There's a list of advertisers that put ads on hold. But given the talent bleed, can it survive both problems of ad revenue and talent bleed?
It really doesn't matter as something else will take its place. Let nature take its course such as Darwin would say.
The last message to all employees surely will result in both departures and lawsuits.
Jump to Postfreedom of speech, but not freedom of reach
You can't have one without the other. In any case, freedom of speech is not what you think it is. It just means the government can't censor what you say (which Ron De Santis just found out in Florida). Since, …
Jump to PostAs our men of business become more prominent and wealthier, they enter a feedback loop. Sycophants flatter instead of challenging them. This impacts their ability to hear criticism. And that leaves them more likely to cling to toadies who feed their now inflated self-image. All too often, the end …
Jump to PostFollow-up question - what happens when the "new twitter" decides that anything goes except
- negative comments about Tesla
- negative comments about SpaceX
- negative comments about Elon Musk
- comments that run contrary to Elon Musk's political views
Jump to PostI find it unbelievable that Musk walks in on day one and says the code has faults here, here, and here (realy? is he the greatest coder ever born and can see the errors straight away, in code he is inspecting for the first time? (World's fastest speed reader as …
Jump to PostIt's now a year later, and apparently Twitter ended up in the trash. We only have X now ... ;)
we need an alternate ceo
Might as well put a sign over the door that says Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
I'm reminded of the question put to Warren Buffett which was "How does one manage a conglomerate?" The question was how Warren was able to manage companies with such a wide set of goals and disciplines. Warren said (this is from memory and rewritten as such) that you let the team that built the company continue to run the company. As long as they are performing well, you let them be.
In other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Then I recall the quote from Dr. McCoy in the first Star Trek movie. "You know engineers. They just love to change things."
In other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Who said it wasn't broke? Elon acquired a failing company. Twitter might have been making gross ad revenue, but it was never profitable, and it was bleeding a LOT of money every month. If I suddenly acquired a company that was losing millions every month, the first thing I'd look to do is see where I could cut. He saw a lot of employees who either didn't share his vision, weren't willing to stand behind him, or who he felt weren't up to snuff. Sometimes what you adopt is such a complete mess, it makes sense to just scrap everything down to the bare bones and start from scratch. In his case, it does him no favors to be spending millions of dollars on employees that don't share his vision, don't stand behind him, and aren't pulling their weight. Honestly, I would have done the same thing.
"it was never profitable" tells me it needs to go where such companies go when that happens. But the founders and more did make millions so maybe the goal of many companies isn't to be profitable over all.
Just make you a multi-millionaire.
Adding with edit: That last sentence was poorly written. Let's try this: The goal of many companies is to make a few people millionaires or maybe billionaires.
Am I the only optimistic one here? I genuinely think that Elon will cull all the dead weight and corporate structure and attitudes, and successfully rebuild Twitter from the ground up as a small and nimble Silicon Valley startup.
Am I the only optimistic one here?
Yes.
Elon has clearly stated that his priorities for twitter are
We've seen the major news networks sacrifice journalistic integrity for profit. Everything is framed as "two sides" issues even when one side is clearly full of effluvium. Musk will do whatever brings in the most views, clicks, and retweets. In other words, the exact opposite of reasoned discourse.
Today the news is all access cards were disabled because Elon is afraid of sabotage to the servers.
Paranoia is part of dictatorships.
-> At first I thought there was some hope as Elon talked and then not about becoming more like WeChat. I don't know what you know about WeChat but it's quite the heavyweight elsewhere because people use it to buy things at the store and more. If only Elon had stuck to that as a new feature. History note: Elon's first hit was Paypal with a 1.5 billion dollar sale to Ebay in 2002.
Seems it's going to be a "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" or worse story now.
Definitely inspirational. But let's not assume that everything he thinks and does is awesome. An expert in one field is not necessarily an expert in others. Linus Pauling was a world-renowned biochemist but his ideas on mega-dose vitamin C were just plain wrong. Albert Einstein was a physicist, but that didn't make his opinions on anything outside his expertise and more or less relevant than mine.
Elon Musk may end up making twitter profitable. But will twitter end up being a force for good? I rather doubt it.
I checked on a Tweet and WOW, Twitter now has a lot of X-RATED material. I never saw that before on Twitter. I didn't go looking for it, it arrived in my email. The Tweet looked normal but scroll down and "there it is." WOW.WOW.WOW.
So now it's filling with porn, Nazis and Qbots.
Dani, is this a good thing?
I mean, it's obvious things are going to go to shit for a little bit after laying off, in one fell swoop, most of the machine. That's why I said that I think he'll be successful at knocking everything that's currently there to the ground, clearing out the rubble, and rebuilding Twitter from the ground up as a small and nimble startup with Silicon Valley startup values.
He paid $44 billion just to tear it to the ground? But only after letting it go completely to shit and further tarnishing its reputation (if that is possible)? Doesn't seem like a sound business decision to me. He could have started his own twitter with a clean slate, impose no restrictions on what is posted, and let that go to shit for a lot less than $44 billion.
He paid $44 billion just to tear it to the ground?
Not quite. He paid $44 billion just to tear it to the ground while kicking and screaming, and only after very publicly unsuccessfully trying to get out of the purchase. He realized before making the purchase that there was no way to salvage what was there already in order to get it to a profitable state, but his pre-purchase tantrum and antics resulted in him being legally forced to buy it anyways. Now that he was forced to buy it, tearing it to the ground and starting over with his own clean slate is his only course of action to give him the end-goal he wants, which is a Twitter clone that adheres to his particular vision and sensibilities.
his only course of action to give him the end-goal he wants, which is a Twitter clone that adheres to his particular vision and sensibilities.
