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

[jeremyp]

Interesting. I seem to recall Thunderf00t made a video recently claiming that Musk could not buy Twitter because he didn’t have enough money and this was just a PR stunt. I didn’t watch the whole video because frankly he was taking waaay too long to make whatever point or cite whatever evidence he was going to cite, and I just ran out of patience.

Here is what he said on twitter though:

https://mobile.twitter.com/thunderf...7?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet

ETA:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AFWKXe221L0

Thuderf00t made some flawed assumptions. It's true that most of Musk's wealth exists on paper only, in the form of Tesla stock which is grossly overpriced, but that doesn't mean he can't raise the money to buy Twitter. He can just take out loans secured against the Tesla stock.

 

[Darat]

If I was a large stock holder in Twitter (may be a small one god knows where all the pension funds I'm part of are invested) I would snatch his hand off. It is a ridiculous offer.

 

[jeremyp]

Like what I said before. This is a money-making venture only. He won't give two square ***** what people do or do not say on the platform. But when it starts to lose him cash, it will have a "For Sale' sign on it faster than you can launch a penis-rocket.

If it starts losing him money, he'll probably sell it to Tesla. That's what he normally* does.


*where "normally" means he did it with Solar City.

 

[Robin]

I'm waiting to see exactly how Twitter changes before passing judgement on whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.

I suspect the US mid terms will be the time that becomes clear one way or another.

 

[Norman Alexander]

But not in the sense of a sound company, making good consistent profits with long term prospects of strong profits continuing. He'll make money from stock sell off and so on.

Twitter has name recognition, but not much else going for it.

However he does it, he has not bought it to make a loss. It is for his benefit.

 

[Vixen]

Twitter when it first started was good for 'breaking news': all the journalists kept an eye on it. Then it became a personal opinion type alternative to FB, for people who wanted to spout off but not get into debate. Then it became some kind of popularity contest, with people actually 'buying' followers. It is now at the 'Follow Back Friday' stage where everyone scrambles to get more followers, as they once aspired to number of 'friends' on FaceBook (I was always happy with a small circle and was shocked to discover my son and his friends with an automatic 700+ friends). It's the Instagram and Amazon thing, where people constantly check the numbers. For example, what ranking your book has on Amazon today. Then the advertisers zoomed in. Having been ripped off a couple of times by such advertisers - many of them opportunists - on Twitter (and had had an anxious long wait for some trainers from Instagram, advertised as being by a local firm but was now actually going to come all the way from China, in about six weeks [they turned out to be OK]), I will never order any goods advertised on Twitter (or Instagram) again. Although my personal preference is Twitter over FB, I like the two line quickie stuff, I can't say Elon Musk is going to do much to mess it up as it never was anything all that special anyway, albeit brilliant in some ways. Who remembers the days when it regularly crashed because of too many people logging in? It is still good for breaking news and politics IMV. I can't see that Musk is going to reverse that aspect of it. It'll probably go the same way as Friends Reunited as everything reaches a peak and then dies. Even FB is dying.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Musk is a strange bird. He can certainly be erratic, and even mean.

But before we assume he’ll ruin Twitter, at least consider his track record with other endeavors:

Making Tesla a major, successful player in the EV world, pushing other manufacturers to play catch up, all of which overall reduce carbon emissions.

Making reusable boosters a reality, drastically reducing the cost of getting a payload into orbit, allowing…

Launching a gazillion small satellites into orbit to provide reliable access to relatively high speed internet to millions who could not otherwise get it.

I could relate to the doomsaying about Twitter’s future if Musk’s past was littered with ill conceived business plans that resulted in failure. As it is, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on Twitter.

 

[Darat]

Musk is a strange bird. He can certainly be erratic, and even mean.

But before we assume he’ll ruin Twitter, at least consider his track record with other endeavors:

Making Tesla a major, successful player in the EV world, pushing other manufacturers to play catch up, all of which overall reduce carbon emissions.

Making reusable boosters a reality, drastically reducing the cost of getting a payload into orbit, allowing…

Launching a gazillion small satellites into orbit to provide reliable access to relatively high speed internet to millions who could not otherwise get it.

I could relate to the doomsaying about Twitter’s future if Musk’s past was littered with ill conceived business plans that resulted in failure. As it is, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on Twitter.

That seems to be ignoring his "not quite as successful" endeavours (even if I give you his satellites )- if I only count my hits my god I'm legendary!

 

[Segnosaur]

On one hand, Musk's purchase of Twitter may have caused the value of the Trump-Linked twitter replacement Truth Social to drop. (I mean, it was always a scam and was probably going to crash in value anyways, but its nice to see it happen sooner than later, when the failure is more visible.)

