I Still Hope Twitter Succeeds

The last few weeks of Elon craziness regarding Twitter has been kind of shocking in all sorts of ways. We knew, going in, that he didn't appear to understand the challenges of running a social media website. His statements regarding free speech suggested that he really didn't understand that concept either. But, every time I point this stuff out, people (often on Twitter) start yelling at me that I'm being unfair to him, not giving him a chance, or they say I'm jealous" (of what?!?) and that we just needed to let him do his thing.

Well.

We're seeing that now. And... it's been a mess. Casey Newton's latest Platformer is almost shocking in how dysfunctional Twitter currently is under Musk. Lots of people are focusing on the headline of the article, in which Musk and his trusty (but equally clueless) team of close advisors tossed around the idea of putting Twitter behind a paywall (you could use it for free for a certain amount of time, and would then need to pay). That idea would destroy the site even more, but whatever. The more interesting bits are just the crazy chaos.

The layoff process has been a disaster to the point that Twitter is now begging some of the people they laid off to come back (from what I've heard, it's not working very well):

Some teams were cut more than others; several were wiped out entirely. As it turned out, though, the company went too far. As I was the first to report on Saturday, within hours of the layoffs, some managers were already being told to ask select laid-off employees if they wanted their old jobs back.

It began as a rumor on Blind, the app where employees of various companies can chat anonymously with their coworkers. But within a day it was being posted in public Slack channels.

Sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4 PM PST on Sunday," one such message from a manager to employees read. I'll do some research but if any of you have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate before 4."

Then, they screwed up the rollout of the key feature that Musk insisted was necessary to pay the bills. A new version of the Twitter Blue subscription plan, that he's confusingly merged with the verification system, but without the verification (whatever, the details don't seem to matter much to him, so I'm not going to explain them much better than that). Apparently, so far, that's going just great as well.

The company rolled out a new version of the app on Saturday with release notes that said the new Blue was now available. (The copy, written by Calacanis, was widely derided for sounding like a phishing email.) The problem is that Blue was not available, and so those who did subscribe found that they had merely gotten access to the current version of Blue.

Then, after a debate about the potential effects of unleashing thousands of new verified accounts onto the platforms in the middle of the US midterm elections, the company postponed the launch.

And, even then, it turns out that the economics of the new Twitter Blue, which, again, is Elon's baby, don't... actually add up.

But the new Blue likely faces larger problems. The existing version only had a little more than 100,000 active subscribers, Platformer has learned. The new version will be 37.5 percent more expensive, and its value seems murky for most regular users of the platform. It's unclear how the company will persuade enough people to subscribe to justify the effort.

[....]

Other employees have warned about a secondary feature of the new Blue that Musk added at the last minute: reducing ad load in the Twitter app by half. Estimates showed that Twitter will lose about $6 in ad revenue per user in the United States by making that change, sources said. Factoring in Apple and Google's share of the $8 monthly subscription, Twitter would likely lose money on Blue if the ad-light plan is enacted.

For what it's worth, I've got fairly decent information suggesting that the loss is actually more than $6. Of course, what that likely means is that Musk's promise that Twitter Blue subscribers will get half the ads" is bullshit. He's going to need to keep the ad rate up higher.

And, yes, Elon is now trying to claim that users are up under his leadership, but (1) it's funny that he's using the same mDAU stat that his own lawsuit mocked as fake and made up and (2) it's extremely unclear if that matters if all the advertisers bail on the site (and given the initial users Elon attracted, it seems like advertisers might stay away).

Anyway, there certainly are many people who are looking at all of this and laughing. There's a certain schadenfreude in watching the world's richest man, who insisted he knew better, show that... maybe he doesn't (though he can't seem to admit that).

And this is leading some to accuse anyone who is pointing all this out of wanting Elon to fail." Again, I know that's true of some people. But I doubt it's the view of most. In my case, I really, really want him to succeed. I've written multiple posts explaining how Elon could actually be good for Twitter. Twitter, historically, has had trouble adapting with the times, rolling out new and useful features, and getting pulled in all sorts of short-term focused directions by a board that was upset that the company wasn't making as much money as others in the space. A singular focus and no Wall St. pressure could do wonders. If that focus were based in reality. And, right now it looks like Elon traded the pressure of quarterly reporting... for the pressure of having to pay off the interest on $13 billion in loans. Not great.

But, Twitter still strikes me (as Elon claimed it did to him) as an extremely important platform regarding the public discourse. I'd like to see the site survive, certainly, but thrive would be even better. I don't care if I'm proven wrong in my predictions, because predictions are there to be proven wrong. Having the site thrive would be even better.

The problem is that Musk seems to be driving the thing off a cliff with surprising speed. His freak-outs over impersonation (which just demonstrate his hypocrisy on the speech issues) are not helping. His similar freak-outs over advertisers bailing (rapidly) are equally distracting and problematic. I wrote the post about Elon speedrunning the content moderation learning curve in hopes that, you know, he might actually do the speedrun and realize that he inherited a system that was actually working quite well already, and the drastic changes he's discussed and keeps threatening (but not implementing yet) are going to create more problems than they solve.

No one is arguing that he can't do whatever he wants with the site. He bought it. He can break it. But all of the chaos and nonsense and the simple refusal to understand what makes Twitter work for people who are not billionaires with a deep-seeded need to be adored, is a problem. I don't want him to fail. I want him to stop messing things up and to make Twitter better, not worse.

So far, he's done the opposite, and it's not... looking good.