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Even just him announcing a new platform would scare twitter investors. If successful it'd drive twitter even further down. Paul Graham thinks he would be able

by memish 5y ago

Even just him announcing a new platform would scare twitter investors. If successful it'd drive twitter even further down. Paul Graham thinks he would be able to compete: "It is obvious. It's also obvious that Elon could draw an initial set of users that was more than big enough to have sufficient network effects on day 1." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507782349924274180 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507782349924274180 "I'd try it the first day. Wouldn't you? Sum that pattern across Twitter, and you've got quite a lot of users on day 1." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507855287130243085 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507855287130243085 "You don't need to get everyone to switch right away. All you need, to start with, is a critical mass of users — enough so that people don't feel they're talking to a void. You'd very likely have that from the start. Then it grows." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507855750680428545 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507855750680428545

shrimpx 5y ago
I think Paul Graham overestimates Musk’s social media influence. He’s powerful on Twitter in large part due to Twitter. Same with Trump, btw. If it were so easy for Musk to recreate the network, why spend 43B on some infrastructure? Musk knows he’s muzzled outside of Twitter.
- sgjohnson 5y ago
  > why spend 43B on some infrastructure? Because he's not spending $43bn on some infrastructure, but for the >200mn daily users. That's $210 for every user.
  - swores 5y ago
    That's the point being made rhetorically by the person you replied to, fyi.
evanextreme 5y ago
If the former president of the United States with a distortion field around his politics and the largest cable news network backing his every word couldn't succeed in launching a platform, I doubt Elon can. Unlike Elon, Trump has constantly blasted news networks and tech companies in the U.S. as being fake and run by lefties, to the point where his entire base believes it, and even that wasn't enough to migrate them off of twitter, because again, network effects. Twitter benefits by having everyone on it, and with no one to yell at Trump's audience is left to talk to themselves, which is boring. Additionally, with all due respect to Paul, his logic here is absurd. "I'd be interested so that means everyone must be" is the wrong line of thinking for a product launch like this. Everyone is _interested_ in something the first day, but whether or not that's enough to build on is another matter. So many social networks had massive first day signups. I was "interested" in Byte on the first day. I signed up, posted a few bytes, and stopped using the app after a week. Parler, Gab, Truth, had "interest" too. The problem is that critical mass of users he describes are all just talking to themselves in their insular group (elon fans) just as the right-wing networks had their conspiracy theorists etc. It's enough to have users, but its not enough to promote long term growth. I know it's not something _i'd_ be interested in, which refutes his point because its purely anecdotal. So, the only demographics that'd actually stick with an elon twitter competitor are: People who love elon musk and everything he creates, and people who are banned from twitter. If it shakes out to be anything like Gab and Parler, the later means the site is going to swarm with Nazis like every other free speech competitor to twitter, which as a jew is something i'm deeply uncomfortable with. There's not enough free speech in the world for me to put up with being harassed by people who share the views as the ones who murdered my great grandparents. And as much as people here enjoy grandstanding about free speech, its likely something you're uncomfortable with too, otherwise you'd be on those sites. Basically, the product elon wants to make already exists and it has no users. If Trump (who had a significantly bigger following on twitter than Elon) wasnt enough, if big right wing stars like Milo werent enough, what's gonna be enough? Because copy pasting Truth and slapping Elon on the front... wont be.
semi-extrinsic 5y ago
If this is true, why isn't Clubhouse a resounding success?
- themanmaran 5y ago
  It's functionally quite different. And requires a higher level of effort to engage with the content.
- behnamoh 5y ago
  elitist marketing bs based on invitations that didn't work and ultimately attracted wannabe narcists to boost their ego
  - swores 5y ago
    Clearly that's not the only reason or gmail would have been a flop too. I actually think that marketing choice was the only reason they got as much initial traction as they did, without it I think most of HN would never have heard of Clubhouse, rather than that it would have been more successful.
giarc 5y ago
Would that not have been true about Truth Social? They would have had enough users on day 1 to get network effects, but it hasn't happened. You could blame technical issues, but as I understand, Trump isn't even on the platform and neither is Fox News. So why would a Musk Twitter clone work any better?
- tekknik 5y ago
  Truth Social still has a waitlist. They failed to attract the critical mass of users in day 1
majormajor 5y ago
