of the elites that give it perceived clout in the first place, like big celebs, journalists and pundits. And then where do they go? Will a super-woke version replace it, with Twitter relegated to Truth Social/Parler status?

For me, there’s nothing better than Twitter for breaking news, sports content and gossip. It’s a good diversion for 15 or 20 minutes a day, and you get the very latest on stuff happening in real time (NFL trades, the Kanye circus, etc.). To the extent that it becomes a medium for any discourse that really matters, it quickly becomes a cesspool of bs, echo chambers, and amplifying fringe nutjobs. Avoid that nonsense and enjoy it for the hot takes and laughs, and you’ve got something really cool.

Honestly I don't think he'll give any of them their twitters back. I think like like a past guy he just likes making promises he doesn't keep. A neighbor of mine Son worked for Musk at Tesla for a number of yrs. He made a lot of empty promises to employees about better pay and benefits etc etc. Lied to people constantly about promotions and fired people for just asking questions or disagreements. There's also a **** ton of inappropriate behavior the company covered up by Elon. Sooner or later everything will come out. It's not a matter of if but when.

Yep. I was born and raised in Fremont. A lot of people I went to HS with worked at the plant. My one friend was sexually assaulted by a executive. She got about a half million payout to leave and keep it quiet.

Terrible work environment and even a more terrible person. Musk lies cheats and steals. I don't see him lasting long at twitter or if he does what he wants I think he ends up losing money in it more then adding. Something will happen where he has to sell the company.

Greatest entrepreneur since the Vanderbilts and Gettys. Lots of jealousy to go around with regards to a person like that.

Hey, we're talking about Djackson and all the other butthurt people about Musk. They're much smarter than the richest man in the world.

 

[fatness]

Sounds great!

"Already at Twitter, some employees are working late and on weekends — and a few have even spent the night in the office to keep up with Musk's demands.

He's ordered people working on "Elon-critical projects," like getting a new subscription model for verification, to work "literally 24/7" and in 12-hour shifts around the globe to get the work done on an incredibly tight timeline, according to an internal memo seen by Insider. Overall, people are expected to work at a "maniacal" pace and pitch Musk directly with new "cool" ideas, if they would like to keep their jobs."

That's the longest definition of "fluffer" I've ever read.

 

[Joe Bryant]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

That's how the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos of the world operate.

They pay extremely well and expect a lot in return.

A classic from the original Amazon job description. https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-first-amazon-job-ad-reveals-obsession-with-speed-2019-7

Speed wins.

 

[Joe Bryant]

And absolutely, this job is not for everyone.

 

[The General]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

That's how the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos of the world operate.

They pay extremely well and expect a lot in return.

A classic from the original Amazon job description. https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-first-amazon-job-ad-reveals-obsession-with-speed-2019-7

Speed wins.

Pay is relative for sure and not implying Amazon or Twitter folks aren't paid well...but in Amazon's case I can say very definitively stock options are a big driver of the pay. Their stock has been flat to a loser for an extended period now. It is taking the shine off for sure.

These tech stocks blowing up in general is very likely a thing of the past for the near future so this will be across the board at some point for most big tech companies so it's not like there are vastly greener pastures at some other place...but it will definitely be harder to get engineers pumped to grind 80 hours a week without the huge stock carrot dangling in front of them.

Flushing out people is what he was going to have to do if he wants to create a new thing. What they are doing now isn't going to get him what he wants to do.

 

[BeTheMatch]

This thing will be gone before the end of the year.

 

[Dezbelief]

I wonder how many of the people sleeping in the office this weekend, spending every waking hour on Elon's project, who were integral to the project will be unemployed before Thanksgiving.

 

[Judge Smails]

Brilliant dude - but I’m disgusted how he treats people. Richest guy on earth and yet he tries to avoid paying people what they are due. Firing for cause when there is none. Blatantly disregarding the WARN act. Look at how the CEO at Stripe handled layoffs vs this a-hole. Lost all my respect

 

[cockroach]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

It's a real terrible look after firing so many people. Dude comes in and guts the company culture, destroying morale and now asks you to work 3x harder in the absence of your teammates. I can't image the kind of sand bagging or "malicious compliance" I'd be doing in those shoes as I cozy up for a first row seat to the imploding trainwreck driving off a cliff.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

This seems like an odd decision. It appears like Musk is trying to both increase profitability (increasing subscribers, mass layoffs) and radically change the product (the everything app). I don't see how he accomplishes the 2nd goal with mass layoffs.

