I am assuming that Elon is not this much of a dumbass - what am I missing here?
No it wouldn't. Literally tons of people would do it and plenty of competitors have tried or are trying.
Per the value of the userbase and the cost of switching: well look at some of the competitors I mentioned, the ones Joe Rogan and others flock too when they get a temporary Twitter ban, do they not return immediately after their ban is lifted?
The cost of code and marketing can't beat Twitter's network effect. Getting Elon, Joe, and plenty of other personalities to move also is no guarantee that even a slight portion of the userbase switches.
I also think its odd to mix altruistic ideas like free speech platforms with profitable network effects. If it's just about speech, why can't such a platform co-exist with Twitter? Why does it need to overtake Twitter?
No? It is entirely possible to imagine consequential features that are uncompelling: Actively hostile features.
>I also think its odd to mix altruistic ideas like free speech platforms with profitable network effects. Why does it need to overtake Twitter?
What is the value in Twitter over the "free speech" clones if Twitters audience doesn't have value? Does Twitter have such unique features that couldn't be replicated much cheaper than the buy price?
I really feel like a lot of you guys vastly overestimate the impact of Twitter on The Real World. Elon Musk included.
Musk doesn't have a strong ability to deceive. He doesn't have strong interpersonal skills given his mental affliction. You should take what he says at face value other than when he's making an obvious joke and lots of things make a lot more sense.
Lewis' trilemma as always applies. He either a great deceiver, completely believes what he says but is beyond his ability, or actually will do what he says.
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
Musk has a trend of doing this with investments. It's purely speculative but I think it is reasonable to suggest based on Musk's previous actions I do not think he is serious about buying Twitter.
Also there's recent news that Musk was forced to settle despite believing that he would have won the case because bankers were holding Tesla hostage.
This is what makes Musk appealing. He doesn't care about the money. He cares about the future. Money is a means to an ends. As he's stated, the company only needs to make enough money to continue to grow. It doesn't need to be profitable above $0 after R&D.
He has been talking about the future for 20 years right now with little to show for. Tesla accounts for 1.3% of all cars sold in 2021.
In the same timeframe Microsoft put the future™ on every Americans desk, Apple put it in every pocket, Google created it on the web and Amazon delivered it to your door.
But of course people take all of that for granted because those companies never tried to substitute themselves to religion, in the sense that hope for the future™ is seen as a product to be pushed in the market to gain synchopants.
Little to show for??? It's kind of hard to completely change the world consumer car purchases. 1.3% of all cars is HUGE. https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-v... It takes a long long time to get this large, even if you're growing at over 50% to 100% per year which is a ridiculous growth rate.
> In the same timeframe Microsoft put the future™ on every Americans desk, Apple put it in every pocket, Google created it on the web and Amazon delivered it to your door.
You're comparing a company making real physical large objects to companies selling software. None of those companies even compare to Tesla.
> But of course people take all of that for granted because those companies never tried to substitute themselves to religion, in the sense that hope for the future™ is seen as a product to be pushed in the market to gain synchopants.
Because software, much as people like to tell you, will not solve all our problems. Software plays a key part of every industry and is integrating itself into more and more industries (like with Tesla and SpaceX with software being one of key aspects that make what they do work), but software itself will not change the future.