Elon Cleaning House

The always plugged in Kara Swisher with a 3 tweet thread on the collapse in advertising

 

This is clever

 

Yep, two big issues with Twitter advertising: it is low ROAS (Return-on-Advertising-Spend) to start and makes up a tiny amount of their budgets. So there is no reason to take basically any risk for it.

 

Is it time to start averaging in?

 

When is amazing to me is how much otherwise smart right wingers actually start believing their own stuff about the power of liberal activists and failing to appreciate the simple workings of the market. There’s a well publicized exchange with Musk and an individual close to McConnell about blaming and shaming the advertisers that are pulling out, and then someone currently working for McConnell talked about the fact that all of these advertisers are going to be called before the Senate and harassed for failing to advertise on Twitter.

It’s like they really believe that there is no independent business reason for advertisers pulling out. They don’t understand that while the CEOs of these businesses are very sympathetic to Republicans, their Directors of Marketing have to make an economically rational decision. Senate staffers fail to appreciate the market power of people that are not like them. These staffers are smart people, but they are acting incredibly stupidly. They are in a bubble, and believe their own BS.

 

FrEe SpEeCh!!!!! FrEEEEd!!!

Wait, advertisers are choosing to leave?

The government must investigate this disloyalty immediately!

Gotta love conservatives and their “logic”.

 

Companies better keep giving him money or they're going to regret it! They have been warned.

Elon Musk says what's next for Twitter advertisers if they bow to activists demands and leave the platform

 

Threats. That should definitely attract new advertisers. This is a good strategy… if he’s trying to actually run major advertisers off. A bit bizarre really.

 

It’s my favorite platform. Especially for news. I haven’t noticed any changes really. Mostly just Elon stirring people up. Platform should be invisible in my opinion.

I think he’s accidentally drumming up momentum for another similar platform to develop.

 

Wow. Threatening your customers. I’d pull out. There are so many other digital ways to reach customers.

I’m prepared to see Home Depot ads all day long I guess.

 

I get TMobile ads all day.

 

Elon ‘a new tack to win back advertisers.. threaten them with boycotts. LOL - it’s a bold strategy let’s see how it works for him.

Elon Musk Tries to Win Advertisers Back by Threatening Them

 

He has stated from the beginning that Twitter is just a springboard to create an "everything app" or as he calls it: "X." That's why I've been saying his purchase of Twitter cannot be judged anytime soon. It's what he does with it 3 to 5 years from now, when it's most likely absorbed into a much larger project, that is going to determine whether the investment was worth it. I don't pretend to know exactly what Elon wants to do, but I could see all sorts of potential integrations with Tesla and such. Whether you love him or hate him, if you think he thinks he's fixing Twitter by charging $8 and opening up speech, you don't know Elon Musk. These are just prelim starter moves and he'll likely hand off most of the grunt work and engineering within a couple months.

 

Okay, this is funny:

 

I guess Elon is cleaning house since he managed to rid Twitter of many advertisers raising the question is Elon Musk a gross incompetent who doesn't know how to a manage a social media platform or did he purchase Twitter as a plaything to satisfy his ego and really doesn't care whether it's profitable or not. I tend to take the latter view.
Twitter suffers "massive drop in revenue," Elon Musk says

Some of world's biggest brands have quietly paused ads on Twitter

 

He signaled weeks before he took over that massive layoffs were coming. Big tech has been clobbered with layoffs this year, as an industry. This was all coming before any advertisers pulled their ads and Twitter employees knew it.

 

Apparently those have seen the new paid verification system say there is no safeguard against changing your name after you’ve been verified. So I could get verified under my real name and then change to Donald Trump and keep my blue check mark…. Smart….

 

This takeover reminds me of Elon's fiasco with the Thai cave rescue and calling the rescuers' pedophiles because they didn't believe his technology could help them in that circumstance. The kids were all rescued and Elon ended up in court for defamation.

I truly believe Elon is a genius, and what he has done to change the space industry and reenergize NASA is remarkable. Part of genius is also taking big risks and believing in oneself. That doesn't mean he can make all the right moves on Twitter. If he goes down the Thai rescuer path, it's going to be one gigantic failure. In the end, even if it's a failure, it won't really hurt him. He will still be a billionaire and his ego will have been massaged by all the attention, good or bad, he's the focus. The rest of us will have been distracted and maybe this becomes one big CF of a social experiment that we learn from.

 

could you post some stories of big tech being “clobbered” with layoffs this year?

LOL