7 ms·

Disney almost bought Twitter in 2016

87 points by edavis 6y ago

BitwiseFool 6y ago
If Disney had bought Twitter it would have gone away just like Tumblr.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  what if salesforce bought it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
markdown 6y ago
> But: maybe? Presumably a Twitter under Disney would be a very different Twitter today. We might have had to sign over to Disney copyright of all our tweets for 999 years?
- pphysch 6y ago
  Disney would relentlessly astroturf shill their latest productions on Twitter? Oh wait I wonder if part of the calculus was that Disney could get a lot of marketing value out of the platform by participating in it as Millions of Totally Real Human Users without actually owning it. Ergo these PR liabilities gain relative weight in the decision. Perhaps owning it would be a liability in itself. Curious that Dorsey is on their board too.
- ahnick 6y ago
  You mean like this? https://twitter.com/disneyplus/status/1254772307941191686 https://twitter.com/disneyplus/status/1254772307941191686
janeshmane 6y ago
It's hard to imagine why the board thought that was a good idea. They should've bought Twitch or something Twitch-like that could be more easily molded to be "on brand".
- numpad0 6y ago
  I understand why they saw fit, if you don’t look at their media tab, a lot of influential content creators on Twitter are also Disney fans. If you do look at their media tab, the story changes completely, but if you don’t, the statistics solo should look beautiful.
pjc50 6y ago
A decision more guaranteed to nuke both brands is hard to think of. As the article says, the hate speech problem is extremely difficult to solve, but Twitter also has all sorts of NSFW, queer, and activist communities that are the exact opposite of Disneyfication.
- mc32 6y ago
  Yeah there was no way that that union would have worked. They might as well have contemplated buying Reddit. Imagine if it became a sanitized family friendly microblogging platform where it was all pure, clean, fun conversation, anything not sparkly clean got knocked off. That would have ensured its death and would have shrunk to maybe 10MM users total.
  - slimsag 6y ago
    "Twitter Kids, with content curated by machine learning!" - some ex-YouTube PM
    - pfraze 6y ago
      People like to rip on YouTube for the recent child-protections but there was some dark shit going on, stuff like uploading Peppa Pig videos spliced with NSFL footage. The youths love YouTube, you can't take that lightly.
      - lwf 6y ago
        Right, and that content was on YouTube Kids. The current "made for kids" policy goes a length toward improving on the situation GP was decrying.
  - pier25 6y ago
    > They might as well have contemplated buying Reddit As a regular user of both platforms I see where you're coming from, but Twitter has more of a mainstream presence. There are politicians, brands, famous people, etc. Maybe someone that might only hear about Twitter from the news (and not actually use it) could think it would be a good fit for Disney.
preommr 6y ago
TIL Jack Dorsey is on the board of directors at Disney. This on top of being the founder/ceo of both twitter and square. I wonder what his secret is.
- NelsonMinar 6y ago
  Arrogance.
  - gameofcode 6y ago
    Jack Dorsey's been pretty active on the podcast scene recently, and I feel it's harder to fake your personality in multiple long form conversations. I never got a hint of arrogance from him. On a side note, why do people love to paint being the CEO of two companies in such a bad light? How is it different to a CEO of a conglomerate having responsibility for multiple divisions?
    - dan-robertson 6y ago
      Generally shareholders would prefer a ceo whose incentives are aligned with those of the company. On the one hand maybe it’s good that Dorsey could fuck off from twitter if things went bad and not suffer too much from it: it allows him to take risks and ceos not wanting to take reasonable risks as much as shareholders would like (because they have a undiversified interest in their company doing well but more importantly not doing badly whereas shareholders are typically more diversified and so can accept a bigger loss) is a known issue with many public companies. On the other hand, if he can fuck off and do ok if things go bad, maybe he is less motivated to stop them going bad. A second issue is that people may feel that he will not be able to do the job properly if he is splitting his time between companies, and twitter have to care about the opinions of their shareholders and their users and their advertisers and their employees. Any of those groups may feel this. A main part of the job of the CEO will be deciding what the companies values are and making sure they are reflected by the firm’s actions. For Twitter at the moment this seems like a harder job than for many companies so possibly it would be even harder than usual to be a part-time CEO.
xnx 6y ago
It's easy how Disney and Twitter would be a bad fit, but don't forget that Hasbro (toy company) owns Death Row Records home to a group N.W.A. where the "N" stands for the "n-word". https://nypost.com/2019/08/25/hasbro-acquires-gangster-rap-label-death-row-records-as-part-of-4b-deal/ https://nypost.com/2019/08/25/hasbro-acquires-gangster-rap-l...
- TenJack 6y ago
  One thing though is I don't think Hasbro bought just Death Row Records. They bought the parent company that owned Death Row Records among other record labels.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Hasbro owns Death Row because it bought another entertainment conglomerate with lots of natural-fit-for-Hasbro properties that happened to also own Death Row.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Actually it stands for "Niggaz", not "n-word"
- Fnoord 6y ago
  The acronym N.W.A., with its meaning, [1] is self-chosen. It is an old, long defunct rap group from Comptom. Quoting from Discogs: "American group, seminal purveyors of the gangsta rap sub-genre. NWA stands for "Niggaz Wit Attitudes". They were active from 1986 to 1991, and for a short period in 1999/2000." Their most defining album is probably Straight Outta Comptom from 1988. [2] TL;DR these people are one of the pioneers of west side hip-hop, and gangsta rap in general. What's in a name? Rap music is filled with controversy. Apple bought Dr Dre's Beats, too. Dr Dre was one of the founders of Death Row records. As a non-American, I find the name "Death Row records" more intimidating than N.W.A. or what it stands for, btw. [1] https://www.discogs.com/artist/13726-NWA https://www.discogs.com/artist/13726-NWA [2] https://www.discogs.com/NWA-Straight-Outta-Compton/master/26117 https://www.discogs.com/NWA-Straight-Outta-Compton/master/26...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mandeepj 6y ago
Google also almost bought Twitter. I guess the year was 2009.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I expect they planned to shut it down in 2011.
  - efreak 6y ago
    Not quite. More likely they'd rebrand it, make some minor cosmetic changes, then neglect it until only a hardcore group of fans remained. Then they'd forget it exists.
villgax 6y ago
Ahhh hence that bullshit #Hastag based ownership of tweet thing

