Twitter, when the wall came down
dtrace.org
dtrace.org
Is it clear though? There is a lot more to running Twitter than just keeping the servers online. If the site turns into a cesspool and becomes unpleasant to be on, users will flee in droves.
That's already the case.
I realise that your use of decimate is likely an autocorrect typo, but as it stands, it's actually a rather witty description of what occurs on social media right now. The top 5% decimates what the 1% disseminates.
After the Abraham Accords, seems like less a joke than a real possibility.
Let's see someone tackle the actual hard problems and not just do PR stunts with a glowing orb.
This doesn't necessarily matter. From the blog post:
> I keep wondering about “what is going to replace Twitter”, but I am increasingly of the belief that this is the wrong question, that no single thing is going to replace Twitter. That is, Twitter as an idea — a single social platform catering to all demographics and uses — will become like the evening nightly news or the morning newspaper: a relic from a bygone era.
Twitter is a way to spend time. People can leave Twitter and spend their time in other ways, without joining a service like Twitter. The world existed before Twitter existed, and the world will continue to exist after Twitter doesn't.
$1.3 Billion debt service (assuming 10% CCC Bonds locked into April 2022 on $13 Billion in debt)
Assuming 3500 staff were let go, do you really think each staff member was costing the company $370,000 / year ? I don't think so. I'd estimate the costs-per-head to be under $200,000 for the typical staff member (sure, maybe some set of senior programmers are paid $250,000 with + $100,000 in benefits, but there's not _THAT_ many senior level staff. And the seniors are exactly the people you don't want to be firing)
Even then, that's just the debt issue. Rumor is that Twitter lost $700-million/year or so in ad revenue at its latest advertising conference.
My current estimate to Twitter's yearly losses is _STILL_ on the order of $1100+ Million or so, even with all the staff reductions. (Originally $2+ Billion or so losses/year, but maybe 900-million/year saved from this firing spree)
And having lost its CRO, who walked out on Thursday, Musk tried to repair the damage himself on a conference call with major advertisers, who started adjusting their spending down while on the call. Twitter's ad revenue for 2023 will be a smoking crater.
Clear based on what evidence?
> So, Twitter will keep running smoothly on infrastructure side.
Time can only prove this.
I have no doubt that Musk is doing damage, but the hypothesis is: change can happen really fast, therefore Twitter will immediately fail, which isn't a self evident truth.
From the article:
> I keep wondering about “what is going to replace Twitter”, but I am increasingly of the belief that this is the wrong question, that no single thing is going to replace Twitter. That is, Twitter as an idea — a single social platform catering to all demographics and uses — will become like the evening nightly news or the morning newspaper: a relic from a bygone era.
Unfortunately, in the meantime some people believe that Mastodon may be filling that void. I don't think it can, but as a long time Fediverse user, I'm worried that people will think that for long enough to change it into something it couldn't be.
The hypothesis wasn’t that Twitter will immediately fail. It was that it is currently on that path. And that changes happen gradually, but can be profound. (Or as the trope about bankruptcy goes: it happens gradually and then all at once).
It might not ever “fail” as a company, but it’s on that path. Whether that is less relevance or a bankrupt company, it’s too early to say. All we do know is that it is changing.
Is it though? My own experience is that Twitter is exactly the same as it was two weeks ago. The only difference I'm seeing is that a lot of people on Twitter are currently preoccupied with the topic of Twitter.
As far as I can tell it's not really much different than when a lot of people on Twitter have been preoccupied with some other controversy. And in every case, the same discussions of general news and domestic politics go on entirely unaffected.
I can at least say that it is for me. Not because of changes on Twitter but because a lot of the people I am on Twitter for have all the sudden created Mastodon profiles and started posting content there too.
Like GP said, what it has become is still for us to find out but the wheel has been set in motion: staff is being laid off, product changes are being introduced, whole departments are left not staffed and it will take weeks to months for all of this to unravel.
It is a different beast, internally, than it was 2 weeks ago. It will keep changing and being molded but that Twitter no longer exists, it's on the path to become something else.
Its a serious problem for sure. Its obviously a far more stressful situation for all involved. Perhaps the typical user isn't affected yet, but we're all forward looking. Anyone who can add up revenue / costs / profits can see that Twitter suddenly became in trouble this past week.
> I am increasingly of the belief that this is the wrong question, that no single thing is going to replace Twitter.
