Pay 44 billion for a brand, then change it. Pure genius.
Pay billions for a userbase, then drive away the ones that aren’t Nazis or bots.
An X looks like a swastika if you only add half the seriffs
Been saying it for a while, but his plan was to run it into the ground all along. Who is he buddy-buddy with in public? The Saudi’s and the Russians, who both have an interest in seeing Twitter burn to the ground. He started by laying off people, not paying their bills, and making stupid brand decisions. This has been the plan all along and there’s really no other logical explanation. 44 billion is nothing to the Saudis and Russian oligarchs if it takes away a key tool for organized dissent and the spread of western ideals.
@MeetInPotatoes You are giving him too much credit.
I guess, but I honestly thought he would be better at pretending to make good decisions.
Brand and user base. Destroy both
@boredtortoise And last, destroy the technology. Mission completed.
Don’t give him too much credit. Elon is transparently too terminally online to be destroying Twitter because that’s his goal. He didn’t even actually mean to buy it until he was forced to.
Yeah, he was just trying to manipulate stocks and a judge made him follow through.
Yeah Musk is malicious but I’ll give this one to incompetence
Sell the servers on eBay to the homelabbers lmao
What are they gonna call tweets now?
Exes. Elon has too many of those, too.
Crusades?
Cross words?
Xits?
Pay 54 billion dollars to utterly destroy a platform which gave normal people the ability to effectively spread information about the wrongdoing of the upper class, and which often promoted that very information.
That’s why he did this, he knows it’s killing g Twitter and wants it dead.
Twitter and Reddit are both lessons in how to kill a community and a brand.
Lessons for whom? I have several things I would like to kill but lack the requisite trillions to execute my vision.
Sounds like a Kickstarter idea if I’ve ever seen one.
“Tired of running your massively popular online service? Call BrandWreckers™ , your one-stop shop for dismantling user loyalty and brand reputation. Call now and lose your first 10k users for free!”
“All you have to do is point!”
You know I wonder if we could create a non profit that exists only to buy things and then donate them (IP, closed source, whatever) to the public domain. If you had a savvy board, such an organization could do a lot of good.
Something like this must already exist, right?
A savvy board would get a 10% cut on each transaction, count me in!
I mean they would need to be paid, but idk about a percentage. Mostly just to fairly compensate them for the time spent vetting deals.
What’s savvy about getting paid just for your time? You need to get paid for expertise, opportunities, networking… that’s at least 10%, since a non-profit wouldn’t have preference shares.
I’m leery about a percentage just because I perceive a conflict of interest. Overall compensation of 10% might be about right, but tying actual compensation to the cost of stuff that is bought creates a perverse incentive to overspend on things. That’s money donated for the betterment of humanity, not so I can have a 3 acre swimming pool.
But IDK maybe I’m looking at it wrong.
Would be the largest one if we want to go after facebook
You can throw Warner Brothers Discovery in there while you are at it (HBO now stupidly referred to as “Max”)
HBO has changed their branding like 5 times in the last few years I swear.
They’re literally a household name.
I grew up poor in Australia, and no one really had pay TV around me - least of all the people I hung with. Over the years, you’d still learn through other TV shows and movies that HBO was the channel with the good stuff.
Why change that? Why lose such branding? Have they become associated with something that they don’t want to be? If not, leave great enough alone.
C-suite executives I guess.
I just saw a trailer for an adventure time spin off on a youtube channel called “Max” and though it was a random channel that post trailer lol. Granted i rarely watch anything and while i know about HBO i don’t ever remember watching anything from them.
I watched a South Park movie for the first time in years. In this one they traveled into the future. Everything had Max or Plus added to the name. It seemed pretty spot on with where we are going
I get the feeling that these execs need a plan to increase profits every quarter, and this is one of the gotos.
Maybe the CEO is just a big Image comics fan and forgot the second X in Maxx.
When they start focusing on the brand, it’s over.
I was part of a “startup” that was all volunteers. We called ourselves Citizens Market, and the idea was to produce an app that let you scan a barcode to get ethical info on the company who made the product.
Like GoodGuide, but they got to market faster.
After a few years of effort, a marketing person joined our all-volunteer team and convinced the head to change the name to Fosfo. Why Fosfo? Because matches have phosphorous in them, and so it referenced illumination, and the illumination had to do with our mission of … you guessed it: providing information.
The thing failed. I mean, we were already failing because we didn’t have the profit motive cutting our decisions down to what worked. But the name “Fosfo” was when I knew the project was dead.
“Citizens Market” was the perfect name for what our app would do. But no, had to have some web 2.0 jackass giving us a facelift. That was our path to salvation: a rebrand.
That’s a sad story. It sounds like a good utility, and the outcome too common.
Out critical blunder was hoping to crowdsource the generation of the dataset we’d use to provide scores.
What we should have done was find existing data about company ethics and just build the feature of scanning a UPC barcode to get the data.
