Great pull request here which improves the algorithm:
https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/pull/17
…so he's now not charging people who can pay, while charging people less able to pay.
Though, the main problem is that Twitter is about as big in Japan as it is in the US, but Elon only thinks about US culture wars because his only friends are a few VCs and a retired postal worker crank named catturd2. So none of his new ideas are going to work there.
> the main problem is that Twitter is about as big in Japan as it is in the US
It’s not even close. When you account for the value of ad impressions, the US market is worth about 3.5x its next biggest market (Japan), and it drops off very sharply after that. You can argue that Twitter’s policies should be less US-centric. But the reason they are that way in the first place is because the US market is their most valuable market by a long shot.
No, you can tell who he cares about because he replies to them, and because his emails were released in discovery from the earlier Twitter lawsuit and it turned out his friends put him up to it because they were mad the Babylon Bee got banned for a US culture war pronouns joke.
I certainly don't have to expect he'll make good decisions, since he has no experience with the business, is a completely atypical user, was forced to buy it in the first place, and has lost $20 billion so far by his own valuation. (May have lost a few millions more by firing that disabled Icelandic acquihire in violation of his contract and a few discrimination laws.)
The network effect is very very strong though. Even if someone makes a good competitor (Instagram is prototyping one apparently) I'd be surprised if bad decisions actually killed it.
> When you account for the value of ad impressions, the US market is worth about 3.5x its next biggest market (Japan), and it drops off very sharply after that.
I suggest reverse adjusting for how poor their ad targeting is. I've used it both places; the ads are actually good and relevant in Japan (…except for being for domestic apps, so not valid for tourists) but in the US they've always been nonsense. eg if you follow any doctors it will just assume you're also one and burn the budget of every medical ad it's got showing them to you.
(Note that I use discriminate in the literal sense, as a simple statement of fact.)
Also, how did you get a blue check before being able to buy one?
(Speaking about Twitter the product, not necessarily Twitter the company.)
Twitter the multi-billion dollar advertising company needs the big whales. I think it was pretty clear the company was under discussion.
https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/twitter-business-month...
and of course all this means is that the organizations most likely to be able to afford it won't have to
The smart move would be silent on the policy change, pay, and support rival platforms as they can. Instead they will eventually pay and look like they lost.
It's wild hubris for twitter to try to invoice/penalize the very users and organizations that make twitter anything but insolvent. There should be money exchanged here, but it should be flowing generously and most importantly in the other direction.
I don't think the NYT is worried about "reach."
LOL they are desperate for reach. Incredibly so; have you not listen to any podcast by them? They are begging people to go to their site. They get a fraction of the organic traffic they used to and nearly everything is driven from other site like Twitter, Google News, Facebook, etc. The internet age has not been kind to classic news orgs.
That's on the strength of having a lot of verticals like games, recipes and Wirecutter though.
And all that discussion so that they can spend $72k annually with Twitter, a y/o/y increase of $72k from last year. With no guarantees of reach, because the whole paid-only verification thing is an experiment that began an hour ago. Let me just say that this whole pitch is going to be...difficult... at the point in the economic cycle where we find ourselves.
Facebook did they same thing btw, just more gradual. For years they changed the algorithm slowly to take away reach from Pages only to offer it back as long as you paid.
Then why are they on Twitter?
The top 10,000 are getting exemptions and won't have to pay
https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/twitter-business-month...
But i agree it is a bad idea. The worst actors have money to buy the blue marks of an army of accounts.
This is basically making it easier for authoritarian governments to abuse it
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/13/facebook-...
So wonder if some value is wrong in one of those constants. Anyways, the blocking feature is broken..