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Elon Musk to buy Twitter, take company private


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Elon Musk to buy Twitter, take company private
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chucker
 
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2022-11-14, 07:41

Honestly, it's very tricky.

Personally, as a user, I'd even like to pay money, but Twitter Blue wasn't very compelling pre-Musk and it's even less compelling now. It used to cost $5/mo and offered things like editing tweets; now it costs $8/mo and also offers a verified badge that they don't actually verify. I would probably pay $10/yr, maybe even $20. I'm not going to pay $96/yr.

So why did they make it so expensive? Well, because you're actually worth about that as an ad customer as well. (I've seen estimates that the average user has an advertiser value of $12/mo, even.)

I imagine they'll do something like "large organizations can bulk-buy Twitter Blue", and if it's something like $2,000/yr for NYT, that might be an expense they say yes to.

It's not that I think Elon has an easy job ahead. It's that some of the things he's done so far are bafflingly dumb. He'd gain so much by 1) talking less 2) spending more time thinking certain policies through. Previous Twitter Inc. management wasn't great, but they had, actually, put a lot of thought into things like "how do we do moderation? What about local laws?" etc.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
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2022-11-14, 10:22

I love that Congress is telling him to fix it now or "Congress will". Like the government needs to step in while he works out the bugs.

The internet is the internet, trying to rule it is not the place of any government.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
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Ryan
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Join Date: May 2004
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2022-11-14, 11:41

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
Honestly, it's very tricky.

Personally, as a user, I'd even like to pay money, but Twitter Blue wasn't very compelling pre-Musk and it's even less compelling now. It used to cost $5/mo and offered things like editing tweets; now it costs $8/mo and also offers a verified badge that they don't actually verify. I would probably pay $10/yr, maybe even $20. I'm not going to pay $96/yr.

So why did they make it so expensive? Well, because you're actually worth about that as an ad customer as well. (I've seen estimates that the average user has an advertiser value of $12/mo, even.)

I imagine they'll do something like "large organizations can bulk-buy Twitter Blue", and if it's something like $2,000/yr for NYT, that might be an expense they say yes to.

It's not that I think Elon has an easy job ahead. It's that some of the things he's done so far are bafflingly dumb. He'd gain so much by 1) talking less 2) spending more time thinking certain policies through. Previous Twitter Inc. management wasn't great, but they had, actually, put a lot of thought into things like "how do we do moderation? What about local laws?" etc.
The number of companies who would buy Blue in bulk is too small to bring in any serious revenue. I was on a team that examined ideas like this recently and the fact is newsrooms just don't have any money outside of the very top (NYT, CNN, etc). There's not enough money in the market to justify any product investment. At best you're making an extra $1-2 mil/year.
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PB PM
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2022-11-14, 15:12

The only option for Twitter is to find a way to make more off user data if it wants to live.
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kieran
@kk@pennytucker.social
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2022-11-14, 18:39

I use Twitter constantly and would 100% be their target market for a subscription, but Twitter Blue just didn't make sense to me.

I don't use any of the Twitter main apps and use Twitteriffic as my client on all of my devices. I pay them for Twitter rather than pay Twitter itself.

No more Twitter. It's Mastodon now.
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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
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2022-11-14, 19:19

Quote:
Originally Posted by kieran View Post
I use Twitter constantly and would 100% be their target market for a subscription...
HOW do you use Twitter? Like, over the course of a typical "exchange".


...
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kieran
@kk@pennytucker.social
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2022-11-14, 20:26

I read twitter constantly during the course of my day. Any time I need to waste time or just look at a few things, Twitteriffic is the app I open.

I don't post nearly as much as I used to, but I still interact, mostly with the same people that I've been interacting with for the last 10 years on Twitter. Not so much "new" people

No more Twitter. It's Mastodon now.
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chucker
 
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2022-11-14, 22:16

Quote:
Originally Posted by kieran View Post
I use Twitter constantly and would 100% be their target market for a subscription, but Twitter Blue just didn't make sense to me.

I don't use any of the Twitter main apps and use Twitteriffic as my client on all of my devices. I pay them for Twitter rather than pay Twitter itself.
All of this for me as well except Tweetbot. The $6/yr (I think) are worth it.
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kieran
@kk@pennytucker.social
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2022-11-14, 22:26

I thought I had mentioned it, but Twitter is by far my largest source of news. I see things on Twitter and then do deeper dives into specific sites if necessary.

I can't even imagine things like sports games, elections, natural disasters, etc... without being able to open Twitter and follow along in real time.

No more Twitter. It's Mastodon now.
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drewprops
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Join Date: May 2004
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2022-11-15, 09:07

Twitter is great for breaking news. It has been my experience that it specializes in either train wreck situations or hyper deep dives into contentious minutiae of single topics.

I'm more of a generalist. Maybe I'm not following the right accounts?

I watch old-fashioned television for local news (there is a lot) and catch the nightly world news for what we now recognize as a "log" of daily events. I can jump on things I see there and track them down online from 12 different directions.

And of course my phone explodes just like yours when something big happens. News apps.

The internet offers so much to suit so many. It will be a real loss if he bungles Twitter.

