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Musk's personal account on Twitter is and was the Marketing Department for Tesla. They don't have to start advertising, because they have never had to buy ads,

by csours 4y ago

Musk's personal account on Twitter is and was the Marketing Department for Tesla. They don't have to start advertising, because they have never had to buy ads, people are willing to talk about them for free, and a lot of that discourse was due to Musk's tweets.

solarkraft 4y ago
Yeah sure, but he wants to funnel money into Twitter somehow.
- csours 4y ago
  Feel free to skip this comment. Sometimes I write comments for HN and then delete them. I almost deleted this one (which means I probably should have). This is what's in my head. ----- Why didn't Tesla buy Twitter? Why could Tesla start spending massive amounts of money on Twitter Ads if it couldn't buy it? SolarCity was in a related field, which was at least a fig leaf or minimal justification. There's no real justification to buy Twitter or buy ad space on Twitter. Elon is not actually the god emperor of Tesla. He's been able to sell all of his decisions as improving the future of Tesla (and thus humanity). Of course I could be completely wrong here; I don't have a crystal ball. ----- I think about how we might get to a post-scarcity society, and what post-scarcity means. People like Gene Roddenberry have done a great job portraying this future, but not how we get there. Much of our political discourse is between people who disagree about whether or not we are living in a time of scarcity or post-scarcity. Many people in the city live in the low-scarcity mindset. Many people in the country live in a scarcity mindset. This isn't determinative, it's relative. Just being one place or the other does not dictate how you view the world, but it is indicative. We don't talk about scarcity directly in political speech. It's a deep assumption about the world. It's so deep you may not have even realized that you had taken a side before now. Are taxes and economic activity a zero-sum game? Obviously the other side is wrong, why would you even entertain the question? ---- Why the fuck did I bring up Star Trek and post-scarcity? Because Twitter is a place where fights happen. I'm very happy that people are sending tweets instead of bombs, but we have to continue advancing our level of discourse, and I'm not at all convinced that online public speech is the way to do that; I'm especially not convinced that we can do that in short form; and I'm especially especially convinced that the process of advancing the discourse will not be funded by ads.
matt-attack 4y ago
That is such an overestimation of the reach and influence of the Twitter platform. People buy Teslas because they're awesome cars. People find out about Tesla because everyone and their brother has one. It started slow, you knew a guy who knew a guy, but they preached its praises. It slowly snowballed. They're to the point now, where you can't not find out about them. Twitter IMHO played a deminimus role in that. Normal people in the normal world aren't obsessing over Elon's tweets, or even reading about them. Literally no one I know with Teslas (and it's many many) even using Twitter. Furthermore, there are many other high-profile companies that are extremely well known that simply opt not to advertise. Look at Costco. There's no Twitter mouthpiece and no advertising yet everyone either shops there or knows about it, but doesn't shop there.
- user_named 4y ago
  Absolutely, completely wrong. All of what your wrote. Musk's Twitter has given Tesla hundreds of billions of advertising equivalent exposure.
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    Yikes, if that equivalence is true then Twitter advertising has a horrible ROI. Less than $1 of sales per dollar of advertising is not a good look.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    Hundreds of billions. I could believe, maybe, 'millions'. A hundred thousand dollars buys you a lot of ads on twitter.
    - user_named 4y ago
      Whoosh. Musk's tweets gets him into newspapers and magazines globally. Thousands of them. TV too. You can't buy that kind of advertising.
- frollo 4y ago
  This may be true in the USA, but not in the rest of the world. I live in Europe and, even if I often drive by a Tesla dealer on my way to work, don't know that many people driving one. Basically all the discourse I hear about Tesla comes from the Internet (and most of it from Twitter, even if I don't actually use that site). The next time I have to buy a car, my decision to buy or not a Tesla will be heavily influenced by the information I already have, which comes from there (obviously, I'll also take other things into account and even pay a visit to the dealer - but still, I wouldn't consider it if nobody told me anything about the brand).

by csours 4y ago

solarkraft 4y ago

Yeah sure, but he wants to funnel money into Twitter somehow.

csours 4y ago
Feel free to skip this comment. Sometimes I write comments for HN and then delete them. I almost deleted this one (which means I probably should have). This is what's in my head. ----- Why didn't Tesla buy Twitter? Why could Tesla start spending massive amounts of money on Twitter Ads if it couldn't buy it? SolarCity was in a related field, which was at least a fig leaf or minimal justification. There's no real justification to buy Twitter or buy ad space on Twitter. Elon is not actually the god emperor of Tesla. He's been able to sell all of his decisions as improving the future of Tesla (and thus humanity). Of course I could be completely wrong here; I don't have a crystal ball. ----- I think about how we might get to a post-scarcity society, and what post-scarcity means. People like Gene Roddenberry have done a great job portraying this future, but not how we get there. Much of our political discourse is between people who disagree about whether or not we are living in a time of scarcity or post-scarcity. Many people in the city live in the low-scarcity mindset. Many people in the country live in a scarcity mindset. This isn't determinative, it's relative. Just being one place or the other does not dictate how you view the world, but it is indicative. We don't talk about scarcity directly in political speech. It's a deep assumption about the world. It's so deep you may not have even realized that you had taken a side before now. Are taxes and economic activity a zero-sum game? Obviously the other side is wrong, why would you even entertain the question? ---- Why the fuck did I bring up Star Trek and post-scarcity? Because Twitter is a place where fights happen. I'm very happy that people are sending tweets instead of bombs, but we have to continue advancing our level of discourse, and I'm not at all convinced that online public speech is the way to do that; I'm especially not convinced that we can do that in short form; and I'm especially especially convinced that the process of advancing the discourse will not be funded by ads.

matt-attack 4y ago

That is such an overestimation of the reach and influence of the Twitter platform. People buy Teslas because they're awesome cars. People find out about Tesla because everyone and their brother has one. It started slow, you knew a guy who knew a guy, but they preached its praises. It slowly snowballed. They're to the point now, where you can't not find out about them. Twitter IMHO played a deminimus role in that. Normal people in the normal world aren't obsessing over Elon's tweets, or even reading about them. Literally no one I know with Teslas (and it's many many) even using Twitter. Furthermore, there are many other high-profile companies that are extremely well known that simply opt not to advertise. Look at Costco. There's no Twitter mouthpiece and no advertising yet everyone either shops there or knows about it, but doesn't shop there.

user_named 4y ago
Absolutely, completely wrong. All of what your wrote. Musk's Twitter has given Tesla hundreds of billions of advertising equivalent exposure.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Yikes, if that equivalence is true then Twitter advertising has a horrible ROI. Less than $1 of sales per dollar of advertising is not a good look.
- kbelder 4y ago
  Hundreds of billions. I could believe, maybe, 'millions'. A hundred thousand dollars buys you a lot of ads on twitter.
  - user_named 4y ago
    Whoosh. Musk's tweets gets him into newspapers and magazines globally. Thousands of them. TV too. You can't buy that kind of advertising.
frollo 4y ago
This may be true in the USA, but not in the rest of the world. I live in Europe and, even if I often drive by a Tesla dealer on my way to work, don't know that many people driving one. Basically all the discourse I hear about Tesla comes from the Internet (and most of it from Twitter, even if I don't actually use that site). The next time I have to buy a car, my decision to buy or not a Tesla will be heavily influenced by the information I already have, which comes from there (obviously, I'll also take other things into account and even pay a visit to the dealer - but still, I wouldn't consider it if nobody told me anything about the brand).