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ChronoPsyche t1_iv62v7c wrote

Reply to comment by hugosebas in Is Twitter Secretly "Going AI"? by MythOfMyself

We've known he has wanted to make his own social media to compete with Twitter for a while. To accomplish this he decided to just buy Twitter and turn it into his desired social media. Basically buying out the competition.

This is a very common practice, the difference is that instead of it being a big company buying out a small company, it's a billionaire buying out a big company. Never before possible until recently with the wealth of billionaires ballooning to insane heights.

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hugosebas t1_iv65053 wrote

Yeah, but for 40 Billion? Is it really that worth making a Twitter competitor for that much money? In my mind, given what he did with his other companies he will try to innovate social media, I just don't really understand how that can possibly be worth 1/5 of his net worth.

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ChronoPsyche t1_iv67k1g wrote

What do you mean by innovate?

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hugosebas t1_iv6iwmt wrote

I am not sure if I understand your question, Google gives me the definition below:
Innovate: "make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products."

If you are asking how it is that Musk will innovate Twitter, that is what I would like to know, will he just try to optimize management?, maybe with AI?, automating staff?, reducing costs? Is that enough to recover his money? I don't think so, in my view, he would need to make Twitter better as a product to consumers and I just don't really know how he can achieve that in order to recover 40 Billion dollars.

In a recent interview, when talking about Twitter, he said this:
"In terms of what it could be, I think there is an enormous amount of potential, that will be very difficult to achieve, but I think possible and I think ultimately it could be one of the most valuable companies in the world"

Innovation is this untapped potential he believes Twitter has, that can make the company one of the most valuable companies in the world, I'm just curious to what is his vision for Twitter.

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ChronoPsyche t1_iv6qxed wrote

I know what the word innovate means. It seemed like you had something in particular in mind you thought he was going to do. If not, then I'll point you to the possibility that he may want to make Twitter like WeChat.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/05/elon-musks-twitter-plans-may-take-inspiration-from-chinese-super-apps.html

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hugosebas t1_iv6t9iy wrote

Nah, I didn't have anything in mind really, the closest thing I got was to make some kind of Tiktok/Twitter hybrid. I heard that he wanted to make it like WeChat, but honestly I didn't really looked much into how WeChat worked and I always thought it was some kind of Facebook/WhatsApp, but looking into it a bit more, I am starting to understand what he wants to do. It is in fact something we don't have here in the west, but given that WeChat is China only and given that we have all kind of currencies here in the West it will be kinda hard to implement something like that globally, at least the financial part of WeChat. But ok, at least I am starting to understand where this is going.

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hugosebas t1_iv68jtc wrote

Twitter is bleeding money atm and as been in the last 2 years, Twitter's best year was 2019 with 1,4 Billion annual net profit, even if he could maintain that, it would take around 30 years before he can make his money back. If he is not expecting to make Twitter into something truly revolutionary, I don't know what is he thinking.

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ChronoPsyche t1_iv6rgcv wrote

It's definitely not out of the realm of possibility that he is not acting rationally. He is a smart businessman but he is also a huge risk taker. A lot of his risks have paid off, a lot haven't.

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