He is totally out of his element and flying by trial and error. A crash and burn is the most likely result IMO.
Social media and advertising is an inherently humanistic/social endeavor requiring a deft business touch. Musk isn't exactly famous for his humanity or his humility or his social skills. He is waddling around like a duck out of water.
Not necessarily. I'm not a fan of the guy, but I do work in investment finance. The increase of interest rates might've been the reason he didn't want to go through with the buy. We went from a world where borrowing money was almost free to a world where it's very expensive. When Elon signed himself into buying Twitter loaning money for you and me was between 0.25% and 0.50% rate, when it finalized it was between 3.75% and 4.00%. The organisational loans are different, but not by much, and not only did those 6 months show the increase in rate, our financial industry also went through the realization that this wasn't likely to end as soon as they first hoped.
I'm not sure we can ever really get into the details, but I do think that going from free money to very expensive money likely had more to do with this than his ego and bad judgement.
Too bad he didn't take time to figure that out before he placed his bid.
Too bad he didn't figure out that social media wasn't a good fit for his style.
Therefore it's hard to say how fast the ship is sinking, if at all. He could make a brillant change tomorrow, then do something horrific 80 seconds later, and who knows what the net effect would be.
When your competitor is Mark Zuckerberg and he can moot an alternative with the sole USP being "sanely run", and this sounds like a positive development, you know value is being destroyed.
But this was predictable way back, including for instance the Thai cave rescue, where his suggestion being shot down led him to make unwarranted, vile personal attacks.
Elon Musk comes across as a malignant narcissist. Twitter is his narcissistic supply. It is going as well as anyone remotely informed would have predicted.
He could have got out of this for a couple of billion dollars, a telling off, and a small hit to his credibility with backers. But no. He has had his thin skin exposed, and everything avoidable that has happened since is the inevitable consequence of him lashing out while decompensating.
Sensible, consistent business leaders simply do not behave the way he does: if they are sociopaths, they at least try to surround themselves with qualified people who are not.
Elon has ruined his reputation with everyone who matters. It's not unreasonable to assume that if he makes judgements this bad in public he is making much worse judgements in private. This isn't business, it's a function of his personality.
He has not ruined his reputation with the people he is enabling: the assorted alt right and hard right wing pond scum he follows and trollishly retweets because they provide him with narcissistic supply.
The reality I suspect is that most people who know who he is don't think "he's a dick but he's a good businessman" now, because they can see that little of what he is doing is good business. He didn't have to do this at all. And the majority of people see the serious flaws in his behaviour.
And while people still have a tendency to compensate for the narcissists who crept up on them while validating their beliefs (Trump, Boris Johnson) I don't believe people have their eyes closed to Musk, because everyone who comes to understand a narcissist gets a bit better at avoiding letting more narcissists into their lives.
I always tended to believe that he's a pitiable little rich boy who is overselling his own myth, but I now believe he is malignant.
The Thai cave rescue story is what cemented it in my mind: he is a bully who expects to get away with callously punishing other people for his hurt feelings.
He's not the sort of person who should be trusted with anything, and we know from the behaviour of other severe narcissists that his behaviour will only get worse after the criticism he receives from this incident.
> "he toys with people like Halli Thorleifsson"...
Who started the public exchange with Musk in the first place. Who tweets HR questions to their employer unless there's another agenda? After that exchange, he received a bunch of new subscribers for his upcoming announcement he made a few days later (releasing a song on Spotify and other platforms), the tweet still pinned. Among other announcements such as opening a new restaurant.
He went into detail about his disability, got world-wide media attention and sympathy, got the subscribers, got the Musk apology, had his job termination reversed, got his own Wikipedia page, among other things.
Cave Diver guy: Messy, but again the Diver guy started it. Musk had no idea who this man was until he publicly attacked Musk for trying to help the Thai rescue.
Would you take to a public forum and tell someone they can shove something they built up their ass? Who does that? The Diver guy did it. When Musk reacted poorly, then apologised, the Diver guy already had dollar signs in his goggles, tried to sue Musk for the ridiculous amount of $190 million, and was awarded zero dollars by the jury. But, "musk bad man" is the easier take, and you'll get upvotes, so just stick with that.
It's glitched a few times and popped up a "you've hit the rate limit" message on the app, but that goes away with an app restart or refresh of the page.
With Twitter, it's only Elon. There is no one in his way. He can do whatever he wants. If the other industries were not regulated, he would be a serial Stockton Rush disaster artist.
Twitter has no adults in the room. He can’t help but destroy it.
We're just watching the over-reaction here once again screaming at another Twitter speed bump magnified by the techies.
Just like the other speed bumps before, this will be yet another nothing.
Why are you specifically looking for me again? Unless you are an obsessed rvz fan, despite denying it? [0]
Out of all comments here, you have just wasted your time replying to only me. Again.
I'm just sitting back laughing at you and everyone else reacting to the panic and hysteria that will just subside regardless.
Looks like I'm not the only one who's noticed, either[0] ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33125070
(^ that one with a bonus dismissive "told you so"/"i am right"-esque response! XD )
It's obvious that existing users will find this unsettling.
But new users can currently read only 300 tweets before they are rate limited for 24 hours, and that is all of about 12-15 average threads.
Why would they find it less unsettling? It's not a competent product at this point.
In somewhat more comprehensible terms: ... the golden calves are destroying twitter, not the guy who bought the thing from the guy who had no fucking idea what he was doing until someone told him ... (aka ... the dog).
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/678x250q70/r/923/fyVf45.j...