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Twitter was locked in a chaotic doom loop. Now it’s on the verge of collapse | Siva Vaidhyanathan (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 years ago by biggiepants@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t think he’ll sell willingly. I just could see a scenario where his creditors who paid for a large part of it demand to see some return on investment and force him too.

I think for that to happen, 1. value of TSLA would have to drop a lot making creditors question his ability to repay, and 2. value of TWTR would have to remain relatively high. Right now TSLA is rising and TWTR valuation is falling so if I was a creditor I'd much rather hold Elon debt than a piece of TWTR.

Agreed. The fact that especially Reddit, but a lesser extent Twitter have been unable to monetize genuine human posts and all the data that gives (Reddit is basically the only way to make Google useful nowadays and Twitter is basically the only place to go for breaking news) seems negligent to me.

Reddit / Twitter / Facebook / etc haven't found any creative way to monetize the numerous genuine interactions on their platform other than data mining them for ad targeting. So they double down and triple down again on that- Facebook went creepy and might as well be a credit bureau, Reddit tried to stay non-evil for a while, Twitter just kind of did their own thing and burned cash and never really made money but investors stayed in because a company that big has to eventually make money somehow.
Now they all say HOLY SHIT WE ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING OF REAL VALUE TO SELL!!!!! and see AI training as their winning lottery ticket.

What strikes me though is how un-creative it all is. Here's a bunch of the most important databases in human history and the best they can think up is ads and AI training?
And they all do the same thing- grow into huge companies with tons of distraction side projects and middle managers that burn cash, then wonder why they aren't profitable.
Elon saw that with Twitter- to run Twitter you need server people and developers and ad salespeople and the rest of them probably did little of use. Same thing is probably true with Reddit though. Reddit has like 2000 employees. What the hell do they all do? It sure as hell isn't productive development. I'd bet money they have a ton of useless middle management.

Any one of these companies (IMHO) would do much better trying to be a utility more or less. Make it easy and cheap/free for everyone, but keep operating costs down. Make a little money off a lot of people. And do what Reddit would do if they had two brain cells to rub together- pay us a fee and you are the customer and can use the thing however you want; or don't and you see a ton of ads.