Twitter Reading Limits

[Pakuni]

Ziggy needs to try that.

What's Scoop's current value? Could the underboard try a hostile takeover?

[Heisenberg]

He's not smart, he's not savvy, he's just a nepobaby who was propped up by other people's work, then failed on his biggest stage when he tried to run things. He's a dumb person's idea of a smart person, and it shows.

According to Bloomberg, his net worth today is $233 billion and he remains the richest person in the world.

His net worth is up $96 billion since the day he bought Twitter. So, even if Twitter is worth zero, he is richer today than the day he took it over last October.


Founder of Paypal
Telsa
Spacex
Solar City
The Boring Company
Neuralink (brain implant company which just got FDA approval)
Founder of OpenAI
Owner of Twitter

Quite the failure.

[MU82]

Every page load is 20±. Scroll quickly and it's more. You can easily hit 600-1000 in an hour.

Punishing your mega users is the opposite of what other successful subscription/microtransaction biz models do. You usually cultivate your whales.

Thanks for the info.

[Skatastrophy]

According to Bloomberg, his net worth today is $233 billion and he remains the richest person in the world.

His net worth is up $96 billion since the day he bought Twitter. So, even if Twitter is worth zero, he is richer today than the day he took it over last October.


Founder of Paypal
Telsa
Spacex
Solar City
The Boring Company
Neuralink (brain implant company which just got FDA approval)
Founder of OpenAI
Owner of Twitter

Quite the failure.

He was not the founder of PayPal. He was acqui-hired and became the CEO of a PayPal precursor. He was terminated within the year due to making truly terrible software engineering decisions that made the engineering team threaten to quit en masse. Much like he's doing with Twitter. He has a track record with software companies and it's not good.

Here's a good book if you're interested:

The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth https://a.co/d/b99CuHv

[JWags85]

He's not smart, he's not savvy, he's just a nepobaby who was propped up by other people's work, then failed on his biggest stage when he tried to run things. He's a dumb person's idea of a smart person, and it shows.

You're one of the people who thinks that emerald mine was actually worth hundreds of millions of dollars don't you?

The absolute stupidest continuing criticism of Musk by people who hate his political slant is that he's actually not intelligent and hasn't done anything remarkable ever.  There is a huge tract of space in the "intelligent person who has done some very smart and successful business stuff but isn't perfect and make plenty of mistakes out of hubris" realm below the "MUSK IS THE SMARTEST MAN SINCE EINSTEIN" plane that his fanboys view him at.  But no, his critics have to go with "he's actually incredibly stupid" and just living off his inherited extravagant wealth and nepotism and then back it up with claims from Errol Musk who is a known liar who is estranged from his family.

As for Twitter, I actually think its 2 fold.  I do think they are fighting the data scrapping (and Musk has long been an AI fanboy, so I would believe he's super attentive/paranoid to that space) and I also think they had cloud issues so it was just some convenient CYA.

I think the long term plan for Twitter is still TBD.  I think taking everything at "moment in time" in terms of valuation and whatnot is silly, cause its a privately held company thats undergoing substantial changes.  When a PE firm takes over a business and rips it down to the studs to rebuild/streamline/etc, nobody is watching daily like "Oh, Conglomerate Co was worth $5B and now its only worth $1B!".  Musk has made a ton of mistakes and can't keep his mouth shut so everything is highly publicized, but people have been calling "this is the end of Twitter" almost quarterly for like 5 years, even before Musk.  He could still absolutely implode, but until he throws up his hands and sells Twitter for parts or just shuts the site down, TBD IMO.

[jficke13]

One thing that Elon and co are undeniably great at (at least for some people) as this thread capably proves: The man has sure crafted a hagiography that a certain portion of the public is just *desperate* to believe.

I think that there's actually a good reason for that. People want to believe that humanity is capable of solving big problems. We look at a (probably glorified) past and see things like WW2, Manhattan Project, Smallpox eradication, Interstate Highway System, and wish we could pull off something like that. Then Elon rolls in as the Face of a series of enterprises (some of which) do Big Things. Tesla (with a lot of government subsidies) set into motion the electrification of the auto industry. SpaceX (with a lot of government subsidies) set into motion the privitation of the space-commerce/transit industry. Huge and amazing accomplishments!

Of course there's the Borin Company that is mostly just good at defrauding local governments and only has one death tunnel under Vegas that has no fire escapes, so that's not quite as good. And Twitter is demonstratively in a worse business position now than it was when he bought it, so that's less great.

