Twitter “no longer exists” as a company, merges into Musk’s X Corp | Hacker News Reader

Twitter “no longer exists” as a company, merges into Musk’s X Corp

arstechnica.com

29 pointsbarbazoo29 comments

I have a strong feeling Musk didn't buy Twitter to grow Twitter. I have strong feeling that Musk bought Twitter for technology and people's information and to use it however he sees fit to profit from it.

Probably, it's a good reminder to everyone that business and personal expression mix like oil and water.

Devils advocate, though - how do you grow Twitter? I ask this as someone who doesn't have an account on it (asked and answered, I guess), but my impression is that Twitter pretty much has everyone who matters already. The featureset is also fairly complete, at least insofar as what you can add without breaking the site - the last significant feature was NFT profile pictures. It sorta seems like Twitter did way better than it ever should have, and then capitalized on that hype to build a facade of a meaningful and loved brand.

If you could get normal people to use it, it would grow. I am not entirely sure what is necessary, but Twitter has/had a lot of small problems (notably scams, which are unfortunately coming back again).

Twitter is a _great_ idea IMHO. It could be _the_ tool to do _any_ communication. It could displace WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Instagram, Facebook, Substack, Medium, YouTube, etc. etc. A single app where you do everything, and now imagine if you had payments in the app! Musk being Musk, I assume he will support doge first.

> Twitter is a _great_ idea IMHO. It could be _the_ tool to do _any_ communication.

I mean, this is where I centrally disagree. Twitter shouldn't be this. It should be a microblogging platform that integrates with the rest of the web, not the revival of Web3.0. You shouldn't trust a business to handle "any communication", which is why FOSS software has dominated all truly secure and worthwhile messaging protocols.

It's interesting how we've seen the rise and fall of titan walled gardens from Compuserve to AOL to MySpace to Facebook, and yet on the other side of the world WeChat seems to go from strength to strength.

What's their secret sauce?

I agree with you.

However consider how much you could get from people's data and a large wealth of information to train on while you're also trying to develop driverless cars and want to make sure people buy your stuff and not someone else's.

Or like you said, all the important people are already on it and now he's got access to them through the app.

I agree with you. Although I wouldn't bet against Musk when it comes to growth. He may come up with some quirky ideas like free Doges for anyone that sign up for Blue...

Why would anyone sign up for blue to get free doge when they can buy thousands of doge with the money it costs to sign up for blue?

I think his motivations changed drastically after the market drop.

Before, he mostly wanted to "liberate" Twitter (whatever that means) and spread his brand. Money was a lesser factor.

But the massive financial loss changed the calculus. I dont think he would have so desperately tried to cut costs otherwise.

Um Twitter dropped in price AFTER Musk offered to buy it at above market value if I'm recalling correctly. He put himself in that position willingly.

He didn't buy it to liberate it. He bought it to make money off of it.

IMO only, but it seemed obvious to me he bought Twitter to have a personal, unfiltered, unaccountable platform to pontificate from. The trove of information he now has access to is gravy.

IMO only, but it seemed obvious to me that he bought Twitter because he signed a contract in a mixture of arrogance and bad faith entirely expecting to find be able to use the process to embarrass Twitter on the way to wriggling out of his commitment and then found himself trapped by it while Twitter’s now-former management and owners laughed all the way to the bank.

I don't think those necessarily are contradictory rationales. With that much hubris being slung around, there's room for any number of reasons, which seemed to have changed over time.

Speaking of hubris, is it possible there’s tons of non public factors that affected his rationale and we’ll never really know the whole truth?

But didn't he forgo many of the standard contingency clauses that he would have been able to use to wiggle out of the deal?

I'd say the attitude you're describing seems more like the second chapter of the story, where the first was that he earnestly wanted to aggressively acquire it.

> But didn't he forgo many of the standard contingency clauses that he would have been able to use to wiggle out of the deal?

That's the arrogance part, yes.

He bought Twitter because he had to buy it.

Sure but only because he offered to. He always wanted to buy it. He just wanted a better price when the entire stock market tanked shortly afterwards

I think he was just bluffing, but in the end it turned out that his bluff was legally binding.

The main skepticism I see of Musk on here is he’s motivated by greed. Recently saw someone suggesting he’s pumping doge to earn a few million, which frankly is a waste of time for a guy worth $200B. But the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. If anything, he has a remarkable disregard for money. Back when he poured half his (modest at the time) fortune into SpaceX, the idea they would succeed was batshit crazy. Private rocket companies just didn’t exist. Only the worlds superpowers with their infinite budgets and pick of the litter of scientists had made it to orbit. He had to have known there was a 99% chance he’d lose his money.

Tesla and electric cars was somehow even more reckless. EVs were a complete joke and nobody had started a successful car company in the US in decades. Unlike other billionaires, he doesn’t buy yachts or islands or seem interested in anything but work. This whole greed motive just doesn’t hold water.

The greed motive has nothing to do with conspicuous consumption or work ethics, or risk management. He is most definitely motivated by greed, regardless of how he expends the money or perceive risk. I'd go further and say no one who lives on a salary can really grasp how a billionaire calculates risk.

In my experience, people who start companies for the money always fail, because their conviction is weak. Especially risky ones like EVs and rockets. I simply don’t buy it. I think this attitude is mainly a defense mechanism.

It's a selection bias to think you have insight into enterprise success based on how your friends fared there...

Musk openly crapped all over Twitter tech and publicly humiliated the team - before and after the acquisition. Twitter tech is worth having, but Musk will realize it after he destroys it with a million quick hacks and bandaids.

He’s always stated plainly that he loves those “everything” apps.

He’s planning to integrate financial services into the app. Probably even some form of crypto support.

I'm a firm believer in the UNIX philosophy. These jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none pieces of software are terrible. The equivalent of putting all your digital eggs in one digital basket.

Agreed — but evidently the other 99.999% of humanity loves them.

I assume he won't be selling it in the near future then.

Does Musk owning Twitter affect your interest in purchasing a Tesla EV? For me, I was never all that interested in Tesla EVs, but this pretty much just repulses me entirely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com