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> Is there still any doubt about that? I think there is. Not so much because of Musk himself, but because network effects businesses are hard to kill. Exhibit
by wpietri 4y ago
> Is there still any doubt about that?
I think there is. Not so much because of Musk himself, but because network effects businesses are hard to kill. Exhibit A being Jack's years of vague, indifferent, part-time management.
I think he could continue to fuck it up for a while, find a reason to declare victory, and turn it over to a department-store mannequin to run while he goes back to his real job(s). It would slowly reconstitute itself and keep chugging along. As comparison, I note that Tumblr and Flickr are still going concerns.
That said, he's been far more diligent in breaking it than I ever expected, so he may well manage to destroy it.
- jacquesm 4y ago> but because network effects businesses are hard to kill That is true, but once it does go down it can go very fast, especially if there is a viable replacement. Digg, Slashdot, MySpace, AOL, Google+ etc. Network effects work to your advantage on the way up, but can work to your disadvantage on the way down. Tumblr and Flickr are shadows of their former selves.
- wpietri 4y agoOh, for sure. It'll be interesting, though, to see if there is a "next Twitter". I suspect that Twitter is a creature of the era in which it started, and so that there is no next Twitter in the sense of a global town square. I think it will be more like email's slow slide, with different needs causing fragmentation into different tools and spaces.
- nickthegreek 4y agoWhile also paying the bills? Sure he could do it with unlimited capital, but I don’t see that as being the case. He has debt to pay.