The everything app?

Seems like all he needs to do is get people to stop using Apple Pay and Google Wallet, and credit card apps, and Amazon app for shopping.

What's the problem?

And their secured bank websites....no biggie

Is this the plan for Twitter or just people speculating?

I mean Elon would need this level of ambition for this investment to pay off but this seems like pipe dream type stuff. Twitter would need some major rebranding and features no one else has to make this even remotely possible.

I've never met Elon Musk or anything, but he's put enough out there about himself to know that he's not normal. A normal person probably wouldn't invest in PayPal. When PayPal was successful, a normal person would just take their profit and spend the rest of their life on an island with supermodels or something. They certainly wouldn't sink all of it into an unrelated venture involving an electric car company. And they definitely wouldn't "diversify" their portfolio by starting up a private space exploration company in their spare time. None of this is normal. All of it strongly indicates a person who a) has a vision that he believes in to an almost pathological degree and b) a nearly-pathological indifference to risk.

In an alternate universe, I could imagine Elon Musk trading places with that guy who solo'ed El Capitan and nothing else would be different. I suspect those two guys are wired almost the exact same way.

Where I'm going with this is that I kind of doubt that Musk bought Twitter because he wanted to change the way they allocate imaginary checkmarks. My guess is that he has some idea of what he wants to do here that would strike all of us as being kind of crazy but he has a track record here.

The track record is certainly there.

I would mention he also has had projects like tunnels underneath cities that will change the way we travel using Hyperloop trains and pneumatic tubes that are in actuality just holes you can drive cars single file through slowly under the Vegas Strip.

I was told my Tesla was supposed to drive itself and be an Uber when I was sleeping when I bought it a few years ago.

He’s definitely an organizer of talent, project manager, marketer combination in his own class. We’ll see if he can do it again by getting engineers to work 80 hours a week for years on end to make a better app that replaces all the ones we already have.

I hope he does would make my life easier and be another great American company so I am pulling for it.

The other thing to consider is that social media isn't just an engineering problem to be solved. Firms like Facebook, IG, and Twitter all face network effects that tend to make dominant incumbents look like their market position is more secure than it really is. Twitter is valuable because "everybody" is on Twitter. But anything that sparks an exodus, even if it's a fairly subdued exodus, lowers the value of the product to everyone else. This can snowball quickly.

For example, I aggressively don't care who owns Twitter. I didn't care that Jack owned it, I didn't care that he passed off management duties to the other guy, and I don't care that Musk owns it now. Twitter is interesting to me because of the other people on it, not its ownership. So I'm not leaving just because the ownership changed or just because they're cutting staff. But if enough other people leave, I'll leave too because it won't be worth hanging around.

Companies that build rockets don't have to worry about this kind of thing. That's just rocket science -- this is more complicated.

Not a brilliant insight or anything. Musk is surely aware of this and everybody in his little orbit is as well. It does seem like it requires a very different approach to innovation in manufacturing industries. Then again, PayPal dealt with some of this kind of thing too, albeit to a lesser extent.

I've been thinking the same thing. If Twitter dies, it will be with a whimper not a bang. It will bleed value, maybe we'll all find a new platform that offers a better experience (or maybe we won't), and by the time it shuts down we'll all be like, "Oh yeah, I remember I used to spend a lot of time on there."

I was actually kind of arguing the opposite here, that social media companies can implode a lot quicker than people imagine. E.g. MySpace. Very few of these companies have much solid ground under their feet, at least as far as I understand the industry. I could be wrong here but I really don't think I am.

I wasn't really talking about the speed at which it will happen (although I suspect it will be of the "slowly, then all at once" variety). The part I was agreeing with was the notion that what will ultimately kill Twitter won't be people leaving because they're upset at Elon, it will be if people are leaving because other people are leaving and they no longer get the value they once did out of the network.

 

[FBG26]

Brilliant dude - but I’m disgusted how he treats people. Richest guy on earth and yet he tries to avoid paying people what they are due. Firing for cause when there is none. Blatantly disregarding the WARN act. Look at how the CEO at Stripe handled layoffs vs this a-hole. Lost all my respect

I saw a copy of the termination letter and they are being paid with benefits to February 2023. They are placed in non-working status but still employed until then. So it shouldn't violate the WARN act. I'll see if I can find the link.