> "It is obvious. It's also obvious that Elon could draw an initial set of users that was more than big enough to have sufficient network effects on day 1." This would be "obvious" about Trump, too, no? Perhaps your claim is that Musk would have a better chance of making something that scales and can accept all those users from day 1, but then that's also a much more expensive bet for Musk to make with higher up-front pre-launch cost.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Musk wouldn’t do such a blunder launching it. Truth Social with a sizeable war chest, took Mastadon (while [still] lying about it) with many months if not over a year to get it ready. Being able to launch a product with more than enough resources is almost intertwined with drawing in users. Truth Social never had the bare minimum expectations. Something that is not given to most people since most aren’t abnormally focused on grifting and so on for such a big venture.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    Another critical failure of Truth: Trump wasn't posting on it. Trump can't carry a platform he himself couldn't bother to use. Truth might've survived launch on that core difference alone, and an Elon-backed service might work if Elon himself actually uses it.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      That is wildly baffling. Not only Trump not using it, but does that mean the dozens upon dozens of popular figures around him who his fans also like, are mostly not using it either? The SPAC stock is still holding strong snd it self making no sense day to day. It went up 7%+ on news Fox joined two weeks ago. The next day when this was found to be false. It didn’t even drop 1-2%. Truth will fail no doubt. However all the SPAC, other investing and political insiders and the Trump family themselves still have a realistic shot of cashing out pretty well. Nothing close to if it was competently rolled out, but tens of millions to hundreds of millions going to many diff insiders is still a ton. Trump’s cash out should still be huge and would probably give him his largest cash stock pile ever (before it goes to pay debts off)
bastardoperator 5y ago
I'd argue Trump has more immediate, impressionable supporters than Elon and his twitter like platform is a complete bust. I'd also argue people don't switch, they add. Rarely is someone popular on a single media platform, they tend to use to all of the vertices to engage. There would have to be a value proposition, one that persuades users, the name Elon in my opinion isn't a large enough selling point on it's own.
- memish 5y ago
  "Trump's fan base are not tech bellwethers, to put it mildly. Elon's are." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507791725410070528 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507791725410070528
  - bastardoperator 5y ago
    I don't think Elon's fan base are any more capable or driven. I would argue Trump is vastly more popular on social media than Elon and that Trump supporters are at the very least motivated for reasons outside of billionaire worship and straight trolling.
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      Billionaire worship/trolling vs Blindly following regardless of the amt of double speak, hypocrisy, blindly rejecting things because they are not on your side and following things that go against your best interests + billionaire worship + allowing the amount of grifting that occurs... The motivation may be different. Is it any better? Or change anything for the better in terms of social media success? Trump’s popularity may be larger, but it’s also more isolated and siloed. The total possible user base for a social network of almost any billionaire will be larger than Trump’s. Not that most would ever get close to reaching that amount or getting numbers more than Trump. Just that the addressable market is bigger.
  - chillwaves 5y ago
    you are arguing that signing up for twitter (or the equivalent) is some kind of significant barrier to entry?
ChicagoDave 5y ago
I doubt Musk has the patience for building or owning a graph based technology business. The complexities of Twitter’s architecture are not trivial and a huge reason it’s not been successfully disrupted. The other big reason is balancing the greater good vs unrestricted access, which has taken years to accommodate. Musk is just an ego-centric billionaire with a lot of money and an unproven belief that Twitter could be better with his proposed changes. I’d bet he’s thoroughly aware that those changes could destroy the platform. I believe the offer is rejected and the other top ten shareholders (all hedge funds) buy up anything he dumps and the price remains stable.
- aceon48 5y ago
  It’s not been successfully disrupted because a disrupter came and went viral, and AWS literally deleted their servers as they were becoming the most downloaded app
  - ChicagoDave 5y ago
    Are you talking about Parler and the overt fascism and racist postings? No global corporation will allow that in their midst. You’re a fool if you think there is any long term viability to those psychotic beliefs.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  It will tank the price because other people will sell if he does. I don't know if his threat is strictly illegal, but the feds have to reign in some of this behavior sooner or later or all of the Musk day-trader fanboys will think they too can get away with it. A few people can't, but the SEC can't deal with thousands of Musk's fanboys skirting the law.
  - doopy1 5y ago
    How is it skirting the law to trade based on what he publicly says?
  - ChicagoDave 5y ago

