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If these numbers are right and they're laying off 50% the workforce, half of me wonders how much Parag could raise to build a new Twitter from scratch and just
by mikeryan 4y ago
If these numbers are right and they're laying off 50% the workforce, half of me wonders how much Parag could raise to build a new Twitter from scratch and just hire 500 - 1000 talented folks off the street for the venture, I mean if Travis K could raise almost a billion for his shitty ghost kitchen venture I'd have to think they could get enough runway to get something launched pretty quickly.
There's so many "What we should do" moments that are too expensive or deviate too far from the core business that don't get developed in most enterprises that could be pursued when starting from a blank slate.
Anyway, just a thought experiment.
- nmfisher 4y agoThe success of most* social media platforms was largely unconnected with the developers who built it or the underlying software. You can't just hire a few hundred retrenched developers and expect to come up with a successful social media platform after some number of months. Timing, marketing, and user psychology are much more important. * I'd say TikTok is the exception, because delivering (a) instantaneous video and (b) useful algorithmic recommendations is a technically difficult proposition. But at the same time, I'd argue their success was driven largely by the music licensing deals they initially cut (and their insane marketing spend), which is what caused their early growth.
- mikeryan 4y agoI agree with a lot of what you say, but in this hypothetical I'm envisioning this a bit differently then a completely new social network so much as Twitter 2.0 with a very direct focus on getting a large "Lift and Shift" of users directly from Twitter. I should also be clear that I'm assuming a relatively proportional level of talent across Product, Design etc too not just retrenched engineers.
- DeathArrow 4y ago>getting a large "Lift and Shift" of users directly from Twitter Why would someone switch from Twitter? If anything, you might expect more freedom of speech and less bots on Twitter. On the parallel Twitter the maximum you can expect is the old Twitter minus some functionality, plus some offline time and some bugs.
- Nowado 4y agoAvoiding some of that free speech. One could even hope for all of it to stay contained within Twitter.
- Certhas 4y agoIt's not hard to have a free speech platform. It's hard to have a useful speech platform. Useful speech probably requires editing and moderation and so far it's pretty clear algorithms and upvote/downvote systems aren't terribly good at it. It seems to me that the last decade or so provides ample evidence that allowing everyone to say everything they want is almost certainly anti-correlated with substantial and meaningful debate.
- cudgy 4y agoIt seems to me that the last decade or so provides ample evidence that not allowing everyone to say everything they want is almost certainly anti-correlated with substantial and meaningful debate.
- Certhas 4y agoOur perceptions differ markedly then. I have a fairly plausible mechanism behind my observation: Getting your thoughts published and disseminated used to require buy in from a wide range of people, the publishers essentially. Publishers edited and moderated what they published so they could gain a reputation as trustworthy or sensationalist. Maintaining that reputation was essential for the business. Who would buy a newspaper with a reputation for false reporting? Removing the publishers at replacing them with algorithms designed to maximize engagement removed this intermediate layer of reputation checks. Further as the infrastructure is paid for exclusively by ads and those can be targeted fairly well, engagement is far more important than platform reputation. This has reduced the level of public discourse markedly and wrong and discredited opinions can gain substantial audiences and establish strong societal narratives with no "human editor in the loop". This we are seeing an influence of conspiracy theoretical thinking on advanced democracies that would have been unthinkable even in the 90s.
- bamboozled 4y agoYes but this is good timing. A lot of people are pretty unsatisfied with Musk as a human lately and it seems like if there was an alternative available, people would go there quickly.
- IgorPartola 4y agoCould a commercial player grab an existing open protocol like Mastodon and just put a really slick UI/UX on that?
- DeathArrow 4y agoWho is unsatisfied with Elon and would switch to something else for that? Is there a market study?
- nebula8804 4y agoSwitching cost is 0 as long as your friends are on the other platform. Just get enough people pissed off at elon to "try" out the new service and enough might stick around.
- bamboozled 4y agoI've seen him say and do a lot of controversial and in my opinion very immoral things in the last year. Maybe I'm just talking for myself but if I used Twitter, and a decent modern alternative existed, I'd at least make an account and hope other came along so I didn't have to be part of his "town square" or his "everything app" (which sounds like a nightmare). I think Musk has done some good things in the past, but honestly, he seems like an asshole and increasingly willing to do questionable things for money and to protect his interests. I don't use any of his products and I'd been more than happy if it stays that way.
- cudgy 4y agoInteresting. What technologies do you use that you are fully aware that no assholes were involved in its creation? How does one go about ensuring they follow this no-asshole rule? Many considered Steve Jobs to be an asshole. Do you use an apple product? How about Bill Gates and Microsoft? Or Linus and Linux? Or Amazon and Jeff Bezos? Or Oracle and Larry Ellison? Or Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg? Or …
- parkingrift 4y agoTwitter isn’t some engineering marvel. Anyone could go build a scalable Twitter clone. There are a handful of competitors on the market and a few open source projects. All things considered, it’s easy. Making a viable business out of it is hard.