But boy do we want to focus on the first couple hits and *BELIEVE* the man has unique genius that unlocks human potential for greatness. Framed that way it is a nice story at least.

[JWags85]

But boy do we want to focus on the first couple hits and *BELIEVE* the man has unique genius that unlocks human potential for greatness. Framed that way it is a nice story at least.

I'm not sure if you were speaking to me in your post, but I don't think he's a unique genius.  I dont think Steve Jobs was a unique genius either, just a really exceptionally good marketer, but he was the original patron saint of tech founder self marketing.  I think Musk's a smart guy who had vision and was ahead of the curve on a few things and was in the right circles and rooms at the right time.  None of the precludes him from being a failure or deficient in other arenas (how many successful business people/doctors/lawyers failed miserably getting into restaurants or real estate?) but that also doesn't make his early work any less impressive IMO.  I'm pretty middle of the road with Musk and think he's lost the plot markedly, but I have been pretty open against pushing back on the revisionist history that's actually just a lucky sperm club board president wi

[jficke13]

I'm not sure if you were speaking to me in your post, but I don't think he's a unique genius.  I dont think Steve Jobs was a unique genius either, just a really exceptionally good marketer, but he was the original patron saint of tech founder self marketing.  I think Musk's a smart guy who had vision and was ahead of the curve on a few things and was in the right circles and rooms at the right time.  None of the precludes him from being a failure or deficient in other arenas (how many successful business people/doctors/lawyers failed miserably getting into restaurants or real estate?) but that also doesn't make his early work any less impressive IMO.  I'm pretty middle of the road with Musk and think he's lost the plot markedly, but I have been pretty open against pushing back on the revisionist history that's actually just a lucky sperm club board president wi

eh I wasn't really addressing you specifically, moreso the greater online discourse surrounding Musk generally.

I mean there's a reason this meme exists:



FWIW I think the "Musk is obviously a moron" narrative is overblown. I just think that people who attain a level of success where nobody in their orbit will tell them "no, you're being an idiot" have a tendency to think they can be as great in some unrelated field as they are in their field of success. This type of brain worm is not unique to him at all. Musk's meltdown just happens to be on an inherently transparent platform so he's kinda giving us all frontrow seats.

[shoothoops]

You're one of the people who thinks that emerald mine was actually worth hundreds of millions of dollars don't you?

The absolute stupidest continuing criticism of Musk by people who hate his political slant is that he's actually not intelligent and hasn't done anything remarkable ever.  There is a huge tract of space in the "intelligent person who has done some very smart and successful business stuff but isn't perfect and make plenty of mistakes out of hubris" realm below the "MUSK IS THE SMARTEST MAN SINCE EINSTEIN" plane that his fanboys view him at.  But no, his critics have to go with "he's actually incredibly stupid" and just living off his inherited extravagant wealth and nepotism and then back it up with claims from Errol Musk who is a known liar who is estranged from his family.

As for Twitter, I actually think its 2 fold.  I do think they are fighting the data scrapping (and Musk has long been an AI fanboy, so I would believe he's super attentive/paranoid to that space) and I also think they had cloud issues so it was just some convenient CYA.

I think the long term plan for Twitter is still TBD.  I think taking everything at "moment in time" in terms of valuation and whatnot is silly, cause its a privately held company thats undergoing substantial changes.  When a PE firm takes over a business and rips it down to the studs to rebuild/streamline/etc, nobody is watching daily like "Oh, Conglomerate Co was worth $5B and now its only worth $1B!".  Musk has made a ton of mistakes and can't keep his mouth shut so everything is highly publicized, but people have been calling "this is the end of Twitter" almost quarterly for like 5 years, even before Musk.  He could still absolutely implode, but until he throws up his hands and sells Twitter for parts or just shuts the site down, TBD IMO.

"Political slant" is an interesting way to say racist, among other things.

[jesmu84]

Well, at least he wants to take away voting from those who don't have kids

[brewcity77]

According to Bloomberg, his net worth today is $233 billion and he remains the richest person in the world.

His net worth is up $96 billion since the day he bought Twitter. So, even if Twitter is worth zero, he is richer today than the day he took it over last October.

He was worth $340B at the end of 2021 before his whole Twitter kerfuffle started. He's tanked his net worth by more than $100B.

