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Comment by furyofantares | Hacker News Reader

> What's most surprising it seems he has no thesis for the company or how it can be made better or what was so terrible about it.

I believe the thesis is he thinks it's possible to duplicate WeChat as a ubiquitous everything-app (news, media, social media, payments, ordering in restaurants, shopping, messaging) in the West. Why someone would believe that, I don't know. I imagine thinking you could also be the owner of it might motivate believing it can happen somewhat.

I suppose the other thesis is that Twitter was horribly mismanaged and can work on far fewer resources to do more if he runs it like Space X or Tesla. That seems plausible to me though in this case it's beyond me why he thinks the actions he's taken will get him there.

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> Twitter [...] can work on far fewer resources to do more if he runs it like Space X or Tesla

Even disregarding the content moderation speed run, the technical problems for Tesla and Space X are fundamentally about four things: physics, mathematics, materials technology and applied computer science. Mostly predictable. Twitter is like any other large messaging or information distribution system. Chaotic. Unpredictable. Highly adversarial.

Think about it. In a cloud of atoms, you don't get a sizable fraction trying to game the rest of them. Materials technology may be cruel, but at least it's not actively adversarial. Lithium batteries are volatile and can explode, but they don't do so out of malice.

With Twitter, EM is quickly learning that people are not that different from him. Awful. And dealing with them requires skills and knowledge that the best engineering can't cover.

Incidentally, I think EM is also finding new peers. He is on course to wreak about 40B worth of economic damage in a month, which puts him in the Truss-Kwarteng category. Quite an achievement.

There already exist WeChat equivalents in the West that do "news, media, social media, payments, ordering in restaurants, shopping, messaging", and in fact they even predate WeChat. They're known as Android and iOS.

No, they're called browsers.

Or, if you're thinking of more of a walled garden, Facebook is damned close.

don't smartphones in China mostly run Android? Seems like a weird thing to compare OSs with apps

If uses the point is, if you ask a typical WeChat user to describe what it is, you'll get a similar answer to the android equivalent. From a user point of view, they're comparable.

Isn’t Facebook like 95% of the way there? (Not Meta.. I’m talking about FB specifically).

News. Media - social and otherwise, payment processing, shipping, messaging.

The restaurant ordering thing is about the only box they don’t check.

> The restaurant ordering thing is about the only box they don’t check.

Not restaurant, but they started on delivery marketplace items. I guess the former would have eventually happened.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-marketplace-and-doorda...

I don't think I know anyone who does all of their shopping on facebook, or pays their bills on facebook, or uses facebook messaging exclusively, let alone all of those things. Having the feature list isn't the thing, it's getting people to see the app as their one stop shop for all their technology needs. Just having the feature list doesn't replicate WeChat, I don't know why Elon thinks it's possible to replicate.

If he can replicate WeChat this could be a good deal even if current Twitter flashes out in the process.

I’m not sure how Twitter is helping in creating WeChat for the rest of the world.

WeChat solved a problem specific to the Chinese market, given how it's internet market is structured. In the rest of the world, that problem is solved at an OS or browser level. And buying either of those would have been way cheaper than $44 billion

I agree with the first two sentences, but not sure how you think buying a browser or OS would be cheaper. Facebook tried hard and could not do it with a way bigger war chest. Google spent significant money into Android and Chrome (I have worked for both so not impartial).

The thing is with both OS and browser is that they are really long term efforts and I am not sure if Elon could pull that of anymore. For sure Elon from 10 years ago could, but not sure if he has the patience anymore. Same with Zuck, I don't think he has the patience for what he is trying to achieve.

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