11 ms·

Twitter, when the wall came down

115 points by greyface- 4y ago

idlewords 4y ago
I am livid that this acquisition has put me in the position of defending Elon Musk, but people are being silly. Twitter has seen more movement on improving the core product this week than it has in the past five years, and for the first time that I can remember an active user is in charge of the site. Musk hasn't even adjusted his CEO chair back to his preferred angle and people are already writing post-mortems like this about his tenure. There needs to be more chill. Evaluating whether the proposed changes to the site are for the better or not requires waiting a bit to let them actually happen. The complete freakout around Twitter in the media, most of whom have panicked the way a junkie would if forced to find a new heroin dealer, is not helping things. Neither is the online pity party taking place exclusively on the very site that is supposed to be dying.
- modeless 4y ago
  Someone should archive all these "let me dunk on Elon's Twitter acquisition now" posts and comments. If Elon's Twitter isn't a smoking hole in the ground in a year's time, a bunch of these comments are going to look really silly. If it actually succeeds in doing something interesting, or even just succeeds in roughly maintaining status quo, then seemingly a large majority of internet commenters really ought to examine their preconceived notions. It'll be interesting...
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    Ah yes, we can pass those archived posts around the campfire and have a good chortle about how wrong and naive those intensely wrong people were.
    - modeless 4y ago
      Maybe that's what you like to do. Personally, I like to update my priors on whose opinions are more likely to be correct.
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    You can name any successful company, and you can point to a large group of people who said that the company was going to fail. Generally, humans have a bias towards saying things are "impossible" or "sure to fail" with limited personal understanding of the nature of that thing. Indeed, people are more expert about impossible things than possible things...they have encyclopaedic knowledge of things that don't work (this is a safety behaviour that some are more disposed to than others). I have learned, through personal experience of getting this wrong, that people will surprise you more often than your pessimism will be justified.
  - kweingar 4y ago
    Someone should document all of the strident defense of Musk recently. If Twitter does not succeed, my guess is that many of them will attribute it to anything other than Musk’s management. Some ideas for that story might be: - Elon never had a chance because woke celebrities and activists pressured advertisers to not renew their contracts with Twitter - Twitter employees were too lazy and entitled, or maybe they intentionally sabotaged Musk’s plans for ideological reasons - The government unfairly cracked down on Twitter, which would have been desirable a year ago but is completely unnecessary now that the good guys are in charge - Well, Twitter’s revenue and userbase might have cratered, but really Elon won in the end because now it is a place for free speech. He never cared about the money, why are you so focused on the money? - Twitter might have failed but it was going to fail before Elon bought it anyway so it’s not really his fault - Elon easily could have made Twitter profitable but he realized that the cultural problems ran too deep so he turned his attention to more important projects
- croes 4y ago
  >Twitter has seen more movement on improving the core product What improvements? I see lits of fired people and gruesome deadlines for the rest to implement a subscription feature. All of that while Musk is mocking users and whines about shrinking ad money and threatens to publicly shame his customers.
  - idlewords 4y ago
    Musk so far has talked about fixing search, adding the ability to post long-form video and attach long text to tweets instead of having to paste images of text, like an animal. He's also reworking the site business model so that heavy users can get a subscription tier with more features. These seem like... pretty sensible directions to take the product, based on how people are really using it. The "fired" people get to sit around doing nothing at full pay for the next three months, while the not-fired are being asked to do a reasonable amount of work for an engineering staff of thousands. As to the mocking and whining part, if it bugs you then don't read his tweets. I've hated the guy for years and that approach has worked great for me!
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - croes 4y ago
      >Musk so far has talked about fixing search Talk is cheap >He's also reworking the site business model so that heavy users can get a subscription tier with more features You mean Twitter blue? Forcing it by combining it with the blue check and cutting feature like ad free articles isn't a good way a getting paid customers >The "fired" people get to sit around doing nothing at full pay for the next three months And then? Bills still need to be paid after these 3 month and at the moment most companies put a freeze to hiring new employees. >while the not-fired are being asked to do a reasonable amount of work for an engineering staff of thousands. Implementing a feature with short deadline or get fired sounds reasonable to you? Forcing managers to work 12 hours and 7 days a week is neither https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/01/twitter-chaos/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/01/twitter-chaos/ >if it bugs you then don't read his tweets It doesn't bug me, but it shows but customer relationship. He mocks the people he wants to pay the subscription and scares away or blocks advertising customers. https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 That's not how you fix things, that's how you become a template for Horrible Bosses 3
- trothamel 4y ago
  With the exception that I don't have a problem defending Musk, I agree with this, especially the benefits of having someone who is a user in charge of the site. It's pretty clear that there were massive problems with impersonation and inconsistent moderation on the site, and this week seems to have made progress on those aspects, among others.
- joeevans1000 4y ago
  He fired the accessibility team (who cares about the disabled, apparently), the human rights team (Twitter is in many countries and this has implications), and several other teams that were concerned with people's wellbeing. You may be right that it's premature to guess on directions the company will take. But these acts are pretty clear.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- gilbetron 4y ago
  This is my take on it as well. I think Musk has been a complete douche lately, and I've never bought into the "Musk is Tony Stark" narrative. However he is a nuanced human being, and so even though I don't like his current public persona, I know there is more there than just that. Maybe twitter will collapse (that would be really bizarre) given all the people that still love to use it (I stopped about 18 months ago). Maybe it will become even more popular (kinda doubt it). No idea. Regardless, the frantic claims are tiring and pointless except to monetize outrage.
- bambax 4y ago
  > Twitter has seen more movement on improving the core product this week than it has in the past five years Musk should totally buy Pinboard.
  - Typhon 4y ago
    I think Pinboard is more likely to buy Twitter. And honestly this might not be the worst thing that could happen to it. Not sure if Maciej will be keen however.
relueeuler 4y ago
Meanwhile, all the takes on how Elon will have engineers shipping so many features is amusing. No sense of mounting tech debt and how that limits your ability to scale. Getting something quick out the door being your only objective. I don’t expect Elon to understand that dynamic, so he will just discover it the hard way when he is confused why all the sudden he can’t ship anything.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Yeah, Elon managed to build one of the earliest and most important major web services, but since then he's just been farting around doing rocket science. How is he supposed to handle a website that processes literal terabytes of data every hour? In real time mind you
  - bottlepalm 4y ago
    Pretty easy compared to Starlink
- wyldfire 4y ago
  > how that limits your ability to scale. My guess is that after ~15 years or so, Twitter is probably either At Scale already or never will be. > he will just discover it the hard way when he is confused why all the sudden he can’t ship anything. Ship anything? The site works now. How much NRE is required just to keep relaying tweets and showing ads? My guess: not much.
  - relueeuler 4y ago
    My comment is more about where it is headed. If you have been following Twitter you can read accounts of engineers pulling all-nighters, working over the weekend and “launching” the verification feature. Then, read accounts of users trying to use it but said feature not working. A few iterations of this for different features/products, and it will quickly impact his ability to ship anything (likely due to no automated testing in place, poor design decisions, etc.). Here is an example from a customer: https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588981510916276224?s=46&t=7kgCnVpHFSYKMRqhuADA7w https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588981510916276224?...
chatterhead 4y ago
- gpm 4y ago
  That's typical...
- rlucas 4y ago
  BC has a lot of cred with some of us "been around since web 1.0" folks, to be clear
bottlepalm 4y ago
So people say Elon doesn't actually 'run' his companies, that he's just lucky. But now people say Elon is running Twitter and he's running it into the ground. The narrative changes based on how people want to justify success or failure. Elon is either the cause or 'had nothing to do with it' All I can see - laying off tons of people, implementing sweeping changes, cutting non-essential programs, cutting cloud costs, making big financial bets is pretty much the same way he has operated SpaceX and Tesla the past 20 years. All the while people saying landing rockets is a dumb idea, global satellite internet will never work especially with lasers, launching astronauts is harder than you think, and electric cars are impractical and lead to Tesla's bankruptcy. It's been only a few days, can we not give the guy some time to at least try some things. All these, 'the sky is falling at Twitter' posts are not going to age well. It will probably end up being a good case study in how the media steers the narrative and group think.