by memish 5y ago

shrimpx 5y ago

I think Paul Graham overestimates Musk’s social media influence. He’s powerful on Twitter in large part due to Twitter. Same with Trump, btw. If it were so easy for Musk to recreate the network, why spend 43B on some infrastructure? Musk knows he’s muzzled outside of Twitter.

sgjohnson 5y ago
> why spend 43B on some infrastructure? Because he's not spending $43bn on some infrastructure, but for the >200mn daily users. That's $210 for every user.
- swores 5y ago
  That's the point being made rhetorically by the person you replied to, fyi.

evanextreme 5y ago

If the former president of the United States with a distortion field around his politics and the largest cable news network backing his every word couldn't succeed in launching a platform, I doubt Elon can. Unlike Elon, Trump has constantly blasted news networks and tech companies in the U.S. as being fake and run by lefties, to the point where his entire base believes it, and even that wasn't enough to migrate them off of twitter, because again, network effects. Twitter benefits by having everyone on it, and with no one to yell at Trump's audience is left to talk to themselves, which is boring. Additionally, with all due respect to Paul, his logic here is absurd. "I'd be interested so that means everyone must be" is the wrong line of thinking for a product launch like this. Everyone is _interested_ in something the first day, but whether or not that's enough to build on is another matter. So many social networks had massive first day signups. I was "interested" in Byte on the first day. I signed up, posted a few bytes, and stopped using the app after a week. Parler, Gab, Truth, had "interest" too. The problem is that critical mass of users he describes are all just talking to themselves in their insular group (elon fans) just as the right-wing networks had their conspiracy theorists etc. It's enough to have users, but its not enough to promote long term growth. I know it's not something _i'd_ be interested in, which refutes his point because its purely anecdotal. So, the only demographics that'd actually stick with an elon twitter competitor are: People who love elon musk and everything he creates, and people who are banned from twitter. If it shakes out to be anything like Gab and Parler, the later means the site is going to swarm with Nazis like every other free speech competitor to twitter, which as a jew is something i'm deeply uncomfortable with. There's not enough free speech in the world for me to put up with being harassed by people who share the views as the ones who murdered my great grandparents. And as much as people here enjoy grandstanding about free speech, its likely something you're uncomfortable with too, otherwise you'd be on those sites. Basically, the product elon wants to make already exists and it has no users. If Trump (who had a significantly bigger following on twitter than Elon) wasnt enough, if big right wing stars like Milo werent enough, what's gonna be enough? Because copy pasting Truth and slapping Elon on the front... wont be.

semi-extrinsic 5y ago

If this is true, why isn't Clubhouse a resounding success?

themanmaran 5y ago
It's functionally quite different. And requires a higher level of effort to engage with the content.
behnamoh 5y ago
elitist marketing bs based on invitations that didn't work and ultimately attracted wannabe narcists to boost their ego
- swores 5y ago
  Clearly that's not the only reason or gmail would have been a flop too. I actually think that marketing choice was the only reason they got as much initial traction as they did, without it I think most of HN would never have heard of Clubhouse, rather than that it would have been more successful.

giarc 5y ago

Would that not have been true about Truth Social? They would have had enough users on day 1 to get network effects, but it hasn't happened. You could blame technical issues, but as I understand, Trump isn't even on the platform and neither is Fox News. So why would a Musk Twitter clone work any better?