Communities coalesce, and disperse. They rarely move as a flock.
Tumblr users did move to Twitter, but they arrived with millions of other people.
I follow a handful of people directly, and my experience hasn't changed.
So yes I agree I am not entirely sure why everyone seems to be jumping to conclusion. Just like everyone ( or People on the internet ) thought consumers were abandoning Facebook in 2015, 2016 or 2019.
That being said the way Musk is going about these changes is damaging to Twitter in the short term. Will be interesting to see if Twitter survives when the dust settles.
This seems to be a recurring opinion of Twitter users, but as someone who doesn't use it I thought it was just a way to prove that some slightly public figure is who they say they are and not some imposter? It seems weird to be upset that "Elon Musk " is Elon Musk and not some crypto scammer (maybe a bad example), so I guess I'm missing something.
Verification had a "notoriety" aspect - I couldn't get verified because I'm a nobody; dang might be able to, Paul Graham for sure.
But it's also not enough. You can change your name, photo, bio, to be like someone else, even if you have the checkmark. Users have to also read the handle (unique within the app), but the page styling gives that significantly less emphasis.
Jeph Jacques, author of Questionable Content webcomic and verified Twitter user, has been having fun this week by making a parody of Musks's account. https://twitter.com/jephjacques (currently partially restricted, but you can click through)
"Name + Checkmark" doesn't make a good certificate of authenticity.
The only official "meaning" of the badge was that the user matched the identity of the profile, even though more was read into it both by users and employees. The notion that it will now be possible to "pay to impersonate" is absurd, but I have seen it being spread widely on social media and on television!
That's what they said, but what happened in actual practice is that you had to have a certain level of fame or notoriety to get a blue check. Everyone knows this, it isn't just "reading into it"
It is indeed quite obviously absurd, which is why it seems strange that so many people are assuming that this is exactly what is going to occur. It doesn't take much thinking to imagine ways they could allow anyone to get verified while not allowing impersonation. For example—and this is just the first idea that comes to mind—they could require people to consent to their username being locked in return for that checkmark.
People said the same about Tesla and Space-X too. They said the same about bezos and amazon.
* he reacted to the revenue drop by threatening those that are reducing their spend! (Does it need to be said that menacing customers who choose to buy less from you doesn’t really work in a free economy?)*
Or maybe he is exaggerating the problem for marketing purposes. Twitter is private so it no longer has to report earning. If this was true, he would have no reason to announce it. It is part of his marketing angle.
All I can see - laying off tons of people, implementing sweeping changes, cutting non-essential programs, cutting cloud costs, making big financial bets is pretty much the same way he has operated SpaceX and Tesla the past 20 years. All the while people saying landing rockets is a dumb idea, global satellite internet will never work especially with lasers, launching astronauts is harder than you think, and electric cars are impractical and lead to Tesla's bankruptcy.
It's been only a few days, can we not give the guy some time to at least try some things. All these, 'the sky is falling at Twitter' posts are not going to age well. It will probably end up being a good case study in how the media steers the narrative and group think.
Wow, that's not my experience of reading the tech media.
Twitter gets disproportionate attention because of the relationship you mentioned, but also because what's happening to it is pretty unprecedented. It stands to reason that it'll be the main topic in tech journalism for the next few weeks, particularly as Musk continues his attention seeking behavior (and journalists continue to feed on it).
I mean, a month ago Musk wasn't even go to buy Twitter. You'd think we'd want to wait at least a few weeks (if not much longer) before deciding that what Musk is attempting to do during the first few days is definitely going to be the way Twitter will be handled going forward.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221104220914/https://www.washi...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/20/musk-tw...
Twitter as a public company was a money pit. Now is Elon's money pit.
Musk's purchase, as you may know, increased Twitter's interest burden, so now Twitter is losing $4mil/day.
In the absence of Musk holding the company hostage from April to November, yes, of course Twitter would have to make some cuts like so many others who've had a drop in revenue.
But there's no reason to believe they would have cut the estimated 50-55% that Elon has.
edit: And now there's impact of this decision: of those who didn't get cut, how many will decide this isn't a healthy environment to work in?
More fundamentally, there's something deeply misguided about anyone complaining about layoffs at any corporation which haemorrhages money the way Twitter has for many years. Quite simply, unless Twitter has a path towards financial viability, there would be no point in it having any employees at all.