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  Running a company requires a lot more work than destroying one.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I thought he was famous for being a micromanager, and that the troughs (and peaks) of his companies are commonly attributed to that. At least in my bubble (which is not particularly "pro" Elon) he's never been characterized as "hands off"; only incompetent in ways that don't guarantee failure when you're already worth billions of dollars.
- bnralt 4y ago
  I found it odd that both the New York Times and The Washington Post had top stories about how terrible things were at Twitter now that Musk took over. A few days is hardly enough time to decide that a new leader has destroyed a company.
  - cokeandpepsi 4y ago
    why? it's a major media takeover with a lot of big names/drama invovled same scale as the at&t/warner media deal it's one of the top stories in the WSJ too
bagels 4y ago
Isn't it premature to call Twitter's death? Is there any data to show it's actually going to be immediately replaced by anything else? I have no doubt that Musk is doing damage, but the hypothesis is: change can happen really fast, therefore Twitter will immediately fail, which isn't a self evident truth.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Is there any data to show it's actually going to be immediately replaced by anything else? From the article: > I keep wondering about “what is going to replace Twitter”, but I am increasingly of the belief that this is the wrong question, that no single thing is going to replace Twitter. That is, Twitter as an idea — a single social platform catering to all demographics and uses — will become like the evening nightly news or the morning newspaper: a relic from a bygone era.
  - lokedhs 4y ago
    That would be nice. But at some point, someone will both have the resources as well as the luck of being at the right place and a new, possibly more powerful (because they will be more competent than twitter) platform will take over. Unfortunately, in the meantime some people believe that Mastodon may be filling that void. I don't think it can, but as a long time Fediverse user, I'm worried that people will think that for long enough to change it into something it couldn't be.
- mbreese 4y ago
  It already has changed. The Twitter from two weeks ago is gone and replaced with… something. We don’t know what that currently means, but it is different. The hypothesis wasn’t that Twitter will immediately fail. It was that it is currently on that path. And that changes happen gradually, but can be profound. (Or as the trope about bankruptcy goes: it happens gradually and then all at once). It might not ever “fail” as a company, but it’s on that path. Whether that is less relevance or a bankrupt company, it’s too early to say. All we do know is that it is changing.
  - 4y ago
mooreds 4y ago
Very insightful analysis of the current Twitter situation. This was my favorite line: > having screwed up the most basic element of the business: he doesn’t even know who the customer is! This knowledge is difficult to obtain. But I agree it is basic and critical. Knowing who both desires the value you can offer and can pay for it is critical to any successful business. If you are interviewing, learning who the customer is is critical for you to have any chance of assessing the chances of success of the company. If they don't know who it is, ask how they are finding out. (If they are a later stage company and still finding it out, that is a risky situation.) It's also important to know the answer to ascertain what kind of company is being built. For instance, if the customer is the CIO, that is going to be an entirely different kind of company (in so many ways: marketing, sales team, product emphasis, value of engineering, customer LTV, customer lifecycle, UX, and more) than a company where the customer is an engineering manager or developer.
- i_like_apis 4y ago
  It was a stupid thing for the article to say. Musk knows exactly who the current customer is, and he obviously wants to change it. The current customer is the ad buyer. It would be a lot better for the users if they were the customer (rather than the product).
  - snotrockets 4y ago
    Twitter has about quarter of a billion MDAU. How many of those would pay? How much? What would be the cost of having 250mm customers? There’s a reason the web is so dependent on advertising.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      Pay to be heard, not pay to read. If you want to be heard, you'll need to be pay $8. Blue users will get priority over their tweet ranking compared to non-blue users. Lot of people would pay I think. It is not the same as Youtube where you are just purely consuming, not participating.
charliea0 4y ago
My priors are 30% Twitter “fails” in either bankruptcy or by losing most of its userbase, 30% Twitter more or less continues - perhaps unable to meet its new interest payments, 30% it’s much more profitable albeit in a very different form.
- charliea0 4y ago
  10% something I haven’t anticipated happens. :)
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  That's kind of like putting even money on low, mid, high in roulette.
valine 4y ago
I never liked the classist undertones associated with the twitter verified badges. In some ways it’s satisfying to see the badge stripped of its meaning and prestige. That being said the way Musk is going about these changes is damaging to Twitter in the short term. Will be interesting to see if Twitter survives when the dust settles.
- sorenjan 4y ago
  > I never liked the classist undertones associated with the twitter verified badges. In some ways it’s satisfying to see the badge stripped of its meaning a prestige. This seems to be a recurring opinion of Twitter users, but as someone who doesn't use it I thought it was just a way to prove that some slightly public figure is who they say they are and not some imposter? It seems weird to be upset that "Elon Musk " is Elon Musk and not some crypto scammer (maybe a bad example), so I guess I'm missing something.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    That's still how it was for the highest profile users (Trump had the check mark, remember) - but down in the lower-regions it was a status symbol for those who "made it" - and the rumor is that status symbol could be gamed. Verification had a "notoriety" aspect - I couldn't get verified because I'm a nobody; dang might be able to, Paul Graham for sure.
    - paulpauper 4y ago
      I think it changed and nobodies can get verified if they submit docs
  - grok22 4y ago
    Yeah, I too don't understand why the earlier system was 'classist'? It seemed like a better way to be sure that someone was who they said they were? The proposed mechanism of paying to get a check-mark seems suspect. I understand paying for extra features, but paying to say "I am who I am" seems like it could get abused and not a good idea. Now only people who think they need to pay for it and think it worthwhile will get it and that seems like classist in a different way.
aq9 4y ago
Shaka, when the walls fell.
- FPGAhacker 4y ago
  came here to post this. ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/star-trek-tng-and-the-limits-of-language-shaka-when-the-walls-fell/372107/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/st...
- deleted 4y ago
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- ihatepython 4y ago
  Elon, on the ocean OP, his eyes uncovered. The river Temarc, IN WINTER
ghoulies 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yes, every single person on Twitter is required to post how it's now Shitter, how they're leaving for a mastodon instance, and then later how they're returning to Twitter because their instance was too full of racists and fascists. Some are speed running it: https://journa.host/@richard_schultz https://journa.host/@richard_schultz
linuxhansl 4y ago
As I said before. There was a world before Twitter and there will be a life after Twitter. I deactivated my account (and Facebook et al) over a year ago. Not only have I not missed it, I feel lighter without it. I still find/follow things I like - just not on Twitter (or Facebook and whatnot). Aside: Social media that trigger our reward response (followers, likes, etc) will inherently never really work. People will post things that get the most followers or likes, not what matters. The more radical, the more likes or followers, the better. Not everybody of course, but enough to make these system in total a detriment to society.
rosywoozlechan 4y ago
I feel like most people are simply coping with the Twitter takeover. People and pundits may have no agency in the matter but they certainly have lots of opinions. You can't will Twitter to fail as much as you might want that to be possible. If Twitter fails it will be because of the company's execution. Not because everyone got all angry and wanted to cancel Musk. He's not cancel-able as he has his own platform now and his success or failure is not within your reach to touch.
wokwokwok 4y ago
I don’t care if the person in charge is Elon, or some other random person, this post this has one thing right: Things are changing. …and they are changing fast. The problem with fast drastic change is that it is relatively unpredictable. That appears to have, clearly, caught people, including Elon with his pants down. It’s even more unpredictable than expected. No one likes change, its just a fact of life… but change this fast, and in ways people didn’t expect is really making people uncomfortable. Did anyone really have a good idea what bring down the wall in Germany would do? No, they had no ducking idea. Likewise, anyone claiming prescience about what is going to happen here is simply speculating. They have no idea. It’s too much change, too fast, to easily predict. All these “you’ll come back to this thread…” posts are embarrassing cat whistles by idiots. No one has any idea what’s going to happen. Coming back, later, and being like “I called it!” will simply mean you made a good random coin flip call. Nothing more.
flir 4y ago
There's a rumour going round that engineers were stack-ranked on LoC and the bottom n% were fired. I would love to know if that's true or not.
- camjohnson26 4y ago
  Kudos to whoever did their most recent lint upgrade.
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  The reality is a similar situation probably played out at Stripe, Lyft, and other tech companies this week. They’re really not that different.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    Ranked on lines of code? Hope not.