...
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
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2022-11-16, 08:51

So Musk said get hardcore or leave. I really wonder how many will leave from that alone. I mean, they still have bills to pay and such so quitting without another job lined up seems foolish at this point. Especially with Amazon and others cutting jobs in the 10's of thousands.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
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PB PM
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2022-11-16, 10:10

There’s lots of jobs in trucking I hear. Maybe they could do that, it would be more productive for society.
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Ryan
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2022-11-16, 10:40

Here's a great thread on why we had so many engineers. We did a lot of cutting edge work behind the scenes. Elon is throwing all that away.

https://nitter.ca/danluu/status/1592774269733601281#m

(Nitter link to avoid the login interstitial for non-twitter users)
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Brad
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Join Date: May 2004
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2022-11-16, 11:16

Hear, hear.

Much like Amazon and Google and Microsoft and IBM, no matter how much you may hate these companies or their products, in order to build those big products, a lot of smart and dedicated engineering talent and hard work have gone into their foundations that, especially if they're contributing to open source, which many of them are, other unrelated engineers around the world benefit from. They lift everyone up. Twitter engineers have pushed hardware and software in some really interesting places, and that thread is a great summary of some of them.

Also, thank you for linking through Nitter. I've used Nitter more than a few times to try to read things like this.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
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2022-11-16, 13:44

Maybe Musk will just cluster some Mac Studios and all will be well. AAPL stocks go up too! Win!
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Ryan
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2022-11-16, 15:38

There's a running joke at the company about the "load bearing Mac Mini" because in the early days it was both the LDAP and VPN server until someone unplugged it thinking it was unused. Oops.
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turtle
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2022-11-16, 15:44

I had that in my house. Wild that Twitter did to at one point.
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Ryan
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2022-11-16, 15:53

I think most successful startups end up with at least one load bearing laptop somewhere along the way.
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drewprops
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2022-11-17, 07:15

I just found out that insulin is free now. What a time to be alive! 🧐


...
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Ryan
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2022-11-17, 19:25

It's over. The remaining engineers on every core team—core as in "serves the tweets"—have almost all resigned.
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Capella
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2022-11-17, 23:27

With the big Formula 1 race this weekend where everyone's going to be dramatic about Abu Dhabi 21 again, plus the World Cup on Monday, the site's going to take the worst pounding ever when it can't handle it. What a fucking shame.

"A blind, deaf, comatose, lobotomy patient could feel my anger!" - Darth Baras
twitter ; amateur photographer ; fanfiction writer ; roleplayer and worldbuilder
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709
¡Damned!
 
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2022-11-18, 08:25

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan View Post
It's over. The remaining engineers on every core team—core as in "serves the tweets"—have almost all resigned.
Commit to "hardcore" work hours under no leadership and with no direction – or – take 3 months paid time off during the holidays to find a new WFH job? 🤔 Tough call.

So it goes.
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chucker
 
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2022-11-18, 08:29

If there were any sense at all that his vision for this company is something special, it might be interesting to quite a few engineers (especially if they are in their 20s, fit, and not on an H1B visa).

But he seems to have absolutely no idea what he's doing?
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
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2022-11-18, 09:56

Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
Commit to "hardcore" work hours under no leadership and with no direction – or – take 3 months paid time off during the holidays to find a new WFH job? 🤔 Tough call.
Yeah, Musk clearly wanted to purge more under the "volunteer" method so he has less who can sue him for "wrongful termination" or whatever they come up with.

I'd likely stay on if I worked there. Only because I like a challenge. I wouldn't work there because I do work from home and no desire to change that any time soon.

Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
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PB PM
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2022-11-18, 10:12

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
If there were any sense at all that his vision for this company is something special, it might be interesting to quite a few engineers (especially if they are in their 20s, fit, and not on an H1B visa).

But he seems to have absolutely no idea what he's doing?
Considering that Musk pisses people off wherever he goes, how many Tesla and SpaceX employees are suing those companies over things he done, this is not at all surprising. The guy is a train wreck that pushes talented people away wherever he is the boss. New people will come in and take the lower pay, but the company won’t be as good as it was.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
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2022-11-18, 10:43

Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle View Post
I'd likely stay on if I worked there. Only because I like a challenge.
If there was a clear direction or an endpoint everyone was focused on and striving towards together, sure. It might even be fun (short-term). But at this point I don't think Elon even knows what what he wants or means when he says people need to work 'hardcore'. Smash keys faster while cranking up GWAR?

So it goes.
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Ryan
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2022-11-18, 11:37

Quote:
Originally Posted by 709 View Post
If there was a clear direction or an endpoint everyone was focused on and striving towards together, sure. It might even be fun (short-term). But at this point I don't think Elon even knows what what he wants or means when he says people need to work 'hardcore'. Smash keys faster while cranking up GWAR?
^ Exactly.

Anyways every network engineer at the company has now quit or been fired. Good fucking luck without them.
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Bryson
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Join Date: Feb 2005
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2022-11-18, 11:47

In a macabre way, it'll be interesting to see how long it stays up without it's network engineers. An interesting test case...
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Frank777
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2022-11-18, 15:31

On the one hand, there's no better way to rid the company of people you don't want than to make them quit on their own.
'In-person' and 'long hours' are like kryptonite to the latest generation.

But this would seem to reduce the company to a shell. Like others have said, the site's operation and viability seems in question.

I do hope someone has a plan here. I like Twitter and want to see it succeed.
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Frank777
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2022-11-18, 16:03

Factcheck: True
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