What level of error would be sufficient to warrant the haphazard descriptor? Two percent? One percent?
A company like Twitter is complex, and it's very likely that some number of people are important in a way which cannot be seen from a top-down view. Hence error correction. It's a good thing. I see it as a healthy sign that Twitter management are identifying and rectifying their mistakes so quickly.
May be your tolerance for normal things have diminished and you find normal speech "offensive".
I haven't found anything sexist/racist on Twitter or elsewhere on places like /r/conservative. It's most likely your definition of racist/sexist that's changed.
I was amazed at their intervention in a recent lawsuit where they argued against releasing public records. The ACLU of old would never have done this.
I think this case is also what you are referring to when you mention denial of biological facts? For others reading this comment, here's what the ACLU actually submitted to the court:
> Proposed Intervenors deny the allegation that "it is precisely a combination of anatomy, genitalia, and physical characteristics that differentiate men from women[.]" Proposed Intervenors also deny the allegation that "human beings" are "sexually dimorphic, divided into males and females each with reproductive systems, hormones, and chromosomes that result in significant differences between men[] and women[.]"
It is absurd. They have really lost the plot.
But I don’t want to see my views in wider society since it would lead to a shitty life for a lot of people.
The difference between me an you is you want society to return to being evil and you’ll do whatever it takes to get there. Disgusting.
1. The people saying Elon doesn't have a heavy hand in his companies and the people saying he is running Twitter with a heavy hand are largely the same people.
2. It's impossible that Elon indeed both does have a heavy hand in Twitter and does not have a heavy hand in most/all of his other companies.
These assumptions are the same flavor of cognitive bias to the one you're accusing others of: That born of a desire to paint a group of perceived opponents in a poor light.
2. It's possible of course, but almost nobody making either point (usually both) does so with the kind of nuance necessary to make this argument.
Not the parent poster, but that post didn't seem to contain the biases you mentioned. You had to make an intellectual leap to find them.
2. The arguments that he "doesn't run his companies" is referencing the successes, and that he "runs a company into the ground" references failures. These two ways of looking at him are not only not mutually exclusive, they go very well together: "whenever he intervenes he makes it worse, any company that is successful is so because he gets out of the way", or something along those lines.
Whether or not those arguments hold up I neither know nor care about, because this drama is as significant to my life as Amber Heard vs Johnny Depp was. Which is to say: only insofar as it seems to be so goddamn unavoidable when I want to spend my limited time on this earth doing other things.
If SpaceX succeeds it's because everybody came together and pulled their weight in the right direction, Elon included. It takes a lot of people for a company to succeed.
Twitter could initiate a death spiral at the hands of one person, who culls the workforce too aggressively and scares off all the advertisers.
I'm content to reserve judgement and see what happens over the long term. Others are completely free to judge based on day-to-day drama, of course. But for their own sake I hope they keep a note of their assessments and predictions now, and check back in a few years to see how well they did.
In a capitalistic world, if someone is so lucky that he could churn out successful companies one after another, then he is an investment genius, his luckiness is a super power belongs to him and him alone, not anyone else, so capital, in forms of both money and talents, will still follow.
Regardless, he is so influential yet controversial it is going to be very difficult to objectively assess his work and impact.
Certainly I won't buy a cent what some media experts said about him at current moment.
And hiring is going to be difficult. As a techie in silicon valley, no way I'd consider joining unless they paid way, way above market since I know any job there will be just one Musk tantrum away from evaporating. Too risky.
Another way of looking at this is since so many people left, there is lots of vacuum, and open positions to be taken, and if you can hold on for a while many good things could be headed your way. What will leaving do anyway, you have to work your way up in the new company. It is also not a very great market for job seekers given most companies are or will lay off people inevitably.
>>As a techie in silicon valley, no way I'd consider joining unless they paid way, way above market since I know any job there will be just one Musk tantrum away from evaporating. Too risky.
This is another misnomer, there is lots of tech talent often for way cheaper going around. Not every body needs to reverse binary trees to build react sites. Or even myriad other infrastructure and general programming tasks that 99% of all software development is made up of.
Of all the ways in which somebody could lose their jobs, Musk surely has some of the most logical reasons. I've seen routine lay offs for a lot more flimsy reasons, where some mid level management often does to protect their fiefdoms, or decide to randomly cancel projects their immediate competition in company is working for.