darawk 4y ago
Why does Elon induce such strangely bad faith takes in people? Of course he understands what Twitter's business model was. He's trying to change it. It's perfectly reasonable to criticize his choice! The direction he's taking it in might not work out. But the idea that he "doesn't know who the customer is" is absurd. There's a bunch more strange takes in this piece, but this first one is pretty emblematic of the class. Elon very well might fail, but there are perfectly reasonable explanations for the things that he's doing, and the way that he's doing them. He's hashing this all out in public in real time because he wants to move extremely fast, and he clearly feels that most of tech, and Twitter in particular, have become fat and lazy. His remedy is to avoid the drawn out process of a "normal ceo": > Instead of doing what any sane new CEO of a troubled entity would do (namely, determining what changes need to be made by spending a bunch of time listening to customers, users, and employees — and then carefully plotting and executing those changes) And instead iterating rapidly, in public. This approach has obvious drawbacks, but it does have benefits in terms of iteration speed, feedback, and avoiding certain kinds of institutional bias. It might not work out, of course, but why are we pretending that it makes no sense? The guy is clearly competent. He does some things I don't always agree with, and I think in particular he's taken a bit of a strange turn in the past few years. However, he's built more successful wildly successful companies - in very difficult industries - than nearly anyone on earth. The idea that he doesn't understand Twitter's business model is just fundamentally a non-serious thing to say.
- deleted 4y ago
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- fatbird 4y ago
  You don't turn a plane in flight by slamming the yoke as far left as you can. If you know how to fly, then you know how to make a fast turn, but that means knowing how flying works, how the plane responds, and how your current state will change in response to your inputs. Twitter's business is advertising sales. Musk destroyed a billion dollars in committed pre-sales for 2023, then drove away more advertisers in his attempt to fix the situation, then threatened prospective advertisers with "thermonuclear name-and-shame." He's basically destroyed Twitter's ad sales model without a replacement revenue stream ready to go. $8 for various perqs won't replace a fraction of it even with significant uptake, and this is in the context of adding a billion dollars of annual debt servicing in a company whose revenue was only marginal profitable with the ad sales. On top of that, cutting half the staff with zero notice and ordering a billion dollar reduction in infrastructure costs is a massive amount of organizational chaos added at the same time as he's expecting to iterate quickly and replace a multi-billion dollar revenue stream. None of this is a sane way to remake twitter into an agile, non-ad-dependent company. This is controlled-flight-into-terrain. These are desperate, flailing measures. edit: fixing emphasis
ec109685 4y ago
I wonder what percentage of Twitter users know and care Twitter is owned by Musk now? This will be a big shock and a month from now, people will be going about their business.
- dtjb 4y ago
  Recent discovery documents show that user engagement is driven by a disproportionately small base of power users, a group that has been shrinking even before the Musk takeover [1]. I don't think the masses especially care who owns the platform. But the power users probably do, especially as big changes around content, editorialization, and monetization are being discussed. If that small base of power users continue to leave, then the masses stop coming to the site. [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweeters-go-twitter-is-losing-its-most-active-users-internal-2022-10-25/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweet...
simple10 4y ago
Does anyone here happen to have insight into Twitter usage stats? Advertisers will return if the users remain, especially with what's been going on with Meta ads. Sure, some influencers will leave Twitter over principle and never come back, but Facebook and others have survived much more aggressive #delete campaigns. My sense is that barring some major Twit scandal next Tuesday (mid-term elections in the US), the controversy will blow over. In a few months, Twitter's user growth metrics will start to trend upward. Much like how Facebook survived Cambridge Analytica #delete campaign. There isn't anything ready to replace Twitter in the next few months. All the free publicity it's getting right now is setting the stage for major publicity for every new feature Musk and team rolls out. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it more likely Musk will actually succeed in the long run given his access to funding, track record and his ultimate goal of fixing the public square? Genuine question.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  I also have the feeling that some of the most vocal “I’m leaving Twitter, Twitter is dead” folks are actually quite toxic and negatively influence the platform. Maybe the experience for those who stay will be improved.
  - simple10 4y ago
    If they can fix the bot problem and allow for better long form conversations (even as a paid feature), true engagement will go up and advertisers will return. I run a lot of conversion (not brand) ads on Meta, Google, and Reddit but haven't had predictable success on Twitter in years because of the bots. Large brands will shy away for awhile because of the controversy, but small businesses will advertise on Twitter if the cost per click goes down due to fewer bots.
- snotrockets 4y ago
  Advertising budgets on Twitter are pocket change compared to other channels. Twitter has to actively convince customers to advertise on it, they’re not an obvious destination.
- paulpauper 4y ago
geuis 4y ago
My general concern is that these continuing side projects are seriously going to start detracting from his self reported primary missions dealing with spaceflight and human colonization. As a collective of industries/businesses, Spacex, Starlink, Gigafactories for batteries, and Tesla cars all generally support each other. That's four overwhelmingly large enterprises that any regular founder would build their career around individually. It's incredibly impressive that Musk has built all four into successful businesses. The random side projects are a distraction. Twitter is just the largest and most expensive. Boring machines is going nowhere, though I appreciate the comedy in the naming. Tesla long haul trucks are a natural extension of that ecosystem but should be managed by employees at Tesla. Neurolink potentially has some major long term foundational changes, but the tech is probably 10 years too early to build a successful company around. (However I think this is potentially Musk's most important future company beyond Spacex.) But, he is the guy with the success so far, so my little one-man opinions are just that. My personal priorities are on spaceflight and colonization, and I would like to see him just focusing on that. Despite the progress that Starship is making, everything seems to have slowed down dramatically. There has yet to be a full stack launch. They just moved ship 8 to the retirement pad. There was only one Heavy launch this year when 3 were scheduled. Regular Falcon 9 flights are happening almost daily, which is quite astounding. Like, really astounding. Starlink is already active and providing high speed service around the world and is a critical part of Ukraine's defense against Russia. I just want to see more progress being made towards the moon lander, reusable Starship launches, on-orbit refueling, and measurable progress towards Mars expeditions.
- simonw 4y ago
  Possibly the most brutal comment I've seen about this whole situation was: > Imagine living in a Mars colony with this management style https://twitter.com/Jon_Christian/status/1587853397385834496 https://twitter.com/Jon_Christian/status/1587853397385834496
  - geuis 4y ago
    Oof. Too right. But honestly, it's too early to worry about who runs what. Let's focus on progress towards transportation first.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sorenjan 4y ago
I clicked the link to Elon's tweet, and of course the replies are full of American right wingers making US politics of the situation. Because "muh free speech" is going to make Elon's Twitter as successful as Kanye's Parler I guess. Or maybe Truth social? Or perhaps Voat?
paulpauper 4y ago
Perhaps this shouldn’t have been surprising, but Musk has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, having screwed up the most basic element of the business: he doesn’t even know who the customer is! (It’s, um, the ad buyer, stupid.) People said the same about Tesla and Space-X too. They said the same about bezos and amazon. * he reacted to the revenue drop by threatening those that are reducing their spend! (Does it need to be said that menacing customers who choose to buy less from you doesn’t really work in a free economy?)* Or maybe he is exaggerating the problem for marketing purposes. Twitter is private so it no longer has to report earning. If this was true, he would have no reason to announce it. It is part of his marketing angle.
- simonw 4y ago
  It's not a very good marketing angle.
  - penium 4y ago
- coretx 4y ago
  if the integrity of Twitter goes up, "the top 10% of the left and right equally angry", so will the value of the twitter firehose. There is so much value in there, no advertiser could afford it. The same goes for the access to people it holds. When [namecencored] says he wants to turn Twitter in some creepy Chinese everything-app; it implies he knows what troves of value is not capitalised upon right now. To base the twitters business model primarily on ad buyers is ludicrous. Even disabling firehose access to people and using the hose themselves for stock trading alone could potentially be a bomb.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  They said Tesla, SpaceX and Amazon don't know their customers? I don't remember that.
coretx 4y ago
Mass judgement of people based on ( alleged ) reputation is dangerous to both the judged and the judging alike. The same is true for such behaviour within smaller groups. "Hacker News" is one such group. Perhaps it would be appropriate leadership and ethical to source technical facts and opinions prior to judge anyone or anything, with the same blindfold as worn by lady justice - no matter what side we are on. Let's call it the good side, as left and right are captured already ;-)
