I don’t care if Musk makes money or not. I just spend hours trying to convince strangers on the internet that I’m a smarter business mind than Elon Musk.
Nah, I enjoy talking about business, especially ones that I know. Sorry it got in the way of your fanboying.
For purposes of comparison Musk's acquisition of Twitter has been compared with AOL's acquisition of Time Warner for $182 billion. For those who do not recall. How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong (Published 2010) When the deal was announced on Jan. 10, 2000, Stephen M. Case, a co-founder of AOL, said, “This is a historic moment in which new media has truly come of age.” His counterpart at Time Warner, the philosopher chief executive Gerald M. Levin, who was fond of quoting the Bible and Camus, said the Internet had begun to “create unprecedented and instantaneous access to every form of media and to unleash immense possibilities for economic growth, human understanding and creative expression.” The trail of despair in subsequent years included countless job losses, the decimation of retirement accounts, investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, and countless executive upheavals. Today, the combined values of the companies, which have been separated, is about one-seventh of their worth on the day of the merger.
Musk's effect on the platform is already being felt. Celebrities are starting to leave Twitter. Here's a running list. Personally, I'm not all that interested in the tweets of show business celebs. What does interest me are tweets from well respected subject matter experts like Laurence Tribe, George Conway or Neal Katyal. When individuals of that nature start abandoning the platform the number of daily engagements will drop significantly. If Musk continues on his current path Twitter could very well end up as another 4Chan or Truth Social and I'm not sure whether either one of the social media platforms is very lucrative.
Quite the work environment. “Twitter managers have told some staff to work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week — equivalent to 84 hours a week — to meet Musk's deadlines, CNBC reported, citing internal communications. Twitter didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on working hours, staff sleeping at the office, and layoffs.“ Twitter managers told staff to work 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week: CNBC
I used Conway as an example. When high profile credible users start leaving Twitter in droves their followers will do the same. I'm not sure whether a platform consisting primarily of members of MAGA nation (both active posters and followers) will be all that attractive to advertisers, Twitter's primary source of revenue. Maybe I'm mistaken but it would seem that the loss of affluent well educated followers would not be very positive for a company that relies on ads for its revenue.
The reason all those Twitter alternatives arent doing anything is because none of the libs are there, its just a bunch of people preaching to the choir, there's no one to troll. If you cant own the libs and blue check marks its not fun, so chasing away all the people to get mad at will just turn it into Gab.
We will see how much it changes. Some on the left are prematurely freaking out IMO. And some on the right seem to love Musk despite the fact that he supported Andrew Yang for president, supports Universal Basic Income, believes climate change is a serious problem, etc. But his being "anti-woke" is enough I suppose for them to consider him as one of them. As someone else noted, Twitter has never been family friendly or that heavily moderated - in many respects. It has had porn and racist and misogynistic comments. People vilifying folks, doxxing them. Musk said the other day that they will have a committee to evaluate the rules, so it doesn't seem the line is going to be drawn at criminality like the chan boards. Moderation is obviously a tough job even with the best intentions. My guess is that Musk got tired of "wokeness" and likes to dabble in conspiracy theories, which is why he has promoted some. I think he was also bothered by discussions around Covid and what he saw as efforts to shut down dissenting views or laypeople giving advice about treatments. One area where I think he's going to have to figure out a line is perceived threats against others. If someone says they wishes someone goes to a woman's house and assault her, is that a threat or does it have to be someone with the ability or intent to act upon it? A second area is the spreading of disinformation. Let's say it is objectively incorrect, such as if a partisan group spreads disinformation that the election is on Wednesday rather than Tuesday. Is that fair game? What about spreading around deep fakes under the guise of satire? I probably overly-complicate everything, but it's not going to be easy for them to draw hard and fast rules and consistently enforce them across the board.
That was so bad… they actually gave AOL top billing in the new name … and dropped it years later. But a dial up internet company merging with a landline cable company… it is comical in hindsight, but at same time it might have turned out differently if Steve Jobs was running the show.
