Musk bought Twitter, what hasn't gone wrong?

WhiningKhan said:
That would at least give musicians some feelings of vengeance - the f*n internet nerds ruined their economy model with Spotify etc, so let the tech folks learn as well how it feels to collect pennies from your creative output...
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I dont believe that to be the case. Spotify fills the hole left by FM/AM radio. Radio stations used to pay less royalties to musicians per play (multiplyed by the radio ratings) than spotify does today.

The problem that spotify also only recomends top hits can equally be made for radio, and again, if you are willing to dig just a little bit, spotify can offer you way more options than radio ever did.
 
milk said:
I dont believe that to be the case. Spotify fills the hole left by FM/AM radio. Radio stations used to pay less royalties to musicians per play (multiplyed by the radio ratings) than spotify does today.
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Well I know that to be the case. While Finland is a ridiculously small music business market area, I personally know people telling me their income from radio/tv/etc is/was more than 10 times compared to streaming. The difference comparable to a year's income vs a month's income.

But I was not actually referring to radio vs streaming, but lack of CD sales.
 
fehu said:
Do you mean that when a scammer pays 8$ X forgets to perform any crosscheck, but with 1$ it will be easier to remember to do it?
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Most scammers with "bluecheck" didn't pay for it, but got the access through hacking. Today many scammers don't even bother with getting an account with bluechecks.
Twitter is in a way quite special because most people on Twitter are content consumers and don't really need to post anything, so they are probably the best platform to do this experiment.
 
WhiningKhan said:
Well I know that to be the case. While Finland is a ridiculously small music business market area, I personally know people telling me their income from radio/tv/etc is/was more than 10 times compared to streaming. The difference comparable to a year's income vs a month's income.

But I was not actually referring to radio vs streaming, but lack of CD sales.
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Wow. That is very surprising. I remember reading the exact oposite, but I am not particularly enlightened on the industr so it could have been spotify comissioned propaganda or whatever.

Lack of CD sales was indeed quite a hit to music as a business, but that was already dead more than a decade before streaming became popular. Napster deserves more blame than Spotify.

I see artists that are not trying to replicate 1990's business models have more success than other though. Stay independent or signed with a tiny local backyard label. Play many gigs. Get a patreon. Livestream rehearsals or jamsessions and what not. Accept donations. Sell merch, etc. Those are pennies indeed, but modern platforms allow one to rake in those pennies from acrosss the entire planet rather than from your local town as it was earlier.

Its harder to become a popstar, but its easier to be a niche indy artist. I consider that a positive rebalancing. How many fucking Justin Timberlakes and Ariana Grandes we need...
 
milk said:
Wow. That is very surprising. I remember reading the exact oposite, but I am not particularly enlightened on the industr so it could have been spotify comissioned propaganda or whatever.

Lack of CD sales was indeed quite a hit to music as a business, but that was already dead more than a decade before streaming became popular. Napster deserves more blame than Spotify.
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Yeah, physical records faded away quickly, and admittedly big income from records was pretty rare even in the 'golden era'. But radio really was and still is much better money source, for those that managed to get playtime. I don't know how it works internationally though but here indeed that's the way it is.

A songwriter (doing stuff for many artists) who has close to 300 million streamings in total since 2016 receives a few thousand euros per year from that. The same songs getting playtime in radio has given him a normal citizen's income.

For those not enjoying airtime, lots and lots of live playing indeed is the only way. That is not necessarily a bad thing, earning through hard work is kinda how the world is supposed to work. Which leads us to back to topic - do the web companies indeed make money too easily?
 
Similar to the writers' strike and now, the actors' strike. The big streaming companies have screwed the 'residuals' down to an absolute minimum and it means they are cashing in while the people making the shows are earning fuck all. As with most big businesses, in fact. The exec class can always count the beans to maximise without somehow actually having any understanding why they are getting the beans to count in the first place...
 
The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000. And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago.
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There must be a reason why they skipped completely these brilliant ideas.
At this exact moment some senior at paypal is laughing very loud.
 
digitalwanderer said:
I'm still trying to figure out why he thought rebranding it as "X" would be a good idea.
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hasnt x been his thing for like 25 years now? its so short and memorable(?)

hey man you owe me money!
let me x you, whats your x?
my x was hacked, i have a new one
oh crap i x'ed your ex-x, sorry buddy
aw crap i have send an x to x support now
 
It just seems so stupid. He could have started his own platform and called it X and not have to buy Twitter. The name Twitter is one of the most recognized names in social media, why toss that?

I really am confused. Your explanation makes sense in layman's terms, but any decent lawyer would shred it and enjoy doing so.
 
digitalwanderer said:
It just seems so stupid. He could have started his own platform and called it X and not have to buy Twitter. The name Twitter is one of the most recognized names in social media, why toss that?

I really am confused. Your explanation makes sense in layman's terms, but any decent lawyer would shred it and enjoy doing so.
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yeah i dont get it either, its like a lesson in how to waste money for the memes and poop emojis
 
I get it. The value of a social is just the people that are inside and that you can sell to advertisers.
The name is nothing, and he made so much noise that anyone who was using twitter now knows that it changed name.
He could have built a new platform from scratch, but it would be a near impossible task to attract as many users.
He just wanted the users and couldn't care less about microblogging, I think that he sees it as an ancillary feature necessary to reach the anything status, or a feature to discard as soon the others are ready.
Once other features are ready, the real game will start.

In the abstract, it's not a bad reasoning. Many company's acquisitions are only about the users.
In the reality, it all depends on:
- if it will be financially viable until new money sources arrive
- if people will stay on the platfom or it will become a new myspace
- if these new anything features will be both up to the task, and useful in the eyes of x's users' demographic base

to succeed you need a lot of planning, a lot of luckiness, and to not be a lunatic sociopath
 
He could still keep the "twitter" name as the denominator for the microblogging service within his larger "X group". much like Google created "abc" but kept the search engine named "Google".
 
Reminds me of the time the U.K the Post Office thought The Post Office wasnt a good name so they decided to call themselves Consignia because nothing says we deliver mail like the word Consignia
thankfully they came to their senses but only after spending a fortune repainting all their vans into the new colour scheme and adding the new logo.
 
Hah, was that in early 00's? The post of Finland did exactly the same thing, deciding they want to be called Itella instead. But apparently their medication was adjusted in response as they switched the sensible name back in less than a decade.
 
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