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Will This Work Out Well For Twitter? (1 Viewer)

What percent chance would you say that in 2 years we look at Twitter and say, "That's worked out pre

  • Total voters
    65
Joe Bryant

Joe Bryant

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Lots of interesting talk on Elon Musk buying Twitter.

This feels like a pretty reasonable take on the things he likely wants to change.

This is a grand plan of what one person thinks he might be up to.

A poster shared a quote from an Atlantic article that said, "Anybody who is extremely confident about how this is going to work out doesn’t know what they’re talking about.'"

To be fair, anyone in 2022 who says they are "extremely confident" just about anything is going to work out doesn't know what they're talking about.

But that doesn't stop us from guessing.

So I'd ask: What percent chance would you say that in 2 years we look at Twitter and say, "That's worked out pretty well for Twitter"?

And yes, "worked out pretty well" and "for Twitter" is up for discussion. That's part of the conversation too. 

 
Totally on the fence here but I picked 50-59.  Don't really know.  Very likely it changes little.   Will be interested to see if it really becomes a free speech platform

 
I voted 50-59.  I neither like nor dislike Elon Musk.  He seems like an odd person who I would probably not be able to relate to IRL.  But you can't argue with his track record.  I figure the guy who built Tesla and SpaceX is probably a better-than-replacement-level owner, so my best guess is that he probably moves Twitter in a good direction.  But I don't have concrete reason for thinking that other than my general impression that Musk tends to succeed at things.  

One reason why I'm very reluctant to vote for anything more optimistic than this is because companies like Twitter come and go all the time.  We tend to think of them as unshakeable monopolies, but MySpace vanished seemingly overnight.  The same network externalities that allow a social media company to achieve a certain level of dominance work the other way once a few users start to leave.  I could imagine looking back at this in two years and having to remind ourselves what Twitter was and why we cared about it so much.  That wouldn't necessarily be Musk's fault -- maybe somebody else will just come up with something better -- but we would definitely put that scenario in the "did not work out" bucket.  

(To be honest, I don't even really know why Musk is buying Twitter in the first place, and I don't think anybody else posting here really does either.  It's not possible for any of us to have a solid opinion on how likely it is that he'll succeed when we don't even really know what he's trying to do, or why.)

 
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IvanKaramazov said:
I voted 50-59.  I neither like nor dislike Elon Musk.  He seems like an odd person who I would probably not be able to relate to IRL.  But you can't argue with his track record.  I figure the guy who built Tesla and SpaceX is probably a better-than-replacement-level owner, so my best guess is that he probably moves Twitter in a good direction.  But I don't have concrete reason for thinking that other than my general impression that Musk tends to succeed at things.  

One reason why I'm very reluctant to vote for anything more optimistic than this is because companies like Twitter come and go all the time.  We tend to think of them as unshakeable monopolies, but MySpace vanished seemingly overnight.  The same network externalities that allow a social media company to achieve a certain level of dominance work the other way once a few users start to leave.  I could imagine looking back at this in two years and having to remind ourselves what Twitter was and why we cared about it so much.  That wouldn't necessarily be Musk's fault -- maybe somebody else will just come up with something better -- but we would definitely put that scenario in the "did not work out" bucket.  
Click to expand...


One thing I'm a big believer in: Recognizing greats.

I never particularly liked Steve Jobs style. And I don't particularly like Musk's style. At least from where I see it a zillion miles removed from reality.

But among business leaders, we're talking about a guy who is GOAT level. 

And he's done it in REALLY hard businesses. He didn't get lucky and be the first to stumble on something.

He dove headfirst into two old school businesses of auto manufacturing and rockets with tons of barriers and complications and CRUSHED both. 

Elon Musk has literally built a career on doing hard things.

I may not like his style. But I can't think of a more capable person in the world. 

I'm fascinated to see what he does with Twitter. 

 
supermike80 said:
Totally on the fence here but I picked 50-59.  Don't really know.  Very likely it changes little.   Will be interested to see if it really becomes a free speech platform
Click to expand...
The issue to me is still...define free speech.  Has free speech ever been about free without consequences at all?  Should it be?

