Ellen PaoI wonder what the engagement and user numbers are for Twitter this month. They must be going up. If the manbaby can keep his shit together enough to hire a team to run and rebuild content moderation and site policies, his site might actually survive for a while
Advertisers bought reddit ads when the site had revenge porn and unauthorized nude photos; they don't care about toxic content that isn't in their face. They accept a fair amount of toxicity, just less than Twitter has now and not if it looks like it's getting much worse. Musk will figure out a plan, say a mea culpa, charm the right people and probably live another day. And then he'll be more incremental about the move to white supremacy and the frog will still boil to death eventually
Kiva@ekp I have this same worry.
Sascha Pallenberg 🇹🇼 ♻️ ⚡@ekp to be fair: the brands usually don't even know about it. They just but ad packages that are being spread out over various platforms. Brand safety is their main concern and they do care deeply about it.
I worked for corporate communication and we probably not only had one of the most iconic brands in our group but also one with the biggest marketing budgets.
@ekp and to put this into perspective Reddit or Twitter budgets are nothing compared to Youtube, TV, sports etc
Jeff Yang@ekp Advertisers care less about toxicity than they care about uncertainty. They’re like venture capitalists that way.
Also hi Ellen!
@originalspin So nice to find you here!
blherrou@ekp Twitter already wasn't a great ROI though, right? Like they don't have the targeting tools of Facebook or AdSense.
Brian Swetland@ekp I think there's still a lot of assumptions about the site not collapsing as he fires and drives away competent staff, makes radical cuts to infrastructure, etc. Some days-to-weeks periods of instability or downtime are not likely to help things and I'll be shocked if that's not in Twitter's future...
Ed Sanders@ekp I can’t dispute that advertising will come back if he rights the ship, but there’s absolutely no evidence that he can right the ship.
@ekp Also, the site shrinks day-by-day, just as critical mass can provide a catalyst for growth, critical paucity can provide the catalyst for decline. Right now, Twitter is presenting the equivalent an explosion at the fireworks factory, it’s all very exciting, but when the dust settles don’t bet on anyone sticking around.
jhamby@ekp People on Twitter are acting as if we all just misbehave and impersonate brands to tank more stock prices, then he'll get fired and the fascists will go away, but your analysis sounds 100% spot on. You've convinced me that there's next-to-no chance he's going to get fired for any of this, and even if he did, your last sentence will still be true under any likely replacement.
xsk@ekp Call me a cynic, but from my point of view that is because they only care wether a platform they advertise on will hide the content they don’t see serving the purpose of their advertisement. In short, they don’t care to whom they sell as long as they can claim they had “No idea, we will look into it immediately” ( in relative terms that serve our marketing strategy now that we have even more exposure due to that bloke that pushed for that radical content )
@ekp doubt it. He needs to not just woo advertisers back, he needs to increase revenue by 20% consistently. That’s a tall order, and he’s not on track to do that.
He’s likely to face FTC criminal sanction too.
@ekp I think you’re correct that advertisers don’t have a principled objection to toxic content. But I don’t think this will save Elon:
1) The structure of Reddit allowed advertisers to target subs that are brand safe. No screenshots of their ads next to revenge porn, for example. Twitter is one timeline, which is way less brand safe.
2) Elon is trebling down on the behavior that scares off advertisers. Threats do not make friends.
3) Elon is facing a bad ad market.
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D.@ekp yep. and there's probably a decent subscription business - 10 million maga supporters at $8 / month ? Plus pay-per-view video, some crypto scamming, maybe a cut of supplement sales ... milk the base!
I'm not sure it's enough to pay the interest in the debt but maybe they can buy it back at 50 cents on the dollar or something.
It might not work (hopefully won't) but it's certainly imaginable.
PC@ekp What, is that the worst scenario you can think up? Wink. I occasionally wonder if at some point he’ll get badly subverted and do something purposefully evil rather than just chaotic. I’m glad he’s financially handicapped himself. He seems to need a challenge. I believe his autism blinds him to the emotional impact of his chaotic tweets.
whetstone@ekp This is clearly true with competent leadership, but what do you think now that we’ve had a couple weeks of manifest incompetence? Not to say that hiring an anodyne CEO wouldn’t fix Elon’s problem almost immediately, but do you think he is capable?