As a collective of industries/businesses, Spacex, Starlink, Gigafactories for batteries, and Tesla cars all generally support each other. That's four overwhelmingly large enterprises that any regular founder would build their career around individually. It's incredibly impressive that Musk has built all four into successful businesses.
The random side projects are a distraction.
Twitter is just the largest and most expensive. Boring machines is going nowhere, though I appreciate the comedy in the naming.
Tesla long haul trucks are a natural extension of that ecosystem but should be managed by employees at Tesla.
Neurolink potentially has some major long term foundational changes, but the tech is probably 10 years too early to build a successful company around. (However I think this is potentially Musk's most important future company beyond Spacex.)
But, he is the guy with the success so far, so my little one-man opinions are just that.
My personal priorities are on spaceflight and colonization, and I would like to see him just focusing on that. Despite the progress that Starship is making, everything seems to have slowed down dramatically. There has yet to be a full stack launch. They just moved ship 8 to the retirement pad. There was only one Heavy launch this year when 3 were scheduled.
Regular Falcon 9 flights are happening almost daily, which is quite astounding. Like, really astounding. Starlink is already active and providing high speed service around the world and is a critical part of Ukraine's defense against Russia.
I just want to see more progress being made towards the moon lander, reusable Starship launches, on-orbit refueling, and measurable progress towards Mars expeditions.
> Imagine living in a Mars colony with this management style
https://twitter.com/Jon_Christian/status/1587853397385834496
But honestly, it's too early to worry about who runs what. Let's focus on progress towards transportation first.
No it's not 10 years too early, it's 50 years late to the party - but your conclusion could very well be right regardless. Non-invasive BCI surpassed everything Neuralink has done so far decades ago, however it's not super relevant since the capabilities of micro electronics skyrocketed; and perhaps indeed beyond SpaceX potential. If you can't afford BCI for your children, in the future they will be doomed to be blue collar as all those who do will have children with brains supported or adjusted for them to pass the highest levels of education & training within shorter amounts of time thus will rule the world. The most famous example of things like this already in use today is DARPA / US Snipers doubling some of their test scores using BCI. This is just the beginning. See the link below for more information. https://totaltdcs.com/uploads/docs/darpa-operational-neurosc...
My sense is that barring some major Twit scandal next Tuesday (mid-term elections in the US), the controversy will blow over. In a few months, Twitter's user growth metrics will start to trend upward. Much like how Facebook survived Cambridge Analytica #delete campaign. There isn't anything ready to replace Twitter in the next few months. All the free publicity it's getting right now is setting the stage for major publicity for every new feature Musk and team rolls out. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it more likely Musk will actually succeed in the long run given his access to funding, track record and his ultimate goal of fixing the public square? Genuine question.
Twitter has to actively convince customers to advertise on it, they’re not an obvious destination.
> having screwed up the most basic element of the business: he doesn’t even know who the customer is!
This knowledge is difficult to obtain. But I agree it is basic and critical. Knowing who both desires the value you can offer and can pay for it is critical to any successful business.
If you are interviewing, learning who the customer is is critical for you to have any chance of assessing the chances of success of the company. If they don't know who it is, ask how they are finding out. (If they are a later stage company and still finding it out, that is a risky situation.)
It's also important to know the answer to ascertain what kind of company is being built. For instance, if the customer is the CIO, that is going to be an entirely different kind of company (in so many ways: marketing, sales team, product emphasis, value of engineering, customer LTV, customer lifecycle, UX, and more) than a company where the customer is an engineering manager or developer.
The current customer is the ad buyer. It would be a lot better for the users if they were the customer (rather than the product).
There’s a reason the web is so dependent on advertising.
Lot of people would pay I think. It is not the same as Youtube where you are just purely consuming, not participating.
Musk (and yourself) seem to be falling in the age old mistake of thinking they are the user, a thought every decent PM should slap out of him, had he not fired them all, and made the rest scared for their lives.
I don't think anyone is failing to see your perspective. I am sharing what I think as objectively as I can present it. You and I are not wrong or right, we will have to see how things will play out. These are proposals.
$8/month. Subscribe. Done.
Clearly he has done lots of things right.
That makes it so odd how chaotic and inept this takeover appears.
Big layoffs after a takeover will also be chaotic, and a bandaid that needs to be ripped off ASAP. There is really no good way to do it, and mistakes will be made.