ed25519FUUU 4y ago
In many ways Musk represents what is usually the HN ideal: former software engineer, driven and ambitious, nerdy, past successful companies under his belt… But because he’s doing something seen as political a bunch of nobody HN anons feel compelled to say he knows nothing about running a tech company. Amazing what politics can do to the mind.
- kweingar 4y ago
  It’s less politics and more his management style. I do not admire bosses who force their reports to work nights and weekends because of some wild, off-the-cuff promise that now needs to be fulfilled instantly. I do not admire bosses who tell their engineers to print out their commits on paper so their performance can be measured by LLOC. I have posted about this a lot recently because I am worried that other tech leaders will take this to heart and treat their employees the same way.
- yunwal 4y ago
  Elon was never a SWE
  - ed25519FUUU 4y ago
    He was coding before he was 13. https://fvi.edu/web-developer/coding/coders-who-changed-the-world-elon-musk/#:~:text=Elon%20Musk%20was%20born%20in,greatest%20coder%2Dpreneurs%20was%20born https://fvi.edu/web-developer/coding/coders-who-changed-the-...
alexjurkiewicz 4y ago
Lots of people are saying the fediverse is more friendly. Of course it is, it has only 0.001% the userbase, and all those people are super enthusiastic early adopters! Just as Twitter's tone changed over time, so will the Fediverse. If it is even lucky enough to succeed in the first place.
the_duke 4y ago
Musk built SpaceX from the ground up, a company that achieved tremendous things in one of the most difficult and entrenched business domains. He played a big role in Making Tesla what it is today, in another of the most entrenched domains. Clearly he has done lots of things right. That makes it so odd how chaotic and inept this takeover appears. Big layoffs after a takeover will also be chaotic, and a bandaid that needs to be ripped off ASAP. There is really no good way to do it, and mistakes will be made. BUT Musk managed to attack and undermine Twitters two most valuable assets: advertisers and celebreties. He claimed advertisers are trying to kill free speech, and threatened them with public shaming. All while sending all the signals that he will change the platform in a way that makes those advertisers very concerned. (less moderation, "free speech", laying off much of the teams ensuring brand safety) He got in public spats with the second most valuable asset: celebrities. Most users on Twitter are just passive consumers, there to hear directly from notable persons they care about. The verification system is essential to this - it gives you reasonable trust that an account is actually the person they claim to be. Maybe a subscription model can make sense, but it should probably be separate from the verification system. There are only ~400k verified accounts, a drop in the bucket at 8$ a pop. This drama could have been avoided by just grandfathering them in. On top of that he has tweeted conspiracy theories by odd media, seemed to do important market analysis and price finding via tweeted survey over 2 days, and all in a has just seemed a bit unhinged. This whole thing is a mess, and I don't get how this can happen. Eg, how can you not realise beforehand how important advertising is for revenue... Tesla stock is falling, so Musk probably is selling to cover costs - he won't get any msignificant loans with good conditions... I always assumed this whole takeover was a boon for the right, to get a favourable relationship with future administrations for Tesla and SpaceX. This may still work out for Musk, but not if Twitter dies too quickly. There is no immediate competition on the horizon though, so there is time
- YeBanKo 4y ago
  Yeah, what he has done with SpaceX is incredible. Love him or hate him, but Falcon launch system is the most viable alternative to Russians. Starlink already provides internet in rural areas and is literally battle-tested. I am skeptical about Tesla, particularly because if their self-driving claims, but he scaled it up and the vehicle itself is solid. That is what many who hate him, don’t want to admit. His companies did create some nice tech. Maybe he just burnt out and lost focus.
i_like_apis 4y ago
> he (Musk) doesn’t even know who the customer is! (It’s, um, the ad buyer, stupid.) Up until now, but ... who wants that really? Ads SUCK. If Ads are the customers, users are the product. I like the idea of turning Twitter into the product. Why should I listen to a chirp from this guy? He doesn't understand what is happening.
- roflyear 4y ago
  everyone who would rather consume media than pay for a subscription wants that...
sytelus 4y ago
These reactionary posts fail to do rational calculations. Letting go half of the staff exactly enabled $1B in debt servicing. Even though it might look reckless, it is clear that much of these staff wasn’t on critical path for running day to day operations. So, Twitter will keep running smoothly on infrastructure side. There is NO viable competition that exists for Twitter in same format. People creating Mastodon accounts quickly find out that it is unworkable at scale. I would expect $8/mo subscription getting picked up by most upper class/professionals as they open up more features to get your posts noticed. Currently, Twitter is mainly a website for top 1% to disseminate their message and it will slowly transform into top 5% decimate their message. Eventually this is win-win and erase out $4M/day losses. The thing I worry about is generating returns on Saudi+VC+bank investments which seems not much as user base and ad revenue have failed to grow despite efforts by multiple CEOs. There was a joke that it might be easier to make peace in Middle East than significantly grow Twitter profits. If Musk can pull that off, he will be business legend. Most likely he won’t but he can take it back to public when market swings high in 2-3 years where he can show turnaround from loss to little bit of profits and generate respectable returns for his investors through our 401k funded public markets.
- Izkata 4y ago
  > There was a joke that it might be easier to make peace in Middle East than significantly grow Twitter profits. After the Abraham Accords, seems like less a joke than a real possibility.
  - kingofpandora 4y ago
    What? By having countries that were already friendly finally make it public? Let's see someone tackle the actual hard problems and not just do PR stunts with a glowing orb.
- gizmo385 4y ago
  > Even though it might look reckless, it is clear that much of these staff wasn’t on critical path for running day to day operations. So, Twitter will keep running smoothly on infrastructure side Is it clear though? There is a lot more to running Twitter than just keeping the servers online. If the site turns into a cesspool and becomes unpleasant to be on, users will flee in droves.
jkerjkeru 4y ago
Always interesting to see Bryan Cantrill, who runs a wannabe-company startup, give business advice to Elon Musk.
ezoe 4y ago
So far, those who claim to be fired Twitter Japan employees are all jocks and queen bees. No nerds. They are crying for their PCs are suddenly bricked and can't use at all. The way their talking sounds like they don't even own a PC at all. A self-claimed Twitter Japan engineer, who hasn't been fired yet, said remote work is hindering their productivity for there are so many video meetings and hardly any time to code. He hopes ending the remote work to reduce the cost of communication. There is no way to fact check those people, but seeing all the stupid moves from Twitter Japan, like announcing to partner with infamous far-right organization to combat the human right issues, or offering a old man who repeatedly commit dogeza for those whose Twitter account are locked for unknown reason and there is no human response from Twitter, so they chose to visit Twitter physically to negotiate the account unlock, indicates Twitter japan was hiring morons.
snapplebobapple 4y ago
It's weird that somebody thinks mainstream companies refusing to advertise on more controversial but popular properties is a good thing. It tells you those mainstream companies have way too much market power and something should be done to mitigate that, up to and including breaking the mainstream company up. There should be so much competition that few companies would ever choose to ignore a popular property with customers likely to use their product. While this may be an innocuous abuse of market power, or perhaps even an abuse you agree with, companies that are abusing their market power are rarely doing it in just one dimension and one has to wonder just how bad the world is getting screwed in less obvious/ in our face ways.
- koonsolo 4y ago
  1. Companies choose to make money above everything else. 2. Companies choose ethics above making money. You can only pick one, and it seems you want companies to go for option 1. I want to see more companies go for option 2.
  - snapplebobapple 4y ago
    First of all, that's not what I said. What I said was all of them choosing to miss out on influencing the customers of a popular (and law abiding) property indicates way too much market power, which almost certainly means us consumers are getting screwed on multiple other fronts by these companies. Second of all, wanting companies to choose ethics over making money is an illogical position because ethics vary greatly across the population and it's only a matter of time before someone abuses market power to get big enough to be able to choose their ethics over their profitability.That you happen to agree with the ethics advertised by today's market power abusers does not mean you always will. Can you imagine if Walmart started shoving their founder's staunch conservative christian values in your face? How about all the business owners that are conservative muslims, do you want those ethics being chosen? It is far better to regulate the most important ethical beliefs of the day through the democratic system of our government and have businesses with so little market power that they don't dare inpose their personal values on the rest of us for fear of losing their customers to the myriad of competitors biting at their heels in the market.
eternalban 4y ago
> While I won’t be using it as much, I will still be on Twitter, and it will still be around It's like the "berlin wall" moment but Bryan will be holding on to his communist party membership card, just in case. https://nitter.net/Jarvis_Dupont/status/1585929998816485376#m https://nitter.net/Jarvis_Dupont/status/1585929998816485376#...

