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Big signals that Musk made a lot of mistakes with twitter if Meta scrambled to ship a competitor like this. I don’t use Twitter so I won’t use this either but i

Big signals that Musk made a lot of mistakes with twitter if Meta scrambled to ship a competitor like this. I don’t use Twitter so I won’t use this either but it’ll be interesting to see if the instagram folks can take this market from twitter.

photonerd 3y ago
This has been known to be coming for quite a while, so it’s probably just opportune timing on their part being close enough to ready to ship. But hooooly crap does it underscore how much of a catastrophe Musk’s actions are.
- duncan-donuts 3y ago
  Oh I didn’t know that. At any rate those product folks at instagram have likely been salivating for the last couple months. Probably would be an extremely fun team to be on right now.
  - TchoBeer 3y ago
    Imagine being on a relatively niche meta project making a twitter clone and then suddenly twitter starts imploding.
- BasedAnon 3y ago
  Musk's actions generally speaking make a lot of financial sense, it's just that he bought a company that wasn't founded on financial sense, and now all that debt requires payment because the economy is in tatters
  - richbell 3y ago
    > Musk's actions generally speaking make a lot of financial sense, it's just that he bought a company that wasn't founded on financial sense... He bought it for ~40% more than it was valued and then scared away a lot of advertisers. That does not make financial sense, and is in large part the root of Twitter/his money problems.
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      Advertisement is not a sustainable business model
      - dvngnt_ 3y ago
        Google has done pretty well
        BasedAnon 3y ago
        Of course they did, they have a monopoly
  - bathtub365 3y ago
    Buying Twitter at the price he bought it at made no sense once the market turned. It would have made financial sense to structure the deal in a way that it was easy for him to get out of, but he didn’t. Twitter has also now been saddled with additional debt with interest that needs to be paid on a regular basis since it was a leveraged buyout. I’ve been thinking about the deal since it happened and it certainly doesn’t seem to make financial sense to me.
  - heartbreak 3y ago
    Where do you think the debt came from?!
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      Alot of it was from the acquisition yes, but Twitter was already in debt.
  - photonerd 3y ago
    His actions make zero financial sense. He bought it 30-40% overvalued, has tanked its income, destroyed its brand reputation, absolutely set fire to advertiser trust & safety. Most estimates put it at ~25% of the value he paid 7 months ago. All the debt you mention? He saddled them with that. That was t there until he came along. Another failure. About the only positive financial thing you can say he did is cut payroll costs. Unfortunately he did that at the expense of site stability & reliability. It will be studied in MBA programs as an example of what NOT to do
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      >has tanked its income Income doesn't matter if you're not profitable. >All the debt you mention? He saddled them with that. No, Twitter was already in debt. The alternative was letting it die, which mind you I don't think would have been a bad idea, but if Musk's goal is to keep it alive then the huge amounts of debt would certainly do that. >Unfortunately he did that at the expense of site stability & reliability. The site did not have the efficiency or importance to warrant the number of employees it had.
      - richbell 3y ago
        > No, Twitter was already in debt. Twitter had around 5.5 billion in debt prior to the buyout. Elon added approximately 13 billion to that. No rational person would look at his actions and claim they "[made] a lot of financial sense".
  - jitl 3y ago
    The new Twitter Blue subscription revenue is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the advertising loss and the debt he saddled the company with.
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      Perhaps, but Twitter blue is a more reliable stream of income.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        Yes, it is more reliably and inalterably inadequate to pay Twitter’s debt.
  - astrange 3y ago
    The economy is in great shape despite how many people try to cope a recession into existence. ("Inflation" is a bad thing that can only happen in a good economy.) He bought the company because he was mad they banned a hate speech account he thought was funny, unbanned them and brought all the other racists back to juice the numbers and so he could reply-guy them, and instantly lost all the advertisers because they don't want to be associated with statue avatar Nazis. That was not good business sense.
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      >The economy is in great shape despite how many people try to cope a recession into existence sure it's not like several banks have collapsed or anything... >That was not good business sense. I'm not in favor of letting nazis on platforms, but having your business decisions be beholden to advertisers is always a disaster in the making.
