Well, Elon’s first week running Twitter has gone worse than I expected. I said last week that I thought the platform would be pretty much unchanged in 1-3 months and then effectively dead within a year. Now it’s looking like it’ll be pretty different in 1-3 weeks and effectively dead within six months. (Nice job, Elon. You spent $44 billion to bring back the fail whale.)
It almost feels like he's treating Twitter like a MVP that he can tweak on the fly... not so easy with a centralized app constantly used by millions.
I deactivated my account this week after being a loyal user for 15 years. Right now I'm feeling 80% grief and 20% relief, I expect the ratio to improve significantly over time. I just miss the people.
The idea of a month-long pause might have worked - but only if he hadn't laid off 50% of the workforce. Organizations take time to recalibrate with that kind of massive RIF. If he pauses now - the bird is gonna crash into a lot of windows as it tries to implement half-baked ideas quickly. Sometimes birds recover from those - sometimes they don't.
I've also noticed that a lot of people, progressives, democrats, liberals, leftists, are looking to withdraw to other networks. I've read some threads about Elon's ambitions/interest in the Republican party, China, or Putin. Is it not also about breaking the networks of journalists, influential figures on the left and among liberals, to reduce what they foolishly see as their power to harm? I don't know.
this guy just confirms to me a little more every day that he is a 💩 hateful person with whom I will never want to discuss, debate, trade or breathe the same air.
I don’t think you really paint how bleak Twitter is right now: Musk himself was arguing that it was losing $4 MILLION A DAY before he fired people. Back of the envelope math says he is losing $2 MILLION A DAY. Just to break even, he needs a little less than EIGHT MILLION blue checks @ $8 bucks a pop. TODAY, there are only 423,000 verified accounts.
I closed out my account the day before Musk took control because I could tell he didn’t have a vision — hell, he tried to pretend his contract wasn’t valid!
It’s not about poker, it’s about business and the hard fact is that Musk is a poor businessman, but to him, it’s everyone else’s fault.
At BEST Twitter will end up in Chapter 11 by the end of the year. It won’t help. He has already alienated the very businesses he needs to keep going. He has even said he would “name and shame” businesses — that is another word for extortion.
The reality is that Musk’s Twitter will fail. At worst it shines a light on just how poorly a Musk enterprise is run: not with good ideas, but with bluster and fanboys.
Elon probably tries to manage his other companies like this but:
- Design changes to vehicles and manufacturing plants are mostly invisible to the outside world and take months to implement, allowing time to course correct
- Gwynne Shotwell acts as a filter for SpaceX
Twitter is a different animal. Elon is learning the hard way!
"He has to come up with an extra billion dollars per year to cover the debt payments he just added to the company’s books, but he doesn’t have to make up that shortfall immediately."
Where would he find that extra billion $ laying around? Pile worse debt over bad, in a surging interest rate and falling tech market values environment? Also, we can speculate that other private investors may contractually have the right to demand their money back, plus interests, at some point (e.g. when certain milestones aren't met). So, perhaps Musk understands just too well that it can get financially much worse pretty quickly.
"The tech crash was bad luck. There was no reason to think in April 2022 that the 18-year bubble was about to suddenly burst. But bad luck early begets bad decisions late."
Isn't luck a funny thing? He basically rode on extraordinarily once-in-a-lifetime good luck wave: the money printing era, where the abundance of funds seeks ever more speculative parking spots. He rode it to become the richest man in the world. Without the money printing, Tesla would have been a monument of failure in the business history books. Same with every other Musk ventures. He took one too many gamble and this time, he got burned.
"Expect flaws. Expect bugs. Expect exploits. There is a reason why you don’t rush major systemic changes like this."
Like Tesla's Autopilot? If Musk managed to get away with that, then why not with half-baked social media features?
But the rumour of Musk-owned Twitter's demise is greatly exaggerated. Musk still command incredible admiration. So, millions of Musk kool-aid drinking fans will stick with him come hell or high water. Most likely Twitter will downsize, become more niche; but it will not disappear, especially if there is no serious alternative.
Really enjoyed the article and insights. I expect even among those not laid off, many will leave in the next 9-10 months, and Musk will bring in employees who align more with his ethos to replace them. The outcome of that feels really uncertain. Not sure about charging $8/month for verification, but I wonder if charging for higher character counts might work because it would give people more space to bloviate ;-) As a side effect, it might also increase the quality of discourse?
