Can't wait to see the HN "just give Elon a chance to put his brilliant plans in motion!" crowd to explain this one to us. Enlighten us please !
Are these the plays of a proverbial multi-dimensional chess genius that are beyond mortal ken, or one clumsy attempt after another to salvage a bad situation that he put himself in?
In some other HN thread related to this, people worked out the math behind the layoff of half of Twitter's workforce days into taking over: assuming revenue remained the same, the company would be profitable enough to cover the loans taken to purchase (with itself as collateral!)
There is a bunch of mass layoffs happening in other tech companies (and across the economy), are we going to pretend they will all go smoothly?
Actually come to think of it, without this acquisition Twitter would still have been forced to let a bunch of people go anyhow regardless of who happens to be the CEO. Possibly just as many. Probably with less severance... but definitely with nicer emails...
Take a deep breath.
Eventbrite cut 50% during covid btw.
Most of Twitter's current losses are the interested payment on Musk's leveraged buyout.
> Eventbrite cut 50% during covid btw
I'm shocked that a company whose business plan revolves around groups of people meeting in person had financial trouble during the pandemic.
Case in point, the HN trope that he is an idiot and doesn't know anything about technology and just takes credit for brilliant engineers' work. I laid out solid evidence that is not true, quoting top of the field scientist and engineers' assessment of his technical knowledge and skills. The only response I get is from RavingGoat (username kind of checks out) claiming Elon must have paid these people to say these things with no evidence whatsoever.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33504228
I know this is cliche here, but in this case, it really seems like Redditors have invaded this space.
That’s become harder in the last few years and practically impossible in 2022. At this point, I am desperately hoping for SpaceX to get Starship/Superheavy flying before Elon manages to screw that up as well.
I’m not a trained psychiatric professional but it looks to me as if his extreme wealth and success has exacerbated some pre-existing tendencies and turned him into a (danger, medical jargon ahead) full-blown mess. It’s a shame to watch.
It seems like he has screwed up being a parent to his many children, most publicly the one that transitioned and cut off ties with him.
He's a lot like Trump in that he jumps into everything declaring it simple and that he gets it unlike everyone else, then says it turns out this is more complicated than anyone thought.
Not much. His public feuding and conspiracy theory spreading is largely constrained to Twitter. The whole thing going under might be the best outcome for him. Presently, however, he’s acting like an addict given the crack store.
I'm sure some of us have parents or grandparents who worked for Howard Hughes back in the day, and are now feeling a strong sense of deja vu. Musk seems to be speedrunning Hughes' career and, really, his entire life.
I suspect that HN has recently seemed more anti-elon because the anti-elon crowd has a lot of bullshit to point to recently, and the pro-elon crowd doesn't really have good defenses to most of it.
But over the past few years he’s become much more vocal about current events unrelated to his companies. He has every right to do it, but whether you’re a cable news commentator or Musk, the more you weigh in on social issues the more polarizing you become.
In the case of Twitter something had to be done. It was too powerful of a public forum and was mismanaged and run by extremists and exacerbated existing divisions, turning them into real rifts. If half a country feels they are being actively suppressed, demonized, and treated unfairly that is a recipe for disaster. Was Elon the guy to fix it? I dunno who else would be crazy enough to try. And his roots are in web tech so his experience may help.
Meanwhile.. it's a corporation that trades in short messages between it's users. Is any of this really worth the emotional investment? It's an odd time in America, but casting all your hopes and dreams through the lens of what Elon Musk does today or where Twitter is tomorrow seems to me to be the worst way to approach it.
Personally I can’t make myself see this as a humanitarian disaster — these employees have known the risk was on the horizon for many months, are eminently employable, high-functioning, with presumably good professional networks and resumes. They’ll land on their feet, and have themselves to blame if they didn’t prepare accordingly. Plenty of other drama in the world to worry about, much of it more severe than ex-twitter ee’s on the open job market thirsty for talent.
He could've done all that much more smoothly. Now though, Twitter is spiraling.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-fired-4-100-when-steve-jobs-...
what is he smoking? Musk literally banned the head of a major advertising organization concerned about where Musk was taking the site in terms of it being friendly to advertising (https://www.axios.com/2022/11/06/musk-twitter-marketers-adve...). Read Josh Marshall's thread at https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1588679838306799617. Musk is absolutely doing everything the customer does not want (the customer being: advertisers), and they have already ran for the exits.
Additionally I think "verified users get priority in replies" has the potential to be absolutely killer. Everyone knows that clout chasing is huge on Twitter. I could easily see a spiral like so:
* Initially 5% of daily actives buy the check marks, mostly just to own the libs (Fox News loves Elon btw). But the newborn blue checks are everywhere in replies. They're accumulating followers like no tomorrow.
* Others begin to follow suit. $8/month is a small price to pay for clout. Remember, that's what they're all there for. "If anyone tells you they don't want more twitter followers, they're lying."
* 10% of the userbase has bought a blue check. 20%. The anti-Elon folks are holding out. But their voices are growing quieter and quieter.
* The entire tenor of the site begins to change. The loudest voices are the Elon fans who bought the check mark early. His politics become dominant on the site.
* Eventually the anti-Elon folks either ragequit or end up purchasing the checkmark. Petty tyranny and clout chasing are kind of their thing. It's a case of irresistible force meets immovable object. Endgame seems hard to predict.
Additionally, I don't believe bot detection is an inherently hard problem. And if every bot detected means the bot creator has to pay another $8 for their next bot, then bot detection becomes profitable for Twitter.
I doubt this ends up being the cheapest way for Russia to influence US elections.
If he didn't think he could improve on the status quo for Twitter, the thing to do would be to trim as much staff as possible to cut costs and then continue with the current ad revenue based model, without making any changes or introducing new features. Twitter was making on the order of $5B/year in ad revenue. Pushing costs below $5B/year should not be difficult given the nature of the service provided.
Alternatively, if what you say is true and he doesn't think he can make it work, he could try to "back out" by flipping Twitter to another buyer, or just take it public again. Revealed preferences suggest he thinks he can outperform those alternatives.