Merged Musk buys Twitter!/ Elon Musk puts Twitter deal on hold....

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d4m10n said:
It's does not look like he knows what he's doing yet, but he does seem open to experimentation. It's possible that the optimal mix of subscription vs. advertising is something which must be determined empirically, along with the optimal mix between active moderation vs. unrestrained posting.

Sent from my Cautious Optimisticator using Tapatalk
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Thanks for your reply.

Out of curiosity, is there any optimism remaining after reading this exchange?
 
Well apparently he's already canned the team responsible for curating your feed and the team responsible for contextualizing your feed, so there's two silver linings.

I'm kidding, of course. It's all silver linings.
 
Staff are going, voluntarily or not, legally or not.
Advertisers are jumping.
Lawsuits are beginning.
Ah, the end of the Twits.
 
dudalb said:
I have read that Musk refuses to accept that when it comes to electroinic cars Tesla is no longer the only real game in town,has real competition and now Tesla has to compete for customers.
Think Netflix, which did not adjust well to no longer being the only real streaming game in town.
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The problem for Tesla is that's now competing with companies who know how to make cars, a slightly better battery is not enough. A moderately intelligent CEO would push Tesla's competitive advantage and switch to being a battery manufacturer.

Edit: methinks Twitter will be the thing that wil dispel any lingering shreds of the idea that Musk is a good businessman and not just a spoiled man-child who got lucky with his early investment into PayPal.
 
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dudalb said:
But..but... Musk is a genius, a real life Tony Stark......
I am now conviced that Time Man of the Year award caused his ego to explode, damaging a good part of his brain in the process.

BTW this is more proof that the good CEO's work to keep their names OUT of the media, instead of trying to attract attention...
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Is it bad of me to wish him the full on Howard Hughes experience?

ETA, he was of course a major inspiration for Tony Stark in the first place
 
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I agree fully with Musk's wholesale culling of Twitter staff. The model of losing money hand over fist is only sustainable when there is an idiotic muppet out there willing to buy the company for several times its value. That scenario no longer exists.
 
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It would be amusing if Tesla pulled its advertising from Twitter :)
 
I Am The Scum said:
This is just getting pathetic

Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.

Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
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Freedom of association is now anti free speech!
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tyr_13 said:
'Nothing' has changed with content moderation yet but the new guy they put in charge has been acting the fool and saying insane things like not paying him is trying to destroy free speech. Maybe that guy should have finished that mandatory new employee course he laughed at.

Yeah, 'activist groups' like, *checks notes* the investors of those companies that don't want to advertise with the chuckle-**** troll. Who could have predicted that people wouldn't want to associate with that?

EDIT: Oh, and that 'nothing changed' officially has come with a ton of indications of messing with people who just so happen to be on Musk's bad side. Shocker.
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To poke at this some more, one of the ad execs who was on the group call that told Musk the advertisers concerns actually responded to this Musk tantrum. It will surprise no one that he confirmed the decision was not because of 'activist groups' or an attempt to 'destroy free speech', but concerns that the brands would be harmed by the content moderation changes.

Which changes? Musk says there have been none. Leaving aside that he also has insisted that there will be many, it was revealed that Musk has already terminated 75% of the moderation team. That's a change. That's a big fat stupid change.

How did Musk respond to this reiteration of the advertising groups' actual concerns? Musk blocked him.

Free speech!
 
dudalb said:
Oh, i think Twitter's main function is to give celebs a chance to show the world what idiots they are.
I can't figure out what Musk wants, frankly, beyond keep his name in the headlines. If he wants to improve his public image, this is no way to do it.
Whatever he wants, it's not money as the saying goes.
I
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Hence my calling him Tinkerbellend before. He really acts like someone who thinks he'll die if his name isn't in the news for too long.

The only half-way sane possible explanation I can come up with, is that maybe he's trying for a Keurig Effect from the other side of the spectrum. There's technically nothing to say you can't bait the left-wing nuts instead of the right-wing ones to get a crap-storm and thus free publicity. An internet crap-storm is an internet crap-storm either way at the end of the day.

Not sure how well it will work though, when it's almost only him fighting the other side of that flame war.

But of course, that still assumes that he actually has a plan. Trying to explain it (or anything else) before having any reason to believe it exists, is pretty much the definition of Tooth Fairy Science. So take it as just that.
 
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I Am The Scum said:
I have an open and non-judgmental question for all. I really want to know...

Some people in this thread may have looked forward to Musk taking over. Some may have thought that he would produce some positive, sustainable changes.