87 points by edavis 6y ago

BitwiseFool 6y ago

If Disney had bought Twitter it would have gone away just like Tumblr.

missedthecue 6y ago
what if salesforce bought it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

markdown 6y ago

> But: maybe? Presumably a Twitter under Disney would be a very different Twitter today. We might have had to sign over to Disney copyright of all our tweets for 999 years?

pphysch 6y ago
Disney would relentlessly astroturf shill their latest productions on Twitter? Oh wait I wonder if part of the calculus was that Disney could get a lot of marketing value out of the platform by participating in it as Millions of Totally Real Human Users without actually owning it. Ergo these PR liabilities gain relative weight in the decision. Perhaps owning it would be a liability in itself. Curious that Dorsey is on their board too.
ahnick 6y ago
You mean like this? https://twitter.com/disneyplus/status/1254772307941191686 https://twitter.com/disneyplus/status/1254772307941191686

janeshmane 6y ago

It's hard to imagine why the board thought that was a good idea. They should've bought Twitch or something Twitch-like that could be more easily molded to be "on brand".

numpad0 6y ago
I understand why they saw fit, if you don’t look at their media tab, a lot of influential content creators on Twitter are also Disney fans. If you do look at their media tab, the story changes completely, but if you don’t, the statistics solo should look beautiful.

pjc50 6y ago

A decision more guaranteed to nuke both brands is hard to think of. As the article says, the hate speech problem is extremely difficult to solve, but Twitter also has all sorts of NSFW, queer, and activist communities that are the exact opposite of Disneyfication.

mc32 6y ago
Yeah there was no way that that union would have worked. They might as well have contemplated buying Reddit. Imagine if it became a sanitized family friendly microblogging platform where it was all pure, clean, fun conversation, anything not sparkly clean got knocked off. That would have ensured its death and would have shrunk to maybe 10MM users total.
- slimsag 6y ago
  "Twitter Kids, with content curated by machine learning!" - some ex-YouTube PM
  - pfraze 6y ago
    People like to rip on YouTube for the recent child-protections but there was some dark shit going on, stuff like uploading Peppa Pig videos spliced with NSFL footage. The youths love YouTube, you can't take that lightly.
    - lwf 6y ago
      Right, and that content was on YouTube Kids. The current "made for kids" policy goes a length toward improving on the situation GP was decrying.
- pier25 6y ago
  > They might as well have contemplated buying Reddit As a regular user of both platforms I see where you're coming from, but Twitter has more of a mainstream presence. There are politicians, brands, famous people, etc. Maybe someone that might only hear about Twitter from the news (and not actually use it) could think it would be a good fit for Disney.