115 points by greyface- 4y ago

I am livid that this acquisition has put me in the position of defending Elon Musk, but people are being silly. Twitter has seen more movement on improving the core product this week than it has in the past five years, and for the first time that I can remember an active user is in charge of the site. Musk hasn't even adjusted his CEO chair back to his preferred angle and people are already writing post-mortems like this about his tenure. There needs to be more chill. Evaluating whether the proposed changes to the site are for the better or not requires waiting a bit to let them actually happen. The complete freakout around Twitter in the media, most of whom have panicked the way a junkie would if forced to find a new heroin dealer, is not helping things. Neither is the online pity party taking place exclusively on the very site that is supposed to be dying.

modeless 4y ago
Someone should archive all these "let me dunk on Elon's Twitter acquisition now" posts and comments. If Elon's Twitter isn't a smoking hole in the ground in a year's time, a bunch of these comments are going to look really silly. If it actually succeeds in doing something interesting, or even just succeeds in roughly maintaining status quo, then seemingly a large majority of internet commenters really ought to examine their preconceived notions. It'll be interesting...
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  Ah yes, we can pass those archived posts around the campfire and have a good chortle about how wrong and naive those intensely wrong people were.
  - modeless 4y ago
    Maybe that's what you like to do. Personally, I like to update my priors on whose opinions are more likely to be correct.
- skippyboxedhero 4y ago
  You can name any successful company, and you can point to a large group of people who said that the company was going to fail. Generally, humans have a bias towards saying things are "impossible" or "sure to fail" with limited personal understanding of the nature of that thing. Indeed, people are more expert about impossible things than possible things...they have encyclopaedic knowledge of things that don't work (this is a safety behaviour that some are more disposed to than others). I have learned, through personal experience of getting this wrong, that people will surprise you more often than your pessimism will be justified.
- kweingar 4y ago
  Someone should document all of the strident defense of Musk recently. If Twitter does not succeed, my guess is that many of them will attribute it to anything other than Musk’s management. Some ideas for that story might be: - Elon never had a chance because woke celebrities and activists pressured advertisers to not renew their contracts with Twitter - Twitter employees were too lazy and entitled, or maybe they intentionally sabotaged Musk’s plans for ideological reasons - The government unfairly cracked down on Twitter, which would have been desirable a year ago but is completely unnecessary now that the good guys are in charge - Well, Twitter’s revenue and userbase might have cratered, but really Elon won in the end because now it is a place for free speech. He never cared about the money, why are you so focused on the money? - Twitter might have failed but it was going to fail before Elon bought it anyway so it’s not really his fault - Elon easily could have made Twitter profitable but he realized that the cultural problems ran too deep so he turned his attention to more important projects
croes 4y ago
>Twitter has seen more movement on improving the core product What improvements? I see lits of fired people and gruesome deadlines for the rest to implement a subscription feature. All of that while Musk is mocking users and whines about shrinking ad money and threatens to publicly shame his customers.
- idlewords 4y ago
  Musk so far has talked about fixing search, adding the ability to post long-form video and attach long text to tweets instead of having to paste images of text, like an animal. He's also reworking the site business model so that heavy users can get a subscription tier with more features. These seem like... pretty sensible directions to take the product, based on how people are really using it. The "fired" people get to sit around doing nothing at full pay for the next three months, while the not-fired are being asked to do a reasonable amount of work for an engineering staff of thousands. As to the mocking and whining part, if it bugs you then don't read his tweets. I've hated the guy for years and that approach has worked great for me!
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - croes 4y ago
    >Musk so far has talked about fixing search Talk is cheap >He's also reworking the site business model so that heavy users can get a subscription tier with more features You mean Twitter blue? Forcing it by combining it with the blue check and cutting feature like ad free articles isn't a good way a getting paid customers >The "fired" people get to sit around doing nothing at full pay for the next three months And then? Bills still need to be paid after these 3 month and at the moment most companies put a freeze to hiring new employees. >while the not-fired are being asked to do a reasonable amount of work for an engineering staff of thousands. Implementing a feature with short deadline or get fired sounds reasonable to you? Forcing managers to work 12 hours and 7 days a week is neither https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/01/twitter-chaos/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/01/twitter-chaos/ >if it bugs you then don't read his tweets It doesn't bug me, but it shows but customer relationship. He mocks the people he wants to pay the subscription and scares away or blocks advertising customers. https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 That's not how you fix things, that's how you become a template for Horrible Bosses 3
trothamel 4y ago
With the exception that I don't have a problem defending Musk, I agree with this, especially the benefits of having someone who is a user in charge of the site. It's pretty clear that there were massive problems with impersonation and inconsistent moderation on the site, and this week seems to have made progress on those aspects, among others.
joeevans1000 4y ago
He fired the accessibility team (who cares about the disabled, apparently), the human rights team (Twitter is in many countries and this has implications), and several other teams that were concerned with people's wellbeing. You may be right that it's premature to guess on directions the company will take. But these acts are pretty clear.
- deleted 4y ago
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gilbetron 4y ago
This is my take on it as well. I think Musk has been a complete douche lately, and I've never bought into the "Musk is Tony Stark" narrative. However he is a nuanced human being, and so even though I don't like his current public persona, I know there is more there than just that. Maybe twitter will collapse (that would be really bizarre) given all the people that still love to use it (I stopped about 18 months ago). Maybe it will become even more popular (kinda doubt it). No idea. Regardless, the frantic claims are tiring and pointless except to monetize outrage.
bambax 4y ago
> Twitter has seen more movement on improving the core product this week than it has in the past five years Musk should totally buy Pinboard.
- Typhon 4y ago
  I think Pinboard is more likely to buy Twitter. And honestly this might not be the worst thing that could happen to it. Not sure if Maciej will be keen however.

relueeuler 4y ago

Meanwhile, all the takes on how Elon will have engineers shipping so many features is amusing. No sense of mounting tech debt and how that limits your ability to scale. Getting something quick out the door being your only objective. I don’t expect Elon to understand that dynamic, so he will just discover it the hard way when he is confused why all the sudden he can’t ship anything.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Yeah, Elon managed to build one of the earliest and most important major web services, but since then he's just been farting around doing rocket science. How is he supposed to handle a website that processes literal terabytes of data every hour? In real time mind you
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  Pretty easy compared to Starlink
wyldfire 4y ago
> how that limits your ability to scale. My guess is that after ~15 years or so, Twitter is probably either At Scale already or never will be. > he will just discover it the hard way when he is confused why all the sudden he can’t ship anything. Ship anything? The site works now. How much NRE is required just to keep relaying tweets and showing ads? My guess: not much.
- relueeuler 4y ago
  My comment is more about where it is headed. If you have been following Twitter you can read accounts of engineers pulling all-nighters, working over the weekend and “launching” the verification feature. Then, read accounts of users trying to use it but said feature not working. A few iterations of this for different features/products, and it will quickly impact his ability to ship anything (likely due to no automated testing in place, poor design decisions, etc.). Here is an example from a customer: https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588981510916276224?s=46&t=7kgCnVpHFSYKMRqhuADA7w https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588981510916276224?...

chatterhead 4y ago

gpm 4y ago
That's typical...
rlucas 4y ago
BC has a lot of cred with some of us "been around since web 1.0" folks, to be clear

bottlepalm 4y ago

So people say Elon doesn't actually 'run' his companies, that he's just lucky. But now people say Elon is running Twitter and he's running it into the ground. The narrative changes based on how people want to justify success or failure. Elon is either the cause or 'had nothing to do with it' All I can see - laying off tons of people, implementing sweeping changes, cutting non-essential programs, cutting cloud costs, making big financial bets is pretty much the same way he has operated SpaceX and Tesla the past 20 years. All the while people saying landing rockets is a dumb idea, global satellite internet will never work especially with lasers, launching astronauts is harder than you think, and electric cars are impractical and lead to Tesla's bankruptcy. It's been only a few days, can we not give the guy some time to at least try some things. All these, 'the sky is falling at Twitter' posts are not going to age well. It will probably end up being a good case study in how the media steers the narrative and group think.