BUT Musk managed to attack and undermine Twitters two most valuable assets: advertisers and celebreties.
He claimed advertisers are trying to kill free speech, and threatened them with public shaming. All while sending all the signals that he will change the platform in a way that makes those advertisers very concerned. (less moderation, "free speech", laying off much of the teams ensuring brand safety)
He got in public spats with the second most valuable asset: celebrities. Most users on Twitter are just passive consumers, there to hear directly from notable persons they care about.
The verification system is essential to this - it gives you reasonable trust that an account is actually the person they claim to be.
Maybe a subscription model can make sense, but it should probably be separate from the verification system. There are only ~400k verified accounts, a drop in the bucket at 8$ a pop. This drama could have been avoided by just grandfathering them in.
On top of that he has tweeted conspiracy theories by odd media, seemed to do important market analysis and price finding via tweeted survey over 2 days, and all in a has just seemed a bit unhinged.
This whole thing is a mess, and I don't get how this can happen. Eg, how can you not realise beforehand how important advertising is for revenue...
Tesla stock is falling, so Musk probably is selling to cover costs - he won't get any msignificant loans with good conditions...
I always assumed this whole takeover was a boon for the right, to get a favourable relationship with future administrations for Tesla and SpaceX.
This may still work out for Musk, but not if Twitter dies too quickly. There is no immediate competition on the horizon though, so there is time
Up until now, but ... who wants that really? Ads SUCK. If Ads are the customers, users are the product. I like the idea of turning Twitter into the product.
Why should I listen to a chirp from this guy? He doesn't understand what is happening.
2. Companies choose ethics above making money.
You can only pick one, and it seems you want companies to go for option 1. I want to see more companies go for option 2.
Second of all, wanting companies to choose ethics over making money is an illogical position because ethics vary greatly across the population and it's only a matter of time before someone abuses market power to get big enough to be able to choose their ethics over their profitability.That you happen to agree with the ethics advertised by today's market power abusers does not mean you always will. Can you imagine if Walmart started shoving their founder's staunch conservative christian values in your face? How about all the business owners that are conservative muslims, do you want those ethics being chosen? It is far better to regulate the most important ethical beliefs of the day through the democratic system of our government and have businesses with so little market power that they don't dare inpose their personal values on the rest of us for fear of losing their customers to the myriad of competitors biting at their heels in the market.
I still find/follow things I like - just not on Twitter (or Facebook and whatnot).
Aside:
Social media that trigger our reward response (followers, likes, etc) will inherently never really work. People will post things that get the most followers or likes, not what matters. The more radical, the more likes or followers, the better. Not everybody of course, but enough to make these system in total a detriment to society.
Evaluating whether the proposed changes to the site are for the better or not requires waiting a bit to let them actually happen. The complete freakout around Twitter in the media, most of whom have panicked the way a junkie would if forced to find a new heroin dealer, is not helping things. Neither is the online pity party taking place exclusively on the very site that is supposed to be dying.
Generally, humans have a bias towards saying things are "impossible" or "sure to fail" with limited personal understanding of the nature of that thing. Indeed, people are more expert about impossible things than possible things...they have encyclopaedic knowledge of things that don't work (this is a safety behaviour that some are more disposed to than others).
I have learned, through personal experience of getting this wrong, that people will surprise you more often than your pessimism will be justified.
Some ideas for that story might be:
- Elon never had a chance because woke celebrities and activists pressured advertisers to not renew their contracts with Twitter
- Twitter employees were too lazy and entitled, or maybe they intentionally sabotaged Musk’s plans for ideological reasons
- The government unfairly cracked down on Twitter, which would have been desirable a year ago but is completely unnecessary now that the good guys are in charge
- Well, Twitter’s revenue and userbase might have cratered, but really Elon won in the end because now it is a place for free speech. He never cared about the money, why are you so focused on the money?
- Twitter might have failed but it was going to fail before Elon bought it anyway so it’s not really his fault
- Elon easily could have made Twitter profitable but he realized that the cultural problems ran too deep so he turned his attention to more important projects
What improvements? I see lits of fired people and gruesome deadlines for the rest to implement a subscription feature.
All of that while Musk is mocking users and whines about shrinking ad money and threatens to publicly shame his customers.
The "fired" people get to sit around doing nothing at full pay for the next three months, while the not-fired are being asked to do a reasonable amount of work for an engineering staff of thousands. As to the mocking and whining part, if it bugs you then don't read his tweets. I've hated the guy for years and that approach has worked great for me!