 
Voted 30-39%.  Should be pretty easy for him to profit off his rep and bring users back without changing the experience all that much, other than presumably a lot more ads to cover the debt he took on to make the purchase. That said, I don't have a lot of faith in a guy who runs an underground tunnel-building company but doesn't understand gravity.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
(To be honest, I don't even really know why Musk is buying Twitter in the first place, and I don't think anybody else posting here really does either.  It's not possible for any of us to have a solid opinion on how likely it is that he'll succeed when we don't even really know what he's trying to do, or why.)
Click to expand...
This is where I'm at.  I can't begin to tell you how likely Musk is "to accomplish his goals" because I don't even know what the goals are.  Just off the top of my head, I think any of the following are possibly his goals:

* Make a bunch of money
* Enhance his own permanent legacy
* Ruin Trump's chances of becoming POTUS in 2024 by letting him back on Twitter
* Test out some new social media theory just for kicks

 
IvanKaramazov said:
I voted 50-59.  I neither like nor dislike Elon Musk.  He seems like an odd person who I would probably not be able to relate to IRL.  But you can't argue with his track record.  I figure the guy who built Tesla and SpaceX is probably a better-than-replacement-level owner, so my best guess is that he probably moves Twitter in a good direction.  But I don't have concrete reason for thinking that other than my general impression that Musk tends to succeed at things.  

One reason why I'm very reluctant to vote for anything more optimistic than this is because companies like Twitter come and go all the time.  We tend to think of them as unshakeable monopolies, but MySpace vanished seemingly overnight.  The same network externalities that allow a social media company to achieve a certain level of dominance work the other way once a few users start to leave.  I could imagine looking back at this in two years and having to remind ourselves what Twitter was and why we cared about it so much.  That wouldn't necessarily be Musk's fault -- maybe somebody else will just come up with something better -- but we would definitely put that scenario in the "did not work out" bucket.  

(To be honest, I don't even really know why Musk is buying Twitter in the first place, and I don't think anybody else posting here really does either.  It's not possible for any of us to have a solid opinion on how likely it is that he'll succeed when we don't even really know what he's trying to do, or why.)
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Nice post. Every word mirrored my thoughts. (And I voted 50-59 too.)

 
Rich Conway said:
This is where I'm at.  I can't begin to tell you how likely Musk is "to accomplish his goals" because I don't even know what the goals are.  Just off the top of my head, I think any of the following are possibly his goals:

* Make a bunch of money
* Enhance his own permanent legacy
* Ruin Trump's chances of becoming POTUS in 2024 by letting him back on Twitter
* Test out some new social media theory just for kicks
Click to expand...


I agree with this too, but I think you need to add another evidence-supported theory of why he's doing this: he wants to be the center of attention.

 
Rich Conway said:
This is where I'm at.  I can't begin to tell you how likely Musk is "to accomplish his goals" because I don't even know what the goals are.  Just off the top of my head, I think any of the following are possibly his goals:

* Make a bunch of money
* Enhance his own permanent legacy
* Ruin Trump's chances of becoming POTUS in 2024 by letting him back on Twitter
* Test out some new social media theory just for kicks
Click to expand...


How likely do you think in 2 years we look at this and we're able to say, "Musk did pretty well with those things"?

 
Joe Bryant said:
One thing I'm a big believer in: Recognizing greats.

I never particularly liked Steve Jobs style. And I don't particularly like Musk's style. At least from where I see it a zillion miles removed from reality.

But among business leaders, we're talking about a guy who is GOAT level. 

And he's done it in REALLY hard businesses. He didn't get lucky and be the first to stumble on something.

He dove headfirst into two old school businesses of auto manufacturing and rockets with tons of barriers and complications and CRUSHED both. 

Elon Musk has literally built a career on doing hard things.

I may not like his style. But I can't think of a more capable person in the world. 

I'm fascinated to see what he does with Twitter. 
Click to expand...
I think this is an excellent analysis. 