SantalBlush 4y ago
Running a company requires a lot more work than destroying one.
woodruffw 4y ago
I thought he was famous for being a micromanager, and that the troughs (and peaks) of his companies are commonly attributed to that. At least in my bubble (which is not particularly "pro" Elon) he's never been characterized as "hands off"; only incompetent in ways that don't guarantee failure when you're already worth billions of dollars.
bnralt 4y ago
I found it odd that both the New York Times and The Washington Post had top stories about how terrible things were at Twitter now that Musk took over. A few days is hardly enough time to decide that a new leader has destroyed a company.
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  why? it's a major media takeover with a lot of big names/drama invovled same scale as the at&t/warner media deal it's one of the top stories in the WSJ too

bagels 4y ago

Isn't it premature to call Twitter's death? Is there any data to show it's actually going to be immediately replaced by anything else? I have no doubt that Musk is doing damage, but the hypothesis is: change can happen really fast, therefore Twitter will immediately fail, which isn't a self evident truth.

lapcat 4y ago
> Is there any data to show it's actually going to be immediately replaced by anything else? From the article: > I keep wondering about “what is going to replace Twitter”, but I am increasingly of the belief that this is the wrong question, that no single thing is going to replace Twitter. That is, Twitter as an idea — a single social platform catering to all demographics and uses — will become like the evening nightly news or the morning newspaper: a relic from a bygone era.
- lokedhs 4y ago
  That would be nice. But at some point, someone will both have the resources as well as the luck of being at the right place and a new, possibly more powerful (because they will be more competent than twitter) platform will take over. Unfortunately, in the meantime some people believe that Mastodon may be filling that void. I don't think it can, but as a long time Fediverse user, I'm worried that people will think that for long enough to change it into something it couldn't be.
mbreese 4y ago
It already has changed. The Twitter from two weeks ago is gone and replaced with… something. We don’t know what that currently means, but it is different. The hypothesis wasn’t that Twitter will immediately fail. It was that it is currently on that path. And that changes happen gradually, but can be profound. (Or as the trope about bankruptcy goes: it happens gradually and then all at once). It might not ever “fail” as a company, but it’s on that path. Whether that is less relevance or a bankrupt company, it’s too early to say. All we do know is that it is changing.
- 4y ago

mooreds 4y ago

Very insightful analysis of the current Twitter situation. This was my favorite line: > having screwed up the most basic element of the business: he doesn’t even know who the customer is! This knowledge is difficult to obtain. But I agree it is basic and critical. Knowing who both desires the value you can offer and can pay for it is critical to any successful business. If you are interviewing, learning who the customer is is critical for you to have any chance of assessing the chances of success of the company. If they don't know who it is, ask how they are finding out. (If they are a later stage company and still finding it out, that is a risky situation.) It's also important to know the answer to ascertain what kind of company is being built. For instance, if the customer is the CIO, that is going to be an entirely different kind of company (in so many ways: marketing, sales team, product emphasis, value of engineering, customer LTV, customer lifecycle, UX, and more) than a company where the customer is an engineering manager or developer.

i_like_apis 4y ago
It was a stupid thing for the article to say. Musk knows exactly who the current customer is, and he obviously wants to change it. The current customer is the ad buyer. It would be a lot better for the users if they were the customer (rather than the product).
- snotrockets 4y ago
  Twitter has about quarter of a billion MDAU. How many of those would pay? How much? What would be the cost of having 250mm customers? There’s a reason the web is so dependent on advertising.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Pay to be heard, not pay to read. If you want to be heard, you'll need to be pay $8. Blue users will get priority over their tweet ranking compared to non-blue users. Lot of people would pay I think. It is not the same as Youtube where you are just purely consuming, not participating.

charliea0 4y ago

My priors are 30% Twitter “fails” in either bankruptcy or by losing most of its userbase, 30% Twitter more or less continues - perhaps unable to meet its new interest payments, 30% it’s much more profitable albeit in a very different form.

charliea0 4y ago
10% something I haven’t anticipated happens. :)
bottlepalm 4y ago
That's kind of like putting even money on low, mid, high in roulette.

valine 4y ago

I never liked the classist undertones associated with the twitter verified badges. In some ways it’s satisfying to see the badge stripped of its meaning and prestige. That being said the way Musk is going about these changes is damaging to Twitter in the short term. Will be interesting to see if Twitter survives when the dust settles.

sorenjan 4y ago
> I never liked the classist undertones associated with the twitter verified badges. In some ways it’s satisfying to see the badge stripped of its meaning a prestige. This seems to be a recurring opinion of Twitter users, but as someone who doesn't use it I thought it was just a way to prove that some slightly public figure is who they say they are and not some imposter? It seems weird to be upset that "Elon Musk " is Elon Musk and not some crypto scammer (maybe a bad example), so I guess I'm missing something.
- bombcar 4y ago
  That's still how it was for the highest profile users (Trump had the check mark, remember) - but down in the lower-regions it was a status symbol for those who "made it" - and the rumor is that status symbol could be gamed. Verification had a "notoriety" aspect - I couldn't get verified because I'm a nobody; dang might be able to, Paul Graham for sure.
  - paulpauper 4y ago
    I think it changed and nobodies can get verified if they submit docs
- grok22 4y ago
  Yeah, I too don't understand why the earlier system was 'classist'? It seemed like a better way to be sure that someone was who they said they were? The proposed mechanism of paying to get a check-mark seems suspect. I understand paying for extra features, but paying to say "I am who I am" seems like it could get abused and not a good idea. Now only people who think they need to pay for it and think it worthwhile will get it and that seems like classist in a different way.

aq9 4y ago

Shaka, when the walls fell.

FPGAhacker 4y ago
came here to post this. ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/star-trek-tng-and-the-limits-of-language-shaka-when-the-walls-fell/372107/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/st...
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ihatepython 4y ago
Elon, on the ocean OP, his eyes uncovered. The river Temarc, IN WINTER

ghoulies 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
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bombcar 4y ago
Yes, every single person on Twitter is required to post how it's now Shitter, how they're leaving for a mastodon instance, and then later how they're returning to Twitter because their instance was too full of racists and fascists. Some are speed running it: https://journa.host/@richard_schultz https://journa.host/@richard_schultz

linuxhansl 4y ago

As I said before. There was a world before Twitter and there will be a life after Twitter. I deactivated my account (and Facebook et al) over a year ago. Not only have I not missed it, I feel lighter without it. I still find/follow things I like - just not on Twitter (or Facebook and whatnot). Aside: Social media that trigger our reward response (followers, likes, etc) will inherently never really work. People will post things that get the most followers or likes, not what matters. The more radical, the more likes or followers, the better. Not everybody of course, but enough to make these system in total a detriment to society.

rosywoozlechan 4y ago

I feel like most people are simply coping with the Twitter takeover. People and pundits may have no agency in the matter but they certainly have lots of opinions. You can't will Twitter to fail as much as you might want that to be possible. If Twitter fails it will be because of the company's execution. Not because everyone got all angry and wanted to cancel Musk. He's not cancel-able as he has his own platform now and his success or failure is not within your reach to touch.

wokwokwok 4y ago

I don’t care if the person in charge is Elon, or some other random person, this post this has one thing right: Things are changing. …and they are changing fast. The problem with fast drastic change is that it is relatively unpredictable. That appears to have, clearly, caught people, including Elon with his pants down. It’s even more unpredictable than expected. No one likes change, its just a fact of life… but change this fast, and in ways people didn’t expect is really making people uncomfortable. Did anyone really have a good idea what bring down the wall in Germany would do? No, they had no ducking idea. Likewise, anyone claiming prescience about what is going to happen here is simply speculating. They have no idea. It’s too much change, too fast, to easily predict. All these “you’ll come back to this thread…” posts are embarrassing cat whistles by idiots. No one has any idea what’s going to happen. Coming back, later, and being like “I called it!” will simply mean you made a good random coin flip call. Nothing more.

flir 4y ago

There's a rumour going round that engineers were stack-ranked on LoC and the bottom n% were fired. I would love to know if that's true or not.

camjohnson26 4y ago
Kudos to whoever did their most recent lint upgrade.
ed25519FUUU 4y ago
The reality is a similar situation probably played out at Stripe, Lyft, and other tech companies this week. They’re really not that different.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  Ranked on lines of code? Hope not.

darawk 4y ago

Why does Elon induce such strangely bad faith takes in people? Of course he understands what Twitter's business model was. He's trying to change it. It's perfectly reasonable to criticize his choice! The direction he's taking it in might not work out. But the idea that he "doesn't know who the customer is" is absurd. There's a bunch more strange takes in this piece, but this first one is pretty emblematic of the class. Elon very well might fail, but there are perfectly reasonable explanations for the things that he's doing, and the way that he's doing them. He's hashing this all out in public in real time because he wants to move extremely fast, and he clearly feels that most of tech, and Twitter in particular, have become fat and lazy. His remedy is to avoid the drawn out process of a "normal ceo": > Instead of doing what any sane new CEO of a troubled entity would do (namely, determining what changes need to be made by spending a bunch of time listening to customers, users, and employees — and then carefully plotting and executing those changes) And instead iterating rapidly, in public. This approach has obvious drawbacks, but it does have benefits in terms of iteration speed, feedback, and avoiding certain kinds of institutional bias. It might not work out, of course, but why are we pretending that it makes no sense? The guy is clearly competent. He does some things I don't always agree with, and I think in particular he's taken a bit of a strange turn in the past few years. However, he's built more successful wildly successful companies - in very difficult industries - than nearly anyone on earth. The idea that he doesn't understand Twitter's business model is just fundamentally a non-serious thing to say.

