9 ms·

I would say Elon cutting 80% of Twitter to no real consequence is the real driver. Everyone is asking "are we Twitter 1.0?" Edit: actually increased engineerin

I would say Elon cutting 80% of Twitter to no real consequence is the real driver. Everyone is asking "are we Twitter 1.0?" Edit: actually increased engineering velocity

airstrike 3y ago
agreed that's the driver—I've heard as much from a couple people the jury is still out on the "no real consequence" piece, however managers seem to ignore the fact that Twitter is private, so who knows how bad it's really doing these days
- happymellon 3y ago
  This is key. No observable impact. Until the whole thing implodes.
  - markhalonen 3y ago
    Elon's algo is to push hard enough such that consequences are observed, then pull back a little. In twitter's case, moving an entire data center over christmas break was a too fast.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Twitter seems to be at that point where Wile-E-Coyote has already run off the cliff and is still treading thin air. Airplanes can glide a great distance even after the engine has been turned off. I'd be willing to bet Twitter is basically gliding now that all that staff that powered the engine is gone.
    - foderking 3y ago
      nice cope
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      We were hearing that the day he bought it and started layoffs. Twitter will be crashed within a few days, we heard. Clearly that never happened. Twitter is still online, making changes and executing. That's what executives are responding to here. They aren't going to draw a strong link between fewer people and less ad revenue when attacks on Twitter by advertisers are so clearly politically motivated, it's just not relevant for most companies business models. Overstaffing is.
candu 3y ago
I'm not sure I would call losing 30-60% of your US + Europe ad revenue year-over-year [1] the same as "to no real consequence". Not that I'm a fan of ad-supported social media platforms, mind you, but that sort of drop would be an existential threat to many companies. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sal...
- gadders 3y ago
  I don't think that was due to firing workers, though. That was more driven by left wing pressure groups like the ADL.
  - gorbachev 3y ago
    The actual reason for advertisers fleeing Twitter was because they kept seeing their ads next to actual Nazis posting on Twitter. The reason they were seeing that was because Twitter fired most people weeding hate speech from Twitter.
    - gadders 3y ago
      Well and the ADL calling major advertisers pre-emptively to tell them to pull their ad spend. You'd think, though, in these days of AI there would be a way for someone to post what they like but be segregated from adverts.
      - EdwardDiego 3y ago
        Ooh no, it's the ADL! Seriously, if hate speech wasn't resurgent on Xitter, do you think the ADL would have had any sway?
        gadders 3y ago
        Yes. I think they would broaden the definition of hate speech until they found some, and then ask for donations to make the problem go away.
radicalbyte 3y ago
Only Twitter is an unusable mess nowadays, it's unstable and you can't post anything there without receiving bot spam. That was very rare before.
- markhalonen 3y ago
  Works fine for me and a lot of other people. What other site gets used for official announcements? Democrats still use it
  - _djo_ 3y ago
    That's simply inertia and the lack of another platform with the same level of critical mass. There's no reason it will continue to last.
- indigodaddy 3y ago
  Also the fact that you cannot see any tweet or essentially even visit the website without a forced login prompt drives potential visits/eyes/views/users away— this is probably the stupidest thing they have done.
abeppu 3y ago
I dunno, Twitter demonstrated that a company which has failed to grow and achieve its goals can drop a lot of staff and ... do significantly worse than before but without totally dying. It hasn't shown that the resulting skeleton crew can succeed and pursue ambitious goals. Their performance since all the layoffs is not a story that people necessarily want to recreate.
- addaon 3y ago
  > Twitter demonstrated that a company which has failed to grow and achieve its goals can drop a lot of staff and ... do significantly worse than before but without totally dying Haven't we known that for decades from the performance art piece that is Hewlett-Packard?
rtkwe 3y ago
"No real consequence" is a big lie. mDAU are down so much they switched to mMAU instead and by his own tweets they're bringing in less ad revenue than before the take over.
- markhalonen 3y ago
  they don't care about mDAU anymore, that was for public markets. Elon's metric is "unregretted user minutes", however that is measured idk
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    They care, they have to to make money. Take any supposed new metric pushed by Elon with a big grain of salt especially something completely unmeasurable like "unregretted user minutes" that's supposed to be their new guiding light.
    - singleshot_ 3y ago
      Are they counting all the minutes we spend talking about this regrettable dumpster fire against the net number?
      - rtkwe 3y ago
        Given it's a completely impossible to measure metric I'm betting it's going to always be improving no matter what's happening on the platform to please the new ownership.
darth_avocado 3y ago
> No real consequences The daddy of no consequences, Elon, himself admits the company is worth way less now. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twitter-value.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twit...] Which means the company is probably worth even less than that. [https://apnews.com/article/twitter-fidelity-musk-value https://apnews.com/article/twitter-fidelity-musk-value]
- markhalonen 3y ago
  He admits he overpaid for it, not that cutting tons of people was a mistake
  - darth_avocado 3y ago
    I don’t know about you but if a publicly traded company, which was trading fairly to the market expectations (way cheaper than peers like FB, Snapchat, Pinterest etc) went private and is now worth less than a third of what it was worth, mostly because usage and advertising revenue are both down, even if you don’t admit it, it was most definitely a mistake.
    - matmatmatmat 3y ago
      Unless you're just a dyed-in-the-wool Elon Musk fan, in which case it's 5D chess.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    His goal was never to pay for it at all, but to make a lot of noise to cover cashing out of the insanely-overvalued TSLA stock. Then he got held to it and they wouldn't let him back out, even after 3 attempts to break free of it. So now he's got lemons and is making lemonade the only way he knows how.