- yieldgap 4y ago
- wittycardio 4y ago
- Firmwarrior 4y agoMan, you and rest of the salt men and fanboys are turning this comment section into a useless firepit
- akmarinov 4y ago> Making a viable business out of it is hard. Even Twitter wasn’t able to figure that part out
- DeathArrow 4y agoAnd here comes Musk. If he manages to make Twitter profitable he deserves some credit.
- shapefrog 4y agoTwitter gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2022 was $3.181B, a 11.24% increase year-over-year. Twitter annual gross profit for 2021 was $3.28B, a 39.58% increase from 2020.
- simonswords82 4y agoTrue but as with all tech companies at the moment Twitter is also going to feel the pinch and they don't have the business size to wear it as well as the others.
- riffraff 4y agoWhy would anyone jump on Parag's new Twitter? The only value Twitter has is network effects, the old leadership clearly didn't show much capacity of adding value and as much as people hate Elon it's not like Twitter didn't come under critics before. Starting a new social network with "it's not run by those dicks" has not been a particularly successful move, anecdotically.
- seydor 4y agobecause he s leftist
- DeathArrow 4y agoA leftist who makes tons of money from other people's hard work. Bizarre but that is the new normal.
- ehnto 4y agoAmerica's Left and Right are in general both quite skewed to the right. Our right wing party here in Australia would be considered left in America. The American left wing party is still considered right wing through the Australian political lens. I'm hesitating to say through the global lens, since I just don't know. But my inkling would be that the majority of the western world has a similar political outlook. America has perverted it's political compass I feel.
- cudgy 4y agoArresting people for going into a local park is considered to be more left wing? Locking down people is considered to be more left wing? The draconian, authoritarian measures taken in Australia surrounding its covid response were truly shocking.
- ehnto 4y agoYou can't gauge Australia's general policymaking from what was an unprecedented event in our history, we were in a state of emergency, it can be hard to get every decision right in such a situation. I'm not sure how informed you are on the matter, but it was also state lead not a federal response. Some states were barely affected, some states threw away the precautions pretty quickly. Victoria had it the hardest, and I don't agree with the level of lockdown there. But it was also the decisions of one guy, who we elected, Dan Andrews, on the advice of his health officials. This is why we have a democracy, we vote him out if his decisions were bad.
- bamboozled 4y agoI've thought the same thing, while Twitter is hard to scale, it's pretty freaking simple product to build, if I had a bit of spare time, I'd be building a clone right now so as everyone leaves Musk's platform they have a place to go.
- DeathArrow 4y agoThere are probably Twitter alternatives laying on GitHub. How much people would you expect leaving Musks platform for another one? Are you willing to bet your life savings on it? I hope not, at least not without solid market research.
- bamboozled 4y agoThere is nothing on Earth I'd be willing to bet my life savings on, sounds like a kind of stupid idea?
- armatav 4y agoDidn't Kalanick raise that money for his "shitty ghost kitchen venture" after using Uber Eats to prove that the model would actually be more lucrative than the cab-service?
- DeathArrow 4y ago>half of me wonders how much Parag could raise to build a new Twitter from scratch That would probably amount in $0. Twitter wasn't profitable and part of it was its CEO. Why would investors be willing to lose money, especially in the current economic situation? I would rather wait for Elon to stabilize Twitter and go public again.
- shapefrog 4y ago> Why would investors be willing to lose money, especially in the current economic situation A whole bunch of genius investors just bought a company worth $11 billion for $44 billion...
- IshKebab 4y agoTwitter wasn't too far off profitability. I looked at the numbers and you could definitely get it to profitability by reducing staff numbers and relocating to much cheaper places (literally anywhere except SV). I think their loss was around $200m/year and staff costs around $300m/year. Something like that. SV salaries are easily double or triple European salaries.
- Ar-Curunir 4y agoYet Elon bought Twitter for $44B, with $11B funded by a variety of external partners.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> If these numbers are right and they're laying off 50% the workforce, half of me wonders how much Parag could raise to build a new Twitter from scratch and just hire 500 - 1000 talented folks off the street for the venture Is Parag a startup entrepreneur, or more of a going-concern executive? Startup seems more Dorsey’s thing—who made more money on the deal and took his new social media effort out of stealth as soon as the Twitter sale was finalized.
- nebula8804 4y agoDidn't he just get a golden parachute of around 54 Million dollars? Would a portion of that be enough to get going?
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Didn't he just get a golden parachute of around 54 Million dollars? I think he got some from stock in the sale, but Musk is characterizing his firing as “for cause” to deny (or at least stall pending legal action) Parag’s golden parachute (same with the other Twitter execs.)
- karol 4y agoParag is not an entrepreneur, he has 0 track record. I expect him to start a podcast:D
- samatman 4y agoHow many people do you think would join a Twitter clone founded by a sore loser from the dregs of the old company? Would they be fun to hang out on the Internet with? None, and no. I appreciate the chuckle though.
- simonswords82 4y agoThe last thing we all need is another Twitter clone...no matter how well intentioned.
- hoseja 4y agoAs if Parag was ever anything else than a bland status quo CEO. The ghoulish neolib heroes have no potential to take real positive action.