We tried to be the app and the data source, and we had a huge two sided marketplace problem, and no incentive for the volunteers who would spend hours and hours doing research.
Another reason why I won’t do a startup under volunteer conditions again. We unconsciously modeled everyone else as like us: willing to donate copious time.
At least it sounds like you learned a lot from it :)
Definitely. It was during that project that I switched from subversion to git for the first time. I remember my coworker James showing me how files just changed when he checked out a branch. I started using git at his insistence (which I hated because I wanted to own the project and he was a more impressive dev than me), and I started to like it. Switched all my other projects to git as well.
I started using git at his insistence (which I hated because I wanted to own the project and he was a more impressive dev than me), and I started to like it. Switched all my other projects to git as well.
Reminds me of a snip from The Winner: be a leader, but if you can’t be a leader, make sure your leader is a damn good teacher
Fosfo sounds like a Linux project (e.g. Free Open Source Fallout)
He really did buy it just to delete it.
Of course he did; he hated Twitter because of it’s ability for marginalized people to organized as well as give people the ability to share videos about his unsafe products.
Dude, he is a PR guy with Twitter being his main platform. There is no logic there.
I mean, it makes perfect sense. He’s a PR guy who wanted to own a platform so he could spin his own facts; the fact that people could post videos of his own products catching fire was bad for him.
He is destroying his platform. While simultaneously helping competitors. While been forced to pay way to much and even pay for the layers his opponents hired. Genius moves all around.
Buying Twitter doesn’t save him from circulating videos of teslas on fire
It does on Twitter. I mean, on X.
The problem is likely that his view of the Internet is highly warped. Between managing so many companies, meeting IRL people, and traveling around, he may have barely any time to learn about what’s out there outside of the most popular platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and whatever someone spins to him during that one party or two.
So he looked into the one thing he knew about that was irking him, saw it had a silly low price, and jumped on the chance of taking control… without realizing it was like jumping onto a water balloon in a swimming pool: even if you manage to catch it, even if you pop it, there is still a pool of water surrounding you.
This gives him way too much credit lol. He isn’t playing 5D chess, he impulse-bought a $44B company and is too much of a narcissistic control freak to stop touching it. Harming marginalized people is a natural consequence of essentially any action a billionaire takes by virtue of their existence.
Yep. And he saw “blue checks” as some kind of Liberal Elite^TM that was manipulating the media and public consciousness. He set out specifically to try to destroy that, but in the process is attempting to create his own version of that imagined cabal.
He’s also petulant child with a meme-poisoned brain that’s stuck somewhere in the body of an edgy 14 year old in 2002.
Headline to come one week later:
“After some backlash from users, Musk comes to a compromise: the new twitter logo is a blue bird with a giant Red X over it.”
Jamie Kennedy about to sue
One week? All of his decisions have been changed within hours of making them. In a few hours he’s going to rename it Y
Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just shut it down once he had it? He’s burning a lot of operational money to do this slowly. It doesn’t make any sense unless he really is that stupid.
I honestly do think he is really really dumb. People love to tell me that he actually does know stuff about rockets or whatever, but c’mon…
Early on, he was selling some of his Tesla stock, thus depressing its value, in order to fund twitter. So I don’t believe the theory that he bought it specifically to tank it. Though he may eventually claim “I meant to do that”.
New logo
Hm, how do images work across instances? Maybe this way?
https://media.kbin.social/media/c9/97/c997d8c329bf759045c432e379534b7687e412b914c86660f9e10f1e5cd7e03c.pngThat’s just perfect. The X on the eye speaks a thousand words.
Beehaw at least seems to use Markdown, so
:
For me (on Beehaw) the image is not embedded, just a link +__+ (but the link works 👍)
Yeah, I added the link since the embedded image didn’t seem to work.
The image embedded correctly on Kbin, just FYI.
I’m sure all the brands who are unsure about continuing their advertising on the platform are going to love having to derail their UI teams to go change dozens of different social media icons implementation.
McDonalds Web Team on Friday: “I think we’ve planned a great sprint for Monday everyone. It’ll be tight but we should be ready in time to promote the anniversary of Grimace’s bris!”
McDonalds Web Team on Monday: “Shit”
I’m getting sidetracked here, but I want to give my support of McD’s turning every possible life event Grimace can have into to a new marketing event, so long as each comes with a new Gameboy color game.
lol
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This seems like an admission that twitter is dead.
Short live X?
All I can think of when he talks about how “X will be an app for everything” is:
Welcome to Zombocom, you can do anything at Zombocom, Welcome to you. Anything is possible at Zombocom. The infinite is possible at Zombocom. The unobtainable is unknown at Zombocom. Welcome to Zombocom.
Zombocom is better than twitter
They are called TWEETS, ELON! TWEETS!
They are called TWEETS, ELON! TWEETS!
Elon Musk: For now…
I’m legit wondering what the term for communication between…Xs…is…? Like…???
