Welcome home, fellow Gator.

The Gator Nation's oldest and most active insider community
Join today!

Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter

Discussion in 'Too Hot for Swamp Gas' started by rivergator, Apr 4, 2022.

  1. oragator1

    oragator1 Premium Member

    22,871
    5,575
    3,488
    Apr 3, 2007
    I am honestly curious as to whether this will be his Waterloo. Just don’t see how he makes money off of it.
    But I think we’ve all learned not to bet against him.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  2. mrhansduck

    mrhansduck GC Hall of Fame

    4,750
    990
    1,788
    Nov 23, 2021
    I do. My FB is almost exclusively people I know personally. On the other hand, almost everyone I follow on Twitter is someone I don't know personally. One benefit of Twitter is that it's not as cluttered or unwieldy as FB IMO. I've gotten responses from people I did not expect. One cool feature is that you can create "lists" to narrow your feed to what you're interested in at any given time. For example, I have a follow list of quite a few meteorologists and storm chasers, and those accounts are active during hurricanes and other severe weather events. So when there's a tornado outbreak, I can see videos and takes about that in near real time without having to sift through all of the political content on my main feed.
     
    • Like Like x 1
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Informative Informative x 1
  3. ATLGATORFAN

    ATLGATORFAN Premium Member

    3,592
    921
    2,153
    Aug 10, 2015

    Even if he loses 15B it wouldn’t change his daily life one bit. Nobody wants to lose 15b but certainly wouldn’t end him
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  4. GatorNorth

    GatorNorth Premium Member Premium Member

    17,126
    8,054
    3,203
    Apr 3, 2007
    Atlanta
    Tesla isn’t going to cover his losses per se but Tesla shareholders would have some negative downstream exposure if Twitter tanks and there’s a large margin calls on his shares.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  5. gatorchamps960608

    gatorchamps960608 GC Hall of Fame

    4,503
    937
    2,463
    Jul 4, 2020
    Me. I use it as a real time newsfeed. I have lists for Gators, Politics and other topics that I categorize providers into. Then I just scroll through that list for the latest info.
     
  6. oragator1

    oragator1 Premium Member

    22,871
    5,575
    3,488
    Apr 3, 2007
    he’s got 54 billion in it, he could lose a lot more than 15. He could lose it all. He was one more bad test launch away from being broke with SpaceX, no guarantee Twitter couldn’t go belly up too, he’s going to take risks with it.
    But more than the dollar losses, it would harm his reputation as the golden boy who always makes the right bet, which could hurt Tesla stock, and his future bets. A bad bet here could be a real cascade effect.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  7. gator_lawyer

    gator_lawyer VIP Member

    16,820
    5,769
    3,213
    Oct 30, 2017
    I do.
     
  8. Gatorrick22

    Gatorrick22 GC Hall of Fame

    87,723
    26,311
    4,613
    Apr 3, 2007
    I believe Musk has stated that he wants more people to voice their opinion even if it's not popular. That's really what most people want from Twitter. I believe that being the arbiter of "facts" is not the mission nor the goal of such a platform.
     
  9. CaptUSMCNole

    CaptUSMCNole Premium Member

    2,966
    174
    343
    May 23, 2007
    NCR
    It is the preferred social media site of The Left and their thought leaders. I cannot remember the exact stats off hand but I think that around 80% of the content is produced by 40k users and most of them are considered to be on the Leftward side of the Democratic Party.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Funny Funny x 1
  10. PerSeGator

    PerSeGator GC Hall of Fame

    2,289
    366
    1,993
    Jun 14, 2014
    IMO his whole plan isn't to make money directly from Twitter, but to use it to a a personal brand builder and push hype towards his products/investments. As the sole owner, he has minimal reporting obligations and no real oversight. He could (and very likely will) manipulate Twitter's algos to drive positive traffic on Tesla, SpaceX, etc. and negative traffic on his competitors. He can also deploy an army of bots to give his empire the appearance of popularity, without any fear of being de-platformed.

    Twitter has minimal value selling ads to third parties, because you can't publicly promote the tools that would actually work (bots, algo manipulation, suppression of competitors, etc.). In private hands, though, my guess is it will be very effective and pay for itself many times over.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  11. AlfaGator

    AlfaGator VIP Member

    47,624
    121,450
    14,105
    Aug 31, 2007
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    Reich showing his true colors.
     
    • Funny Funny x 4
    • Agree Agree x 1
  12. rivergator

    rivergator Too Hot Mod Moderator VIP Member

    35,346
    1,741
    2,258
    Apr 8, 2007
    “Their thought leaders… “
    Seems like an unnecessary pot shot
     
  13. PerSeGator

    PerSeGator GC Hall of Fame

    2,289
    366
    1,993
    Jun 14, 2014
    Both of those points can be true.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  14. gator95

    gator95 GC Hall of Fame

    7,557
    807
    2,013
    Apr 3, 2007
    No idea. But betting against musk has not been profitable the past 5 years or so.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
  15. mdgator05

    mdgator05 Premium Member

    15,786
    2,035
    1,718
    Dec 9, 2010
    Reich's second argument is largely untrue. There are plenty of platforms by which to do that (e.g., Facebook, which has a much larger user base).

    Musk is going to run into the interesting conundrum if he really stops banning people, as pointed out by the Reddit CEO. There are two competing effects in social media network reach: become too restrictive and you limit the size of the market, become too lax in restrictions and you end up with a Chan-style free-for-all that drives the "normies" away.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  16. mdgator05

    mdgator05 Premium Member

    15,786
    2,035
    1,718
    Dec 9, 2010
    Definitely be interesting to see if he has something. He better, because he just made a very big bet that he does.
     
  17. jjgator55

    jjgator55 VIP Member

    6,198
    1,765
    2,043
    Apr 3, 2007
    Twitter isn’t going to change. The advertisers are geared toward the non-MAGA types, and they’re not going to risk losing advertisers. Plus, as been stated he has other interests that will occupy his attention while the more liberal employees run, and moderate the business.
     
    • Optimistic Optimistic x 1
  18. WC53

    WC53 GC Hall of Fame

    4,705
    993
    2,088
    Oct 17, 2015
    Old City
    Brilliant billionaire and nut are not a null set.
    What could go wrong
     
  19. gator95

    gator95 GC Hall of Fame

    7,557
    807
    2,013
    Apr 3, 2007
    Not that big when you look at it. Twitter is not going to zero. IF he can monetize twitter then he will most likely increase his wealth 1.5-2 times. Will be interesting to watch.
     
  20. BLING

    BLING GC Hall of Fame

    8,667
    840
    2,843
    Apr 16, 2007
    Musk says he’s going to authenticate all humans and get rid of the spam-bots and fake accounts. That would be a pretty big change from their current landscape, which has arbitrarily banned a few nutjobs who broke certain rules, but can never seem to get a handle on the spam or bot accounts.

    That inauthentic behavior he’s talking about is 50% of the problem, perhaps even a greater problem to actually address than the violent/terrorist nutjob content which would permeate if allowed. The thing is it’s much easier to say “authenticate human users” than to actually implement it across the entire platform. Although Twitter claims to have been working at fixing these problems with spam-bots, they might have half assed their efforts under the theory that even “fake user engagements” is still user engagement. If Musk successfully eliminates inauthentic behavior that might crush their engagement metrics… metrics which are part of the valuation of the business. This of course makes the financials even more sketchy. So it would seem to be a bit of a catch-22.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1