I joined Twitter back in Feb 2008 and while the platform has changed over the years, now under the management of Elon Musk, it’ll be really interesting to see where the product goes.
With the US$44 Billion takeover now complete this week, Twitter is now expected to go from being a publicly traded company to a private company, something Musk once planned for Tesla.
Musk has been clear about his motivations for buying Twitter, he believes the platform can facilitate better conversations, and better debates, along with a massive potential to reduce the number of bots and spam on that service.
I think all Twitter users can get behind the idea of a better service, but it’ll be really interesting to see the priority list of new features or product changes that Musk prioritises.
Personally, I just hope that TweetDeck, used by power users, gets the R&D investment that it deserves and becomes a first-class citizen when new features are launched.
Musk is now the CEO of Twitter (adding to his portfolio of positions at SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company and Neuralink). One of the first posts since taking the top spot was a message to advertisers.
In the message, Musk references the clickbait titles of traditional media, aimed at polarizing both sides of the political divide in an effort to artificially inflate traffic to their sites. It would be bold to image Musk could solve clickbait, but perhaps with the right application of AI, to programmatically visit a link on Twitter, analyse the article and validate if the title matches the content. Given how much images and video play a role in modern media, they may need to be included as well, not easy, but potentially on the table.
If Musk wants to encourage debate from all sides, but avoid causing divisions, it’s possible we see some kind of balancing of articles or multiple news sources shown for each topic, this space is definitely ripe for innovation. Ideally, when we consume news and content through Twitter, we become more educated, and more rounded as individuals, rather than falling into our tribalistic silos.
Also detailed in the note to Advertisers is a reference to their content being good, adding to the user experience and allowing people to learn about products and services when done well. Musk talks about ads being relevant to you and to do that, he’ll need data.
It is interesting that Musk’s post was directed at advertisers, and not regular users of the platform. Taking the company private will remove the reporting requirements for Twitter, but it doesn’t remove the need to make money. Musk will be looking to make the right product changes, improve the product, broaden the user base and grow advertising spending on the platform.
Going private will allow the company to make the necessary changes, some of which may have impacted the share price, without that pressure. It is understood that going public is on the cards for the future, assuming the service can be improved, the userbase is grown and ultimately the value of the company increases over time.
Today, General Motors decided they wanted to make a headline by temporarily suspending advertising on Twitter. Note: they have deleted their account, this feels like a stunt, rather than a serious effort to leave Twitter and its substantial audience of 237.8 million monetizable daily active users (as of Q2 2022).
This week, Musk continued to grow his following, now sitting at 111.2 Million followers on Twitter. Musk posted this video to become one of his most popular Tweets, now with 42.8 Million views at the time of writing.
