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This is hilarious. For one, I don't even have a twitter so I have no "bubble", as I stated this is the default top recommendations for anonymous users, which is

This is hilarious. For one, I don't even have a twitter so I have no "bubble", as I stated this is the default top recommendations for anonymous users, which is super important for converting people onto the platform. The decrease in activity on twitter is also not a personal anecdote, the number of companies advertising and using platform has decreased substantially. And lastly, this is exactly my point, you're concerned about some woke mob cry baby crap when the average user doesn't care about either side, this is the kind of dumb shit I see all over twitter when I'm literally scrolling past a highlight for a sports reel highlight and as I said the recommended tweets are random paid low follower people using hysterics to try to get attention. The reality is people don't care what you have to say, and doubly so if you get wound up about a random website not making you feel better about shouting into the void.

shri_krishna 3y ago
Okay so let me address your points starting from your last statement: > The reality is people don't care what you have to say, and doubly so if you get wound up about a random website not making you feel better about shouting into the void. So why the censorship/bans then? Censorship does nothing but aggravate the situation even more. Isn't it better to just let people "shout into the void" than stifle their expression and cause harm in real world? > when the average user doesn't care about either side, this is the kind of dumb shit I see all over twitter when I'm literally scrolling past a highlight for a sports reel highlight and as I said the recommended tweets are random paid low follower people using hysterics to try to get attention. You say you don't care about it, and yet you are commenting on it. So you do actually care about what is happening on Twitter. If you consider yourself an average user you wouldn't be concerned about Twitter rising in popularity or drowning in loss. You would see your sports reel highlight and close it while being unconcerned about everything else. > The decrease in activity on twitter is also not a personal anecdote, the number of companies advertising and using platform has decreased substantially. What you are saying here is again talking points of MSM. Which is another bubble of its own. Neither you nor I have any access to actual data on how many companies are advertising and if the number has gone up or gone down apart from the few knee jerk reactions in the beginning of the takeover. The only real source of information for this would be Musk himself. And he says things are back to normal so I'll take him at his word [1]. Everything else is just conjectures and speculations as Twitter is no longer a public company. > This is hilarious. For one, I don't even have a twitter so I have no "bubble" I assumed you are a user because you seemed to talk about Twitter from the point of view of an actual user. > I stated this is the default top recommendations for anonymous users, which is super important for converting people onto the platform. Twitter is too big at this point to worry about "converting people onto the platform". It is not like people are discovering Twitter for the first time in 2023. That number (of new users) is going to be very less - possibly those kids who are coming of age and who Twitter is not a target audience for anyways. So Twitter has probably already saturated the market it can tap into and all those who are still joining are just based on whatever is the regular trajectory of Twitter growth. You can't expect any sort of exponential growth in Twitter usage after it has already been in business for over a decade now. It is not an early stage startup where you talk about conversions for anonymous users. Now any conversion metrics that we should focus on would be advertising revenues (not the number of advertisers as that is meaningless), API revenues (which was recently announced with a huge price bump), number of people subscribing to Twitter Blue, number of people subscribing to Creators, MSM/News media subscriptions, paid tweets and lets not forget deals with Governments. This is where the real numbers are going to come from. And unless Twitter releases these numbers we will never know (as Twitter is now a private company). [1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitter-is-roughly-breaking-even-2023-04-12/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitter-is... "April 12 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday the social media company is "roughly breaking even," as most of its advertisers have returned and its aggressive cost-cutting efforts have started bearing fruit after massive layoffs."
- bfeynman 3y ago
  It's private and sure the owner is rich, but it's still a burn and nowhere near recuperating the cost. A bunch of advertisers left or paused spending as noted. A little lesson on business, Musk bought it for 44 billion, at time it was not quite a profitable company but had 4.4 billion in revenue, if he slashes the operating budget by a huge margin and laying off everyone, then whoopee it's profitable, but it's nowhere near the amount of revenue/profit it needs to pay back the debt taken on to finance the purchase. private market analysts report on ad spending all project twitter revenues to drop substantially (40%) based on ad spend data.
  - shri_krishna 3y ago
    Right now Twitter may not be recuperating the sale I agree, but as long as it is able to pay the interest on debt plus whatever is the equated instalments it should be good (for the time being at least). But one thing we haven't accounted for is Musk using Twitter's dataset for training LLMs in his new AI venture. Now that is a gold mine on its own. There is significant raw potential that is still untapped. Eventually everyone will move out of the ad business as ad blockers become more prolific and it no longer is worth the cost to advertise. So there will be alternative ways of earning. Can never rule that out.