preommr 6y ago

TIL Jack Dorsey is on the board of directors at Disney. This on top of being the founder/ceo of both twitter and square. I wonder what his secret is.

NelsonMinar 6y ago
Arrogance.
- gameofcode 6y ago
  Jack Dorsey's been pretty active on the podcast scene recently, and I feel it's harder to fake your personality in multiple long form conversations. I never got a hint of arrogance from him. On a side note, why do people love to paint being the CEO of two companies in such a bad light? How is it different to a CEO of a conglomerate having responsibility for multiple divisions?
  - dan-robertson 6y ago
    Generally shareholders would prefer a ceo whose incentives are aligned with those of the company. On the one hand maybe it’s good that Dorsey could fuck off from twitter if things went bad and not suffer too much from it: it allows him to take risks and ceos not wanting to take reasonable risks as much as shareholders would like (because they have a undiversified interest in their company doing well but more importantly not doing badly whereas shareholders are typically more diversified and so can accept a bigger loss) is a known issue with many public companies. On the other hand, if he can fuck off and do ok if things go bad, maybe he is less motivated to stop them going bad. A second issue is that people may feel that he will not be able to do the job properly if he is splitting his time between companies, and twitter have to care about the opinions of their shareholders and their users and their advertisers and their employees. Any of those groups may feel this. A main part of the job of the CEO will be deciding what the companies values are and making sure they are reflected by the firm’s actions. For Twitter at the moment this seems like a harder job than for many companies so possibly it would be even harder than usual to be a part-time CEO.

xnx 6y ago

It's easy how Disney and Twitter would be a bad fit, but don't forget that Hasbro (toy company) owns Death Row Records home to a group N.W.A. where the "N" stands for the "n-word". https://nypost.com/2019/08/25/hasbro-acquires-gangster-rap-label-death-row-records-as-part-of-4b-deal/ https://nypost.com/2019/08/25/hasbro-acquires-gangster-rap-l...

TenJack 6y ago
One thing though is I don't think Hasbro bought just Death Row Records. They bought the parent company that owned Death Row Records among other record labels.
dragonwriter 6y ago
Hasbro owns Death Row because it bought another entertainment conglomerate with lots of natural-fit-for-Hasbro properties that happened to also own Death Row.
oh_sigh 6y ago
Actually it stands for "Niggaz", not "n-word"
Fnoord 6y ago
The acronym N.W.A., with its meaning, [1] is self-chosen. It is an old, long defunct rap group from Comptom. Quoting from Discogs: "American group, seminal purveyors of the gangsta rap sub-genre. NWA stands for "Niggaz Wit Attitudes". They were active from 1986 to 1991, and for a short period in 1999/2000." Their most defining album is probably Straight Outta Comptom from 1988. [2] TL;DR these people are one of the pioneers of west side hip-hop, and gangsta rap in general. What's in a name? Rap music is filled with controversy. Apple bought Dr Dre's Beats, too. Dr Dre was one of the founders of Death Row records. As a non-American, I find the name "Death Row records" more intimidating than N.W.A. or what it stands for, btw. [1] https://www.discogs.com/artist/13726-NWA https://www.discogs.com/artist/13726-NWA [2] https://www.discogs.com/NWA-Straight-Outta-Compton/master/26117 https://www.discogs.com/NWA-Straight-Outta-Compton/master/26...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mandeepj 6y ago

Google also almost bought Twitter. I guess the year was 2009.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I expect they planned to shut it down in 2011.
- efreak 6y ago
  Not quite. More likely they'd rebrand it, make some minor cosmetic changes, then neglect it until only a hardcore group of fans remained. Then they'd forget it exists.

villgax 6y ago

Ahhh hence that bullshit #Hastag based ownership of tweet thing