      - astrange 3y ago
        > sure it's not like several banks have collapsed or anything... That's too bad for the shareholders of the banks but it doesn't matter for anyone else.
    - hersko 3y ago
      Do you really consider the Babylon Bee a hate speech account?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - snowwrestler 3y ago
    I agree with you in part: Twitter needed its costs slashed even before the acquisition, and the post-acquisition debt load made it into a crisis. But on top of cutting costs, Musk has also made terrible product and communication decisions that killed significant amounts of revenue and audience.
    - BasedAnon 3y ago
      Killed audience? Most certainly, but as far as revenue I do think he's making headway. The fact is once you start demanding money for things people leave. The idea that users = money has never been true.
- adventured 3y ago
  > But hooooly crap does it underscore how much of a catastrophe Musk’s actions are I think that pretty much nails it. This is Zuckerberg's life - social media & nearby segments - and he's still in his prime (very active, attentive to threats / paranoid) as a competitor in the business sphere. If you give him an opening to cripple Twitter opportunistically, he's going to take a shot. Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat (thus he didn't have to be overly concerned with his actions promptly sinking the ship)? It would be hilariously delusional if so.
  - photonerd 3y ago
    > Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat It kind of did, just by network effects, but he’s spent the last 6+ months systematically filling it in. This last weekend might be the walls crumbling down
    - data-ottawa 3y ago
      Twitter was great because you could broadcast and get picked up by news orgs and viewed by everyone for years. And it didn’t need a CRM or IT staff to deal with, just someone with a phone. Now that that’s over it can’t meet the needs of services like my local power company pushing updates.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat (thus he didn't have to be overly concerned with his actions promptly sinking the ship)? It would be hilariously delusional if so. Of course it had a moat, wow.
  - abledon 3y ago
    > Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat Yes, first mover advantage. I don't think normal non-technically inclined people are going to move their twitter activities to "Threads".
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > I don't think normal non-technically inclined people are going to move their twitter activities to "Threads". Normal, non-technical users (including the key ones that produce a lot of content that other people come for) are often already on Instagram, and many are moving more of their presence their recently even without a Twitter-like UI in response to changes on Twitter. So, that’s something Meta can leverage to build Threads if they manage it well.
- notatoad 3y ago
  >This has been known to be coming for quite a while since before the acquisition closed? i thought i heard somewhere they started working on this january-ish.
quadcore 3y ago
Musk made a lot of mistakes with twitter Now call me crazy but I disagree. I think - or rather I feel - he's doing an excelent job somehow. He's doing what other executives are afraid to do: he's building and building requires some walls to be hammered down ; and yeah this makes some noise and smoke. He's moving fast and breaking things (if you'd excuse the easy punt). To me, what he's doing is exciting and I think twitter is gonna thrive once the big work is done.
- faefox 3y ago
  What is it that you think he's building?
  - sen 3y ago
    Debt.
- berberous 3y ago
  I take no view on whether Elon will be successful on making Twitter more profitable. But as a user -- and someone that typically supports Elon -- I have to say he's made the app subjectively worse IMO. I find the "For You" page and algorithm to boost more "junk" content than before. I used to find it interesting, now it feels like scrolling through Instagram meme pages. I'm at the point where I am thinking of uninstalling it.
  - d3nj4l 3y ago
    Sorry your For You page sucks, but that's a you problem. My For You page is excellent - I see mostly the kind of tweets I like, and when I see a tweet I don't like I tap the not interested button. I actually love the new FYP way more than the old home feed, and the option to switch to the chronological "Followed" feed is more visible than before.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > Sorry your For You page sucks, but that's a you problem. How so? You're blaming the user for a feature that the user didn't design. If the commenter complained about their own chronological Followed feed, that would be a "you problem".
rvz 3y ago
> if Meta scrambled to ship a competitor like this.. More like the 'fediverse' is scrambling [0] to block Threads before it has even launched. [0] https://fedipact.online/ https://fedipact.online/

photonerd 3y ago

This has been known to be coming for quite a while, so it’s probably just opportune timing on their part being close enough to ready to ship. But hooooly crap does it underscore how much of a catastrophe Musk’s actions are.