shri_krishna 3y ago

Okay so let me address your points starting from your last statement: > The reality is people don't care what you have to say, and doubly so if you get wound up about a random website not making you feel better about shouting into the void. So why the censorship/bans then? Censorship does nothing but aggravate the situation even more. Isn't it better to just let people "shout into the void" than stifle their expression and cause harm in real world? > when the average user doesn't care about either side, this is the kind of dumb shit I see all over twitter when I'm literally scrolling past a highlight for a sports reel highlight and as I said the recommended tweets are random paid low follower people using hysterics to try to get attention. You say you don't care about it, and yet you are commenting on it. So you do actually care about what is happening on Twitter. If you consider yourself an average user you wouldn't be concerned about Twitter rising in popularity or drowning in loss. You would see your sports reel highlight and close it while being unconcerned about everything else. > The decrease in activity on twitter is also not a personal anecdote, the number of companies advertising and using platform has decreased substantially. What you are saying here is again talking points of MSM. Which is another bubble of its own. Neither you nor I have any access to actual data on how many companies are advertising and if the number has gone up or gone down apart from the few knee jerk reactions in the beginning of the takeover. The only real source of information for this would be Musk himself. And he says things are back to normal so I'll take him at his word [1]. Everything else is just conjectures and speculations as Twitter is no longer a public company. > This is hilarious. For one, I don't even have a twitter so I have no "bubble" I assumed you are a user because you seemed to talk about Twitter from the point of view of an actual user. > I stated this is the default top recommendations for anonymous users, which is super important for converting people onto the platform. Twitter is too big at this point to worry about "converting people onto the platform". It is not like people are discovering Twitter for the first time in 2023. That number (of new users) is going to be very less - possibly those kids who are coming of age and who Twitter is not a target audience for anyways. So Twitter has probably already saturated the market it can tap into and all those who are still joining are just based on whatever is the regular trajectory of Twitter growth. You can't expect any sort of exponential growth in Twitter usage after it has already been in business for over a decade now. It is not an early stage startup where you talk about conversions for anonymous users. Now any conversion metrics that we should focus on would be advertising revenues (not the number of advertisers as that is meaningless), API revenues (which was recently announced with a huge price bump), number of people subscribing to Twitter Blue, number of people subscribing to Creators, MSM/News media subscriptions, paid tweets and lets not forget deals with Governments. This is where the real numbers are going to come from. And unless Twitter releases these numbers we will never know (as Twitter is now a private company). [1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitter-is-roughly-breaking-even-2023-04-12/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitter-is... "April 12 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday the social media company is "roughly breaking even," as most of its advertisers have returned and its aggressive cost-cutting efforts have started bearing fruit after massive layoffs."

bfeynman 3y ago
It's private and sure the owner is rich, but it's still a burn and nowhere near recuperating the cost. A bunch of advertisers left or paused spending as noted. A little lesson on business, Musk bought it for 44 billion, at time it was not quite a profitable company but had 4.4 billion in revenue, if he slashes the operating budget by a huge margin and laying off everyone, then whoopee it's profitable, but it's nowhere near the amount of revenue/profit it needs to pay back the debt taken on to finance the purchase. private market analysts report on ad spending all project twitter revenues to drop substantially (40%) based on ad spend data.
- shri_krishna 3y ago
  Right now Twitter may not be recuperating the sale I agree, but as long as it is able to pay the interest on debt plus whatever is the equated instalments it should be good (for the time being at least). But one thing we haven't accounted for is Musk using Twitter's dataset for training LLMs in his new AI venture. Now that is a gold mine on its own. There is significant raw potential that is still untapped. Eventually everyone will move out of the ad business as ad blockers become more prolific and it no longer is worth the cost to advertise. So there will be alternative ways of earning. Can never rule that out.