Jack Dorsey leaves Twitter's board of directors
axios.com
axios.com
Not to diminish the other shenanigans afoot in this whole transition, but Dorsey leaving the board seems like the least suspicious of everything else flying around. Having founders around at this late stage is also disruptive to any new regime. It's like a royal family whose existence acts as a percieved limit on the absolute sovereignty of a government, since if there's a slim chance to appeal to them, people will act like they can at critical moments. Twitter is a thing, it's not a person or a community, and his exit hopefully will let people look at the business more objectively.
Well, he knows Musk. And if Musk is about to purchase everyone's shares for $54.20, it would be a horrible time. So if he sells at Twitter's current price, everyone will assume he heard from Musk the acquisition is off, and the price will plummet.
Unless, of course, he sells the shares privately to Musk. It would leave Musk below the poison pill limit (I think), and the amount probably doesn't have to be disclosed then.
>Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first announced the Bluesky initiative in 2019 on Twitter.
For me:
* Let me opt out of all recommendations. I only want to see tweets of people I follow or tags I follow. Nothing else. I'll find more people to follow via the people I follow. Do not post random popular news, people, related stuff in my feed, period.
* Let me choose the types of tweets I see. Personally I want to see zero of (@person liked, @person replied to, ...)
* Remove the 280 character limit (but possibly only show the first N characters in the feed). I don't personally believe the 280 character limit is important to twitter's success. Twitter's difference from most other places is that people are talking from their account, in public. It's one giant flat public forum. It is not FB (friends and family) and it is not Reddit (moderated sub forums). That alone is it's strength. All the 280 character thing does is amplify hyperbole as there is on room for nuance.
I'm sure Musk has his own ideas (no censorship?) but as for me, I won't personally use twitter without the changes above. I have an account, I check about once a month or less. I see lots of the stuff above and quit. It's like having a pushy salesperson following you around and constantly recommending stuff. Rather than more sales I'd just leave for another store.
or even better make that a whitelist or blacklist option. There are some people who retweet way too much but others I'm perfectly happy to see them from.
click the "Latest Tweets" icon at the top right of the feed.
Any third-party app will do that. I find it fascinating that people are using Twitter with anything but a paid third-party app.
Twitter could be described as:
1) Following influencers like on Instagram -- but no cool, sexy, beautiful pictures and very boring.
2) Infinite scrolling like TikTok -- but it's boring three word text replies instead of in your face video.
3) It has leading news stories featured at the top of the feed like Facebook -- but none of your friends are on Twitter and you can't engage them negatively or positively.
Only a certain type of person is going to spend a lot of time on Twitter. That person is a minority.
Especially ones that aren't necessarily interested in photos or short videos you look at once then forget. Or in the amount of work it takes to make said photos and videos as an entry fee to be visible on a platform.
Journalism comes to mind, and with it, politics (of any persuasion).
The writer's side of Twitter is also very active, maybe like you'd expect - writers, of course, gravitate to the written word.
Twitter does have its audiences that other platforms don't cater to very effectively.
Twitter still seems pretty popular without all that extra flashy trash...
https://nypost.com/2019/04/24/twitter-doesnt-reflect-how-mos...
> About 22 percent of Americans use Twitter. And roughly 10 percent of those users are responsible for 80 percent of tweets
And ~70 million US users is not exactly nothing.
Every notable figure, and likely (almost) every person, has done things that are bad. Gandhi was a racist, Lincoln's social media squabbles led him to a duel, Edison electrocuted an elephant for entertainment or advertising, and so on. That Musk has flaws shouldn't surprise anyone or discredit him for his accomplishments.
On top of that, you'd have to treat his Twitter account as anomalous and not indicative of his day to day work because of ...some reason?
I personally don't respect him any less if he just finds and supports smart people, but for some reason others dismiss that unless they think he is personally designing rocket engines.
If you look at it from the perspective of someone who likes Musk, then he's the lynchpin of Tesla and SpaceX which are advancing humanity, every other company's EV and self-driving features are only because he lit a fire under them; and the stuff he's doing with his money is much more exciting than other billionaires like Larry Ellison.
But from the perspective of someone who doesn't like Musk, it's engineers/ scientists/ programmers doing all the real work; 90% of Musk's promises remain undelivered; and his contribution to each company is so minor he can 'lead' five companies at once and still has so much free time he wants to buy a sixth.
