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No matter how good your offering is, you always need marketing if you are competing against an established behemoth in the space like OpenAI. Even Google has be

No matter how good your offering is, you always need marketing if you are competing against an established behemoth in the space like OpenAI. Even Google has been unable to make much of a dent in OpenAI's daily active users despite having superior distribution and (recently) comparable quality. Grok 3 is legitimately one of the best general purpose models out there. People don't know about it because ChatGPT is "good enough". And people have no reason to care unless Grok 3 is 5x better or ships a feature that goes viral like Ghibli portraits.

afavour 1y ago
$300m could buy you a hell of a lot of marketing, no? Then people could choose to use your product rather than be forced to. We’re side stepping the elephant in the room: X/xAI/Musk’s brand is toxic and forcing the product onto users is one of few paths available.
- smeeth 1y ago
  It did buy them a hell of a lot of marketing, Telegram has a billion users and those users are mostly in countries where Musk's brand isn't as toxic.
  - mrweasel 1y ago
    It's honestly a good fit. Telegram also doesn't have the best image, but people don't care, so it's highly likely that they also don't care about the image of XAI or Musk. I do struggle with the 1 billion users, but I also don't believe that X has 600 million users actual users.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    You really believe 1/8th of the world is on telegram?
  - overfeed 1y ago
    Telegram is ostensibly a competitor if you buy into Musk's pitch for X as an "everything app". Paying Telegram $300M instead of developing chat features and/or marketing proves that plans for the "everything app" are dead in the water, or perhaps were never sincere from the get go.
- MangoCoffee 1y ago
  >$300m could buy you a hell of a lot of marketing, no? a quick google search shown Telegram have 1 billion users worldwide. >X/xAI/Musk’s brand is toxic Is it?
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    It sure seems so: https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_while_ev_market_booms-news-4750.php https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_w... https://electrek.co/2025/02/03/teslas-sales-drop-double-digits-in-the-us-biggest-ev-market-while-others-are-growing/ https://electrek.co/2025/02/03/teslas-sales-drop-double-digi...
  - input_sh 1y ago
    > Is it? Yes.
    - andrewinardeer 1y ago
      I know my experience is anecdotal, however, I know at least three people at my workplace who have said in our Slack channel they will never, ever but a Tesla because of Musk's antics while typing it using a Statlink connection.
      - overfeed 1y ago
        It sounds like they'll buy an alternative product when one is available. Tesla, X, and xAI all have multiple viable alternatives - superior alternatives even. That's not yet the case for Starlink in many locations[0], but in 5-10 years, your colleague may be using an Amazon Kuiper, One World, Garmin[1], or Apple[1] connection. 0. Symmetric gigabit fiber Internet remains the gold standard, where one can get it, but unfortunately that's not many places. 1. I hope these companies are at least looking into doing these, as it's adjacent to their current products.
- mattstir 1y ago
  We'll have to see how privacy is handled (whether you can opt out of it suckling on every one of your personal conversations) but assuming some baseline decency from Telegram, I don't think anyone would be "forced" to use it. > We’re side stepping the elephant in the room: X/xAI/Musk’s brand is toxic and forcing the product onto users is one of few paths available This statement is baking in a lot of personal convictions, even if they feel self-evident. Telegram has a billion users and not everyone one of them will share those views. This setup is a lot closer to Google paying Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine than some desperate attempt to get people to play with your toys.
reverendsteveii 1y ago
I honestly don't care about the technical capabilities of the tool when I know it's being actively mismanaged. Incidentally, have you got a moment to talk about the white genocide in south africa?
- zo1 1y ago
  > "Incidentally, have you got a moment to talk about the white genocide in south africa?" Is this some sort of joke, or are you genuinely wanting to discuss what's happening here in South Africa? If it's a joke, I think it's in very poor taste at the expense of a persecuted minority. I have seen it, experienced it, and know full well how real it is, no matter how much social-media pushes it one way or the other.
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - FredPret 1y ago
      > you can relax your grip on your pearls. Not the most polite way to discuss a genocide, or at the very least an absolutely dire situation.
      - alterom 1y ago
        >Not the most polite way to discuss a genocide, or at the very least an absolutely dire situation. It's as polite way as using the word genocide to describe the experience of white people in South Africa today merits. I can only reiterate the parent's recommendation to you.
        FredPret 1y ago
        Here's Genocide Watch's take: https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages Stages currently active in SA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. Some people claim that the high murder rate among white SA'ns means they're also in stage 8/9, but actually the murder rate among black SA'ns is even higher. There's no genocide, but there's a whole lot of red flags and generally terrible things. Just because Trump believes something does not make it wrong. From elsewhere on that site: "Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch, warned that early warnings of genocide are still deep in South African society, though genocide has not begun." There are countless examples of early warnings. Here are a couple: - Former president of SA sings "bring my machine gun" song at ruling party conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFIobjP3xAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFIobjP3xAI - Same guy singing "kill the Boer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JNc7SLUE1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JNc7SLUE1g Many similar statements have been made by other politicians, among them Julius Malema, who collectively represent a large part of SA's population, over the course of many years. Don't respond to something like this with a flippant statement about clutching your pearls.
oblio 1y ago
Don't bet against Google. Their cloud is growing despite coming from 4th or 5th place, now it's on 3rd place and growing faster than AWS and if I recall correctly, faster than even Azure. And Google basically invented LLM tech.
saubeidl 1y ago
Grok3 could be leagues ahead of anything else in the game and yet a large portion of the western population would never use it due to its owners antics.
- stackedinserter 1y ago
  Don't overestimate the size of that portion.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    Don't underestimate it. https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_while_ev_market_booms-news-4750.php https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_w...
    - abletonlive 1y ago
      It’s fair to underestimate it when Tesla is still the dominant fully EV automaker globally and in all the markets that this article talks about.
      - seangrogg 1y ago
        By what metric(s)? Not being disingenuous, purely curious.
        abletonlive 1y ago
        By number of fully EV sold each quarter. Take out hybrids from the metric because Tesla does not make hybrids
        seangrogg 1y ago
        Valid. And I do think they'll continue to own the lion's share of total sales for a while. But is there any concern over their being down YOY for Q1 while other manufacturers are largely growing? Or is the expectation that it's a temporary blip and they'll continue growing in the upcoming quarters from previous YOY numbers?
Spooky23 1y ago
It’s pretty good. I think it seems better especially early on because the guardrails aren’t as stringent. ChatGPT is really wussified. I tried to edit a fence from a picture of my son hitting a baseball and it was flagged as violent content. From a business context, i wouldn’t put my customers data anywhere near grok.
theijcfj47744l 1y ago
This is mostly a HCI problem - Google's AI interface for eg. is horrible, but Perplexity is a joy to use.
Hikikomori 1y ago
Tech fascists have the best ai, great.