From what little I know of Musk I don’t think I particularly like him. And of course I am either contemptuous or indifferent to Twitter (depending on my mood) so I don’t care what happens to it. 
But genius is genius. If Picasso tells you he’s going to paint something, you don’t attempt to evaluate it before he starts. You hand him the oils and let him go. 

 
What does "work out well" mean? 

I doubt the experience as a user will improve. I expect to see even more "promoted" content cluttering up my feed. I guess there will be more QANON/Proud Boys type content on the platform but I won't follow anyone putting it up.

 
Joe Bryant said:
Rich Conway said:
This is where I'm at.  I can't begin to tell you how likely Musk is "to accomplish his goals" because I don't even know what the goals are.  Just off the top of my head, I think any of the following are possibly his goals:

* Make a bunch of money
* Enhance his own permanent legacy
* Ruin Trump's chances of becoming POTUS in 2024 by letting him back on Twitter
* Test out some new social media theory just for kicks
Click to expand...
How likely do you think in 2 years we look at this and we're able to say, "Musk did pretty well with those things"?
Click to expand...
I can't begin to imagine.  Looking at the first one I listed, for example, I don't even know if the goal is to make money.  If he wanted to make money on it, I'm betting he could.  If that's not the goal, then it's not fair to grade him on "how well he made money".  Ditto all the others.

 
Rich Conway said:
I can't begin to imagine.  Looking at the first one I listed, for example, I don't even know if the goal is to make money.  If he wanted to make money on it, I'm betting he could.  If that's not the goal, then it's not fair to grade him on "how well he made money".  Ditto all the others.
Click to expand...
Let me fire off an analogy here by using the Baltimore Orioles and New York Mets.

Seems to me that for years now, the primary goal of the Orioles has been to turn a profit and they haven't legitimately tried to "win games".  They've largely been successful at turning a profit and they've largely been unsuccessful at winning games.  As I see it, however, they haven't "failed" at winning games because they aren't trying to win games.  On the other hand, the new owner of the Mets has shown that he's willing to spend whatever it takes to win games, profits be damned.

In short, to grade (or even predict) "success", one needs to know the goals.

 
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Insomniac said:
What does "work out well" mean? 

I doubt the experience as a user will improve. I expect to see even more "promoted" content cluttering up my feed. I guess there will be more QANON/Proud Boys type content on the platform but I won't follow anyone putting it up.
Click to expand...
You don’t have to follow them.  The problem is when people you follow quote them and thr fighting evolves.  

 
FairWarning said:
You don’t have to follow them.  The problem is when people you follow quote them and thr fighting evolves.  
Click to expand...
Right. I think a big issue with why everyone is not on Twitter, and a lot of people on it don't use it much, is because of the quote tweet arguments, trolls, bots and bickering. 

You can follow the most innocuous subject, and it will turn into a fight. 

I have a rough time seeing how less moderation is going to improve the average person's experience. 

 
FairWarning said:
It is broke.
Click to expand...


Not in my opinion. In retrospect this will be viewed as the high water mark for this social media platform and people in the future will say, "It was never as good after Musk took over"  

And fine with me, as I bought Twitter at $29 and am getting out at $54.20 a share.  :pickle:

I will continue to use the platform but will look at alternatives when they become available.

 
Rich Conway said:
In short, to grade (or even predict) "success", one needs to know the goals.
Click to expand...


Kind of.

But this isn't scientific. 

Lots of people have opinions that "He's in for a world of hurt, this won't go well" to "He's a genius and everything he touches turns to gold. This will go very well". 

I think that kind of guessing about how something will play out is interesting so I asked people to take a guess with a percentage. 

 
squistion said:
Not in my opinion. In retrospect this will be viewed as the high water mark for this social media platform and people in the future will say, "It was never as good after Musk took over"  

And fine with me, as I bought Twitter at $29 and am getting out at $54.20 a share.  :pickle:

I will continue to use the platform but will look at alternatives when they become available.
Click to expand...


Thanks. I'm sure there are lots of people like you who feel this way. By definition, if people are using a product, they probably are generally ok with how it works as is. And change is not something they're always looking for. 

Side note, how did it work with the stock you owned? What is the process?