Termination letter

Today is your last working day at the company, however, you will remain employed by Twitter and will receive compensation and benefits through your separation date of February 2, 2023.

During this time, you will be on a Non-Working Notice period and your access to Twitter systems will be deactivated. While you are not expected to work during the Non-Working Notice period, you are still required to comply with all company policies, including the Employee Playbook and Code of Conduct.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I wonder how many of the people sleeping in the office this weekend, spending every waking hour on Elon's project, who were integral to the project will be unemployed before Thanksgiving.

Years ago, I worked at a failing dot-com, and we shared lots of gallows humor about being the people who were forced to mix the Kool-Aid at Jonestown

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I can't claim to know a ton about Elon, but I kind of get the sense from people who have been following him for a long time that something seems to have shifted. It's like he's embraced the whole meme-lord troll persona. Maybe he's always been like that. Or maybe, like Tom Cruise in his couch-jumping days, he's always been like that, but now he's only more so. Anyway, that's one more reason I'm skeptical of the whole "The business genius who invented Tesla and SpaceX will confound his critics once again" narrative

 

[krista4]

I wonder how many of the people sleeping in the office this weekend, spending every waking hour on Elon's project, who were integral to the project will be unemployed before Thanksgiving.

Years ago, I worked at a failing dot-com, and we shared lots of gallows humor about being the people who were forced to mix the Kool-Aid at Jonestown

Flavor-Aid!

(Former employee of the company that owned the Kool-Aid brand.)

 

[krista4]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

It's a real terrible look after firing so many people. Dude comes in and guts the company culture, destroying morale and now asks you to work 3x harder in the absence of your teammates.

Yes, this. No problem with "work harder," but in a still relatively good job market, it doesn't seem smart to axe a lot of people and then tell the rest to pick up the slack. You either have good performers left, who will bolt because they can, or you axed the wrong people and have only the slackers left, and...

And he has no way to know right now who are the good people and who aren't, either.

 

[TheMagus]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

It's a real terrible look after firing so many people. Dude comes in and guts the company culture, destroying morale and now asks you to work 3x harder in the absence of your teammates.

Yes, this. No problem with "work harder," but in a still relatively good job market, it doesn't seem smart to axe a lot of people and then tell the rest to pick up the slack. You either have good performers left, who will bolt because they can, or you axed the wrong people and have only the slackers left, and...

Right. The top talent can very easily, in this tech market, go work someplace else for the same pay that does not require them to sleep in their office under the threat of losing their job to meet unachievable timelines and half-assed products. These people, a week and a half ago, were working for a very different corporate culture and leadership style and I would imagine the only ones who would stick around are the ones that don't have options elsewhere - meaning the not so good ones.

It's not like they got significant raises and/or ever agreed to work for Elon in the first place. He just swooped in and turned the company on its head. If he does have ambitions for rebuilding the platform he's doing it in a very strange way from a human capital perspective.

 

[Capella]

He is going to take an unimaginable loss on this. Word is they have no upfront advertising secured for next year when usually they have 20-30% already banked.

Coca-Cola and Verizon etc simply will not advertise with a company where their ad can be screenshot beneath a tweet espousing something anti-Semitic or saying the N word. It’s a dead business walking.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I wonder how many of the people sleeping in the office this weekend, spending every waking hour on Elon's project, who were integral to the project will be unemployed before Thanksgiving.

Years ago, I worked at a failing dot-com, and we shared lots of gallows humor about being the people who were forced to mix the Kool-Aid at Jonestown

Flavor-Aid!

(Former employee of the company that owned the Kool-Aid brand.)

Yes, I had heard that before. Still, no one ever says "drinking the Flavor-Aid".

When you think about it from a brand perspective, it's actually kind of amazing: You have a food product that is (falsely) associated with a mass poisoning event, and yet its popularity remained high for years afterward. In fact, maybe that has it backward. The fact that the drink at Jonestown was described as Kool-Aid is a testament to its dominant market position.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

He is going to take an unimaginable loss on this. Word is they have no upfront advertising secured for next year when usually they have 20-30% already banked.

Coca-Cola and Verizon etc simply will not advertise with a company where their ad can be screenshot beneath a tweet espousing something anti-Semitic or saying the N word. It’s a dead business walking.

Also doesn't help when the CEO himself is retweeting false conspiracy theories

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I wasn't really talking about the speed at which it will happen (although I suspect it will be of the "slowly, then all at once" variety). The part I was agreeing with was the notion that what will ultimately kill Twitter won't be people leaving because they're upset at Elon, it will be if people are leaving because other people are leaving and they no longer get the value they once did out of the network.