And if seeing him be an asshole to that diver is what changes you from one perspective to the other?...
Ask the engineers of any failed companies what real work they’ve been doing?
> 90% of Musk's promises remain undelivered
He promised the hard things that are more often than not fail. He doesn’t care if he is wrong.
> his contribution to each company is so minor he can 'lead' five companies at once and still has so much free time he wants to buy a sixth.
That’s an uncharitable take. He is obviously doing a good job given how EVs are being seen today, and how dominant SpaceX has become. One may argue he isn’t afraid of challenge, and work six times as hard of other CEOs
Regardless of the current culture, you may reject the worldview in which a few mean Tweets are a reason to destroy/forever despise a person, regardless what that person has achieved otherwise.
In fact, the more people reject this judgmental, fire-and-brimstone attitude, the better place the social networks will be.
The current standard where gangs of people try to make other people permanent social outcasts based on one or several short quips somewhere on Twitter is psychotic, North Korea style. You do not have to accept it as normal.
Why are Elon Musk haters so irrational when they make their arguments?
Reputation can matter a great deal to a billionaire and many have gone through impressive efforts to burnish theirs.
Musk avoiding regulatory issues with agencies is a very different thing from incurring the wrath of a court. A judge can order jail time, fines, etc., to bring Musk into compliance with court orders.
Delaware is actually pretty quick with court cases, a couple of months end-to-end.
...Twitter is an necessary mistake...
I think Musk underestimates how complicated social media is.
Do founders ever feel regret when they walk away from what they became known for? If you still have drive after you leave, I imagine there is a lot of pressure to reproduce your first success.
EDIT>>Removing reference to Dorsey only having one major success.
I mean, yeah, the new interface is unusable with anything under a Xeon workstation, and it's very mobile editing focused, for a blogging platform, and it drove me and a variety of other people off Blogger entirely, but... they've not just left it alone. That would have been an improvement over what they did to it.
My extensive thoughts on their "improvements" here: https://www.sevarg.net/2020/10/10/end-of-blog-new-blogger-in...
Which is now a Jekyll based blog, hosted on my own hardware.
But no, you don't feel pressure to build it again. Because first this is a lot of work and second it is not even likely that you will succeed again at it. Especially in b2c
I also don't care about the stock price
What is the credit rating of Block, Twitter and Square? D- ? DD- ?
Twitter: Ba2
Telsa: A-AAA depending on the debt type
However, Telsa and Twitter are likely to have credit impacts if Musk acquires Twitter because of the structure of the deal. Musk is using $62 BN of Tesla stock to finance the Twitter buyout, which increases Telsa's debt leverage, and will introduce $13 BN of new debt for Twitter. Both companies could see a drop in credit ratings, at least temporarily.
But the market is fickle, and Musk is unpredictable, so...
Sources:
https://www.fitchratings.com/entity/square-inc-97197931
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/twitter-credit-faces-a-mul...
Square changed the game on merchant accounts with Point of Sale systems.
It's the only market where you can make a direct comparison between company X or Y and the most solid entity in the world which is the US Federal Govt. for you cannot buy stocks in Uncle Sam, only bonds.
> Square changed the game on merchant accounts with Point of Sale systems.
Business isn't politics, you have to show profits or at least huge FCF to claim that you've made it. Xerox was the game changer with GUI , BlackBerry/PocketPC with smartphones, Myspace with social media etc...yet only historians of business remember such details. Changing the game isn't the name of the game. Signing off incredible amounts of quality of life for the American consumer, that's what it's all about.
So what are you talking about?
GM has a debt ratio of 1.7 compared with Tesla (the high growth new comer) of 0.9.
You put ANY metric between Tesla and GM that could justify GM having a higher credit rating. It’s ridiculous.
If you think you have found an error in bond rating procedures then put your money where your mouth is. Go long Tesla bonds and short GM bonds, and make a fortune. Be sure to lever up to maximize your returns.
Easy to call someone ignorant, but how about you show it.
If you're making a SV reference, Jack Barker (Action Jack) is largely based on Jack Welch (Neutron Jack)
In that place, the BoD is basically networking central - people get put on the board if the company thinks their connections will help the company out. I suppose they also weigh in on important decisions, but bringing along their Rolodex seems like the reason they are there (and I was assuming that is not so important when you are a $40B+ globally known company)