afavour 1y ago

$300m could buy you a hell of a lot of marketing, no? Then people could choose to use your product rather than be forced to. We’re side stepping the elephant in the room: X/xAI/Musk’s brand is toxic and forcing the product onto users is one of few paths available.

smeeth 1y ago
It did buy them a hell of a lot of marketing, Telegram has a billion users and those users are mostly in countries where Musk's brand isn't as toxic.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  It's honestly a good fit. Telegram also doesn't have the best image, but people don't care, so it's highly likely that they also don't care about the image of XAI or Musk. I do struggle with the 1 billion users, but I also don't believe that X has 600 million users actual users.
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  You really believe 1/8th of the world is on telegram?
- overfeed 1y ago
  Telegram is ostensibly a competitor if you buy into Musk's pitch for X as an "everything app". Paying Telegram $300M instead of developing chat features and/or marketing proves that plans for the "everything app" are dead in the water, or perhaps were never sincere from the get go.
MangoCoffee 1y ago
>$300m could buy you a hell of a lot of marketing, no? a quick google search shown Telegram have 1 billion users worldwide. >X/xAI/Musk’s brand is toxic Is it?
- saubeidl 1y ago
  It sure seems so: https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_while_ev_market_booms-news-4750.php https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_w... https://electrek.co/2025/02/03/teslas-sales-drop-double-digits-in-the-us-biggest-ev-market-while-others-are-growing/ https://electrek.co/2025/02/03/teslas-sales-drop-double-digi...
- input_sh 1y ago
  > Is it? Yes.
  - andrewinardeer 1y ago
    I know my experience is anecdotal, however, I know at least three people at my workplace who have said in our Slack channel they will never, ever but a Tesla because of Musk's antics while typing it using a Statlink connection.
    - overfeed 1y ago
      It sounds like they'll buy an alternative product when one is available. Tesla, X, and xAI all have multiple viable alternatives - superior alternatives even. That's not yet the case for Starlink in many locations[0], but in 5-10 years, your colleague may be using an Amazon Kuiper, One World, Garmin[1], or Apple[1] connection. 0. Symmetric gigabit fiber Internet remains the gold standard, where one can get it, but unfortunately that's not many places. 1. I hope these companies are at least looking into doing these, as it's adjacent to their current products.
mattstir 1y ago
We'll have to see how privacy is handled (whether you can opt out of it suckling on every one of your personal conversations) but assuming some baseline decency from Telegram, I don't think anyone would be "forced" to use it. > We’re side stepping the elephant in the room: X/xAI/Musk’s brand is toxic and forcing the product onto users is one of few paths available This statement is baking in a lot of personal convictions, even if they feel self-evident. Telegram has a billion users and not everyone one of them will share those views. This setup is a lot closer to Google paying Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine than some desperate attempt to get people to play with your toys.

