Elon Musk reportedly discussing putting all of Twitter behind paywall
It would seem $8 a month for Twitter Blue might just be the beginning. Musk is allegedly toying with paywalling all of Twitter.
Ever since Elon Musk officially closed the deal to buy Twitter and took over ownership of the company, the changes to the platform have been coming fast and furious, for better or worse. Musk has laid off employees, changed verification, and paraded the new Twitter Blue, which now costs $8 a month for access to additional Twitter features, verification, and post priority. Unfortunately, it might not stop at a premium for Twitter Blue. Reportedly, Elon Musk has been toying with a plan to paywall all of Twitter.
These supposed plans were shared in a recent report by Platformer. According to the report, sources familiar with the situation shared that Elon Musk and advisor David Sacks were discussing plans to possibly paywall all of Twitter in a meeting on Monday. Among the models suggested were one that would allow browsing of Twitter up to a certain point before demanding a subscription fee.
“One such plan might allow everyone to use Twitter for a limited amount of time each month but require a subscription to continue browsing,” the report claimed.
Source: Susan Walsh/AP Photos
Paywalling all of Twitter would be a risky move for Elon Musk, despite the CEO’s efforts to recoup the $44 billion he paid for the platform and make Twitter profitable. The revised Twitter Blue has rolled out, which runs $8 USD per month and allows users verification, post priority (unverified users will be pushed down the list in replies), and other features such as limited Tweet editing. Musk’s new Twitter team has also cracked down on the platform, banning a number of high-profile accounts impersonating him over the last several days.
Nonetheless, putting up a paywall for all Twitter use feels like something far down the line at this time. As the current Twitter works on sprucing up Twitter Blue, we’ll see if the paywall rumor becomes more solidified. Stay tuned as we continue to follow the situation for further updates.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Elon Musk reportedly discussing putting all of Twitter behind paywall
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That would be glorious.
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check out his management vision:
https://twitter.com/davidbrunelle/status/1589822594018312192
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He's clearly very smart in certain areas, just not *all* areas - like everyone!
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which ones are those?
harnessing generational wealth bestowed by his parents on the backs of emerald miners?
paying other people to do hard work?
messing up implementations and getting fired but not before vesting enough equity to become even wealthier and thus buy the time of more smart people?
he's really good at failing up-
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I don't think he's especially smart. Not any smarter than a lot of folks, at least.
For example, I don't think he's smarter than most of the people I've worked with.
I suppose I've failed to communicate well here but when I say I think he's an idiot it's because of his radically incorrect assessments of his own capabilities across a variety of domains. He's incompetent in most of the things he does.
He is likely an entirely middling software engineer. Maybe a middling mathematician. Where he excels is in his lack of moral compass, a splash of luck, and a large amount of wealth handed to him out the gate.
I don't believe he is remarkable in an intellectual capacity, and the degree to which he mistakenly assumes his limited facilities extend to all domains of knowledge renders that unremarkable intellect all the less remarkable.
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There’re plenty of engineering types who’ve worked directly with him who can vouch for the depth and breadth of his knowledge in cars and rockets. But Twitter isn’t a technical problem with a solution you can easily benchmark.
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I think it's beyond highly unlikely that most engineers given infinite time and money could produce Tesla and SpaceX in their current form. Lots of people inherit tons of wealth and fail to deploy it productively let alone to this level of success. Lots of founders make big exits and then never hit again with their newfound wealth, connections and time.
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Tesla and SpaceX are not success stories due to Musk. They are insofar as he wrote the checks and wanted to see them come to fruition. They are not a result of his genius as a leader.
If you could make any argument in favor of him, it's that he knows how to grow teams / hire. Even that, however, is muddied by the fact that he stood on the shoulders of the original founders at Tesla and built a cult of personality around himself that made hiring into SpaceX undoubtedly easier.
Tesla and SpaceX are success stories due to massive teams of motivated engineers, designers, and leaders who posses the real talent.
> Lots of people inherit tons of wealth and fail to deploy it productively let alone to this level of success.
He's made some great bets. He wasn't the genius behind their success.-
Also, as an aside, that many wealthy people don't manage to do this isn't the strongest of arguments.
Many people don't win the Powerball either. That someone did win the Powerball doesn't mean they were eminently qualified to select Powerball numbers and had a special vision for Powerball.-
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He wasn't the reason Paypal succeeded, but he became wealthy from it. He then went to Tesla where the key technology was already built and he began cultivating a reputation that stole a lot of the responsibility for that creation and attributed it to himself. He then went on to work on SpaceX and at that point the hiring handles itself. I had a boatload of really sharp classmates who were interested in aerospace shit and for them there was no 'cooler' option than SpaceX. Those people are why SpaceX succeeded. Not Elon.
I will concede that he succeeded in cultivating a persona that attracted the right talent. That is a skill, I just don't consider it 1:1 with intellect or necessarily genius. And a large portion of it was stolen wholesale from the real geniuses behind Tesla.
