Musk on path to turn Twitter into the next MySpace or Yahoo, co-founder suggests
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I have a hard time feeling sorry for a billionaire that’s “sad” about another billionaire.
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A harmless pie
Seniorius Lurkius
One day, we might have the technology to make and play the smallest violin. For now, this will have to suffice: 
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Into the next MySpace!?
Hurray! He's succeeding beyond all expectations! Go Musk!
Hurray! He's succeeding beyond all expectations! Go Musk!
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Throw a tardigrade on that sucker and we've got a win.One day, we might have the technology to make and play the smallest violin. For now, this will have to suffice:
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These guys all presumably gained financially from Twitter's sale and probably had the clout to prevent it, so hearing about their regrets right now seems pretty revisionist.
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I don't think that's an apt comparison. Tom never stiffed his vendors while holding immigrant workers hostage at work with their visa statuses, all after drastically overpaying (with other people's money) for a company that he forewent due diligence on.
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The only takeaway here is that a bunch of Twitter founders and subsequent leaders never made good on their premise for what Twitter could and/or should be (that list includes Williams and Dorsey) and are now shitting on someone else continuing their fine tradition of allowing Twitter to implode due to egregious mismanagement and overall ineptitude.
It's fine, Musk is just finishing the job towards Twitter's eventual irrelevance. That's cause for celebration.
It's fine, Musk is just finishing the job towards Twitter's eventual irrelevance. That's cause for celebration.
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Hahahah! Fidelity lowered their valuation to $6.5B, or about 15% of what Himself paid for it.
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He makes an interesting point about content from friends vs content from those with skill.
We need both. We need a safe space for friends, we need a safe space for discovery. We also need a safe space for free speech
The problem is when a platform tries to tell you what you want to see.
Facebook is a great example. It began as mostly private where you could only get in if you were in a limited group. It grew and gained privacy controls. But at its heart it was about your existing communities. Then it tried to go algorithmic. My use of Facebook plummeted when I stopped being able to see everything from friends. My commenting plummeted, their posting plummeted in response. It's only good for shared purpose groups today.
Twitter was more open, it was about being on giant community. It failed when under Musk it wanted to loosen user controls. The algorithm never worked well no matter what they tried. I always wanted chronological. The number of news posts that I saw 8 hours later was frustrating. Twitter worked great for real time and it could have been a great platform for that. Can you imagine if they sold access to every city in the country, to news groups, to organizations and instead of messing with my main feed if I had a section where I got all my important messages? I could subscribe to my city's content and their API enabled it being an emergency feed with geolocating, disappearing posts and the like.
YouTube is about watching skilled content. I don't care if my friends are there.
LinkedIn grew as a vague network builder. Its failure was in not finding a way to sell access to people. The content is full of cliches but what I would love is a way to see that I know someone somewhere and be able to pay money and my knowing them opens doors into a business. The other direction, that when I review a peer that others validate my knowledge to review this person and it thus becomes a form of reference that businesses can rely on. Could have upended hiring with verifiable experience but didn't.
The networks that figure out that people want full content privacy do well, the networks that figure out sometimes people want one-way communication do well. The ones that try to blend the two don't do either well.
We need both. We need a safe space for friends, we need a safe space for discovery. We also need a safe space for free speech
The problem is when a platform tries to tell you what you want to see.
Facebook is a great example. It began as mostly private where you could only get in if you were in a limited group. It grew and gained privacy controls. But at its heart it was about your existing communities. Then it tried to go algorithmic. My use of Facebook plummeted when I stopped being able to see everything from friends. My commenting plummeted, their posting plummeted in response. It's only good for shared purpose groups today.
Twitter was more open, it was about being on giant community. It failed when under Musk it wanted to loosen user controls. The algorithm never worked well no matter what they tried. I always wanted chronological. The number of news posts that I saw 8 hours later was frustrating. Twitter worked great for real time and it could have been a great platform for that. Can you imagine if they sold access to every city in the country, to news groups, to organizations and instead of messing with my main feed if I had a section where I got all my important messages? I could subscribe to my city's content and their API enabled it being an emergency feed with geolocating, disappearing posts and the like.
YouTube is about watching skilled content. I don't care if my friends are there.
LinkedIn grew as a vague network builder. Its failure was in not finding a way to sell access to people. The content is full of cliches but what I would love is a way to see that I know someone somewhere and be able to pay money and my knowing them opens doors into a business. The other direction, that when I review a peer that others validate my knowledge to review this person and it thus becomes a form of reference that businesses can rely on. Could have upended hiring with verifiable experience but didn't.
The networks that figure out that people want full content privacy do well, the networks that figure out sometimes people want one-way communication do well. The ones that try to blend the two don't do either well.
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A harmless pie
Seniorius Lurkius
Most people who have used Twitter will probably continue to use it, sure, but I don't think it makes sense to assume that they "could care less". Most of my friends who've stuck around have done so for content that is only available there, but they care quite a lot that their feeds are filling with ever more extreme right wing hate content. Most people actually don't use Twitter at all. I count myself among them.