Good piece, but I was surprised by the prediction that Twitter will be effectively dead in six months. By what mechanism? User loss? A lot of people have put a lot of time and energy into Twitter and there's no obvious replacement
It almost feels like he's treating Twitter like a MVP that he can tweak on the fly... not so easy with a centralized app constantly used by millions.
I deactivated my account this week after being a loyal user for 15 years. Right now I'm feeling 80% grief and 20% relief, I expect the ratio to improve significantly over time. I just miss the people.
If Musk really wants to commit platform seppuku what he'd do is start offering a block-free account for $20 a month.
The idea of a month-long pause might have worked - but only if he hadn't laid off 50% of the workforce. Organizations take time to recalibrate with that kind of massive RIF. If he pauses now - the bird is gonna crash into a lot of windows as it tries to implement half-baked ideas quickly. Sometimes birds recover from those - sometimes they don't.
I've also noticed that a lot of people, progressives, democrats, liberals, leftists, are looking to withdraw to other networks. I've read some threads about Elon's ambitions/interest in the Republican party, China, or Putin. Is it not also about breaking the networks of journalists, influential figures on the left and among liberals, to reduce what they foolishly see as their power to harm? I don't know.
this guy just confirms to me a little more every day that he is a 💩 hateful person with whom I will never want to discuss, debate, trade or breathe the same air.
I don’t think you really paint how bleak Twitter is right now: Musk himself was arguing that it was losing $4 MILLION A DAY before he fired people. Back of the envelope math says he is losing $2 MILLION A DAY. Just to break even, he needs a little less than EIGHT MILLION blue checks @ $8 bucks a pop. TODAY, there are only 423,000 verified accounts.
I closed out my account the day before Musk took control because I could tell he didn’t have a vision — hell, he tried to pretend his contract wasn’t valid!
It’s not about poker, it’s about business and the hard fact is that Musk is a poor businessman, but to him, it’s everyone else’s fault.
At BEST Twitter will end up in Chapter 11 by the end of the year. It won’t help. He has already alienated the very businesses he needs to keep going. He has even said he would “name and shame” businesses — that is another word for extortion.
The reality is that Musk’s Twitter will fail. At worst it shines a light on just how poorly a Musk enterprise is run: not with good ideas, but with bluster and fanboys.
Elon probably tries to manage his other companies like this but:
- Design changes to vehicles and manufacturing plants are mostly invisible to the outside world and take months to implement, allowing time to course correct
- Gwynne Shotwell acts as a filter for SpaceX
Twitter is a different animal. Elon is learning the hard way!
"He has to come up with an extra billion dollars per year to cover the debt payments he just added to the company’s books, but he doesn’t have to make up that shortfall immediately."
Where would he find that extra billion $ laying around? Pile worse debt over bad, in a surging interest rate and falling tech market values environment? Also, we can speculate that other private investors may contractually have the right to demand their money back, plus interests, at some point (e.g. when certain milestones aren't met). So, perhaps Musk understands just too well that it can get financially much worse pretty quickly.
"The tech crash was bad luck. There was no reason to think in April 2022 that the 18-year bubble was about to suddenly burst. But bad luck early begets bad decisions late."
Isn't luck a funny thing? He basically rode on extraordinarily once-in-a-lifetime good luck wave: the money printing era, where the abundance of funds seeks ever more speculative parking spots. He rode it to become the richest man in the world. Without the money printing, Tesla would have been a monument of failure in the business history books. Same with every other Musk ventures. He took one too many gamble and this time, he got burned.
"Expect flaws. Expect bugs. Expect exploits. There is a reason why you don’t rush major systemic changes like this."
Like Tesla's Autopilot? If Musk managed to get away with that, then why not with half-baked social media features?
But the rumour of Musk-owned Twitter's demise is greatly exaggerated. Musk still command incredible admiration. So, millions of Musk kool-aid drinking fans will stick with him come hell or high water. Most likely Twitter will downsize, become more niche; but it will not disappear, especially if there is no serious alternative.
Really enjoyed the article and insights. I expect even among those not laid off, many will leave in the next 9-10 months, and Musk will bring in employees who align more with his ethos to replace them. The outcome of that feels really uncertain. Not sure about charging $8/month for verification, but I wonder if charging for higher character counts might work because it would give people more space to bloviate ;-) As a side effect, it might also increase the quality of discourse?
Good piece, but I was surprised by the prediction that Twitter will be effectively dead in six months. By what mechanism? User loss? A lot of people have put a lot of time and energy into Twitter and there's no obvious replacement