Musk offers to buy Twitter

[SuperMatt]

Then there's this... ugh

Elon Musk suggested firing workers and working with influencers to boost Twitter's bottom line​

Elon Musk suggested firing workers and working with influencers to boost Twitter's bottom line: reports

Elon Musk pitched some ideas to lift Twitter's bottom line when he spoke to bankers, but ultimately didn't go into details in his pitch, reports say.

finance.yahoo.com

Who possibly could have foreseen that? Hmm...

We don’t know what, if anything, Musk will change about Twitter. If he follows the path of most private equity purchasers, he will:

Fire lots of workers,
Transfer his own debt to become the company’s debt,
Pay himself huge amounts of money,
Try and sell the burnt-out husk for an inflated price 5 years from now,
Or have the company declare bankruptcy as a way to reduce the debt that he used to buy it.

Vulture capitalism. See also: Toys R Us.

Opinion: Private Equity Is The Enemy Of Working People

My retail job was destroyed by greedy financial executives. There are millions more like me, and we're fighting back.

www.buzzfeednews.com

We’ll wait and see how far down the list he goes.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Who possibly could have foreseen that? Hmm...


We’ll wait and see how far down the list he goes.

I'm very curious about the transfer of debt aspect. Since he possibly used the last of his shares of Tesla that he's allowed to sell, he's sort of locked himself in. Does he find a way to buy back shares of Tesla, using Twitter in the future?

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

User acquisition will always trump a subscription model on this type of platform, advertising is where it's at for them. They're not "giving" us anything, they're feeding off of our data like vampires and in return we get to watch a bunch of angry people bitch all day. The only one's making out are shareholders and they're laughing all the way to the bank.

I understand the business model, but I think people get an outsized sense of their importance with their data as an active user thinking they get to call the shots. The biggest (and possibly) only tool you really have in your arsenal is to just leave the service. Enough people do that and there may be changes, may. Complaining while continuing to be an active member isn’t going to get too far. You can say the same thing about voting. There’s no incentive to change as long as parties can comfortably rely on your vote no matter what they do.

 

[Eric]

I understand the business model, but I think people get an outsized sense of their importance with their data as an active user thinking they get to call the shots. The biggest (and possibly) only tool you really have in your arsenal is to just leave the service. Enough people do that and there may be changes, may. Complaining while continuing to be an active member isn’t going to get too far. You can say the same thing about voting. There’s no incentive to change as long as parties can comfortably rely on your vote no matter what they do.

This is what I will be doing, with over 8000 followers no less, but it's been going downhill for a long time anyway so it won't be any real loss. We should also consider that Musk is attempting something that has never been successful, saving a social media company as the ship is going down. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out but by any stretch of precedent, this has never successfully worked before.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

This is what I will be doing, with over 8000 followers no less, but it's been going downhill for a long time anyway so it won't be any real loss. We should also consider that Musk is attempting something that has never been successful, saving a social media company as the ship is going down. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out but by any stretch of precedent, this has never successfully worked before.

I heard somebody say recently that Twitter is the social media of the elites, and in a way I agree. I know that's become an insulting term, but for the most part it's where the people at the top (celebrities, politicians, business leaders, experts in their field) go to communicate and then people respond or troll. I know there are far more people on there who aren't in that group, but I'm saying people who are in that group tend to use Twitter as their main social network interaction with the peasantry. I don't know if that can be replicated by another service, but also maybe it's time that people just get offline and go live their lives....or at least spend a lot more time offline.

 

[JayMysteri0]

I heard somebody say recently that Twitter is the social media of the elites, and in a way I agree. I know that's become an insulting term, but for the most part it's where the people at the top (celebrities, politicians, business leaders, experts in their field) go to communicate and then people respond or troll. I know there are far more people on there who aren't in that group, but I'm saying people who are in that group tend to use Twitter as their main social network interaction with the peasantry. I don't know if that can be replicated by another service, but also maybe it's time that people just get offline and go live their lives....or at least spend a lot more time offline.

I believe you're both right. The aspect of it being for elites though is also what makes it something they hate. Because "the elite" can communicate with everyone else easily, it also opens them up to being "cancelled" just as quickly. Which is the very thing Musk doesn't care for. Social media may tilt towards the biggest presences, but it also can tear them down should they offend enough. With Musk owning Twitter and a bizarre belief that it should offend all parties. You better believe someone if calls Musk out, he's depending on his drones to defend him. If those drones have to collectively make up that the persons who called out Musk are pedophiles with no proof, in Musk's eyes that is their right.