 
Joe Bryant said:
Thanks. I'm sure there are lots of people like you who feel this way. By definition, if people are using a product, they probably are generally ok with how it works as is. And change is not something they're always looking for. 

Side note, how did it work with the stock you owned? What is the process?
Click to expand...


From what I've read on Google, my 100 shares will be cashed out at $54.20 per share when Musk officially takes over the company, which will be sometime before the end of the year. 

 
Just read up on a few thoughts Musk threw into the ether regarding changes for twitter and I am keen on a few of them and would like to see where they lead. the first is going subscription based and getting rid of ads. This could help with opening the platform to a more free speech based model as it removes outside corporate dictates form the equation. That concern has actually been a thing on other sites such as youtube and facebook. Musk also floated, rather cheekily, about closing the SF based hq of twitter since no one comes to the office anyway and remaking it into a homeless shelter. That's kind of a neat idea, imo. 

 
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One thing that I've seen mentioned a ton elsewhere but not yet in this forum is potential issues with employee retention/recruitment at Twitter.  A number of their concerns are laid out in this article. This seems like maybe not a great sign:

Managers responsible for hiring have been asked to keep track of how many prospective employees turn down job offers because of fears about Mr. Musk, according to internal communications reviewed by The Times.
Click to expand...

 
Ultimately don't see this changing much in the long run. User driven product and he will have to moderate at some point. He loves attention and thrives under these circumstances though and wouldn't bet against him making this something we don't understand at the moment.

 
sho nuff said:
The issue to me is still...define free speech.  Has free speech ever been about free without consequences at all?  Should it be?
Click to expand...
I think free speech is defined differently by different people.  So it is unlikely there will be a consensus on it.  

However, because it is a voluntary platform, I feel if there is content on twitter someone doesn't like or gets offended by, then don't view it.   Like changing the channel. 

 
squistion said:
Not in my opinion. In retrospect this will be viewed as the high water mark for this social media platform and people in the future will say, "It was never as good after Musk took over"  

And fine with me, as I bought Twitter at $29 and am getting out at $54.20 a share.  :pickle:

I will continue to use the platform but will look at alternatives when they become available.
Click to expand...
I think we’ll agree it won’t be Trump’s site.  

 
supermike80 said:
I think free speech is defined differently by different people.  So it is unlikely there will be a consensus on it.  

However, because it is a voluntary platform, I feel if there is content on twitter someone doesn't like or gets offended by, then don't view it.   Like changing the channel. 
Click to expand...
But since it also has a terms of service…violating them and being suspended or banned is not a limit of ones free speech.

 
Twitter is not a company that currently makes a profit.  I suspect it turns into a pay to tweet site.  It will eliminate the negative posters.  I suspect it will continue to be free to read.  Musk isn’t doing this for fun, he is going to make money.

 
Having agreed with IK that we don't know what he wants to do, I'll say this:

  • If he plans to destroy it or blow it up he will most likely be 100% successful.  I'm guessing based on Joe's OP that would not work out well for Twitter as a platform (5%)
  • If he plans to keep business as usual then it would (obviously) work out as well as if he didn't acquire it.  This also is the category for him just doing this because he can and doesn't really care (20%)
  • If he plans to make sweeping changes then I think that will be 50/50 on success rate.  (25%)
  • If he plans to make it mass marketing for his other ventures then he'll be successful probably around 90%  (50%)
So, from a Musk standpoint I think he'll succeed in what he wants.  From a Twitter platform standpoint it's a mixed bag.

 
Toby2ElectricBugaloo said:
One thing that I've seen mentioned a ton elsewhere but not yet in this forum is potential issues with employee retention/recruitment at Twitter.  A number of their concerns are laid out in this article. This seems like maybe not a great sign:
Click to expand...


Yeah, I mean Musk has had trouble getting any competent employees at Tesla and SpaceX.  It's amazing he got a rocket off the ground!!!

 
I think Twitter as a platform will be as successful, or more successful, in two years, in their eyes. But what is successful to them, might not be successful to you or I.