Talk is cheap
>He's also reworking the site business model so that heavy users can get a subscription tier with more features
You mean Twitter blue? Forcing it by combining it with the blue check and cutting feature like ad free articles isn't a good way a getting paid customers
>The "fired" people get to sit around doing nothing at full pay for the next three months
And then? Bills still need to be paid after these 3 month and at the moment most companies put a freeze to hiring new employees.
>while the not-fired are being asked to do a reasonable amount of work for an engineering staff of thousands.
Implementing a feature with short deadline or get fired sounds reasonable to you? Forcing managers to work 12 hours and 7 days a week is neither
https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/01/twitter-chaos/
>if it bugs you then don't read his tweets
It doesn't bug me, but it shows but customer relationship. He mocks the people he wants to pay the subscription and scares away or blocks advertising customers.
https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921
That's not how you fix things, that's how you become a template for Horrible Bosses 3
You may be right that it's premature to guess on directions the company will take. But these acts are pretty clear.
However he is a nuanced human being, and so even though I don't like his current public persona, I know there is more there than just that.
Maybe twitter will collapse (that would be really bizarre) given all the people that still love to use it (I stopped about 18 months ago). Maybe it will become even more popular (kinda doubt it). No idea.
Regardless, the frantic claims are tiring and pointless except to monetize outrage.
Musk should totally buy Pinboard.
How is he supposed to handle a website that processes literal terabytes of data every hour? In real time mind you
My guess is that after ~15 years or so, Twitter is probably either At Scale already or never will be.
> he will just discover it the hard way when he is confused why all the sudden he can’t ship anything.
Ship anything? The site works now. How much NRE is required just to keep relaying tweets and showing ads? My guess: not much.
Here is an example from a customer:
https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1588981510916276224?...
Thing about tech debt is that you can actually take a loan if you need it. May be Twitter right now need to take that loan and pay it later.
A self-claimed Twitter Japan engineer, who hasn't been fired yet, said remote work is hindering their productivity for there are so many video meetings and hardly any time to code. He hopes ending the remote work to reduce the cost of communication.
There is no way to fact check those people, but seeing all the stupid moves from Twitter Japan, like announcing to partner with infamous far-right organization to combat the human right issues, or offering a old man who repeatedly commit dogeza for those whose Twitter account are locked for unknown reason and there is no human response from Twitter, so they chose to visit Twitter physically to negotiate the account unlock, indicates Twitter japan was hiring morons.
This will be a big shock and a month from now, people will be going about their business.
I don't think the masses especially care who owns the platform. But the power users probably do, especially as big changes around content, editorialization, and monetization are being discussed.
If that small base of power users continue to leave, then the masses stop coming to the site.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweet...
Things are changing.
…and they are changing fast.
The problem with fast drastic change is that it is relatively unpredictable.
That appears to have, clearly, caught people, including Elon with his pants down. It’s even more unpredictable than expected.
No one likes change, its just a fact of life… but change this fast, and in ways people didn’t expect is really making people uncomfortable.
Did anyone really have a good idea what bring down the wall in Germany would do? No, they had no ducking idea. Likewise, anyone claiming prescience about what is going to happen here is simply speculating.
They have no idea.
It’s too much change, too fast, to easily predict.
All these “you’ll come back to this thread…” posts are embarrassing cat whistles by idiots. No one has any idea what’s going to happen.
Coming back, later, and being like “I called it!” will simply mean you made a good random coin flip call. Nothing more.
It's like the "berlin wall" moment but Bryan will be holding on to his communist party membership card, just in case.
https://nitter.net/Jarvis_Dupont/status/1585929998816485376#...
There's a bunch more strange takes in this piece, but this first one is pretty emblematic of the class. Elon very well might fail, but there are perfectly reasonable explanations for the things that he's doing, and the way that he's doing them. He's hashing this all out in public in real time because he wants to move extremely fast, and he clearly feels that most of tech, and Twitter in particular, have become fat and lazy. His remedy is to avoid the drawn out process of a "normal ceo":
> Instead of doing what any sane new CEO of a troubled entity would do (namely, determining what changes need to be made by spending a bunch of time listening to customers, users, and employees — and then carefully plotting and executing those changes)
And instead iterating rapidly, in public. This approach has obvious drawbacks, but it does have benefits in terms of iteration speed, feedback, and avoiding certain kinds of institutional bias. It might not work out, of course, but why are we pretending that it makes no sense?