Totally agree. Twitter may end up just fine. But "slowly, then fast" (Hemingway) is absolutely in in play here.

Musk needs to log off Twitter and just tend to the business instead of being the main character. He's the story right now, which is kind of absurd except that he's feeding it. Joe wouldn't make that mistake.

 

[The General]

I wasn't really talking about the speed at which it will happen (although I suspect it will be of the "slowly, then all at once" variety). The part I was agreeing with was the notion that what will ultimately kill Twitter won't be people leaving because they're upset at Elon, it will be if people are leaving because other people are leaving and they no longer get the value they once did out of the network.

Totally agree. Twitter may end up just fine. But "slowly, then fast" (Hemingway) is absolutely in in play here.

Musk needs to log off Twitter and just tend to the business instead of being the main character. He's the story right now, which is kind of absurd except that he's feeding it. Joe wouldn't make that mistake.

Here’s the rub IMO. Musk has Ef you money and simply doesn‘t care. It appears he loves being the story.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I wasn't really talking about the speed at which it will happen (although I suspect it will be of the "slowly, then all at once" variety). The part I was agreeing with was the notion that what will ultimately kill Twitter won't be people leaving because they're upset at Elon, it will be if people are leaving because other people are leaving and they no longer get the value they once did out of the network.

Totally agree. Twitter may end up just fine. But "slowly, then fast" (Hemingway) is absolutely in in play here.

Musk needs to log off Twitter and just tend to the business instead of being the main character. He's the story right now, which is kind of absurd except that he's feeding it. Joe wouldn't make that mistake.

Here’s the rub IMO. Musk has Ef you money and simply doesn‘t care. It appears he loves being the story.

Well if he intentionally wants to destroy Twitter, what do I care? Weird flex, but okay. I'll just go to the next place. No big deal.

 

[The General]

I wasn't really talking about the speed at which it will happen (although I suspect it will be of the "slowly, then all at once" variety). The part I was agreeing with was the notion that what will ultimately kill Twitter won't be people leaving because they're upset at Elon, it will be if people are leaving because other people are leaving and they no longer get the value they once did out of the network.

Totally agree. Twitter may end up just fine. But "slowly, then fast" (Hemingway) is absolutely in in play here.

Musk needs to log off Twitter and just tend to the business instead of being the main character. He's the story right now, which is kind of absurd except that he's feeding it. Joe wouldn't make that mistake.

Here’s the rub IMO. Musk has Ef you money and simply doesn‘t care. It appears he loves being the story.

Well if he intentionally wants to destroy Twitter, what do I care? Weird flex, but okay. I'll just go to the next place. No big deal.

Agreed about Twitter. It’s not some essential service. No one really knows what the hell he’s doing.

Dropping 45 Billion is a helluva a flex buying Twitter with it not so much but is still pretty baller

 

[krista4]

He is going to take an unimaginable loss on this. Word is they have no upfront advertising secured for next year when usually they have 20-30% already banked.

Coca-Cola and Verizon etc simply will not advertise with a company where their ad can be screenshot beneath a tweet espousing something anti-Semitic or saying the N word. It’s a dead business walking.

Well, at least they have experienced marketing and advertising people in place. Wait, you’re telling me the head of global marketing, VP of global sales, chief advertising executive, and GM of technologies quit this week? Oh.

 

[Capella]

He is going to take an unimaginable loss on this. Word is they have no upfront advertising secured for next year when usually they have 20-30% already banked.

Coca-Cola and Verizon etc simply will not advertise with a company where their ad can be screenshot beneath a tweet espousing something anti-Semitic or saying the N word. It’s a dead business walking.

Well, at least they have experienced marketing and advertising people in place. Wait, you’re telling me the head of global marketing, VO of global sales, chief advertising executive, and GM of technologies quit this week? Oh.

what could go wrong!

 

[uwillbsoon]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

That's how the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos of the world operate.

They pay extremely well and expect a lot in return.

A classic from the original Amazon job description. https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-first-amazon-job-ad-reveals-obsession-with-speed-2019-7

Speed wins.

I respectfully disagree.

Strategy is more important than speed. Tesla isn't exactly hitting Musks timelines, but his strategy of building a high end car that appealed to rich folks instead of trying to build a low priced car (and compete on price with typically small margins) gave him the capital to do a lot of what's followed. If he was quick to build a mass marketed car like a lot of people did, he would have failed.