There's a new variant of Covid? It's be gone by the next quarter & drinking horse piss laced with ivermectin will get rid of it. Prove me wrong. It's my right to make that claim that now 250K idiots believe and are stalking confused horses.

As a private entity Twitter would truly become "the social media of elites".

 

[lizkat]

We’ve really become spoiled. If a social network charged a $1 a month subscription for access half the users would find that insulting and the other half would just leave. Meanwhile we’ll complain endlessly about the interface, experience, propaganda, and ads that we spent exactly $0 on.

Too true. It's part of the reason (ok, and only a small part, since there was a lot of corporate politics also involved) that CNN+ was ditched about ten seconds after its launch. Not enough people signed up for a pretty dirt cheap offer: half off for life and so currently like 3 bucks out of pocket per month.

Some of the platform's new live content was mocked immediately but not many reviewers homed in on highlighting for the public the back catalog and on demand stuff that the offer had put on tap for subscribers.

All the media critics were talking about was how much the corporation had shellled out to lure the talent and launch the thing. And why was that? Because the media critics work for beancounters too.

For us, price-driven public consumers of infonet content, it's still always about "infomation wants to be free" -- but for the beancounters monitoring launch of the new platform it was hey no one's doing to be watching the ads.

And the honchos at Warner Bros.Discovery know this too, which is why mailboxes are now flooded with offers to the former subscribers to CNN+ to avail themselves of either or both of of two separate free 14-day trials, one for Discovery+ with ads, and one for HBO Max with ads.

Yeah. With ads. And, only if you would be a new subscriber to those platforms...

User acquisition will always trump a subscription model on this type of platform, advertising is where it's at for them. They're not "giving" us anything, they're feeding off of our data like vampires and in return we get to watch a bunch of angry people bitch all day. The only one's making out are shareholders and they're laughing all the way to the bank.

You have rested the case.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Too true. It's part of the reason (ok, and only a small part, since there was a lot of corporate politics also involved) that CNN+ was ditched about ten seconds after its launch. Not enough people signed up for a pretty dirt cheap offer: half off for life and so currently like 3 bucks out of pocket per month.

Some of the platform's new live content was mocked immediately but not many reviewers homed in on highlighting for the public the back catalog and on demand stuff that the offer had put on tap for subscribers.

All the media critics were talking about was how much the corporation had shellled out to lure the talent and launch the thing. And why was that? Because the media critics work for beancounters too.

For us, price-driven public consumers of infonet content, it's still always about "infomation wants to be free" -- but for the beancounters monitoring launch of the new platform it was hey no one's doing to be watching the ads.

And the honchos at Warner Bros.Discovery know this too, which is why mailboxes are now flooded with offers to the former subscribers to CNN+ to avail themselves of either or both of of two separate free 14-day trials, one for Discovery+ with ads, and one for HBO Max with ads.

Yeah. With ads. And, only if you would be a new subscriber to those platforms...



You have rested the case.

I have another hot take on the embarrassing failure of CNN+ that proves that social media has a corporate news favoritism bias. For quite a while the independent news sources I follow have complained that their content gets demonetized, buried, or removed. Basically anything that isn’t towing the corporate news line. In some cases they even agree with the corporate news line but because they used certain keywords in their support, bye bye it goes. “There’s isn’t enough evidence to show covid was created in a lab”. Uh, oh. You said “created in a lab”. Bye bye.


So this caused CNN posts to rise in the searches and recommendations. The suits went “Wow, look at those numbers. We sure get a lot of views. We should start our own thing.” Wrong. WRONG. It appears you rigging the system gave you completely inaccurate data about your popularity. Now your competing service is getting demonetized and removed at quite a hefty loss. Try to salvage staying in your lane.

 

[Eric]

Perfectly said…

 

[lizkat]

I have another hot take on the embarrassing failure of CNN+ that proves that social media has a corporate news favoritism bias. For quite a while the independent news sources I follow have complained that their content gets demonetized, buried, or removed. Basically anything that isn’t towing the corporate news line. In some cases they even agree with the corporate news line but because they used certain keywords in their support, bye bye it goes. “There’s isn’t enough evidence to show covid was created in a lab”. Uh, oh. You said “created in a lab”. Bye bye.


So this caused CNN posts to rise in the searches and recommendations. The suits went “Wow, look at those numbers. We sure get a lot of views. We should start our own thing.” Wrong. WRONG. It appears you rigging the system gave you completely inaccurate data about your popularity. Now your competing service is getting demonetized and removed at quite a hefty loss. Try to salvage staying in your lane.

Personally I think the abrasive, aggressive politics in the news division management at Warner Media, plus the chaos and uncertainty involved during the runup to the merger with Discovery proved a huge distraction to management of the rollout of CNN+.