Every horse that is beaten dead in here about censorship or free speech isn't a blip on the radar for Twitter. Don't think I have ever seen it trending or a top story. I think Musk brings some celebrity and gravitas to the company, I think he will make a few minor changes that will be heralded as either ground breaking or site destroying depending on which side you are on, and he will get richer. 

I think they will push the freemium versions of the site, where you can continue to post and read for free, but for a monthly fee (like Twitter Blue), you get a validation checkmark and some posting perks. I think the Dogecoin tip jar will be a real thing. You load up your account with some Doge and if there is a post you really like, slide them a microtransaction. And upping your posting game to try and get paid as well. NBA Twitter is a great example of a lot of people that put in real work to give facts and opinions about their favorite team, they should get compensated at the public sees fit, with Twitter taking a small transaction fee. TikTok is killing it right now with this business plan.

 
Bogart said:
I think Twitter as a platform will be as successful, or more successful, in two years, in their eyes. But what is successful to them, might not be successful to you or I.

Every horse that is beaten dead in here about censorship or free speech isn't a blip on the radar for Twitter. Don't think I have ever seen it trending or a top story. I think Musk brings some celebrity and gravitas to the company, I think he will make a few minor changes that will be heralded as either ground breaking or site destroying depending on which side you are on, and he will get richer. 

I think they will push the freemium versions of the site, where you can continue to post and read for free, but for a monthly fee (like Twitter Blue), you get a validation checkmark and some posting perks. I think the Dogecoin tip jar will be a real thing. You load up your account with some Doge and if there is a post you really like, slide them a microtransaction. And upping your posting game to try and get paid as well. NBA Twitter is a great example of a lot of people that put in real work to give facts and opinions about their favorite team, they should get compensated at the public sees fit, with Twitter taking a small transaction fee. TikTok is killing it right now with this business plan.
Click to expand...
This makes a lot of sense. Twitter could be a lot more productive for Twitter, and I agree with others that Musk will be smart on capitalizing. 

Voted 60-69%. A little tribute to Elon.

 
John123 said:
Yeah, I mean Musk has had trouble getting any competent employees at Tesla and SpaceX.  It's amazing he got a rocket off the ground!!!
Click to expand...
From the article:

But other employees have argued in internal messages seen by The Times that their co-workers have shifted too far to the left side of the political spectrum, making employees who support Mr. Musk’s plans too uncomfortable to speak up. In a worker-run survey of nearly 200 Twitter employees on Blind, an anonymous workplace review app, 44 percent said they were neutral on Mr. Musk. Twenty-seven percent said they loved Mr. Musk, while 27 percent said they hated him.
Click to expand...
This is a pretty consistent pattern in these of sorts debates.  A small, but very loud and self-righteous group of people manage to shout over an equal-sized group that feels differently and a much larger group that doesn't care.  

Kind of the story of Twitter, to be honest.

 
John123 said:
Yeah, I mean Musk has had trouble getting any competent employees at Tesla and SpaceX.  It's amazing he got a rocket off the ground!!!
Click to expand...


Do you think hiring people to help you build cars and rockets is the same as retaining people to assist you in reversing content policies that those same people spent years crafting?

Also, Musk's reputation has changed substantially since he was first at those other places. For example, many of the people we see in this thread celebrating him would have dismissed him as an out of touch billionaire plutocrat tree-hugger when he was primarily known for building electric cars.

 
Toby2ElectricBugaloo said:
Do you think hiring people to help you build cars and rockets is the same as retaining people to assist you in reversing content policies that those same people spent years crafting?
Click to expand...


Of course not.  And why would he want to retain the people who crafted the policies he's buying Twitter to get rid of?  Just like a presidential administration, there will be some house cleaning after he takes over.  That's to be expected.   Your post suggested he would have trouble attracting or hiring people.  My point is that's not true. 

 
IvanKaramazov said:
From the article:

This is a pretty consistent pattern in these of sorts debates.  A small, but very loud and self-righteous group of people manage to shout over an equal-sized group that feels differently and a much larger group that doesn't care.  

Kind of the story of Twitter, to be honest.
Click to expand...
And the media is more likely to cover the 27% who hate the sale.  The sky is falling sells more.

 
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