It was run by business people trying to make money? This is hilarious. Twitter was under performing by all accounts, and even in a bull market where every other social media company was somehow doing better, Twitter was stagnant.
I have no idea what Musk thinks he is accomplishing or what the other 'smarter' people around him are thinking (funny how not a single post here references their tweets), but lets at least try to be realistic about the mess Twitter was previous to Musk getting involved. I mean their own ex head of security came out in August of this year and said the company was a mess internally when it comes to security.
It was run by business people trying to make money? This is hilarious. Twitter was under performing by all accounts, and even in a bull market where every other social media company was somehow doing better, Twitter was stagnant.
I have no idea what Musk thinks he is accomplishing or what the other 'smarter' people around him are thinking (funny how not a single post here references their tweets), but lets at least try to be realistic about the mess Twitter was previous to Musk getting involved. I mean their own ex head of security came out in August of this year and said the company was a mess internally when it comes to security.
Obviously it was run by business people trying to make money. They might not have been overly successful at it, but they were trying to make money. If they weren't - they would have been pushed out by shareholders/board. They didn't have a Facebook like structure where Zuckerberg can do whatever he wants because he has all the voting power.
Well thank goodness the smart business minds have moved into Twitter then. Because nothing screams business competency like buying a company that is losing $4M a day by adding $13B of debt that needs to be financed on top of it.
Meh. All it takes is one or two prominent figures to move their account to one of the other sites. Especially if Musk tries to force people to pay for Twitter.
Trump had 89 million followers and a massive cult of ideology. How did Truth Social go? Or Parler?
People follow hundreds of accounts, big and small. People aren't just going to abandon the collection of accounts they follow or the followers they have accumulated over time for one influencer. No individual node in those social networks is more valuable than the network. Even Bieber and Taylor Swift aren't making that happen, and their accounts are each smaller than Elon's anyways.
If Twitter does implement paywalls or something else that fundamentally worsens/breaks the creator/user experience, then there could be a mass exodus, but it's not happening otherwise. One or two big influencers does not make a global town square.
__________________
"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
The Following User Says Thank You to JohnnyB For This Useful Post:
Trump had 89 million followers and a massive cult of ideology. How did Truth Social go? Or Parler?
People follow hundreds of accounts, big and small. People aren't just going to abandon the collection of accounts they follow or the followers they have accumulated over time for one influencer. No individual node in those social networks is more valuable than the network. Even Bieber and Taylor Swift aren't making that happen, and their accounts are each smaller than Elon's anyways.
If Twitter does implement paywalls or something else that fundamentally worsens/breaks the creator/user experience, then there could be a mass exodus, but it's not happening otherwise. One or two big influencers does not make a global town square.
I'm not sure how you can say that so confidently. The past shows this not to be true, with places like MySpace. A lot of people have moved to TikTok. "Influencers" don't care, they just add to to the list of "subscribe to my Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Mastadon you know what to do!"
I think what will drive change is when other sites start adding Mastadon(or whatever turns out to be the favored replacement) embeds to things like news stories as they do with Twitter now.
Trump had 89 million followers and a massive cult of ideology. How did Truth Social go? Or Parler?
People follow hundreds of accounts, big and small. People aren't just going to abandon the collection of accounts they follow or the followers they have accumulated over time for one influencer. No individual node in those social networks is more valuable than the network. Even Bieber and Taylor Swift aren't making that happen, and their accounts are each smaller than Elon's anyways.
If Twitter does implement paywalls or something else that fundamentally worsens/breaks the creator/user experience, then there could be a mass exodus, but it's not happening otherwise. One or two big influencers does not make a global town square.
Agree with this. There isn't anyone on twitter important enough to lead a change. If there were - it would make sense for someone to just come and pay those users a bunch of money to switch platforms. This happened a bunch to video game streamers - but even those people switching services couldn't get a bunch of people to move off Twitch to Mixer or YouTube gaming or whatever.
I'm not sure how you can say that so confidently. The past shows this not to be true, with places like MySpace. A lot of people have moved to TikTok. "Influencers" don't care, they just add to to the list of "subscribe to my Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Mastadon you know what to do!"
I think what will drive change is when other sites start adding Mastadon(or whatever turns out to be the favored replacement) embeds to things like news stories as they do with Twitter now.
All of those other apps offered something different and people go to them for different reasons/experiences. They offer substantially different value propositions for creators and users. They're not just clones of each other.
I'm not saying Twitter can't go the way of MySpace and lose audience to something else, I'm just saying it's not going to be beaten by a bunch of Twitter clones, just like MySpace wasn't replaced by MySpace clones. Any alternative that wants to take on Twitter needs to offer something that is a huge improvement on Twitter or completely reshapes the town square experience rather than just being a clone not owned by Elon.
__________________
"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
All of those other apps offered something different and people go to them for different reasons/experiences. They offer substantially different value propositions for creators and users. They're not just clones of each other.
I'm not saying Twitter can't go the way of MySpace and lose audience to something else, I'm just saying it's not going to be beaten by a bunch of Twitter clones, just like MySpace wasn't replaced by MySpace clones. Any alternative that wants to take on Twitter needs to offer something that is a huge improvement on Twitter or completely reshapes the town square experience rather than just being a clone not owned by Elon.
I guess I just disagree. Enough people start moving, the crowd follows. And it's not like Twitter is some feature complete social media site, there are plenty of ways to improve on it.
All of those other apps offered something different and people go to them for different reasons/experiences. They offer substantially different value propositions for creators and users. They're not just clones of each other.
I'm not saying Twitter can't go the way of MySpace and lose audience to something else, I'm just saying it's not going to be beaten by a bunch of Twitter clones, just like MySpace wasn't replaced by MySpace clones. Any alternative that wants to take on Twitter needs to offer something that is a huge improvement on Twitter or completely reshapes the town square experience rather than just being a clone not owned by Elon.
The biggest 'clone' takeover I can think of was Reddit taking over from Digg.
The comparison you could see is if Musk starts push the 'paid' users way above the free users in terms of power or reach. If the free users are the ones people want to follow and more and more of them just give up because they've lost their reach - then you are at risk.
I think more likely is it splinters where some comes along and becomes 'sports twitter' and 'media guy twitter' or whatever. But even that is hard to see happening any time soon.
Maybe Twitter should just be a platform under an NPO and is funded by donations from individuals, institutions and corporations and monitored by decentralized community moderators and fact checkers. Similar to Wikipedia?
The Following User Says Thank You to Ozy_Flame For This Useful Post:
Maybe Twitter should just be a platform under an NPO and is funded by donations from individuals, institutions and corporations and monitored by decentralized community moderators and fact checkers. Similar to Wikipedia?
Interesting you weren’t bothered by it before Elon took over.
Obviously it was run by business people trying to make money. They might not have been overly successful at it, but they were trying to make money. If they weren't - they would have been pushed out by shareholders/board. They didn't have a Facebook like structure where Zuckerberg can do whatever he wants because he has all the voting power.
Before Elon, twitter was owned by huge investment firms that manage trillions in assets and that also own significant amounts of all 6 major US media companies. Twitter has a profound ability to shape public discourse, influence politics and impact businesses. There are countless ways to extract value from twitter that aren't directly financial, but probably not so much that you still sell it to whatever schmuck is willing to pay $40B for it.