Anytime Warner pops up in M&A talks, Wall Street rightly wonders

wtf, yet again they figure oh, synergy, let's do it!​

This one won't prove to be as bad as the AOL-Time Warner one, nothing could top that, probably, but only because Steve Case was busy planting new GMO varieties of something or other on his piece of Hawaii?

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Personally I think the abrasive, aggressive politics in the news division management at Warner Media, plus the chaos and uncertainty involved during the runup to the merger with Discovery proved a huge distraction to management of the rollout of CNN+.

Anytime Warner pops up in M&A talks, Wall Street rightly wonders

wtf, yet again they figure oh, synergy, let's do it!​

This one won't prove to be as bad as the AOL-Time Warner one, nothing could top that, probably, but only because Steve Case was busy planting new GMO varieties of something or other on his piece of Hawaii?

I did hear new management hated how CNN was being run with an extra dollop of distain for CNN+ before it even launched. But that internal shakeup doesn’t explain the extremely low subscription rate. It was an epic miscalculation in demand. But I also wouldn’t expect any better if another major TV news network attempted something similar. They are effectively crowded out by independent journalists in the streaming frontier and TV news networks mostly appeal to older people who are often tech challenged or “I just like things the way they are.”

 

[lizkat]

I did hear new management hated how CNN was being run with an extra dollop of distain for CNN+ before it even launched. But that internal shakeup doesn’t explain the extremely low subscription rate. It was an epic miscalculation in demand. But I also wouldn’t expect any better if another major TV news network attempted something similar. They are effectively crowded out by independent journalists in the streaming frontier and TV news networks mostly appeal to older people who are often tech challenged or “I just like things the way they are.”

Sure. Probably can't find any execs who believe that CNN+ was anything but a placeholder move, and one that to begin with was really late to the plate in terms of a crowded streaming environment, and then on top of that offering specialties that the current viewing public may figure have already been served "forever" by OTA news and then "documentary" category of platforms like Netflix et al.

Tastes can change, and it's possible over time that more young people will become interested in the idea of a news-oriented platform with a back catalog of also news or history oriented offerings. But right now the combo of a likely slog to significant viewership and the pressures of a corporate merger must have spelled doomsday to more than a few involved in the CNN+ platform construction when news of ATT's proposed spinoff of a WarnerMedia merger with Discovery went public.

The only real winner in the merger aside from golden parachute holders may end up being ATT's corporate image, which now maybe kinda sorta gets to offload its deserved embarrassment over lack of having done anything great early on with the aforementioned "synergy" it supposedly acquired after its deal with WarnerMedia.

This time around, in doing the merger with Discovery and spinoff of the combined media unit, the ATT shareholders kept their same number of ATT shares, and at point of the deal closing also got some WBD shares that they can do whatever they want with in future.

That's ATT's way of hoping to wash its hands of any negative general-public association with whatever happens next with the actual media operations, even though ATT will hold 7 of 13 of the board seats of Warner Bros. Discovery. And even though, as various pre-merger pieces speculated, there are a lot of complications to sort out in the aftermath of the merger.

Warner Bros. Discovery: Reality TV Execs Move Front & Center As Post-Merger Leadership Structure Emerges

As Discovery and WarnerMedia are set to close their $43B merger later this week, the attention has been focused mainly on the deal’s ramifications for WarnerMedia’s movie and scripted television businesses. There’s been much industry chatter about the importance of Casey Bloys’ scripted...

currently.att.yahoo.com

...it is unscripted television where the two merging companies have the biggest overlap and where combining the assets will require consolidation.

It has gone largely under the radar how Discovery, ostensibly a company led entirely by reality television and unscripted execs, will bring together the numerous nonscripted divisions and cable networks, fed largely by that non-fiction pipeline, across the two groups.

And then because bottom line it's about money, the aim of this reorganizing of deck chairs is like all the rest of them, not to be caught without some plausible "chair over there", e.g. the next possible set of M&A moves, plus a decent parachute in case that doesn't turn up on time. That sort of thing was speculated upon last year, even in an era when anti-trust reviews are more serious and even when this deal was still being finalized.

The WarnerMedia-Discovery deal was structured to make a future sale easier

John Malone was willing to give up super-voting shares in Discovery to make a future sale easier, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Herdfan]

I did hear new management hated how CNN was being run with an extra dollop of distain for CNN+ before it even launched. But that internal shakeup doesn’t explain the extremely low subscription rate. It was an epic miscalculation in demand.