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fatbird 4y ago
You don't turn a plane in flight by slamming the yoke as far left as you can. If you know how to fly, then you know how to make a fast turn, but that means knowing how flying works, how the plane responds, and how your current state will change in response to your inputs. Twitter's business is advertising sales. Musk destroyed a billion dollars in committed pre-sales for 2023, then drove away more advertisers in his attempt to fix the situation, then threatened prospective advertisers with "thermonuclear name-and-shame." He's basically destroyed Twitter's ad sales model without a replacement revenue stream ready to go. $8 for various perqs won't replace a fraction of it even with significant uptake, and this is in the context of adding a billion dollars of annual debt servicing in a company whose revenue was only marginal profitable with the ad sales. On top of that, cutting half the staff with zero notice and ordering a billion dollar reduction in infrastructure costs is a massive amount of organizational chaos added at the same time as he's expecting to iterate quickly and replace a multi-billion dollar revenue stream. None of this is a sane way to remake twitter into an agile, non-ad-dependent company. This is controlled-flight-into-terrain. These are desperate, flailing measures. edit: fixing emphasis

ec109685 4y ago

I wonder what percentage of Twitter users know and care Twitter is owned by Musk now? This will be a big shock and a month from now, people will be going about their business.

dtjb 4y ago
Recent discovery documents show that user engagement is driven by a disproportionately small base of power users, a group that has been shrinking even before the Musk takeover [1]. I don't think the masses especially care who owns the platform. But the power users probably do, especially as big changes around content, editorialization, and monetization are being discussed. If that small base of power users continue to leave, then the masses stop coming to the site. [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweeters-go-twitter-is-losing-its-most-active-users-internal-2022-10-25/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweet...

simple10 4y ago

Does anyone here happen to have insight into Twitter usage stats? Advertisers will return if the users remain, especially with what's been going on with Meta ads. Sure, some influencers will leave Twitter over principle and never come back, but Facebook and others have survived much more aggressive #delete campaigns. My sense is that barring some major Twit scandal next Tuesday (mid-term elections in the US), the controversy will blow over. In a few months, Twitter's user growth metrics will start to trend upward. Much like how Facebook survived Cambridge Analytica #delete campaign. There isn't anything ready to replace Twitter in the next few months. All the free publicity it's getting right now is setting the stage for major publicity for every new feature Musk and team rolls out. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it more likely Musk will actually succeed in the long run given his access to funding, track record and his ultimate goal of fixing the public square? Genuine question.

BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
I also have the feeling that some of the most vocal “I’m leaving Twitter, Twitter is dead” folks are actually quite toxic and negatively influence the platform. Maybe the experience for those who stay will be improved.
- simple10 4y ago
  If they can fix the bot problem and allow for better long form conversations (even as a paid feature), true engagement will go up and advertisers will return. I run a lot of conversion (not brand) ads on Meta, Google, and Reddit but haven't had predictable success on Twitter in years because of the bots. Large brands will shy away for awhile because of the controversy, but small businesses will advertise on Twitter if the cost per click goes down due to fewer bots.
snotrockets 4y ago
Advertising budgets on Twitter are pocket change compared to other channels. Twitter has to actively convince customers to advertise on it, they’re not an obvious destination.
paulpauper 4y ago

geuis 4y ago

My general concern is that these continuing side projects are seriously going to start detracting from his self reported primary missions dealing with spaceflight and human colonization. As a collective of industries/businesses, Spacex, Starlink, Gigafactories for batteries, and Tesla cars all generally support each other. That's four overwhelmingly large enterprises that any regular founder would build their career around individually. It's incredibly impressive that Musk has built all four into successful businesses. The random side projects are a distraction. Twitter is just the largest and most expensive. Boring machines is going nowhere, though I appreciate the comedy in the naming. Tesla long haul trucks are a natural extension of that ecosystem but should be managed by employees at Tesla. Neurolink potentially has some major long term foundational changes, but the tech is probably 10 years too early to build a successful company around. (However I think this is potentially Musk's most important future company beyond Spacex.) But, he is the guy with the success so far, so my little one-man opinions are just that. My personal priorities are on spaceflight and colonization, and I would like to see him just focusing on that. Despite the progress that Starship is making, everything seems to have slowed down dramatically. There has yet to be a full stack launch. They just moved ship 8 to the retirement pad. There was only one Heavy launch this year when 3 were scheduled. Regular Falcon 9 flights are happening almost daily, which is quite astounding. Like, really astounding. Starlink is already active and providing high speed service around the world and is a critical part of Ukraine's defense against Russia. I just want to see more progress being made towards the moon lander, reusable Starship launches, on-orbit refueling, and measurable progress towards Mars expeditions.

simonw 4y ago
Possibly the most brutal comment I've seen about this whole situation was: > Imagine living in a Mars colony with this management style https://twitter.com/Jon_Christian/status/1587853397385834496 https://twitter.com/Jon_Christian/status/1587853397385834496
- geuis 4y ago
  Oof. Too right. But honestly, it's too early to worry about who runs what. Let's focus on progress towards transportation first.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sorenjan 4y ago

I clicked the link to Elon's tweet, and of course the replies are full of American right wingers making US politics of the situation. Because "muh free speech" is going to make Elon's Twitter as successful as Kanye's Parler I guess. Or maybe Truth social? Or perhaps Voat?

paulpauper 4y ago

Perhaps this shouldn’t have been surprising, but Musk has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, having screwed up the most basic element of the business: he doesn’t even know who the customer is! (It’s, um, the ad buyer, stupid.) People said the same about Tesla and Space-X too. They said the same about bezos and amazon. * he reacted to the revenue drop by threatening those that are reducing their spend! (Does it need to be said that menacing customers who choose to buy less from you doesn’t really work in a free economy?)* Or maybe he is exaggerating the problem for marketing purposes. Twitter is private so it no longer has to report earning. If this was true, he would have no reason to announce it. It is part of his marketing angle.

simonw 4y ago
It's not a very good marketing angle.
- penium 4y ago
coretx 4y ago
if the integrity of Twitter goes up, "the top 10% of the left and right equally angry", so will the value of the twitter firehose. There is so much value in there, no advertiser could afford it. The same goes for the access to people it holds. When [namecencored] says he wants to turn Twitter in some creepy Chinese everything-app; it implies he knows what troves of value is not capitalised upon right now. To base the twitters business model primarily on ad buyers is ludicrous. Even disabling firehose access to people and using the hose themselves for stock trading alone could potentially be a bomb.
andrewflnr 4y ago
They said Tesla, SpaceX and Amazon don't know their customers? I don't remember that.

coretx 4y ago

Mass judgement of people based on ( alleged ) reputation is dangerous to both the judged and the judging alike. The same is true for such behaviour within smaller groups. "Hacker News" is one such group. Perhaps it would be appropriate leadership and ethical to source technical facts and opinions prior to judge anyone or anything, with the same blindfold as worn by lady justice - no matter what side we are on. Let's call it the good side, as left and right are captured already ;-)

ed25519FUUU 4y ago

In many ways Musk represents what is usually the HN ideal: former software engineer, driven and ambitious, nerdy, past successful companies under his belt… But because he’s doing something seen as political a bunch of nobody HN anons feel compelled to say he knows nothing about running a tech company. Amazing what politics can do to the mind.