It's been about a week. Does anybody here think Elon Musk has any clue what he's doing? Like... even a little bit? From my perspective, this sure looks like social media CEO on-the-job training.
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Yeah, I am completely baffled by what he is doing. I keep having to wonder to myself if I just don't get some deep genius that is going on that I am not getting. This is why I said...

angrysoba said:
I mean, I know, I get it, he's a genius, he's a billionaire, I am neither, I have never put rockets into space or built electric cars or hyperloops or submarines, etc... but this is the kind of thing that I would have thought does not serve him well.
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I am not someone who just assumes he must be up to something extremely clever, unlike his fans, but too much of this looks really terrible. I even said...

angrysoba said:
Don't investors get nervous seeing him spouting the kind of stuff that could be a joke or might be a half-joke or might be serious. I think that some people (for example, almost everyone in Ukraine), are pretty much sick of trying to figure out where he stands on things.
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It turns out that many of his advertisers seem to think the way that I do about this, and that is why a lot of them are nervous about advertising on Twitter. Of course, he then goes and says that the advertisers are anti-free speech, and of course his idiot fans applaud him and say "we got your back!" (as if they have the kind of cash to help out). Some crypto bro was assuring that there are "millions" of other crypto bros who will pay the 8 dollars. Will 8 million dollars a month really make a dent in the 44 billion dollars Musk paid for this?

angrysoba said:
Yeah, and I honestly cannot work out what he is going for with those tweets. I assume the first is a joke, and the second is supposed to be serious?
Is he trying to do some banter with Stephen King and then ingratiate himself with him as well? Or does Musk think he's scored some points against King?
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angrysoba said:
My word! I thought 8 dollars was a joke.
And now… wait…what… people pay to end a division between lords and peasants? Huh? His scheme does the opposite? What?

Seriously, what a trainwreck.
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That tweet to Stephen King really did look like a joke, and now I don't even know.:confused:
 
dudalb said:
I have read that Musk refuses to accept that when it comes to electroinic cars Tesla is no longer the only real game in town,has real competition and now Tesla has to compete for customers.
Think Netflix, which did not adjust well to no longer being the only real streaming game in town.
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Tesla may not be the only electric car these days, but it's still way ahead of the curve of the other manufacturers.

Them being their own car dealership also shaves off a bit of the cost of the car. There's no third party that has to make profit on sale and service.

In Norway, there's practically only electric cars for sale now. On the list of top 20 cars sold so far this year, they are all electric.

And Tesla tops that list, with easy margin. Tesla is Norway's most sold car brand, and so far this year every third car sold is a Tesla.

Although other brands of electric cars have become decent, you simply get more car for your money with Tesla.
 
Twitter has already lost a big chunk of 2023 ad revenue.

2/ Back Twitter (like a lot of digital companies) participates in an event called new fronts. At this event, they sell large chunks of ads for the following year.

Typically, Twitter sells like ~600-900M in ads at new fronts. That's guaranteed revenue for following year.

3/ This year, they didn't sell much of anything.
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theprestige said:
You're also assuming that something of value is being lost, here.
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There was a company valued at about $40B. It appears that it is worth less than that now. Not sure what it will be worth in five years, but I’m glad I don’t have a stake in it.
 
theprestige said:
You're assuming that Musk likes Twitter and wants it to succeed.
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He owns it now. If it doesn't succeed, he will personally lose a lot of money. Also some powerful people in Saudi Arabia will lose a lot of money and some banks will lose a lot of money, or at least will call in loans that are secured on Tesla stock. Not only that but it will become quite difficult to continue pushing the narrative that Musk is some kind of tech company genius.

All that said, it would not surprise me to find out that your implication is correct and Musk is deliberately killing Twitter.
 
Ryokan said:
.....
Although other brands of electric cars have become decent, you simply get more car for your money with Tesla.
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I dunno if that's true. Teslas cost more than many other electrics, and they have had long-running quality control issues. And of course, they do have the problem of hitting things in self-drive mode. When Tesla started, it was almost one-of-a-kind. Now it is competing with the biggest, best resourced manufacturers in the world. I'm not sure I would take a Tesla over a Toyota or Hyundai.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesm...n-by-its-own-quality-control/?sh=4330d33b5da7
https://medium.com/geekculture/heres-why-quality-control-might-be-the-demise-of-tesla-b878a4b581f
https://insideevs.com/news/549130/consumerreports-tesla-reliability-poor-2021/
 
theprestige said:
You're assuming that Musk likes Twitter and wants it to succeed.