duncan-donuts 3y ago
Oh I didn’t know that. At any rate those product folks at instagram have likely been salivating for the last couple months. Probably would be an extremely fun team to be on right now.
- TchoBeer 3y ago
  Imagine being on a relatively niche meta project making a twitter clone and then suddenly twitter starts imploding.
BasedAnon 3y ago
Musk's actions generally speaking make a lot of financial sense, it's just that he bought a company that wasn't founded on financial sense, and now all that debt requires payment because the economy is in tatters
- richbell 3y ago
  > Musk's actions generally speaking make a lot of financial sense, it's just that he bought a company that wasn't founded on financial sense... He bought it for ~40% more than it was valued and then scared away a lot of advertisers. That does not make financial sense, and is in large part the root of Twitter/his money problems.
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    Advertisement is not a sustainable business model
    - dvngnt_ 3y ago
      Google has done pretty well
      - BasedAnon 3y ago
        Of course they did, they have a monopoly
- bathtub365 3y ago
  Buying Twitter at the price he bought it at made no sense once the market turned. It would have made financial sense to structure the deal in a way that it was easy for him to get out of, but he didn’t. Twitter has also now been saddled with additional debt with interest that needs to be paid on a regular basis since it was a leveraged buyout. I’ve been thinking about the deal since it happened and it certainly doesn’t seem to make financial sense to me.
- heartbreak 3y ago
  Where do you think the debt came from?!
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    Alot of it was from the acquisition yes, but Twitter was already in debt.
- photonerd 3y ago
  His actions make zero financial sense. He bought it 30-40% overvalued, has tanked its income, destroyed its brand reputation, absolutely set fire to advertiser trust & safety. Most estimates put it at ~25% of the value he paid 7 months ago. All the debt you mention? He saddled them with that. That was t there until he came along. Another failure. About the only positive financial thing you can say he did is cut payroll costs. Unfortunately he did that at the expense of site stability & reliability. It will be studied in MBA programs as an example of what NOT to do
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    >has tanked its income Income doesn't matter if you're not profitable. >All the debt you mention? He saddled them with that. No, Twitter was already in debt. The alternative was letting it die, which mind you I don't think would have been a bad idea, but if Musk's goal is to keep it alive then the huge amounts of debt would certainly do that. >Unfortunately he did that at the expense of site stability & reliability. The site did not have the efficiency or importance to warrant the number of employees it had.
    - richbell 3y ago
      > No, Twitter was already in debt. Twitter had around 5.5 billion in debt prior to the buyout. Elon added approximately 13 billion to that. No rational person would look at his actions and claim they "[made] a lot of financial sense".
- jitl 3y ago
  The new Twitter Blue subscription revenue is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the advertising loss and the debt he saddled the company with.
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    Perhaps, but Twitter blue is a more reliable stream of income.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      Yes, it is more reliably and inalterably inadequate to pay Twitter’s debt.
- astrange 3y ago
  The economy is in great shape despite how many people try to cope a recession into existence. ("Inflation" is a bad thing that can only happen in a good economy.) He bought the company because he was mad they banned a hate speech account he thought was funny, unbanned them and brought all the other racists back to juice the numbers and so he could reply-guy them, and instantly lost all the advertisers because they don't want to be associated with statue avatar Nazis. That was not good business sense.
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    >The economy is in great shape despite how many people try to cope a recession into existence sure it's not like several banks have collapsed or anything... >That was not good business sense. I'm not in favor of letting nazis on platforms, but having your business decisions be beholden to advertisers is always a disaster in the making.
    - astrange 3y ago
      > sure it's not like several banks have collapsed or anything... That's too bad for the shareholders of the banks but it doesn't matter for anyone else.
  - hersko 3y ago
    Do you really consider the Babylon Bee a hate speech account?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  I agree with you in part: Twitter needed its costs slashed even before the acquisition, and the post-acquisition debt load made it into a crisis. But on top of cutting costs, Musk has also made terrible product and communication decisions that killed significant amounts of revenue and audience.
  - BasedAnon 3y ago
    Killed audience? Most certainly, but as far as revenue I do think he's making headway. The fact is once you start demanding money for things people leave. The idea that users = money has never been true.
adventured 3y ago
> But hooooly crap does it underscore how much of a catastrophe Musk’s actions are I think that pretty much nails it. This is Zuckerberg's life - social media & nearby segments - and he's still in his prime (very active, attentive to threats / paranoid) as a competitor in the business sphere. If you give him an opening to cripple Twitter opportunistically, he's going to take a shot. Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat (thus he didn't have to be overly concerned with his actions promptly sinking the ship)? It would be hilariously delusional if so.
- photonerd 3y ago
  > Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat It kind of did, just by network effects, but he’s spent the last 6+ months systematically filling it in. This last weekend might be the walls crumbling down
  - data-ottawa 3y ago
    Twitter was great because you could broadcast and get picked up by news orgs and viewed by everyone for years. And it didn’t need a CRM or IT staff to deal with, just someone with a phone. Now that that’s over it can’t meet the needs of services like my local power company pushing updates.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat (thus he didn't have to be overly concerned with his actions promptly sinking the ship)? It would be hilariously delusional if so. Of course it had a moat, wow.
- abledon 3y ago
  > Did Musk think Twitter actually had a moat Yes, first mover advantage. I don't think normal non-technically inclined people are going to move their twitter activities to "Threads".
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > I don't think normal non-technically inclined people are going to move their twitter activities to "Threads". Normal, non-technical users (including the key ones that produce a lot of content that other people come for) are often already on Instagram, and many are moving more of their presence their recently even without a Twitter-like UI in response to changes on Twitter. So, that’s something Meta can leverage to build Threads if they manage it well.
notatoad 3y ago
>This has been known to be coming for quite a while since before the acquisition closed? i thought i heard somewhere they started working on this january-ish.

