1: Some games I play (usually mobile games) give a bonus if you link to your Twitter account. (They never tweet on my behalf or anything, and I rarely tweet anything for them to spy on either.) Funny enough, they all call it Twitter, I can’t think of one that calls it “X” yet.
2: There is one game developer for an online game that I’m heavily involved in early in alpha (as a customer/financial supporter/tester) and they use Twitter a lot. It’s a way to engage with them. Probably 95% of all my tweets are just directed at them. I wouldn’t be shocked if they shut down their Twitter account though, since they also have a forum like this one and a Discord channel to engage with people.
Other than that, I don’t use it at all. It could shut down tomorrow and it really wouldn’t impact me in any meaningful way. I don’t even have the urge to swap to another platform because I’d just go there, create an account, and then not do anything with it.
If you want to stay up to date on the latest news in science, technology, AI, or a host of other subjects, Twitter is still the best place to go. All of my favorite science reporters are there.
I suspect that in terms of advertising, Twitter will go the way of Fox - lots of ads for garbage products, ads aimed at seniors and conservative people. It won’t be nearly as lucrative as the big ad buys from giant companies, so Musk will have to find another source of revenue, or cut costs further, or accept that he will have to pay the price for his free speech stance by subsidizing Twitter.
Twitter was making about $4 billion per year, of which 3.5 billion is ad sales and the rest is licensing of information. If half of his ad revenue stays gone, that’s $1.75 billion in lost revenue.
So far, the Twitter paid membership is a bust. L:ast I saw, he had about 8,000 paid members, out of several hundred million monthly users. At $20 ea, that’s $160,000 per month. Pretty much a rounding error in his lost revenue. To fix the revenue hole he would need to grow that by a factor of 100.
That said, Musk can afford a billion or two per year indefinitely if he’s serious. You can’t shut down Twitter by starving it. And the user base is remarkably stable - only down something like 5% since 2019, and it’s been growing again recently. Musk gets an awful lot of free publicity, and so does Twitter by association.
Either way, it feels to me like the recent growth in accounts must be at least partially propped up by porn spam accounts, and all those weirdo ads/vendors.
Musk making a fool of himself has compelling entertainment value. His fanboys should encourage him to write, direct and star in his very own major motion picture.
Kind of a shame that’s already what he’s paying just to service on the bank loan he took out to purchase Twitter. Now poor Linda can’t even claim that it’s cashflow positive if you ignore its debts.
Oh yeah, I wouldn’t be investing in Tesla stock nowadays either.
It’s the same audience as the sovereign citizen who represented himself at trial for lacking a driver’s license or vehicle registration, and was so eloquent in his presentation that the judge told him to shut up, move on, and stick to the facts. There’s a YouTube video I posted in the SovCits thread. The guy could have been Elmo’s more sober brother.
It occurs to me as I peruse these pictures of Elmo pontificating in interviews and at events that the reason he has a security detail following him around isn’t because he’s rich and might be kidnapped for ransom. Who would pay it? The real reason he has a security detail, I have come to realize, is because he has such an eminently punchable face – the sanctimony and pomposity just demands that you limber up your best arm for a really good hit…
Why, because the title of “CEO” is a pathetic fake, and she’s actually just an advertising sales manager whose sole purpose is to bring in more advertising revenue, and her drug-addled boss just told all current and potential Twitter advertisers to go fuck themselves? Would that spoil her day?
I’ve said it before, but Yaccarino will not be at Twitter/X very long, and will eventually leave with a hugely tarnished reputation and likely a drug or alcohol problem, which is a typical consequence of unmanaged stress. Unless she’s a lot weirder than I thought, by which I mean “wants Elmo to impregnate her, birthing a lovely child that they will name Y^2+1” and who will become heir to the Elmo fortune.
You’re right, I did lose a million billion dollars last year. I expect to lose a million billion dollars this year. I expect to lose a million billion dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million billion dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… sixty two hundred and fifty years.
Genuine question, Sam - what are Musk’s major sources of revenue these days? I assumed Tesla was the biggest. If that’s the case then I’d say he has a problem. My EV plans were basically to watch the charging networks mature and vehicle ranges increase, and in the next year or two buy a Tesla. Now I wouldn’t touch one with a shitty stick - there are plenty of non-Musk alternatives out there. I imagine that’s a pretty common position among prospective EV purchasers. In short, his performance on Xitter is damaging his ability to support it with funds from his other businesses.
I assume SpaceX is profitable, and also somewhat insulated from the effects of his behavior, as he isn’t selling direct to Joe Public with that one. What about his other businesses/sources of revenue? Supporting Xitter “indefinitely” is starting to feel like a stretch.
It’s a pity the show didn’t have a camera on her. It would make for an interesting compare-and-contrast with Deborah Birx listening to Doctor Donald expounding on the bleach-and-sunlight COVID cure.
< Raises hand > I’ll be replacing my LEAF at some point (serving me very well at the moment) and Tesla used to be one of my top picks. Now I would not touch one with your shitty stick.
I do hate to say it since my stepson has one, but I always assume the driver is an asshole anytime I see a Tesla. My stepson isn’t an asshole, he just bought his Tesla before things got so crazy.
I have seen a bumper sticker at least once that Yelled: I bought it before (or something like that).
It seems like they never use their blinkers, that’s for sure. To be fair, that may be true for more people than not at this point though.
We are looking at an EV and Tesla is our top candidate. I’ve done a lot of reading, video watching, making of spreadsheets, etc and the Teslas are the best fit for us. No, I don’t like Musk, but I’m not going to spend this much money on a second choice just because we don’t like him. And, I promise you that I will always use my blinker since this is a big complaint of mine about other drivers. So many people do not use them or think the ideal time to turn one on is AS they initiate the turn.
We have a Model Y with a lease ending this summer. We were just going to replace it like for like (and I’m only interested in leasing because I think the technology is moving so fast) but now, nope. No more money to Elon.
Which is sad, because for the most part, the Tesla has been a great car. The cruise control is mega-janky and I hate that they took out the parking sensors, but for traveling, the charging network and planning in the map cannot yet be beat.
That’s me as well. My current car (which is only 6 years old) is a Chevy Spark. I really like it and the Chevy Bolt is now really attractive to me. I was drooling over Tesla cars for years but the Bolt is more practical and affordable and again, I’ve become a Chevy fan. When I feel ready to make the switch to electric, that’s probably where I’ll be leaning.
It does have a similar problem to Tesla though… It’s so popular that it’s hard to get one.
Y’know, if Musk’s obnoxious trollery makes millions of conservatives buy an EV so they can own the libs, it’ll be the greatest act of double-agent trolling in human history.