[brewcity77]

And I think I've found the perfect Heisy tweet:

ELON: (sticks dick into electric shredding machine, gets dick shredded)

NORMAL PERSON: oh my god, that lunatic just paid for a machine that tore his dick off

FANBOY Heisy: lol like your scrub ass could even afford such an expensive dick mutilator. cry more.

https://twitter.com/scottlynch78/status/1675885347576725504?s=46&t=y09G3XF0pbaZZc_-K-dYSw

[jficke13]

Scott Lynch is a real good one.

Fantastic author. Ex-fireman.

[tower912]

Scott Lynch is a real good one.

Fantastic author. Ex-fireman.

So clearly a genius.

[jficke13]

So clearly a genius.

Absolutely. He doesn't need me recommending his "Gentleman Bastards" series, but if you're not the kind of person who views all fantasy books as unreadable, then it's a top 10 in the 21st century series.

"The Lies of Locke Lamora" is book one. Think "Oceans 11" x "Game of Thrones" and you're not far off.

[Pakuni]

It appears TweetDdck soon will be available only to subscribers.

[JWags85]

It appears TweetDdck soon will be available only to subscribers.

Changing that second D to an I would probably be more to Musk's elevated sense of humor and liking

[pbiflyer]

[panda]

Nothing there? At this point it's hard to tell if it's the platform failing because they failed to pay their bills again, crappy business decisions, or just users deleting their content.

I think Twitter went full Pinterest and locked their content behind having an account.

I don't think Twitter management understands their business model. They aren't the NYT. Subscriptions won't work unless content creation is either owned by the biz, or if creators are being paid. Should have snagged the business model from Twitch or Patreon, that would have generated a ton of cash without ducking up their creator/consumer marketplace. Right now they've pissed off both sides, really impressively bad business.

[Pakuni]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-launch-twitter-like-app-threads-2023-07-04/

[MU82]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-launch-twitter-like-app-threads-2023-07-04/

From the article:

"Threads is going to pose a huge threat to Twitter because it's coming from the Meta and Instagram family of apps," said Drew Benvie, CEO of social media consultancy Battenhall.

"Instagram has 2 billion users compared to around 250 million of Twitter, so it's about ten times bigger already. If only one-in-ten Instagram users tries using Threads, it will overtake Twitter in the blink of an eye."

[tower912]

Zuck vs Musk.     Battle of the bastards. 

[Heisenberg]

From the article:

"Threads is going to pose a huge threat to Twitter because it's coming from the Meta and Instagram family of apps," said Drew Benvie, CEO of social media consultancy Battenhall.

"Instagram has 2 billion users compared to around 250 million of Twitter, so it's about ten times bigger already. If only one-in-ten Instagram users tries using Threads, it will overtake Twitter in the blink of an eye."

I have no opinion about Meta's threads. If it takes over, I'll move to it just like everyone moved from My Space to Facebook.

That said, this is not the first time that Meta (Facebook) has come out with a "killer" app."

From the Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-challenges-heat-up-as-meta-prepares-rival-app-this-week-cd4de69d
Instagram has been used by Meta to launch a Snapchat competitor in 2016 with the Stories feature and a TikTok rival in 2020 with the Reels feature.

Neither of these apps was successful in killing off those competitors.

And before you drone on and on about Musk, Evan Spiegel, SNAP's founder and CEO, is far more unstable than Musk. The guy has serious issues. And yet, FB/Instagram could not knock off SNAP.

So, unless Meta's threads app has something unique about it that makes it worth moving, I'm not holding my breath that this will change anything.

Or, are there enough progressives like Brew that are demanding government censorship of social media that will cause a mass move to Meta? If you believe this, did we forget that just last year, before Musk took over Twitter, the pro-censorship crowd hated, absolutely hated, Zuck? Now he is their savior!

[brewcity77]

Or, are there enough progressives like Brew that are demanding government censorship of social media that will cause a mass move to Meta? If you believe this, did we forget that just last year, before Musk took over Twitter, the pro-censorship crowd hated, absolutely hated, Zuck? Now he is their savior!

I literally have no idea what you're talking about, but if you think Musk gives a single solitary sh*t about free speech you're out of your damn mind.

[shoothoops]

I literally have no idea what you're talking about, but if you think Musk gives a single solitary sh*t about free speech you're out of your damn mind.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-matt-taibbi-substack/673698/and