Canuck
3639
Not sure why Twitter sign ups would be at an all time high right now. You would think that by 2022 most people who were interested in signing up for Twitter would be signed up already. Maybe it’s all bots and people moving over from the right-wing Twitter copycats now that they think “their guy” is in charge?
A big chunk of it is people testing the limits of Musk’s Twitter. They’re signing up for burner accounts so they can:
- Try to impersonate other people (Eli Lilly etc.)
- Try to post copyrighted material.
- Try to post stuff that would have gotten them banned before … but hey, the mods have all been fired!
- Try to troll Elon, etc. etc.
Of course, all of these trollish new users generate more costs (through moderation etc.) than revenue.
But let’s not dwell on that. Twitter usage is up! Sure we lose money on every new troll user, but we make it up in volume!
Nothing interesting. It’s the same old “Our advertising will be so engaging, it will be the content. Users will rush to consume it!” pipe dream that executives who don’t actually understand the concept of entertainment have been salivating over since the dawn of time. (Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is the most expensive version of this.)
If you look at the attached image, it’s of a bog standard “What GoT House are you?” quiz, though. Which is an old and stale idea …
… but so are the notions that Twitter is going to expand via long-form Tweets and video, both of which have been under discussion at Twitter for a decade. Strangely enough, neither feature every actually saw the light of day.
Could it be that smart people looked at the numbers and determined these features wouldn’t be profitable? Surely not. The problem must have been that they didn’t have fearless visionary Elon there to lead them. With Elon, everything old is new again (especially his dad memes.)
What if the long videos are porn? Then you can have short clips that serve as um…entertainment, and you can pay more money to not just see the advertisement but the full product? The longer messages can be interactions between the model and users [1] . All of these features really are part of one consistent model, it’s just a failure of imagination on our part to understand what this very stable genius is doing.
[1] side note: Communication between clients and models will actually go through 3rd party agencies that will pose as the model, but get paid a fraction of the model’s price/hour to drive engagement. Later advances in self driving dirty talk will cut out the middle person and allow Elon to directly manage all porn stars in his new expanded empire.
jsnell
3642
That gets Twitter booted out of the app stores. Now, Musk has been ranting about app store rules the last week (including his hilarious threat to build his own smartphone) and teaming with fellow oligarch Tim Sweeney, so it is possible that is the way he is heading. Though more likely it is just about fearing Twitter gets booted out of the app stores due to insufficient moderation of hate speech.
They won’t lose money if they can convince the advertisers that usage is up. At the end of the day eyeballs is what sets ad prices. That user active minutes metric implies that Twitter usage has gone up. Once the controversy dies down and skittish advertisers come back it could mean a nice little boost to ad revenue.
Well in theory, if ad spend wasn’t dropping globally due to economic conditions. And they are still saddled with horrible debt service so the outlook is shaky. But I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that Twitter is toast.
…and, it must be added, if they can refrain from scaring the advertisers away with their content.
True, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen. In the short term, while there’s uproar and the advertisers don’t want bad PR, they’ll be skittish. In the long term when things calm down they’ll be back.
Maybe? What’s the ad revenue like on Parler? I have no idea.
Better yet, what’s the ad revenue on 4chan?
Twitter has a user base much larger than either of those and a general audience. Citing internet cesspools as comparisons doesn’t seem fair, unless one assumes that Twitter will turn into a similar cesspool. I personally don’t buy that. I do not think it’s going to get any worse than it was during the height of Trump, and that didn’t chase off the audience last time . . .
I’m not citing them, I’m making the point that what Twitter sells — what advertisers are buying from Twitter — is brand safety through content moderation.
There is clearly some level below which advertisers will not play. I doubt that Twitter will become as bad as 4chan, but is there any reason to believe it won’t become as bad as Parler? Or that there isn’t some bar not quite that low but still too low for most advertisers, which Twitter will achieve? Good content moderation takes high staffing levels, and Twitter doesn’t want high staffing levels. That this might cost them a lot of advertising revenue seems at least in the realm of reasonable possibility.
Most reasonable people I know that were using Twitter before still are. Some left briefly and came back for the audience. I see a lot of hand wringing about how degraded Twitter is in specific instances (that get the megaphone treatment), but most everyone I know seems to still be using it without much issue.
The worst case scenario of Twitter seems more like projection, rather than the likely outcome.
I’m still using Twitter. I’m not sure what that has to do with whether Elon’s vision for Twitter has a workable revenue model going forward, especially in light of the debt service he has saddled the company with.
JonRowe
3651
Well, it hasn’t quite yet become “hell” and it is very easy to block and ignore the people you don’t want to hear from, at least for the normal user.
It does feel like Elon is doing his best to drive as many people away as he can though.
Is this like a Major League situation? Is Grimes guaranteed twitter stock in the split?
Alstein
3652
It also depends on who leaves. If Twitter’s base becomes a bunch of poor folks and older folks, that will decline the ad revenue more then you’d think.
Young, richer folks are what the advertisers chase.
Per the InfoWars trials, supplement (and copper flim flams) incoming!
I’m not seeing things the same way. Which isn’t to say that I disagree with your statement, but more that I don’t think it’s applicable to the Twitter situation. I think looking at the situation with a pure quality-of-content lens misses the point.
While advertisers are skittish about special-purpose platforms that are dedicated to bad crowds, I don’t think they will have any problem with a general-purpose platform that pays at least lip service to moderating the worst content.
Parler and 4chan have small and dedicated audiences that are there just for the shit show. Twitter has a large general audience most of which don’t want to participate in any particular shit show.
DoubleG
3655
Musk is now posting white supremacist “secret numbers”
Even I’ve heard of 88, not much of a secret…
I have not. Should I google it or will I regret that?
Eighth letter of the alphabet. Two word phrase.