quadcore 3y ago

Musk made a lot of mistakes with twitter Now call me crazy but I disagree. I think - or rather I feel - he's doing an excelent job somehow. He's doing what other executives are afraid to do: he's building and building requires some walls to be hammered down ; and yeah this makes some noise and smoke. He's moving fast and breaking things (if you'd excuse the easy punt). To me, what he's doing is exciting and I think twitter is gonna thrive once the big work is done.

faefox 3y ago
What is it that you think he's building?
- sen 3y ago
  Debt.
berberous 3y ago
I take no view on whether Elon will be successful on making Twitter more profitable. But as a user -- and someone that typically supports Elon -- I have to say he's made the app subjectively worse IMO. I find the "For You" page and algorithm to boost more "junk" content than before. I used to find it interesting, now it feels like scrolling through Instagram meme pages. I'm at the point where I am thinking of uninstalling it.
- d3nj4l 3y ago
  Sorry your For You page sucks, but that's a you problem. My For You page is excellent - I see mostly the kind of tweets I like, and when I see a tweet I don't like I tap the not interested button. I actually love the new FYP way more than the old home feed, and the option to switch to the chronological "Followed" feed is more visible than before.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > Sorry your For You page sucks, but that's a you problem. How so? You're blaming the user for a feature that the user didn't design. If the commenter complained about their own chronological Followed feed, that would be a "you problem".

rvz 3y ago

> if Meta scrambled to ship a competitor like this.. More like the 'fediverse' is scrambling [0] to block Threads before it has even launched. [0] https://fedipact.online/ https://fedipact.online/