reverendsteveii 1y ago

I honestly don't care about the technical capabilities of the tool when I know it's being actively mismanaged. Incidentally, have you got a moment to talk about the white genocide in south africa?

zo1 1y ago
> "Incidentally, have you got a moment to talk about the white genocide in south africa?" Is this some sort of joke, or are you genuinely wanting to discuss what's happening here in South Africa? If it's a joke, I think it's in very poor taste at the expense of a persecuted minority. I have seen it, experienced it, and know full well how real it is, no matter how much social-media pushes it one way or the other.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - FredPret 1y ago
    > you can relax your grip on your pearls. Not the most polite way to discuss a genocide, or at the very least an absolutely dire situation.
    - alterom 1y ago
      >Not the most polite way to discuss a genocide, or at the very least an absolutely dire situation. It's as polite way as using the word genocide to describe the experience of white people in South Africa today merits. I can only reiterate the parent's recommendation to you.
      - FredPret 1y ago
        Here's Genocide Watch's take: https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages Stages currently active in SA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. Some people claim that the high murder rate among white SA'ns means they're also in stage 8/9, but actually the murder rate among black SA'ns is even higher. There's no genocide, but there's a whole lot of red flags and generally terrible things. Just because Trump believes something does not make it wrong. From elsewhere on that site: "Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch, warned that early warnings of genocide are still deep in South African society, though genocide has not begun." There are countless examples of early warnings. Here are a couple: - Former president of SA sings "bring my machine gun" song at ruling party conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFIobjP3xAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFIobjP3xAI - Same guy singing "kill the Boer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JNc7SLUE1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JNc7SLUE1g Many similar statements have been made by other politicians, among them Julius Malema, who collectively represent a large part of SA's population, over the course of many years. Don't respond to something like this with a flippant statement about clutching your pearls.

oblio 1y ago

Don't bet against Google. Their cloud is growing despite coming from 4th or 5th place, now it's on 3rd place and growing faster than AWS and if I recall correctly, faster than even Azure. And Google basically invented LLM tech.

saubeidl 1y ago

Grok3 could be leagues ahead of anything else in the game and yet a large portion of the western population would never use it due to its owners antics.

stackedinserter 1y ago
Don't overestimate the size of that portion.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  Don't underestimate it. https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_while_ev_market_booms-news-4750.php https://www.arenaev.com/teslas_european_sales_keep_falling_w...
  - abletonlive 1y ago
    It’s fair to underestimate it when Tesla is still the dominant fully EV automaker globally and in all the markets that this article talks about.
    - seangrogg 1y ago
      By what metric(s)? Not being disingenuous, purely curious.
      - abletonlive 1y ago
        By number of fully EV sold each quarter. Take out hybrids from the metric because Tesla does not make hybrids
        seangrogg 1y ago
        Valid. And I do think they'll continue to own the lion's share of total sales for a while. But is there any concern over their being down YOY for Q1 while other manufacturers are largely growing? Or is the expectation that it's a temporary blip and they'll continue growing in the upcoming quarters from previous YOY numbers?

Spooky23 1y ago

It’s pretty good. I think it seems better especially early on because the guardrails aren’t as stringent. ChatGPT is really wussified. I tried to edit a fence from a picture of my son hitting a baseball and it was flagged as violent content. From a business context, i wouldn’t put my customers data anywhere near grok.

theijcfj47744l 1y ago

This is mostly a HCI problem - Google's AI interface for eg. is horrible, but Perplexity is a joy to use.

Hikikomori 1y ago

Tech fascists have the best ai, great.