His sensibilities are Qanon, porn, and fascists?
I think you are making my point here. He paid $44 billion for something that (due to his own infantile tantrums) he will have to throw out and rebuild from scratch. If it weren't for his track record with Tesla and SpaceX he doesn't seem like someone I'd want running a company.
only after very publicly unsuccessfully trying to get out of the purchase
That just means he didn't do his due diligence beforehand. He went into it half cocked.
@rproffitt
So now it's filling with porn, Nazis and Qbots.
He just tweeted that the new tweeter policy will be freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
Negative/Hate tweets will be deboosted & demonetized.
You won't find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out. Which is no different from the rest of Internet.
freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach
You can't have one without the other. In any case, freedom of speech is not what you think it is. It just means the government can't censor what you say (which Ron De Santis just found out in Florida). Since, twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. are app non-government platforms they are well within their rights to determine what ma, and what may not be posted.
And something that should go without saying (but apparently very much needs to be said), freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility for what you say.
His sensibilities are Qanon, porn, and fascists?
No, not at all. Like I said, things are going to go to shit for a little bit. Things are going to get worse before they get better. That's what happens when you tear down what you have to build something brand new from scratch.
If it weren't for his track record with Tesla and SpaceX he doesn't seem like someone I'd want running a company.
What about Paypal?
That just means he didn't do his due diligence beforehand. He went into it half cocked.
No, he definitely did due diligence. From my understanding, where he screwed up is that during the due diligence process, he uncovered some stuff, as would make sense. Instead of keeping what he learned to himself and quietly backing out of the deal, he instead decided to go on blast. He thought that, in making noise airing their dirty laundry, it would drive Twitter's price down by putting the public on notice that Twitter's stock price was way overinflated for what was really going on behind the scenes (an unprofitable company only pretending that a majority of their users are not bots), and he could get a better / more realistic deal. What ended up happening was that he was successful in driving Twitter's stock price down, but then Twitter went after him and said that he used privileged information to ruin Twitter's public image and lower the stock price and the overall value of the company, which caused innumerable and unreversable damages to the company, and so now he'd better buy it for the initially agreed upon price or else.
Then he got threatened with a "you break it, you buy it" lawsuit that forced his hand.
Sooooo that brings me back to how he bought something irrevocably broken (which Twitter acknowledged was the case in their "your break it, you buy it" lawsuit.) Now that has something broken, he felt it makes the most sense to take a wrecking ball to it and start with a clean slate.
Twitter went after him and said that he used privileged information to ruin Twitter's public image and lower the stock price and the overall value of the company, which caused innumerable and unreversable damages to the company, and so now he'd better buy it for the initially agreed upon price or else
So basically this is the second time he got smacked for manipulating the market. Looking less and less like a genius.
Let's dig into the financing a little. https://www.rfi.fr/en/business-and-tech/20221028-loans-investments-and-piles-of-his-own-cash-how-musk-financed-twitter-takeover for those that like more detail.
So Musk put up a little more than 15 billion USD and the rest is debt against the company and from investors that took shares in the company. So Musk is fine even if Twitter goes bankrupt.
The employees and shareholders are going to take the brunt of this possible collapse.
It's Friday. And Twitter employees are having trouble finding who their supervisor is since so many have resigned. From NYTIMES:
Employees were also having difficulties figuring out who was still on staff, and what areas of infrastructure needed more support to keep things up and running.
Still getting daily emails from the Twitter machine. But they are pretty risque to outright hard porn now. Employees and former employees don't seem to be holding back inside information, stories, emails, tweets and more.
I wouldn't be surprised for Twitter to go 404 soon.
Bring back the fail whale! Bring back the fail whale!
I can’t possibly be the only person thinking this.
Let me ask you this. What about twitter needs to be torn down and rebuilt? Is it the code base? What about that is the problem? It seems to me that, societal impact aside, the problems with twitter are:
What exactly requires the mass layoffs and excessive work hours from the remaining staff to fix? How exactly would a "rebuilt from the ground up" twitter differ from present day twitter?
There was a glimmer of hope for Twitter in one lone Musk interview where a plan was told about adding a payment system similar to WeChat. For a moment I could see where this could lead but it never was heard of again.
A few hours ago, Musk reinstated the Orange man so there's another reason to write it's the end of Twitter.
As our men of business become more prominent and wealthier, they enter a feedback loop. Sycophants flatter instead of challenging them. This impacts their ability to hear criticism. And that leaves them more likely to cling to toadies who feed their now inflated self-image. All too often, the end result is ever larger mistakes and more ethically dubious behavior.
Follow-up question - what happens when the "new twitter" decides that anything goes except
What about twitter needs to be torn down and rebuilt?
I suspect that, considering Twitter is operating heavily in the red, then two things need to change. 1) A revenue model not based on ads (whether that ends up being Twitter Blue or whatnot, I have no idea, but there needs to be not just a revenue model not based on ads, but one a subscription model that provides enough added benefit to end users to make it warrant the $. I also struggle with the same problem with DaniWeb Premium and DaniWeb Connect. The whole point to rebuilding DaniWeb’s infrastructure on top of the Dazah platform a handful of years ago was to figure out a sustainable revenue model not based on ads. 2) Reorganize Twitter’s corporate structure such that everything can run like a well-oiled machine with significantly, significantly fewer people.
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