kweingar 4y ago
It’s less politics and more his management style. I do not admire bosses who force their reports to work nights and weekends because of some wild, off-the-cuff promise that now needs to be fulfilled instantly. I do not admire bosses who tell their engineers to print out their commits on paper so their performance can be measured by LLOC. I have posted about this a lot recently because I am worried that other tech leaders will take this to heart and treat their employees the same way.
yunwal 4y ago
Elon was never a SWE
- ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  He was coding before he was 13. https://fvi.edu/web-developer/coding/coders-who-changed-the-world-elon-musk/#:~:text=Elon%20Musk%20was%20born%20in,greatest%20coder%2Dpreneurs%20was%20born https://fvi.edu/web-developer/coding/coders-who-changed-the-...

alexjurkiewicz 4y ago

Lots of people are saying the fediverse is more friendly. Of course it is, it has only 0.001% the userbase, and all those people are super enthusiastic early adopters! Just as Twitter's tone changed over time, so will the Fediverse. If it is even lucky enough to succeed in the first place.

the_duke 4y ago

Musk built SpaceX from the ground up, a company that achieved tremendous things in one of the most difficult and entrenched business domains. He played a big role in Making Tesla what it is today, in another of the most entrenched domains. Clearly he has done lots of things right. That makes it so odd how chaotic and inept this takeover appears. Big layoffs after a takeover will also be chaotic, and a bandaid that needs to be ripped off ASAP. There is really no good way to do it, and mistakes will be made. BUT Musk managed to attack and undermine Twitters two most valuable assets: advertisers and celebreties. He claimed advertisers are trying to kill free speech, and threatened them with public shaming. All while sending all the signals that he will change the platform in a way that makes those advertisers very concerned. (less moderation, "free speech", laying off much of the teams ensuring brand safety) He got in public spats with the second most valuable asset: celebrities. Most users on Twitter are just passive consumers, there to hear directly from notable persons they care about. The verification system is essential to this - it gives you reasonable trust that an account is actually the person they claim to be. Maybe a subscription model can make sense, but it should probably be separate from the verification system. There are only ~400k verified accounts, a drop in the bucket at 8$ a pop. This drama could have been avoided by just grandfathering them in. On top of that he has tweeted conspiracy theories by odd media, seemed to do important market analysis and price finding via tweeted survey over 2 days, and all in a has just seemed a bit unhinged. This whole thing is a mess, and I don't get how this can happen. Eg, how can you not realise beforehand how important advertising is for revenue... Tesla stock is falling, so Musk probably is selling to cover costs - he won't get any msignificant loans with good conditions... I always assumed this whole takeover was a boon for the right, to get a favourable relationship with future administrations for Tesla and SpaceX. This may still work out for Musk, but not if Twitter dies too quickly. There is no immediate competition on the horizon though, so there is time

YeBanKo 4y ago
Yeah, what he has done with SpaceX is incredible. Love him or hate him, but Falcon launch system is the most viable alternative to Russians. Starlink already provides internet in rural areas and is literally battle-tested. I am skeptical about Tesla, particularly because if their self-driving claims, but he scaled it up and the vehicle itself is solid. That is what many who hate him, don’t want to admit. His companies did create some nice tech. Maybe he just burnt out and lost focus.

i_like_apis 4y ago

> he (Musk) doesn’t even know who the customer is! (It’s, um, the ad buyer, stupid.) Up until now, but ... who wants that really? Ads SUCK. If Ads are the customers, users are the product. I like the idea of turning Twitter into the product. Why should I listen to a chirp from this guy? He doesn't understand what is happening.

roflyear 4y ago
everyone who would rather consume media than pay for a subscription wants that...

sytelus 4y ago

These reactionary posts fail to do rational calculations. Letting go half of the staff exactly enabled $1B in debt servicing. Even though it might look reckless, it is clear that much of these staff wasn’t on critical path for running day to day operations. So, Twitter will keep running smoothly on infrastructure side. There is NO viable competition that exists for Twitter in same format. People creating Mastodon accounts quickly find out that it is unworkable at scale. I would expect $8/mo subscription getting picked up by most upper class/professionals as they open up more features to get your posts noticed. Currently, Twitter is mainly a website for top 1% to disseminate their message and it will slowly transform into top 5% decimate their message. Eventually this is win-win and erase out $4M/day losses. The thing I worry about is generating returns on Saudi+VC+bank investments which seems not much as user base and ad revenue have failed to grow despite efforts by multiple CEOs. There was a joke that it might be easier to make peace in Middle East than significantly grow Twitter profits. If Musk can pull that off, he will be business legend. Most likely he won’t but he can take it back to public when market swings high in 2-3 years where he can show turnaround from loss to little bit of profits and generate respectable returns for his investors through our 401k funded public markets.

Izkata 4y ago
> There was a joke that it might be easier to make peace in Middle East than significantly grow Twitter profits. After the Abraham Accords, seems like less a joke than a real possibility.
- kingofpandora 4y ago
  What? By having countries that were already friendly finally make it public? Let's see someone tackle the actual hard problems and not just do PR stunts with a glowing orb.
gizmo385 4y ago
> Even though it might look reckless, it is clear that much of these staff wasn’t on critical path for running day to day operations. So, Twitter will keep running smoothly on infrastructure side Is it clear though? There is a lot more to running Twitter than just keeping the servers online. If the site turns into a cesspool and becomes unpleasant to be on, users will flee in droves.

jkerjkeru 4y ago

Always interesting to see Bryan Cantrill, who runs a wannabe-company startup, give business advice to Elon Musk.

ezoe 4y ago

So far, those who claim to be fired Twitter Japan employees are all jocks and queen bees. No nerds. They are crying for their PCs are suddenly bricked and can't use at all. The way their talking sounds like they don't even own a PC at all. A self-claimed Twitter Japan engineer, who hasn't been fired yet, said remote work is hindering their productivity for there are so many video meetings and hardly any time to code. He hopes ending the remote work to reduce the cost of communication. There is no way to fact check those people, but seeing all the stupid moves from Twitter Japan, like announcing to partner with infamous far-right organization to combat the human right issues, or offering a old man who repeatedly commit dogeza for those whose Twitter account are locked for unknown reason and there is no human response from Twitter, so they chose to visit Twitter physically to negotiate the account unlock, indicates Twitter japan was hiring morons.

snapplebobapple 4y ago

It's weird that somebody thinks mainstream companies refusing to advertise on more controversial but popular properties is a good thing. It tells you those mainstream companies have way too much market power and something should be done to mitigate that, up to and including breaking the mainstream company up. There should be so much competition that few companies would ever choose to ignore a popular property with customers likely to use their product. While this may be an innocuous abuse of market power, or perhaps even an abuse you agree with, companies that are abusing their market power are rarely doing it in just one dimension and one has to wonder just how bad the world is getting screwed in less obvious/ in our face ways.

koonsolo 4y ago
1. Companies choose to make money above everything else. 2. Companies choose ethics above making money. You can only pick one, and it seems you want companies to go for option 1. I want to see more companies go for option 2.
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  First of all, that's not what I said. What I said was all of them choosing to miss out on influencing the customers of a popular (and law abiding) property indicates way too much market power, which almost certainly means us consumers are getting screwed on multiple other fronts by these companies. Second of all, wanting companies to choose ethics over making money is an illogical position because ethics vary greatly across the population and it's only a matter of time before someone abuses market power to get big enough to be able to choose their ethics over their profitability.That you happen to agree with the ethics advertised by today's market power abusers does not mean you always will. Can you imagine if Walmart started shoving their founder's staunch conservative christian values in your face? How about all the business owners that are conservative muslims, do you want those ethics being chosen? It is far better to regulate the most important ethical beliefs of the day through the democratic system of our government and have businesses with so little market power that they don't dare inpose their personal values on the rest of us for fear of losing their customers to the myriad of competitors biting at their heels in the market.

eternalban 4y ago

> While I won’t be using it as much, I will still be on Twitter, and it will still be around It's like the "berlin wall" moment but Bryan will be holding on to his communist party membership card, just in case. https://nitter.net/Jarvis_Dupont/status/1585929998816485376#m https://nitter.net/Jarvis_Dupont/status/1585929998816485376#...