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Lots of people have taken over CEO roles without being founders and failed to achieve the types of growth and success Tesla and SpaceX have in far more established markets/companies. There's a reason all those highly motivated teams of people chose to work at those companies instead of others. There's a reason they achieved results there while many other highly motivated teams of people did not achieve results at other companies (ex Twitter). Your argument is that they did it all in spite of him which just isn't that credible even if his management style is flawed in many ways.
Trying to construct a world where Elon is just a rich idiot because you don't like his political views and shitposting just isn't realistic. It's entirely possible he is exceptionally talented at some things which lead to the unprecedented success he's had leading numerous companies. You can try to argue that his repeated, outsized success is pure luck akin to a Powerball winner but there's far more evidence in the other direction. It's not like we haven't seen numerous people prove highly successful in one field and be unable to translate that success to another field, or even another product in the same field. It doesn't mean their first success was all luck.-
> There's a reason all those highly motivated teams of people chose to work at those companies instead of others
Yes, he was first to the market with a vision and excelled at cultivating a cult of personality around himself as a tech visionary on the shoulders of the Tesla founders. I knew a lot of smart people who went to work there because they wanted to be part of it. I believe they were instrumental in the realization of that vision and further, are the reason those companies are what they are today.
He represents an idea and his success flows from that. Not from his specific intellect. He has god-tier nerd-charisma.
That can be a skill, too, I suppose. It's just not what I consider "smarts" as much as it is being a guy who is sufficiently technical (low requirements) with a godawful amount of money that they're willing to put towards really cool nerdy projects (high requirements).
There's no evidence in either direction, it's entirely based on your and my opinion on the matter and that they diverge is fine.
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I think there’s plenty of evidence from people he worked with that his technical acumen and strategic vision is well beyond what the average person with means can do. At least in this specific engineering fields.
Part of the reason he’s cultivated this cult of personality that attracts good engineers is because of that. Good engineers see through the MBA CEO who doesn’t have the technical chops. They work with him, see he’s got the goods, then refer their friends.
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Nah, just be a sociopath. It’s easy. You don’t have to be incredibly intelligent - just driven for power and fame beyond all reason. Then just don’t care at all about other human beings and you’ll have no qualms at all about treating them like shit to achieve your goals. Have we forgotten Steve Jobs so quickly?
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I know a ton of engineers from both, already?
If you have the kind of money Elon has then yes, you can absolutely become a successful CEO. You'll need to know how to hire good leaders, but if you're starting from a position of wealth the types of networking and connections you need are far more primed to fall into your lap.
Think what you want though. I'm speaking from a variety of personal interactions / people with far more intimate connection to the matter than you (by all odds).-
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mr.sleepy is all like
https://i.imgur.com/FSlEfg5.gif
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DO IT
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Sounds like the business equivalent of a trial balloon in politics. That said, I hope he goes with it so the platform can die on him.
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Most billionaires get bored and just buy a sports team as a fun toy. They take the skills they learned in one business, realize they don't translate to sports, horribly mismanage the team for decades but still pocket a few billion in profit from a monopoly business where the customers are taught by the culture that they're bad people for not supporting 'their' team. Elon got high on his own supply of right wing bullshit and decided his fun toy should be Twitter and is learning just like the Dan Snyder's of the world that your skill don't work here. Except unlike football Musk's toy comes with actual competitor and his mismanagement comes with much bigger risk to the business (and unfortunately for us, much bigger risk to society).
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Some kill whole leagues, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWxMCLHXkVc
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Twitter’s solution for ruining verification is another checkmark
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/8/23448184/twitter-verification-official-checkmark-gray-blue?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
https://twitter.com/verge/status/1590114187858120705/photo/1-
Twitter is rolling out another type of checkmark to help distinguish accounts that users actually need to know are real. Although you can pay for a blue checkmark with the new version of Twitter Blue, select accounts for governments, companies, or public figures will get a gray “Official” checkmark, according to a thread from Twitter’s Esther Crawford, who is heading up the new Twitter Blue initiative.
Amazing.-
To be clear, before Musk bought it Twitter literally already had a checkmark to prove official verification, labels on accounts denoting what exactly they're official about (ex US gov vs RU gov) and a subscription product called Twitter Blue with additional features (like edit tweet). Just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic here.
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This whole thing is so stupid. He should have just come up with some other type of flair/features for paid subscribers instead of whatever the fuck flailing dumbassary this was
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This was entirely intentional. They're playing off the coveted blue checkmark being a status symbol and now anyone can pay to get it!
They know exactly what they're doing and exactly why they wouldn't do it any other way.
Hopefully people are actually smart enough this time to see through these dark patterns and won't support it.
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Is this the Onion? lmao
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Is this some sort of "How fast can you burn 44 billion dollars" challenge?
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I guess comedy is not legal?
https://i.imgur.com/o2lyQ0Z.png -
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Part of me thinks that maybe his plan all along has been to kill it. Can you write off 44 billion dollars? Like maybe secretly (or not so secretly) his ego just can’t take being made fun of so subconsciously he’s like “I’m going to make this thing that’s hurting my feelings go away forever - just like how I’ve always made those small animals and insects go away forever”
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