There's also a lot of engineering strategies (he's a great engineer and/or has hired a lot of great engineers) that have made his companies successful, like reusable rockets.

Luck also plays a role. Amazon wouldn't be what it is if they hadn't accidentally stumbled on their money-making business, AWS. As a shopping website, they'd still be losing money.

And that's where I question whether he'll be successful at Twitter. He seems to be reacting rather than executing a strategy. Reacting to bleeding money and grasping at ways to do it.

Maybe charging users will work. I doubt it because I can't think of an example where someone charged users for access to user generated content and was successful (best I can think of is Angie's List, but that didn't last because free review sites popped up). I also don't think giving paid users priority in feeds is a better user experience. I guess it depends on who pays, but if, for example, Warren Sharp suddenly takes over my mostly football feed because he paid and Matt Waldman didn't, that ain't a great user experience.

He's got to make the ad model work. That's where the money is. And so far, he hasn't shown the emotional intelligence to do that by tweeting conspiracies and insulting advertisers.

 

[Bozeman Bruiser]

He is going to take an unimaginable loss on this. Word is they have no upfront advertising secured for next year when usually they have 20-30% already banked.

Coca-Cola and Verizon etc simply will not advertise with a company where their ad can be screenshot beneath a tweet espousing something anti-Semitic or saying the N word. It’s a dead business walking.

Just today Kanye tweeted "I'm starting to think anti-Semitic means N-word-hard-r".

Guess what Twitter did?

They deleted it.

The fact that some of you believe these bitter blue check influencers claiming a Musk owned Twitter is going to turn into 4chan is sad, but also a great example of why things need to change.



As for advertisers, Twitter was already in the toilet before Musk came along. link

According to eMarketer, Instagram is at the top of the pack for US ad revenue for 2022, at $29.79 billion, with Facebook close behind, at $25.75 billion. YouTube is next, at just over $8 billion, followed by TikTok.

Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest all sit below TikTok in terms of revenue, at $3.01 billion, $2.72 billion, and $2.29 billion, respectively. In fact, TikTok is expected to take in more than Twitter and Snapchat combined for 2022.

So Twitter already was a disaster with ad revenue, and many would agree that Twitter was already a cesspool of the worst people on the internet.

Musk has nowhere to go but up on both fronts. Kind of like the next owner of the Washington Football Team.

 

[The General]

He is going to take an unimaginable loss on this. Word is they have no upfront advertising secured for next year when usually they have 20-30% already banked.

Coca-Cola and Verizon etc simply will not advertise with a company where their ad can be screenshot beneath a tweet espousing something anti-Semitic or saying the N word. It’s a dead business walking.

Just today Kanye tweeted "I'm starting to think anti-Semitic means N-word-hard-r".

Guess what Twitter did?

They deleted it.

The fact that some of you believe these bitter blue check influencers claiming a Musk owned Twitter is going to turn into 4chan is sad, but also a great example of why things need to change.



As for advertisers, Twitter was already in the toilet before Musk came along. link

According to eMarketer, Instagram is at the top of the pack for US ad revenue for 2022, at $29.79 billion, with Facebook close behind, at $25.75 billion. YouTube is next, at just over $8 billion, followed by TikTok.

Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest all sit below TikTok in terms of revenue, at $3.01 billion, $2.72 billion, and $2.29 billion, respectively. In fact, TikTok is expected to take in more than Twitter and Snapchat combined for 2022.

So Twitter already was a disaster with ad revenue, and many would agree that Twitter was already a cesspool of the worst people on the internet.

Musk has nowhere to go but up on both fronts. Kind of like the next owner of the Washington Football Team.

Sounds like a great pickup at 45 billion competing against no one in bidding except one’s self

 

[Summer Wheat]

A

I mean there's something to be said if he hates the company direction he needs to tear it down to the studs...Good luck getting a bunch of new people in there pumped to work 80 hours a week for a tyrant boss.

I'm pretty wait and see on this whole thing, I am enjoying the craziness more than anything.

There are so many unknowns. This $8 thing, people are running with it like he came down from Mt. Sinai with some stone tablets. He's floating ideas! He can say tomorrow that he looked into it, and they will have a free 'layer' of verification, and we will have people explaining why THIS is the best way to do it. Or the worst.

