Flint wrote:

Wouldn't it be awkward for the Elon Fanboys if it turned out that a faux-centrist, right-wing billionaire bought the public square, then immediately flooded it with toxic content until it imploded, removing a major source of organization and information sharing for working class, non-billionaire Americans? But I'm sure it's not that, probably 4D chess

I'm sort of wondering if the studios are keeping the writers' strike going to keep the late night comedians from making fun of the corrupt billionaires in the news.

There is a a looming issue with office real estate, it also is having a lot of effects on business around the offices. 

Griff (too lazy to quote right now):

My gut sense is it's Twitter from 10-12 years ago--so I do think it will thrive, and I think it will stick around for at least 10-12 years. It may or may not follow the same decade-long disintegration, but there are a few safeguards in place that make it *possible* that it won't.

For one, it's a distributed platform, which doesn't mean much to the average person, but you can think of it more like email in the sense that you decide where your "home" is--a Gmail account can send a message to a Yahoo account, and if Yahoo goes down, then yeah, everyone with a Yahoo email address is going to have to relocate, but it won't affect Gmail, or your ability to email each other again once the Yahoo person gets a new address. If Elon destroys Twitter, Twitter is gone. If Elon destroyed Yahoo, Gmail (and email in general) would still very much be a thing.

Secondly, folks At BlueSky are not playing around with hands-off moderation in the name of free speech. Someone ironically said "shut up, cracker" to their friend and got suspended for a day. Maybe you like that level of authority, maybe you don't, but they've decided that the bsky.social instance (which is like the default address you get if you don't run your own server, and where the vast majority of accounts are right now) is going to be civil, end of story.

Flint wrote:

I agree there's a real issue with downtown businesses who thrive on office commuters,

Bad research is now being exposed.  For example, one study found that productivity increased 18% when employees did call centers from home.  Reality.  Productivity decreased 4%.  What did not appear in simplistic data was a massive increase in bad customer support and the resulting increase in repeat calls.

When employees work from home, innovation dies.  Missing innovation result in less productivity and decreased profits; 4 and 10 years later.  Since business school mentalities concluded 'working at home is productive' using  months or a year's data, then a business school conclusions (ie cost controls) could only happen.

Productivity only increases with innovation.  Cost controls also massively reduce innovation.  Microsoft noted this decrease.  By discovering how interaction among employees was massively reduced to isolated islands of interaction.

This also explains a massive increases in extremism and disinformation.  Electronics interactions result in people isolating themselves only to a few (limited) information sources.  Creating introverted thinking and radically segregated concepts divorced from reality.

What has been happening, for example, in call centers?  Employees learn nothing when at home.  Do not advance.  Do not have access to the fewer and better informed peers.  Invent disinformation using speculation.  Time necessary to gain that increased knowledge, to business school graduates, appears as less productivity on spread sheets.  That time spend becoming more informed and more productive is, to a business school analysis, wasted time and increased costs.

Commuting and offices are essential tor the only thing that increases productivity - innovation.

Bill and Dave demanded all hallways be quite wide.  Since that is the only place that most all innovation happens.

We also know that people, learning from electronics sources, have a 10% reduction in comprehension.

Army is now seeing that.  With so many Gen-Zs educated at home during Covid, the Army must now do reeducation courses. Necessary so that recruits can pass basic entrance exams - obtain even basic math skills.  Just another problem with people not in personal interaction.  But and again, the word I constantly use, because it explains so many failures: innovation. The lack of it.  Made worse by conclusions from business school studies.

Business school graduates cannot measure innovation.  Measure it only as increased costs.  Offices are essential for innovation - the only thing that increases productivity.  School rooms are essential for better education.  Personal interaction , accidental and haphazard (wasted time according to business school graduates), is a most critical factor.  Studies based only in costs historically reduce innovation.
 

Innovation has everything to do with what happens to downtown businesses, Twitter (and Musk), anti-work from home beliefs, and the real-estate value of offices.  It is the common factor to all previous posts except one about a writer's strike and what studios want.

But then writers who do not conjugate to intertwine a sophisticated storyline (together in a common office building) do not write highest quality scripts.  This is not innovation; just creativity.

 

Clodfobble wrote:

I have bluesky invites if anyone here wants one.

Whoa, Nelly! Are these invites you're offering peeps HERE going to be on YOUR invite tree?

T I M B E R R R R  !!!

(You're as brave as any lumberjack.)


 

Elon Musk says Twitter's cash flow still negative as ad revenue drops 50%


https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitters-cash-flow-still-negative-ad-revenue-drops-2023-07-15/

Like anything Elon says we have to take this with a pinch of salt. He could be baiting or remarkably being truthful.

As far as who is getting revenue, I'd expect the alt-right "creators" to be getting paid as that seems to be who lives there now.

Last edited by griff (7/16/2023 1:36 pm)

It's funny because it feels to me like they only exist on-line. <shrug>

To paraphrase Slartibartfast, Twitter will soon be X, as in the ex social media site.

Happy Monkey wrote:

... , Twitter will soon be X .

With this many changes, a strategy should have started to materialize.  It all looks like flailing.   A new strategy every week or month.  Nothing in all those previous changes are consistent with this one.

Elon is quite good at getting and letting innovators do their job.  But in Twitter, it looks more like micromanagement - that has no strategy, no objective, no vision, and no ideal what to do.  Characteristic of any organization when the boss is making all decisions.  Rather than the little people who better know how to do things.  And do it right the first time.

But then little people cannot do that when the boss has no strategic objective.  None is apparent lin twitter.


 

Trademark is an Intangible Asset.  When buying a company, one also pays for that trademark. Some trademarks are so valuable that only those are purchased.  Ie GE, Packard Bell, Bell & Howell, AT&T, etc.  All trademarks sold to another.

Why then throw away a trademark that has unusually high value?  Just another example of why this looks so much like flailing micromanagement. 

There are numerous articles online about Elon Musk wanting to use "X" as a brand name going back to his days at PayPal. There are even pictures of him and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel holding corporate credit cards with a big "X" on them. Musk has for a long time said that he wants the "X" brand to represent multiple services under one roof and that he likes the letter "X" because it represents the unknown variable (as in an equation). I expect he's planning to diversify the old Twitter under the "X" brand and that there may be projects of both short and long market duration. It would allow him to make more use of his eye for opportunity.

You might enjoy this article (especially the ending) from the Australian news satire website THE SHOVEL:

Elon Musk changes preferred pronouns to midlife/crisis