I would say Elon cutting 80% of Twitter to no real consequence is the real driver. Everyone is asking "are we Twitter 1.0?" Edit: actually increased engineering velocity

airstrike 3y ago

agreed that's the driver—I've heard as much from a couple people the jury is still out on the "no real consequence" piece, however managers seem to ignore the fact that Twitter is private, so who knows how bad it's really doing these days

happymellon 3y ago
This is key. No observable impact. Until the whole thing implodes.
- markhalonen 3y ago
  Elon's algo is to push hard enough such that consequences are observed, then pull back a little. In twitter's case, moving an entire data center over christmas break was a too fast.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Twitter seems to be at that point where Wile-E-Coyote has already run off the cliff and is still treading thin air. Airplanes can glide a great distance even after the engine has been turned off. I'd be willing to bet Twitter is basically gliding now that all that staff that powered the engine is gone.
  - foderking 3y ago
    nice cope
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    We were hearing that the day he bought it and started layoffs. Twitter will be crashed within a few days, we heard. Clearly that never happened. Twitter is still online, making changes and executing. That's what executives are responding to here. They aren't going to draw a strong link between fewer people and less ad revenue when attacks on Twitter by advertisers are so clearly politically motivated, it's just not relevant for most companies business models. Overstaffing is.

candu 3y ago

I'm not sure I would call losing 30-60% of your US + Europe ad revenue year-over-year [1] the same as "to no real consequence". Not that I'm a fan of ad-supported social media platforms, mind you, but that sort of drop would be an existential threat to many companies. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sal...

gadders 3y ago
I don't think that was due to firing workers, though. That was more driven by left wing pressure groups like the ADL.
- gorbachev 3y ago
  The actual reason for advertisers fleeing Twitter was because they kept seeing their ads next to actual Nazis posting on Twitter. The reason they were seeing that was because Twitter fired most people weeding hate speech from Twitter.
  - gadders 3y ago
    Well and the ADL calling major advertisers pre-emptively to tell them to pull their ad spend. You'd think, though, in these days of AI there would be a way for someone to post what they like but be segregated from adverts.
    - EdwardDiego 3y ago
      Ooh no, it's the ADL! Seriously, if hate speech wasn't resurgent on Xitter, do you think the ADL would have had any sway?
      - gadders 3y ago
        Yes. I think they would broaden the definition of hate speech until they found some, and then ask for donations to make the problem go away.

radicalbyte 3y ago

Only Twitter is an unusable mess nowadays, it's unstable and you can't post anything there without receiving bot spam. That was very rare before.

markhalonen 3y ago
Works fine for me and a lot of other people. What other site gets used for official announcements? Democrats still use it
- _djo_ 3y ago
  That's simply inertia and the lack of another platform with the same level of critical mass. There's no reason it will continue to last.
indigodaddy 3y ago
Also the fact that you cannot see any tweet or essentially even visit the website without a forced login prompt drives potential visits/eyes/views/users away— this is probably the stupidest thing they have done.

abeppu 3y ago

I dunno, Twitter demonstrated that a company which has failed to grow and achieve its goals can drop a lot of staff and ... do significantly worse than before but without totally dying. It hasn't shown that the resulting skeleton crew can succeed and pursue ambitious goals. Their performance since all the layoffs is not a story that people necessarily want to recreate.

addaon 3y ago
> Twitter demonstrated that a company which has failed to grow and achieve its goals can drop a lot of staff and ... do significantly worse than before but without totally dying Haven't we known that for decades from the performance art piece that is Hewlett-Packard?

rtkwe 3y ago

"No real consequence" is a big lie. mDAU are down so much they switched to mMAU instead and by his own tweets they're bringing in less ad revenue than before the take over.

markhalonen 3y ago
they don't care about mDAU anymore, that was for public markets. Elon's metric is "unregretted user minutes", however that is measured idk
- rtkwe 3y ago
  They care, they have to to make money. Take any supposed new metric pushed by Elon with a big grain of salt especially something completely unmeasurable like "unregretted user minutes" that's supposed to be their new guiding light.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Are they counting all the minutes we spend talking about this regrettable dumpster fire against the net number?
    - rtkwe 3y ago
      Given it's a completely impossible to measure metric I'm betting it's going to always be improving no matter what's happening on the platform to please the new ownership.

darth_avocado 3y ago

> No real consequences The daddy of no consequences, Elon, himself admits the company is worth way less now. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twitter-value.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twit...] Which means the company is probably worth even less than that. [https://apnews.com/article/twitter-fidelity-musk-value https://apnews.com/article/twitter-fidelity-musk-value]

markhalonen 3y ago
He admits he overpaid for it, not that cutting tons of people was a mistake
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  I don’t know about you but if a publicly traded company, which was trading fairly to the market expectations (way cheaper than peers like FB, Snapchat, Pinterest etc) went private and is now worth less than a third of what it was worth, mostly because usage and advertising revenue are both down, even if you don’t admit it, it was most definitely a mistake.
  - matmatmatmat 3y ago
    Unless you're just a dyed-in-the-wool Elon Musk fan, in which case it's 5D chess.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  His goal was never to pay for it at all, but to make a lot of noise to cover cashing out of the insanely-overvalued TSLA stock. Then he got held to it and they wouldn't let him back out, even after 3 attempts to break free of it. So now he's got lemons and is making lemonade the only way he knows how.