Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

Well, it has finally been admitted that 1 year later after the layoffs that forecasts of the complete collapse of Twitter/X were somewhat delusional and remains stickier than thought. Unsurprisingly.

Twitter/X should have been shut down 6 months ago maximum according to such prophecies like this one [0] by many HNers here. For example, even with predictions of Threads to 'to hollow out twitter in extremely rapid fashion' [1] giving them just months after launch. Not even that happened, let alone the other dramatic changes to the platform.

We have given the doom-mongers plenty of time for Twitter/X to shut down or completely collapse and go permanently offline but all we got was the alternatives like T2 shutting down [2] due to Threads crushing and killing off the rest of the smaller competitors (Spill, Post.news, Substack Notes, etc) and some Mastodon instances shutting down to recentralize to Mastodon.social, the most centralized and one of the only viable instances that has enough funding to be sustainable.

We are slowly realizing that the completed takeover that happened 1 year ago, lots of emotions and hysteria took over by a small minority begging for the collapse that never happened.

[0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/08/1062886/heres-ho...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580669

[2] https://pebble.is/gabor/status/340649

To me, Twitter/X is still running purely because Musk and the banks he used to finance the purchase REALLY don't want to admit to a failure. Musk is very high-profile, with many government contracts, Neuralink coming in hot, and Tesla under a lot of fire over the Cybertruck. He really doesn't need the bad press right now that he pissed away $44bn. Reporting a valuation of $19bn even now is him slowly ripping off the bandaid to prevent too many eyes focusing on his other projects.

- US web traffic down 19%

- Ad portal traffic down 16%

- Mobile traffic on iOS/Android down 17.8%

- Granted, all social traffic was down around 3-4% globally, but we can see the anomaly that is Twitter's traffic.

To me, it's all rubbernecking at a car burning on the side of the road. We'd rather see it burn down while we're there, rather than watch it on the news.

The simple fact is that Elon's a smart and ballsy businessman, and most of us aren't.

People will shout "agile" from the rooftops, but when it comes to actual change, people are (as they've always been) uncomfortable with it.

In the case of running a business it comes down to Profit = Revenue - Expenses. The purchase of Twitter brought in and will continue to bring in change that aligns with this formula.

People can be upset that a bunch of people got fired, or that new changes have happened, but as they say, it's not personal, it's just business.

Musk isn't god; not everything works out nor is it wise to defer to someone in that way.

> In the case of running a business it comes down to Profit = Revenue - Expenses. The purchase of Twitter brought in and will continue to bring in change that aligns with this formula.

Do you think Musk bought Twitter in order to make money? By that standard, it's been a horrible failure. The prediction that it will change is groundless speculation.

> Musk isn't god; not everything works out nor is it wise to defer to someone in that way.

I never said he is or that everything he does is guaranteed to work.

> Do you think Musk bought Twitter in order to make money?

I think he bought it to bring an idea to life, and that in order to do that it needs to have a viable business model behind it.

And it already has and is changing. I don't think that's a controversial statement...

The forecasts were overblown and X/Twitter is definitely stickier than people thought, but pointing at cherry-picked hyperboles to state that the criticisms were just emotions and hysteria is just ridiculous. Twitter did quite indeed suffer a lot from the Musk takeover, just by looking at ad figures, engagement, and the actual content on the site.

Anecdote: I used to be a daily twitter user, and I barely use it now because you can pay to traffic terrible content (not ads)

You're right, it's been a roaring success, with massively tanking revenue, more fraud/spam, brand destruction, and declining user base! You really showed 'em.

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