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The Internet is five giant websites, each full of screenshots of the other four. As Twitter falls out of favor, another awful something will take its place - my guess, some unholy amalgamation of AI chat bots that is even more efficient at screenshotting the other top 4 websites.
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Your first mistake was saying "I think" when it's pretty obvious you didn't.
The second mistake was thinking it was a "small class of society [that] absolutely hates Musk". The latest polls put him at a 47% favorablility rating, but that compares him to Trump and Biden, neither of whom are moronic billionaires destroying Twitter.
Those mistakes were compounded when you forgot that Twitter can't continue if it lacks the income to continue, which is what's currently happening.
You DO know that Musk is an infantile narcissist who has no shits to give for you or your opinion, right? There are no brownie points for sucking up to him to be had, or for distorting the truth of the matter.
Reality always bites people in the end.
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He may have to pick up the pace because Reddit, Discord and Twitch are all racing to get there first.
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How about both these billionaires get incarcerated for a couple decades and have their billions confiscated to you know, maybe improve peoples lives instead of devastating them for once.
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He's kind of tweaked the For You to serve right wing culture politics and the people who pay for blue and get promoted tend to be the purveyors of some pretty idiotic stuff that you see at the top of the replies to everything now.
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For Musk, I think, it is a vanity project. So long as plenty of people jack off his ego, he's good.
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You are confusing the product with the customers.
The actual customers are the advertisers. If in the process of producing the product (eyeballs on ads) Twitter delivers a dangerous product (I. E. right wing Naz tweets next to a customer’s ad) then the customers will look elsewhere.
If Twitter continues to lose its customer base, eventually it will cease to exist in any meaningful way.
The fact that most people “could care less” (while doubtful in itself) is mostly irrelevant.
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these major services like Twitter (and MySpace) feel very solid and inevitable and long-lived at their peak, but they are all inevitably subsumed by something else; our modern societal institutions are highly ephemeral
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This would probably be correct if Musk owning it was the only objectionable thing about Musk Twitter, but he's turned it into 8chan. On any halfway visible tweet, all the top replies are just toxic shit from the worst users who were dumb enough to pay Musk $8 a month to get their replies amplified to the top. Certain communities may stay around because they're not sure where else to go*, but most people aren't going to hang around the 8chan shit.
*To give an example from one community that I'm familiar with, YIMBY Twitter, has thus far remained insulated from the 8chan shit. My "for you" feed is even free of the 8chan shit and is basically just stuff from people I follow that I didn't see when they first tweeted it out. So it's still tolerable to use, and I'm hanging around because it's an information feed that I really can't get anywhere else, but I'd also like to get off Twitter and am only hanging around insofar as the community hasn't settled on one new location yet. There was a fizzled attempt at moving to Mastadon; based on what I'm seeing so far I think BlueSky will likely be where we decamp to if they ever open it up enough and don't drive people off by fucking up their moderation.
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“If a hundred million people in the world share the most interesting idea or thought, and the computers could algorithmically give you the most interesting slice of that, that's a hell of a media service”
Did Twitter’s cofounder just come up with the idea of Twitter, but, like, again?
Did Twitter’s cofounder just come up with the idea of Twitter, but, like, again?
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So they’re saying Musk needs to find a Fox or Verizon - I mean Oath - to buy off his mistakes and double down on torpedoing itself?
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It's not just a vanity project to him, Twitter is vital to maintaining his ego. He'd probably give up his SpaceX & Tesla shares before he'd give up his Twitter account.
The problem, besides Musk being an idiot, is that he thinks that every Twitter user feels the same way about it. I'm sure he's shocked that people are leaving and/or tweeting less. And now he doesn't know what to do, because all his plans hinged on Twitter users finding the site so vital that they'd happily pay for a blue checkmark, and later do banking, etc.
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The founders created a successful world-wide social network. It played a useful social role. Profits were small but appeared sustainable. Founders were satisfied with the situation, and had no interest in selling.
Musk forced the sale by offering a ridiculous price. Any sensible investor would accept the windfall, wish the new buyer well, and try not to undermine Twitter's new future with negative comments as long as possible. They can't be faulted for changing that position after seeing how horribly Musk has managed it, with no coherent plan for the future.
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I misread that as “incinerated” at first. I was disappointed when I noticed my mistake.
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He sure uses a lot of words without actually saying anything, doesn’t he. Pretty on brand for every Twitter/business exec.
All things made by humans are fragile, but probably the most fragile things are pieces of software. This guy is an idiot.
All things made by humans are fragile, but probably the most fragile things are pieces of software. This guy is an idiot.
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Most people? The vast majority of people are not active on Twitter, even if you use Twitter's MDAU numbers that Musk claimed were full of bots. As noted in many threads, Twitter is way down on the list of popular social media by number of users. Inflating the importance and influence of the social media that you prefer is quite common, just ask any teenager.
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These are the same guys who invent the bus and the train every 6 months.
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