tekknik 5y ago
Truth Social still has a waitlist. They failed to attract the critical mass of users in day 1

majormajor 5y ago

> "It is obvious. It's also obvious that Elon could draw an initial set of users that was more than big enough to have sufficient network effects on day 1." This would be "obvious" about Trump, too, no? Perhaps your claim is that Musk would have a better chance of making something that scales and can accept all those users from day 1, but then that's also a much more expensive bet for Musk to make with higher up-front pre-launch cost.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Musk wouldn’t do such a blunder launching it. Truth Social with a sizeable war chest, took Mastadon (while [still] lying about it) with many months if not over a year to get it ready. Being able to launch a product with more than enough resources is almost intertwined with drawing in users. Truth Social never had the bare minimum expectations. Something that is not given to most people since most aren’t abnormally focused on grifting and so on for such a big venture.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Another critical failure of Truth: Trump wasn't posting on it. Trump can't carry a platform he himself couldn't bother to use. Truth might've survived launch on that core difference alone, and an Elon-backed service might work if Elon himself actually uses it.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    That is wildly baffling. Not only Trump not using it, but does that mean the dozens upon dozens of popular figures around him who his fans also like, are mostly not using it either? The SPAC stock is still holding strong snd it self making no sense day to day. It went up 7%+ on news Fox joined two weeks ago. The next day when this was found to be false. It didn’t even drop 1-2%. Truth will fail no doubt. However all the SPAC, other investing and political insiders and the Trump family themselves still have a realistic shot of cashing out pretty well. Nothing close to if it was competently rolled out, but tens of millions to hundreds of millions going to many diff insiders is still a ton. Trump’s cash out should still be huge and would probably give him his largest cash stock pile ever (before it goes to pay debts off)

bastardoperator 5y ago

I'd argue Trump has more immediate, impressionable supporters than Elon and his twitter like platform is a complete bust. I'd also argue people don't switch, they add. Rarely is someone popular on a single media platform, they tend to use to all of the vertices to engage. There would have to be a value proposition, one that persuades users, the name Elon in my opinion isn't a large enough selling point on it's own.

memish 5y ago
"Trump's fan base are not tech bellwethers, to put it mildly. Elon's are." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507791725410070528 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1507791725410070528
- bastardoperator 5y ago
  I don't think Elon's fan base are any more capable or driven. I would argue Trump is vastly more popular on social media than Elon and that Trump supporters are at the very least motivated for reasons outside of billionaire worship and straight trolling.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Billionaire worship/trolling vs Blindly following regardless of the amt of double speak, hypocrisy, blindly rejecting things because they are not on your side and following things that go against your best interests + billionaire worship + allowing the amount of grifting that occurs... The motivation may be different. Is it any better? Or change anything for the better in terms of social media success? Trump’s popularity may be larger, but it’s also more isolated and siloed. The total possible user base for a social network of almost any billionaire will be larger than Trump’s. Not that most would ever get close to reaching that amount or getting numbers more than Trump. Just that the addressable market is bigger.
- chillwaves 5y ago
  you are arguing that signing up for twitter (or the equivalent) is some kind of significant barrier to entry?

ChicagoDave 5y ago

I doubt Musk has the patience for building or owning a graph based technology business. The complexities of Twitter’s architecture are not trivial and a huge reason it’s not been successfully disrupted. The other big reason is balancing the greater good vs unrestricted access, which has taken years to accommodate. Musk is just an ego-centric billionaire with a lot of money and an unproven belief that Twitter could be better with his proposed changes. I’d bet he’s thoroughly aware that those changes could destroy the platform. I believe the offer is rejected and the other top ten shareholders (all hedge funds) buy up anything he dumps and the price remains stable.

aceon48 5y ago
It’s not been successfully disrupted because a disrupter came and went viral, and AWS literally deleted their servers as they were becoming the most downloaded app
- ChicagoDave 5y ago
  Are you talking about Parler and the overt fascism and racist postings? No global corporation will allow that in their midst. You’re a fool if you think there is any long term viability to those psychotic beliefs.
KerrAvon 5y ago
It will tank the price because other people will sell if he does. I don't know if his threat is strictly illegal, but the feds have to reign in some of this behavior sooner or later or all of the Musk day-trader fanboys will think they too can get away with it. A few people can't, but the SEC can't deal with thousands of Musk's fanboys skirting the law.
- doopy1 5y ago
  How is it skirting the law to trade based on what he publicly says?
- ChicagoDave 5y ago