Hacker News Reader

Comment by jermaustin1 | Hacker News Reader

> an Elon-run Twitter would be a lot more profitable.

I'm not so sure about that. He doesn't have a lot of experience with running ad sales. His big breaks have been PayPal (kind of), Tesla and SpaceX. None of which were social, none of which were "free".

View on HN

So you think he got 3 lucky breaks when with electronic payments, electric cars, and space rockets, and Twitter is too hard?

He got a lucky break with payments that allowed him to try his luck on the other two

He didn't have a lot of experience in cars or rockets either.

I’m not sure either (there is of course uncertainty). But in Tesla and SpaceX, he shows good management, while my (outsider) impression of Twitter’s is that it’s dropping the ball.

Also, I think Twitter was undervalued compared to its potential, and Elon wouldn’t be buying part of it if he didn’t think he could turn a good profit.

> and Elon wouldn’t be buying part of it if he didn’t think he could turn a good profit.

Unless he was buying a seat on the board so that he could help effect change that he desired.

My paypal account is free. It is way more useful than my twitter account which I don't even know my handle.

It's free to someone who only buys product. It's not free to someone receiving money.

Your paypal account charges you every time you make a transaction. It is not free.

This is false. There is no fee when making a purchase in at least the US or Canada [0]. The exception is when there is a currency conversion involved (about a 4% fee).

There are fees when receiving money as a result of selling a product or service, which is where PayPal makes (likely most) of its money.

[0] https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees

It is not false, when you pay for a product with paypal it takes a fee off the person receiving the money. The person receiving the money knows of this cost in advance so adds it onto the price in advance. Therefore the purchaser pays.

It's not always true that a vendor receiving money will increase prices to pass the PayPal fees to the consumer. You can see that many checkouts offer multiple options (e.g. both PayPal, Stripe, and/or other methods), with the item price usually the same even if each method has a different fee. The idea is that you want to make purchasing as convenient as possible, as it costs more to lose a sale, versus paying an incremental fee difference with PayPal.

If a vendor makes PayPal purchases slightly more expensive, it can cause bad will with the customer (who is less likely to return and make more purchases). Exceptions are sometimes with one-off purchases (e.g. a conference ticket or course fee).

Separately, the original comment asserted that the PayPal account charges you each transaction (which is false). The new argument is different, which asserts that a vendor may charge you more due to PayPal fees.

>The new argument is different, which asserts that a vendor may charge you more due to PayPal fees.

You misunderstand me. I didn't say you got charged extra for paypal over Stripe, for instance.

Stripe which you mention is also expensive, and also factored in to the price. I don't know of any serious eccomerce company that is not acutely aware of card fees. Every payment gateway charges high fees and it is factored in to the price the consumer pays.

Twitter is simultaneously useless and also the life-blood of western politics. The people in power care more about what Twitter thinks than what voters think.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com