You're also assuming that something of value is being lost, here.
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d4m10n said:
It's does not look like he knows what he's doing yet, but he does seem open to experimentation. It's possible that the optimal mix of subscription vs. advertising is something which must be determined empirically, along with the optimal mix between active moderation vs. unrestrained posting.
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Musk dudebros out here really straining to defend their guy without completely torching their credibility.
 
theprestige said:
You're assuming that Musk likes Twitter and wants it to succeed.

You're also assuming that something of value is being lost, here.
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Presumably even Musk thinks $44Bn is worth something.

Price of Twitter $44Bn
Cost of Twitter.... Quite a bit more as it's affecting his other companies.

Value of seeing Musk's ego take a battering... priceless
 
Ryokan said:
Tesla may not be the only electric car these days, but it's still way ahead of the curve of the other manufacturers.
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No it isn't. It may have an edge in battery technology still, but it's behind the curve in most aspects of car manufacturing. It's only produced five models and one face lift in twenty years. It's extremely bad at making cars and it's going to get swamped if it doesn't improve.


Them being their own car dealership also shaves off a bit of the cost of the car. There's no third party that has to make profit on sale and service.
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That should be alarming to you: Teslas are not cheap and barely profitable and you are saying that this is in spite of Tesla taking the margin that would normally go to the dealer.

In Norway, there's practically only electric cars for sale now. On the list of top 20 cars sold so far this year, they are all electric.

And Tesla tops that list, with easy margin. Tesla is Norway's most sold car brand, and so far this year every third car sold is a Tesla.
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ICE vehicles will not be allowed to be sold from 2025 in Norway and there are generous subsidies for electric cars. Of course all cars being sold are electric and it is true that Tesla has more capacity than other manufacturers at the moment. This will not continue.

Although other brands of electric cars have become decent, you simply get more car for your money with Tesla.
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I don't think that is the case anymore and, even if it is, it will not continue for long because Tesla has no idea how to get new models into production.
 
jeremyp said:
It's (Tesla’s) extremely bad at making cars…
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Seriously?

52478428882_4a4bc57747.jpg
 
theprestige said:
One can only imagine the number of petty dead man's switches and other time bombs are being left behind in Twitter's IT infrastructure and code base.
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I Am The Scum said:
I really hope that in a week, every instance of the letter E in a tweet is replaced with the poop emoji, and no one knows how to fix it.
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angrysoba said:
They will just look through all the print-outs.
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There are some reports that Elon had the programmers ranked by lines of code written in the last year, and then just terminated the people in the bottom whatever cutoff.

This is a very reliable way of making sure the programmers who worked on the most difficult things, and the ones who are best at writing efficient code, get fired (along with some who were sick for any amount of time or something). What is 'smart' about rewarding spaghetti cludge?
 
tyr_13 said:
There are some reports that Elon had the programmers ranked by lines of code written in the last year, and then just terminated the people in the bottom whatever cutoff.

This is a very reliable way of making sure the programmers who worked on the most difficult things, and the ones who are best at writing efficient code, get fired (along with some who were sick for any amount of time or something). What is 'smart' about rewarding spaghetti cludge?
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Linky?
Because that would be utterly stupid
 
angrysoba said:
Yeah, I am completely baffled by what he is doing. I keep having to wonder to myself if I just don't get some deep genius that is going on that I am not getting. This is why I said...
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Cut more for readability than content. Personally, I didn't think that it's ever really been much of a mystery to be baffled by. Profit wasn't actually the goal. Being in control of public speech to move the public in some desired way was. If there's some actual plan, it's fairly certainly not got much to do with business or actual profit.

Switching "this account is who they say they are" to "anyone can pay a tiny fee and pretend to be anyone" on the eve on an election, for example? It makes no business sense. It makes perfect sense in the context of manipulating the playing field that public speech rests upon to try to achieve some desired outcome (that is undesirable for the general public). That people are being distracted by the inept business angle may actually be a bonus to that goal. "Rich guy bungling" doesn't even remotely elicit the same alarm as "Rich guy clearing the way for terrorists, fraudsters, and con men to trick and screw you and your kids."

I suspect you know this already, though.
 