From: CNN
Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, the controversial blank-check firm that plans to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group, fell 13%.....the selloff comes as Musk reaches a deal to take over Twitter...Trump Media & Technology Group recently launched Truth Social, a Twitter clone aimed at conservatives whom Trump claims Twitter has silenced.

(I guess people are thinking "why go to Truth Media for my daily dose of white nationalism and russian spam bots when I can go to the much more established Twitter")

On the other hand, we have this:

From: Reuters
Republican lawmakers welcomed news that billionaire Elon Musk, who calls himself a free speech absolutist, was purchasing Twitter...

Be warry of anything that MAGAchud congress critters like Gym Jordan think is a "good thing".

 

[Fast Eddie B]

That seems to be ignoring his "not quite as successful" endeavours (even if I give you his satellites )- if I only count my hits my god I'm legendary!

I’ll plead guilty to cherry picking. It’s just in this case the “hits” are so huge!

I’m not really aware of any big “misses”. Care to elucidate me?

 

[Fast Eddie B]

On one hand, Musk's purchase of Twitter may have caused the value of the Trump-Linked twitter replacement Truth Social to drop. (I mean, it was always a scam and was probably going to crash in value anyways, but its nice to see it happen sooner than later, when the failure is more visible.)

Trump is so personally involved with his new platform that he called it “Truth Central” the other day. Might be better to just rename it Pravda.

 

[Segnosaur]

But before we assume he’ll ruin Twitter, at least consider his track record with other endeavors:

(References to SpaceX/Tesla)

I could relate to the doomsaying about Twitter’s future if Musk’s past was littered with ill conceived business plans that resulted in failure. As it is, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on Twitter.

The issue here is that there are multiple measures of "success" when dealing with an influential organization like Twitter.... Will it be financially successful, and will it be best for society as a whole. Success by one measure does not mean that you are successful in all measures.

Musk certainly has had some pretty big financial/technological successes. But when it comes to Twitter, it is possible that he will continue to make Twitter profitable, while at the same time allowing it to spread misinformation, death threats, and other negative social aspects.

Musk seems to be described as a "free speech absolutist". But he has also talked about wanting to get rid of twitter-bots. (Whether he has a reasonable chance to get rid of twitter-bots remains to be seen.) Overall, I would love to see a reporter ask him a basic question: what will Twitter's policy be towards threats of violence and misinformation. If he says "I will maintain Twitter's policies" then there is less need to worry.

 

[plague311]

That seems to be ignoring his "not quite as successful" endeavours (even if I give you his satellites )- if I only count my hits my god I'm legendary!

And the satellites haven't been all that helpful to others occupying space. They almost had a collision recently, and a few dropped from the sky not that long ago.

I don't mess with Twitter, or social media in general, much anymore. Anyone with half a brain can predict what the comments on every thread, from politics to sports, are going to consist of. It was a hoot for the first few weeks I was on it though.

 

[Ziggurat]

Twitters' value is going to drop like a stone, since the best&brightest will jump ship and users will look for something different.

I see no evidence that Twitter had the best and brightest to begin with.

As for its value dropping... is that even a bad thing?

 

[Segnosaur]

That seems to be ignoring his "not quite as successful" endeavours (even if I give you his satellites )

And the satellites haven't been all that helpful to others occupying space. They almost had a collision recently, and a few dropped from the sky not that long ago.

Not to mention they seem to be negatively impacting astronomy....

From: Vox
Over five minutes, a train of 19 satellites had crossed into the telescopes’ view, scarring the observation with bright parallel marks... (it didn't take) long to figure out whose satellites they were: A week earlier, Elon Musk’s SpaceX had launched 60 small satellites into low Earth orbit.
...
the constellation satellites are a cause for straight-up alarm among many astronomers. In the next decade, they have been hoping to capture an even wider, deeper view of the cosmos from the Earth. And the satellites will get in the way.

 

[Ziggurat]

Thuderf00t made some flawed assumptions.

That's an evergreen statement. Even when I agree with him, I don't trust his analysis.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I see no evidence that Twitter had the best and brightest to begin with.

As for its value dropping... is that even a bad thing?

twitter going down in flames would be a great thing.

 

[plague311]

twitter going down in flames would be a great thing.

I'd supply the marshmallows.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

twitter going down in flames would be a great thing.

It's just a tool. One that can be configured to suit different needs.

My Twitter feed is mainly used as a news feed. As such, it works pretty well. Most often I'll tweet responses to tweets, maybe once or twice a day. Rarely, if ever, do I tweet something "unprovoked". Anyway, I'd miss it and for me it serves a useful function.

 

[Ziggurat]

It's just a tool. One that can be configured to suit different needs.

That functionality is very unlikely to go away.