Why do you or anyone subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu? To get content you can't get elsewhere. People can get news from a variety of sources without paying for it. None of it was surprising except for just how fast it crashed.

 

[lizkat]

Why do you or anyone subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu? To get content you can't get elsewhere. People can get news from a variety of sources without paying for it. None of it was surprising except for just how fast it crashed.

It crashed before people could even assess what they were getting from the platform, regardless of what they were shelling out for it.

It wasn't just "news" and it wasn't going to be CNN-light for non-cable viewers either. It was aiming for a different take on news-oriented television. I remain disappointed that the new management effectively said hey that's a huge cost per thousand for five subscribers, you're done, and especially given that some incalculable portion of that disdain for the effort was openly about corporate politics, not about content, reception of it or even a smidgen of respect for the massive effort that had gone into readying the launch.

Oh well. Gonna play with the big dogs, gotta get off the porch. Sometimes the yard out there isn't as big as it may have looked from the porch. But that assessment, if it was actually even made, was extremely premature.

As far as I can tell, the new management squashed the launch marketing pretty well. They really just didn't want to do it, and apparently didn't give a damn that they'd be writing off nearly a billion bucks in the process. Remains to be see whether that decision has consequences later on.

 

[SuperMatt]

It crashed before people could even assess what they were getting from the platform, regardless of what they were shelling out for it.

It wasn't just "news" and it wasn't going to be CNN-light for non-cable viewers either. It was aiming for a different take on news-oriented television. I remain disappointed that the new management effectively said hey that's a huge cost per thousand for five subscribers, you're done, and especially given that some incalculable portion of that disdain for the effort was openly about corporate politics, not about content, reception of it or even a smidgen of respect for the massive effort that had gone into readying the launch.

Oh well. Gonna play with the big dogs, gotta get off the porch. Sometimes the yard out there isn't as big as it may have looked from the porch. But that assessment, if it was actually even made, was extremely premature.

As far as I can tell, the new management squashed the launch marketing pretty well. They really just didn't want to do it, and apparently didn't give a damn that they'd be writing off nearly a billion bucks in the process. Remains to be see whether that decision has consequences later on.

I believe they intentionally “tanked” this. I never even heard of the service until it was already shut down. Corporate politics all the way.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Something to bear in mind when you hear Musk talking

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519735033950470144/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1519739990389010433/

A reminder as well, that I posted earlier from AOC
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1520108070151536641/


Along with,
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1520100158515695623/

That earned the expected response from Musk, covered happily by whom to help illustrate things
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1520206318916837380/


Stolen from another tweet, as a reminder why those who don't like being called out prefer calling for "neutrality"

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."​

 

[JayMysteri0]

What also maybe what is to come

 

[lizkat]

Something to bear in mind when you hear Musk talking

Yeah, Musk and a bunch of other people who don't like free speech unless it's from their own silos. More of them are showing up on Twitter now every day, possibly in anticipation that soon enough it will be fine to once again to abuse other members on the platform.

I'm not sure Musk would go that far with his notion of expanding free speech, but who knows. Possibly he just wants to have a venue where he can manipulate stocks, and imagines the SEC can't hassle him if he owns the social media site from which he posts. If so, he needs better lawyers for sure.

Meanwhile one can almost feel sorry for the pro-Trumpers and trolls thinking Twitter will instantly become a haven for trash. Why is it people keep thinking to re-try experiments with "absolute free speech" on social media platforms anyway? They have all ended up making trash of the platforms and so required development and application of new guidelines. Why Musk figures to fix what Twitter has been trying to repair (and managing to improve the place) is beyond me.

Some of the trolls showing up early have already been banned behind erroneous conclusions about changes in moderation. They seem to assume that since Musk made a purchase offer, the deal is implemented and so are any new rules the guy might have in mind. But old rules persist until further notice, fortunately

And now back to figuring out which movie to escape to or which new jazz to listen to on a Friday night. Later for any more doomscrolling. Weekends are still sacred ground for refreshing the mind and soul for another tilt at the world's windmills on Monday. Or that's how I see it anyway.

 

[Runs For Fun]

The hell?

Elon Musk slammed with backlash for saying the antidepressant Wellbutrin is 'way worse than Adderall' and 'should be taken off the market'

"Please consult a license Doctor before you stop your meds," one user tweeted in response. "Elon Musk isn't a doctor."

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Joe]

Our country is fucked because rich people have successfully convinced everyone that poor people are the reason we can't have nice things.

The amount of basic bros that I see defending Musk as they work low wage jobs is hilarious lol

In the end, we will get what we deserve as a country. The US is turning into a 3rd world country with a Gucci belt.