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Ehhh, at this point people have been predicting the downfall of X/Twitter for so long such predictions feel a bit meaningless. Twitter was always terrible and

Ehhh, at this point people have been predicting the downfall of X/Twitter for so long such predictions feel a bit meaningless. Twitter was always terrible and I was hopeful Elon’s mismanagement would finally destroy it, but I think its clear that its never going anywhere.

threeseed 2y ago
Fidelity who invested in X have said it's worth 20% since Musk took over. So it definitely is dying. It will just take another year or two.
- minimaxir 2y ago
  With Trump winning the election, X will either be merged into Truth Social or nationalized.
  - asdf123wtf 2y ago
    Surprised to see few grappling with this reality. Twitter is like state affiliated social media now. What real barriers can remain between anyone's twitter data and a hostile state regime that's promised to abuse it's power to target it's opposition? It's actually horrifying. And to the extent that Elon believes Twitter was useful in attaining his current position, it doesn't really matter if it's profitable on the balance sheets or not - it's a loss leader.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Musk overpaid for Twitter. That doesn't mean it's dying any faster than incumbent social media platforms do in general. Someday Twitter will be AOL, but so will TikTok and Facebook and all the rest of them, because nothing lasts forever. People who think it's going to die immediately are just hoping that it will, but that's generally not how it works. They die when something else replaces them, and even once the thing arrives the replacement takes quite a long time.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Fidelity has downgraded X by 80% in 2.5 years. And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years. There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms. It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > Fidelity has downgraded X by 80% in 2.5 years. Hence overpaid. They've also lost advertisers, which is obviously bad for Fidelity but not all that relevant to the people using it. And it's not clear to what extent that has any staying power because companies get a one-time story written about them when they do the initial announcement and soon they're back to wanting to run ads everywhere they can because running ads that reach a different user base gets them otherwise-unavailable sales. > And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years. Threads is Facebook. It has users because Facebook is pushing it with both financial resources and the network effect of an incumbent social network, and even then it has fewer users than Facebook itself and its users are disproportionately converts from Facebook/Instagram rather than Twitter because that's where it's being pushed. Bluesky has like 7M users. It's the sort of thing that could replace Twitter, in ten or twenty years. > There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms. It has hundreds of millions of active users. > It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline. Musk changed some things and a small percentage of people left, many of them performatively because they later came back. Network effects are strong.
dawnerd 2y ago
it was never going to die overnight though. It's had a steady decline since the takeover.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Musk is claiming that it recently reached record usage highs, as measured by "user seconds". It's a bit unclear whether he is counting X as a different platform to Twitter though, and "user seconds" is pushed upwards by video content that takes longer to consume. But usage hasn't obviously declined since the takeover either. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1854777813464662307 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1854777813464662307
  - johneth 2y ago
    I always assume the worst possible interpretation of any numbers falling out of Elon's mouth.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    Hint: when people start using a weird metric that no-one has ever hard of before, they are generally doing so because real metrics are, ah, less favourable. For the ultimate example, see WeWork’s old ‘community adjusted EBITDA’, which was pretty much just revenue.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      I don't think it's that weird assuming it's defined in the obvious way. Such a metric is obviously harder to game than MAU or similar as it's less affected by occasional users who don't really use the site but click through links from time to time. It also seems more aligned with what advertisers care about (how many seconds are spent looking at ads).
TMWNN 2y ago
[flagged]

threeseed 2y ago

Fidelity who invested in X have said it's worth 20% since Musk took over. So it definitely is dying. It will just take another year or two.

minimaxir 2y ago
With Trump winning the election, X will either be merged into Truth Social or nationalized.
- asdf123wtf 2y ago
  Surprised to see few grappling with this reality. Twitter is like state affiliated social media now. What real barriers can remain between anyone's twitter data and a hostile state regime that's promised to abuse it's power to target it's opposition? It's actually horrifying. And to the extent that Elon believes Twitter was useful in attaining his current position, it doesn't really matter if it's profitable on the balance sheets or not - it's a loss leader.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Musk overpaid for Twitter. That doesn't mean it's dying any faster than incumbent social media platforms do in general. Someday Twitter will be AOL, but so will TikTok and Facebook and all the rest of them, because nothing lasts forever. People who think it's going to die immediately are just hoping that it will, but that's generally not how it works. They die when something else replaces them, and even once the thing arrives the replacement takes quite a long time.
- threeseed 2y ago
  Fidelity has downgraded X by 80% in 2.5 years. And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years. There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms. It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > Fidelity has downgraded X by 80% in 2.5 years. Hence overpaid. They've also lost advertisers, which is obviously bad for Fidelity but not all that relevant to the people using it. And it's not clear to what extent that has any staying power because companies get a one-time story written about them when they do the initial announcement and soon they're back to wanting to run ads everywhere they can because running ads that reach a different user base gets them otherwise-unavailable sales. > And X has competitors in Bluesky and Threads both of which have seen record user numbers and growth. For example, Threads has grown to 275m MAU in 1.5 years. Threads is Facebook. It has users because Facebook is pushing it with both financial resources and the network effect of an incumbent social network, and even then it has fewer users than Facebook itself and its users are disproportionately converts from Facebook/Instagram rather than Twitter because that's where it's being pushed. Bluesky has like 7M users. It's the sort of thing that could replace Twitter, in ten or twenty years. > There is no reality in which X should be remotely compared to any of the other major social media platforms. It has hundreds of millions of active users. > It is failing at an unprecedented rate and based on user growth in Bluesky/Threads is continuing to rapidly decline. Musk changed some things and a small percentage of people left, many of them performatively because they later came back. Network effects are strong.

dawnerd 2y ago

it was never going to die overnight though. It's had a steady decline since the takeover.

mike_hearn 2y ago
Musk is claiming that it recently reached record usage highs, as measured by "user seconds". It's a bit unclear whether he is counting X as a different platform to Twitter though, and "user seconds" is pushed upwards by video content that takes longer to consume. But usage hasn't obviously declined since the takeover either. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1854777813464662307 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1854777813464662307
- johneth 2y ago
  I always assume the worst possible interpretation of any numbers falling out of Elon's mouth.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Hint: when people start using a weird metric that no-one has ever hard of before, they are generally doing so because real metrics are, ah, less favourable. For the ultimate example, see WeWork’s old ‘community adjusted EBITDA’, which was pretty much just revenue.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    I don't think it's that weird assuming it's defined in the obvious way. Such a metric is obviously harder to game than MAU or similar as it's less affected by occasional users who don't really use the site but click through links from time to time. It also seems more aligned with what advertisers care about (how many seconds are spent looking at ads).

TMWNN 2y ago

[flagged]