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> suggests the company may be rotten from the inside. Even if there are 0 actual facts open to the public that prove this, the optics suggest that this narrati

> suggests the company may be rotten from the inside. Even if there are 0 actual facts open to the public that prove this, the optics suggest that this narrative can be made. He moved the stock 30%+ in a few days by publically buying in. If he sells it, why wouldn't it give up all of the gains he brought (and maybe more)? I don't know what he thinks he stands to gain by buying Twitter. Can a rocket scientist/electric car guru really get into tweets + advertising?

andrepd 5y ago
Why do rich people buy newspapers and media conglomerates? Why did Jeff Bezos "get into journalism" via Washington Post? There is your answer.
- MuffinFlavored 5y ago
  Washington Post can control what is posted through journalists, etc. (digital or not) Twitter is like... an aggregator of a bunch of people tweeting. The people tweeting aren't being paid by Twitter to tweet (like journalists are for Washington Post, even if it's like $75 for an opinion piece/basically blogspam) I feel like that's a pretty big difference?
  - jkukul 5y ago
    Twitter can control what who can post and who cannot (remember Donald J Trump being banned?). Twitter can control what is being read by deciding what is promoted by their algorithms and what gets buried down. These are just few examples. We can't pretend that Twitter is a fully decentralised service and that there's no one pulling the strings.
gpm 5y ago
To strongman the case for him running twitter, he clearly has significant experience and success with running large engineering oriented companies - which is the primary job of twitter executives. Both Tesla and SpaceX have significant software organizations, and he also has experience in running a pure software company back when he was involved with paypall. As a heavy user of twitter, and the de-facto PR person for Tesla and SpaceX he also has a good understanding of the product, both from a normal users perspective and a marketers perspective. That said, I don't think this is primarily about buying twitter being profitable, but that he is motivated by a mix of politics, fun, and funny. I also don't think he's likely to get that into the day to day of running twitter, just because he's already busy with Tesla and SpaceX.
- MuffinFlavored 5y ago
  > running large engineering oriented companies I don't disagree. It's just that... what are his plans for Twitter? Add an edit button? Tweak the algorithm that delivers timelines? None of that is really complicated. Those could be 6 month roadmap projects. > but that he is motivated by a mix of politics, fun, and funny 1/3rd of his net worth on a company seems odd.
  - psyc 5y ago
    First, it’s more like 1/6 his net worth. But I don’t believe the proportion means anything at that level of personal wealth. He’d still have the other $210B, plus ownership of Twitter. Each of those other billions is worth a billion dollars. Almost everybody could make do with just one of them, and he’d have over 200 of them. Even luxury goods don’t scale up to that scale. All he can really do with that is buy companies anyway. And Twitter is what holds his interest right now.
  - icedchai 5y ago
    It seems like Twitter's barely done anything new since going public over 8 years ago. Making a UI that was actually usable for following conversations would be a good place to start. What are all these product people doing? (I'm a small TWTR shareholder. It's one of my worst tech investments.)
res0nat0r 5y ago
Kara Swisher said this 4 days ago: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1513370798815330307 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1513370798815330307 Twitter likely decided to not allow him onboard just because of his constant shitposting about the company, his volatility, and really just wanting Twitter to be his sounding board for whatever offensive things he has to say, so they're trying to ensure he can't try and takeover as we speak.

andrepd 5y ago

Why do rich people buy newspapers and media conglomerates? Why did Jeff Bezos "get into journalism" via Washington Post? There is your answer.

MuffinFlavored 5y ago
Washington Post can control what is posted through journalists, etc. (digital or not) Twitter is like... an aggregator of a bunch of people tweeting. The people tweeting aren't being paid by Twitter to tweet (like journalists are for Washington Post, even if it's like $75 for an opinion piece/basically blogspam) I feel like that's a pretty big difference?
- jkukul 5y ago
  Twitter can control what who can post and who cannot (remember Donald J Trump being banned?). Twitter can control what is being read by deciding what is promoted by their algorithms and what gets buried down. These are just few examples. We can't pretend that Twitter is a fully decentralised service and that there's no one pulling the strings.

gpm 5y ago

To strongman the case for him running twitter, he clearly has significant experience and success with running large engineering oriented companies - which is the primary job of twitter executives. Both Tesla and SpaceX have significant software organizations, and he also has experience in running a pure software company back when he was involved with paypall. As a heavy user of twitter, and the de-facto PR person for Tesla and SpaceX he also has a good understanding of the product, both from a normal users perspective and a marketers perspective. That said, I don't think this is primarily about buying twitter being profitable, but that he is motivated by a mix of politics, fun, and funny. I also don't think he's likely to get that into the day to day of running twitter, just because he's already busy with Tesla and SpaceX.

MuffinFlavored 5y ago
> running large engineering oriented companies I don't disagree. It's just that... what are his plans for Twitter? Add an edit button? Tweak the algorithm that delivers timelines? None of that is really complicated. Those could be 6 month roadmap projects. > but that he is motivated by a mix of politics, fun, and funny 1/3rd of his net worth on a company seems odd.
- psyc 5y ago
  First, it’s more like 1/6 his net worth. But I don’t believe the proportion means anything at that level of personal wealth. He’d still have the other $210B, plus ownership of Twitter. Each of those other billions is worth a billion dollars. Almost everybody could make do with just one of them, and he’d have over 200 of them. Even luxury goods don’t scale up to that scale. All he can really do with that is buy companies anyway. And Twitter is what holds his interest right now.
- icedchai 5y ago
  It seems like Twitter's barely done anything new since going public over 8 years ago. Making a UI that was actually usable for following conversations would be a good place to start. What are all these product people doing? (I'm a small TWTR shareholder. It's one of my worst tech investments.)

res0nat0r 5y ago

Kara Swisher said this 4 days ago: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1513370798815330307 https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1513370798815330307 Twitter likely decided to not allow him onboard just because of his constant shitposting about the company, his volatility, and really just wanting Twitter to be his sounding board for whatever offensive things he has to say, so they're trying to ensure he can't try and takeover as we speak.