For SURE, we should consider the source when it comes to opinions. And I don't mean left/right, I mean, can this person benefit or take a loss depending which way it goes?

If someone has skin in the game, and their livelihood, their MONEY, depends on how this turns out, that needs to be considered.

The only hard and fast opinion I have is that I don't see how the company makes money. Turning it into a different app, or a more inclusive app will take MORE money, it's not just writing code. And he already overpaid by a lot, so there's about 20-25 billion that was spent that will not go into changing this company.

Doesn't mean Elon or investors couldn't make money. But I don't see how the company can stand on it's own two legs, starting from a hole that big.

The fee it a service fee like ATT, Ixfinity or any phone or cable TV provider.

Nobody is forcing anyone to pay. People have the choice to use it or not use it.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I wasn't really talking about the speed at which it will happen (although I suspect it will be of the "slowly, then all at once" variety). The part I was agreeing with was the notion that what will ultimately kill Twitter won't be people leaving because they're upset at Elon, it will be if people are leaving because other people are leaving and they no longer get the value they once did out of the network.

Totally agree. Twitter may end up just fine. But "slowly, then fast" (Hemingway) is absolutely in in play here.

Musk needs to log off Twitter and just tend to the business instead of being the main character. He's the story right now, which is kind of absurd except that he's feeding it.

A chief executive is unable to curb his self-destructive impulses and log off Twitter, you say?

Joe wouldn't make that mistake.

Well, now that he has foresworn the mega-billions in profits generated by the Politics Forum, we will sadly never get to find out

(Never realized that line was from Hemingway. Apparently the exact quote is "Gradually, then suddenly." As someone who owns property in South Florida, I think about that concept often, since I assume that's how climate change will affect Miami's real-estate prices)

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I wasn't really talking about the speed at which it will happen (although I suspect it will be of the "slowly, then all at once" variety). The part I was agreeing with was the notion that what will ultimately kill Twitter won't be people leaving because they're upset at Elon, it will be if people are leaving because other people are leaving and they no longer get the value they once did out of the network.

Totally agree. Twitter may end up just fine. But "slowly, then fast" (Hemingway) is absolutely in in play here.

Musk needs to log off Twitter and just tend to the business instead of being the main character. He's the story right now, which is kind of absurd except that he's feeding it. Joe wouldn't make that mistake.

Here’s the rub IMO. Musk has Ef you money and simply doesn‘t care. It appears he loves being the story.

Well if he intentionally wants to destroy Twitter, what do I care? Weird flex, but okay. I'll just go to the next place. No big deal.

Agreed about Twitter. It’s not some essential service. No one really knows what the hell he’s doing.

Dropping 45 Billion is a helluva a flex buying Twitter with it not so much but is still pretty baller

I agree that it doesn't particularly affect me or you if he turns Twitter into a cash furnace. But it's also not the same as him wasting it on a boat or a giant statue of himself or some other self indulgence. Because he didn't put up all $45B. Explaining exactly how that could unravel is above my pay grade, but suffice it to say that buying something with Other People's Money that, on the day the transaction went through, was worth less than half of what you paid is probably not going to end well, not just for Twitter but potentially for his other companies and for Musk personally.
Pass the popcorn

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

Musk has nowhere to go but up on both fronts.

Whole lot of people have burned through a whole lot of money over the years based on that fallacy. There is always a new bottom.

 

[ignatiusjreilly]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

It's a real terrible look after firing so many people. Dude comes in and guts the company culture, destroying morale and now asks you to work 3x harder in the absence of your teammates.

Yes, this. No problem with "work harder," but in a still relatively good job market, it doesn't seem smart to axe a lot of people and then tell the rest to pick up the slack. You either have good performers left, who will bolt because they can, or you axed the wrong people and have only the slackers left, and...

Right. The top talent can very easily, in this tech market, go work someplace else for the same pay that does not require them to sleep in their office under the threat of losing their job to meet unachievable timelines and half-assed products. These people, a week and a half ago, were working for a very different corporate culture and leadership style and I would imagine the only ones who would stick around are the ones that don't have options elsewhere - meaning the not so good ones.

When you get rid of 50% of your workforce, you are actually getting rid of 60%. The bottom 50% whom you fire plus the top 10% who see the writing on the wall and have other options.

 

[cockroach]

So I guess colonizing Mars can wait? Or ...