The guy is clearly competent. He does some things I don't always agree with, and I think in particular he's taken a bit of a strange turn in the past few years. However, he's built more successful wildly successful companies - in very difficult industries - than nearly anyone on earth. The idea that he doesn't understand Twitter's business model is just fundamentally a non-serious thing to say.
Twitter's business is advertising sales. Musk destroyed a billion dollars in committed pre-sales for 2023, then drove away more advertisers in his attempt to fix the situation, then threatened prospective advertisers with "thermonuclear name-and-shame." He's basically destroyed Twitter's ad sales model without a replacement revenue stream ready to go. $8 for various perqs won't replace a fraction of it even with significant uptake, and this is in the context of adding a billion dollars of annual debt servicing in a company whose revenue was only marginal profitable with the ad sales.
On top of that, cutting half the staff with zero notice and ordering a billion dollar reduction in infrastructure costs is a massive amount of organizational chaos added at the same time as he's expecting to iterate quickly and replace a multi-billion dollar revenue stream.
None of this is a sane way to remake twitter into an agile, non-ad-dependent company. This is controlled-flight-into-terrain. These are desperate, flailing measures.
edit: fixing emphasis
Sometimes you do, depending on what type of plane it is and what you need to do.
We'll have a clear picture in a year or two; I'm still holding out for the fail whale's return.
Doing the things that skilled people do doesn't get the same results if you're not also skilled in the same way.
I'm sure that's true for planes, but I see no reason to believe it's true for Twitter. He's fired a lot of people, but as far as I can tell most of the teams that were killed weren't mission critical.
> Twitter's business is advertising sales. Musk destroyed a billion dollars in committed pre-sales for 2023, then drove away more advertisers in his attempt to fix the situation, then threatened prospective advertisers with "thermonuclear name-and-shame." He's basically destroyed Twitter's ad sales model without a replacement revenue stream ready to go. $8 for various perqs won't replace a fraction of it even with significant uptake, and this is in the context of adding a billion dollars of annual debt servicing in a company whose revenue was only marginal profitable with the ad sales.
This is true, and an ordinary business owner (particularly of a public company) wouldn't do this because they're afraid of losing money for a quarter. Elon isn't as afraid of that, for obvious reasons. He clearly didn't anticipate the advertisers would do this this quickly, especially before he even made any changes. I'm not sure most people anticipated that.
However, the speed with which he's moving has its advantages as well. He just fired 50% of the staff, which presumably nearly cuts their costs in half, since most of a company like Twitter's costs are salaries. So, he does have some breathing room to lose some revenue.
> On top of that, cutting half the staff with zero notice and ordering a billion dollar reduction in infrastructure costs is a massive amount of organizational chaos added at the same time as he's expecting to iterate quickly and replace a multi-billion dollar revenue stream.
This is true, but thus far that chaos has been completely manageable. Twitter hasn't gone down or had technical problems that I'm aware of. It's still very early, of course, and it might have some soon. But I don't see any evidence that anything he's actually done has caused problems yet.
The teams that got cut entirely all seem to me to be non-mission-critical, in a revenue/uptime sense. The mission critical teams got minor haircuts. It doesn't seem at all to me like he's putting the site at risk of going down in a technical sense.
It doesn't matter if they have enough runway to last a quarter without revenue if there's no prospects of bringing back enough revenue to sustain the business, and thus far, there's no hint of any revenue stream sufficient to do so even at Twitter's reduced headcount. And Musk now has to find those new sources of revenue in the middle of organizational chaos when Twitter is least able to execute on any new ideas or iterate effectively.
Do you remember when Digg was king of the Internet, and then they released a badly received update and a week later were no longer even a top contender, eventually to be sold for $500,000? This is the market in which Musk is trying to iterate quickly by lighting everything on fire to motivate those who are left. I'm sceptical, to put it mildly.
ref: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/st...
OP, his eyes uncovered.
The river Temarc, IN WINTER
But because he’s doing something seen as political a bunch of nobody HN anons feel compelled to say he knows nothing about running a tech company. Amazing what politics can do to the mind.
I have posted about this a lot recently because I am worried that other tech leaders will take this to heart and treat their employees the same way.