They’re gonna be NFTs come next week
I guess going forward people will be sending [exes] on X using the X app, and subscribing to X’s and unsubscribing to ex’s?
Not a name that’s easy to verbalize.
- What are you doing?
I’m X-ing about the new …
Mistakes made when drunk and lonely
Kisses, like signing letters with X’s and O’s. He’s planning a hard turn to embrace inexplicable twitter based adult industry.
Now they’re going to be exes and ohs.
Only clearer by the day that this was all an exercise to intentionally kill Twitter to the benefit of billionaires, fascists and other extremists.
Twitter existed as a relatively free and open public space to communicate, organize and assemble to take actions for and against things at scale before musk (e.g. The Arab Spring, a terrifying moment for the Saudis especially - the second largest shareholder behind musk).
When people collectively laughed at elon and his cringe, inbred, emerald boy antics or his humiliating divorce and other routine failures, Twitter was the bullhorn.
Now elon and his desperate far right Toadies will work to try to rewrite reality so they can eventually have this conversation:
"Twitter? What’s a Twitter? Wait, are you talking about blork? A bird? No, blork’s logo is a dinosaur with chainsaw arms… and everyone wants to be his best friend… and it’s against the law to divorce him… and he’s cool… and…"
What an everlasting tool history will remember you as, elon. If they remember you at all, it will be to laugh at you - you’ll never outrun that.
Don’t attribute to malice what is absolutely just idiocy. Musk is not some genius. He is quite literally a man-child who made money because he came from money (and maybe a little luck).
His hubris led to this disaster with twitter—nothing else.
This would make sense if he didn’t constantly amplify right-wing rhetoric and antics. You’d just be ignoring the evidence to think anything else at this point.
I’m not ignoring evidence, I just see an alternative you don’t: He wants attention and he always has. He’s “losing” and the easiest way to get validation is to get it from those that are right-wing. He wants so badly to be treated as “a genius”.
Nobody other than staunch right-wingers believe his non-sense. He only gets headlines because controversy sells.
This is not correct I don’t think. He’s always been right wing, it’s not a new thing. The more important thing is to look at his intentions right before being forced to buy the company.
And those intentions were clearly to use a large amount of cash to bully the company into following his orders. He didn’t like them censoring things. He didn’t like they’re politics. And it was where he spent most of his social media time.
People seem to underestimate the absolute power of elites. He bought an entire company to kill it because he can do that. How many lives will this impact? A ton. All due to the ego of one awful man.
I don’t dispute for a second that Elon’s an idiot, but his ex-wife did ask him to buy and kill Twitter:
“Can you buy Twitter and then delete it, please!? xx” Riley allegedly texted Musk on March 24. “America is going INSANE.”
Maybe it’s not 3D chess but just transparent - yet effective! - stupidity. Buying Twitter was fiscally foolish, but it does seem like he’s gonna kill it, so 🤷
What is Musks obsession with the letter X?
He’s a stunted 8 year old who associates X with edginess. X factor. X Men. X Ray. X rated films. XXX. All super fucking cool
He originally wanted “Model 3” to be called “Model E” so that the three (at the time) Tesla models could spell out “SEX”. Fortunately that name was already taken. He’s a petulant child.
I’ll admit, BACK THEN, I thought it was funny and was sad E was taken. But yeah perspective changes when you realize how much worse he is/was/will be.
Also, he’s an unoriginal dipshit. All he’s good at is buying things and slapping his name on 'em, he’s never had an idea of his own.
DJ Khaled Techbro Edition
He’s also good at investing his dad’s slavery money.
I think you are actually correct about this, I dont think it goes any deeper
X.com is his product he owned, that is loosely associated with PayPal’s success despite it having nothing to do with the tech that it was merged for.
By “absorbing” twitter with his original X company that is older than twitter, he can pretend to be the founder of the parent company X, like he pretends to be the founder of Tesla.
He’s emotionally stunted and stuck in the 90s.
It marks the spot
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That was complete and public way back in 2017 at the latest
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Realizing Elon Musk is a dipshit is something where the two best times to realize that it is true are 1998, and now
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What was that about him doing twitter’s technology policing and leaving running the company to the new CEO?
He’s not even good at using his puppet.
Yeah… Because the thing that’s wrong with Twitter is it’s logo.
It must be incredibly frustrating to be the new CEO that he just appointed, only to have him continuing to run his mouth and make ruinous decisions that tie your hands.
If she didn’t know what she was signing up for then she deserves no pity. If she’s smart she’s using this as a stepping stone.
I mean, I’d love to get paid that amount of money for a few months, do barely nothing, blame my inferiors and retire with investments and a small restaurant in a friendly town.
Musk stiffed a bunch of people out of their severance, so I’m not sure even that is a realistic plan.
How the heck do you use that dumpster fire as a stepping stone?
Get paid enough to start your own company.
Alternatively, spin it as “drove the dumpster in a controlled burn, preventing it from exploding into everyone’s face”.
You would have to know this would happen when working for Musk.