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jimbob said:
Linky?
Because that would be utterly stupid
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Ironically I'm having trouble linking to the reports on Twitter (I just don't use it enough to figure out why the sharing with clipboard isn't working for me), but it's piggy backing off reporting by Bloomberg which said,

Engineers and director-level staff from Tesla reviewed the lists, the person said asking not to be identified discussing private information. Layoff lists were drawn up and ranked based on individuals’ contributions to Twitter’s code during their time at the company, the people said. The assessment was made by both Tesla personnel and Twitter managers.
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Some employees are, reportedly, saying that a large part of that ranking of contribution was literally the number of lines of code written, which they had to support with a printout. I don't know who the fifty trusted Tesla personnel are, but if that's a metric that was even considered, someone has some very strange ideas on how to rank programmers.

Which might explain some of Tesla's software problems.
 
tyr_13 said:
Ironically I'm having trouble linking to the reports on Twitter (I just don't use it enough to figure out why the sharing with clipboard isn't working for me), but it's piggy backing off reporting by Bloomberg which said,



Some employees are, reportedly, saying that a large part of that ranking of contribution was literally the number of lines of code written, which they had to support with a printout. I don't know who the fifty trusted Tesla personnel are, but if that's a metric that was even considered, someone has some very strange ideas on how to rank programmers.

Which might explain some of Tesla's software problems.
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On a quick look, I'm coming up with the story that Musk's programming, back when he did it, was long and multi-purposed, rather than concise and focused. It would hardly be unthinkable for a guy like Musk to quietly consider that to be the better way to handle things and favor others who did so. With that said, I didn't see any specific corroboration on a quick search.
 
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HansMustermann said:
That or it's just the usual way of making money by sending the company into a death spiral. I've mentioned it before, and it's been happening for decades. It goes kinda like this:

New CEO is brought, who announces that he'll mercilessly cut down costs, starting with all that costly R&D. Which he does, to much investor acclaim. The next quarter, profits are way up, since the costs ARE down. The cost of shares spikes sky high. Those in the know, sell their shares now. Those not in the know, are surprised when one year later the company is in a death spiral and the price of shares plummets. Couple more years down the line, company goes bankrupt or gets sold at a bargain basement cost for whatever IP it has left. CEO cashes in his golden parachute (in addition to however many tens or hundreds of millions he gave himself as a wage in that time), moves on to the next company to ruin for fun and profit.

Now I don't know if that's Musk's plan, or he just thought everyone will flock to give him 8$, or what, but let's just say it wouldn't really surprise me either way. A LOT of companies went exactly through the cycle I described.
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Twitter will not be publicly quoted.
 
jimbob said:
Is it bad of me to wish him the full on Howard Hughes experience?

ETA, he was of course a major inspiration for Tony Stark in the first place
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Given that Stark debuted in 1963 this is rather unlikely.It's
 
Ryokan said:
Tesla may not be the only electric car these days, but it's still way ahead of the curve of the other manufacturers.

Them being their own car dealership also shaves off a bit of the cost of the car. There's no third party that has to make profit on sale and service.

In Norway, there's practically only electric cars for sale now. On the list of top 20 cars sold so far this year, they are all electric.

And Tesla tops that list, with easy margin. Tesla is Norway's most sold car brand, and so far this year every third car sold is a Tesla.

Although other brands of electric cars have become decent, you simply get more car for your money with Tesla.
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Are you sure about that?
 
tyr_13 said:
Some employees are, reportedly, saying that a large part of that ranking of contribution was literally the number of lines of code written, which they had to support with a printout. I don't know who the fifty trusted Tesla personnel are, but if that's a metric that was even considered, someone has some very strange ideas on how to rank programmers.
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I actually predicted he would do this when I first heard about the prints.
 
Ryokan said:
Tesla may not be the only electric car these days, but it's still way ahead of the curve of the other manufacturers.

Them being their own car dealership also shaves off a bit of the cost of the car. There's no third party that has to make profit on sale and service.

In Norway, there's practically only electric cars for sale now. On the list of top 20 cars sold so far this year, they are all electric.

And Tesla tops that list, with easy margin. Tesla is Norway's most sold car brand, and so far this year every third car sold is a Tesla.

Although other brands of electric cars have become decent, you simply get more car for your money with Tesla.
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The only advantage Tesla have is that they're a good battery manufacturer who are ahead of the game there. Aside from that they're well behind the curve, as their manufacturing processes for the cars are deficient in quality or expertise leading to slowly built and badly made cars. And the own the showrooms model isn't as good as you think, the traditional manufacturers wouldn't have ditched it years ago if it was.

If Musk had any business sense he'd transition Tesla to being a pure battery manufacturer and keep them ahead of the game in terms of both quality and speed of delivery.
 
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