 

[fatness]

Brilliant dude - but I’m disgusted how he treats people. Richest guy on earth and yet he tries to avoid paying people what they are due. Firing for cause when there is none. Blatantly disregarding the WARN act. Look at how the CEO at Stripe handled layoffs vs this a-hole. Lost all my respect

I saw a copy of the termination letter and they are being paid with benefits to February 2023. They are placed in non-working status but still employed until then. So it shouldn't violate the WARN act. I'll see if I can find the link.

Termination letter

Today is your last working day at the company, however, you will remain employed by Twitter and will receive compensation and benefits through your separation date of February 2, 2023.

During this time, you will be on a Non-Working Notice period and your access to Twitter systems will be deactivated. While you are not expected to work during the Non-Working Notice period, you are still required to comply with all company policies, including the Employee Playbook and Code of Conduct.

That's just a letter, nothing official or binding.

Meanwhile Twitter employees are saying they've received nothing official.

Laid off Twitter employees everywhere have yet to receive any official severance paperwork detailing what they will be offered. But a document attached to the termination notification notes they received said the more detailed paperwork should be out to workers within the next week, and that there will be "no negotiation" on the terms offered.

 

[fatness]

As I understand this, on Monday anyone, for the low low price of $8, can be verified as whomever they say they are by Twitter, and can begin posting on Twitter. That probably won't have any effect on anything Tuesday, though.

 

[eoMMan]

Good article here about the current plans. Simply isn't going to have anywhere near the cashflow for that type of "everything" app.

Seems like it's an appeal for those with more money to use the platform in ways that those with less money cannot. The same people who try to try to manipulate public perceptions through "dark money" groups will find ways to use this.

Since closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last week, Mr. Musk and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages — which would let users send private messages to high-profile users — to the service, according to two people with knowledge of the matter and internal documents viewed by The New York Times.

They have also talked about adding “paywalled” videos, which would mean that certain videos could not be viewed unless users paid a fee, these people said.

Who is paying for this stuff? Serious old man vibes with this post but paying to send messages to some "celebrity" or paying to watch special vids. Good luck with this

Honestly though, I had the same “who’s paying for this stuff” in regards to OF, but that seems to be doing well.

 

[Dr. Octopus]

We saw internal docs with more insight into the new Twitter Blue: -Launch on Nov. 7 but only in current markets (US, CA, Aus, NZ) -Check marks for subscribers, no current ID authentication

Oh my goodness.

No ID authentication. $8 a month gets you @RealQueenElizabeth, with a fancy blue check mark by your name

The day before the election. This is not a coincidence.

I hope Queen Elizabeth gets re-elected.

 

[belljr]

For $8 I no longer have to be elonmuskfan?

 

[Joe Bryant]

I respectfully disagree.

What do you disagree with?

I find it interesting folks are surprised guys like Musk and Bezos demand a lot of production and emphasize speed.

Of course there's more to running a business than speed. One has to have people who are excited to be doing the work and engaged and valued and a zillion other things that make up culture.

But speed is a huge part success. In both innovating and executing.

And Bezos and Musk have a long successful track record there.

Whether Musk will be able to also succeed in a different business like Twitter is a super interesting story. I don't know if he will. Which is what makes it interesting to me.

 

[Joe Bryant]

A chief executive is unable to curb his self-destructive impulses and log off Twitter, you say?

Joe wouldn't make that mistake.

Well, now that he has foresworn the mega-billions in profits generated by the Politics Forum, we will sadly never get to find out

Alas. What could have been GB...

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Elon Musk@elonmusk
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to [Musk's political opinions deleted].

Extremely messed up! [more politics deleted]

Nothing is his fault, you understand?

I liked the argument @IvanKaramazov made above -- that Musk thinks so big it's hard to imagine where he might take Twitter. That's a good counter argument to my position.

Which is... that he's flailing, has no understanding at all of the public or advertisers, or even how the world works when your audience is mass market and doesn't hang on your every word as Gospel.

I mean, how far into 4D Chess can we be if he didn't anticipate that a portion of the public and most advertisers might not care for him or his ideas or his vision for Twitter in advance -- and might react accordingly? I mean, that probably should have been item #1 on his list, no?

 

[Sabertooth]

I do find it interesting people seem surprised by the ask to work super hard and fast on this.

That's how the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos of the world operate.

They pay extremely well and expect a lot in return.

A classic from the original Amazon job description. https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-first-amazon-job-ad-reveals-obsession-with-speed-2019-7

Speed wins.

Sociopathy helps too.