In other words utterly destroy it and throw away $40+B.
Social Media CANNOT ever survive as a subscription business, for a very simple reason … numbers. There is no way to get sufficient numbers to make it useful, and that’s the catch-22, “free” brings in the numbers to make it worthwhile, subscription does not.
Look at it this way. Netflix can survive as a subscription model because WE pay and THEY provide the content. Same for all the streaming audio and video services. But Twitter can’t survive as a subscription model when WE pay ANDWE provide the content.
Are they? Most Americans don’t use Twitter at all, and of the remainder I suspect most don’t know or care about Apple’s App Store fees. Musk proposes to charge $8 to access his platform in the name of free speech. But if someone else charges him $2.50 to access their platform it is anti-free speech.
All four accounts had been singled out for criticism by Andy Ngo, a far-right writer whose conspiratorial, error-riddled reporting on left-wing protests and social movements fuels the mass delusion that a handful of small antifascist groups are part of an imaginary shadow army called “antifa.” In a public exchange on Twitter on Friday, Musk invited Ngo to report “Antifa accounts” that should be suspended directly to him.
Like the humor team that disrupted Elon’s plan to sell Blue authentication check marks by impersonating, well, anyone, it now seems that Right wing trolls are launching mass attacks and reporting people they disagree with, with the result that accounts are being closed down apparently without cause.
I note that this story is from the Intercept, a site started by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwood and others, but which is said to “lean left” in those left/right media charts. Not on the “far out there” left but outside the ‘center’ zone, too. Decide for yourself:
I just saw this in the Financial Times. Currently free to read but who knows how long? The main thing putting off advertisers isn’t political, it is technical:
After several waves of job cuts and departures, Twitter’s ads business team has shrunk so much that many agencies no longer have any point of contact at the company and have received little to no communication in recent weeks, according to four industry insiders. Some brands have been unable to get feedback on how previous campaigns have performed because of the staffing shortages, one media buyer said. Others are complaining Twitter’s ads systems have also become buggy, making it difficult or even impossible to run campaigns. “It is quite unique.
The turmoil, the damage, nothing of this magnitude has happened before. Never,” said a senior executive at a big four advertising agency. “He seems to put off even those advertisers who wanted him to succeed,” another top advertising agency executive said.
I generally agree. IMHO, Musk is somewhat blinded by his own love of the product. He would certainly pay good money to be able to Tweet. It’s awesome for him. But his experience, obviously, is atypical. Not everyone gets either the enjoyment he gets from tweeting, or the 100 million+ follower count, that Musk has. If you come from a place where Twitter is just awesome, then it’s hard to understand why wouldn’t people pay to participate?
I’d guess it’s more, because with social media there’s really no terminal value if it goes “off the air” tomorrow: just some servers, a few desks and chairs, and a bunch of employees who want severance. Hard to imagine those people who “lent” didn’t get some kind of collateral guarantees, probably out of his personal Tesla stock stash. That would have been good for him (he thought) since he wouldn’t have to sell as much stock to fund the purchase.
But hey, I just figured out that for $44 billion, he could cover more than 4000 football fields with $20 bills and light them all on fire and have almost as much fun as he’s having now.
Al, I do not know if you have been following this. I have. The Justice department and most congresscritters want something done about Apple’s fees. That also includes almost all the other players in Silicon Valley. The incoming house majority is even more gungho to do something about Apple’s powers than the outgoing. Twitter is a bigger bullypulpit than Fox News for those who think alike on these topics. Even though the news media Twitterites are saying they are leaving Twitter many are fawning over every utterance by Musk. The press are well known for rubbernecking…the last thing Tim Cook needs.
NYT Dealbook by Andrew Ross Sorkin
This is a column with no link, but there was links to some aspects embedded in the writing.
Snippet
Apple is already being investigated for its App Store policies, including by the Justice Department. Meanwhile, Spotify sued Apple for rejecting its audiobooks app three times, accusing it of anticompetitive behavior. And Epic Games is still locked in a legal fight with Apple over forced use of the company’s in-app payment system. (Epic’s C.E.O., Tim Sweeney, backed Musk’s fight yesterday, tweeting, “Apple is a menace to freedom worldwide.”)
That is considered monopolistic. Not only can the app store be under fire for that but other parts of Apple’s business may fall victim if there are more than one ruling or law past against Apple’s business practices. Microsoft was always threatened with legal action in the 1990s over not sharing APIs on a timely basis. Not sure they were called APIs at the time but basically the code developers needed to work with the OS were shared by Microsoft with preferences to some and not to others.
Google is not committing highway robbery in its Play Store. Meaning the fee rate is not 30%. You can list for free in Google’s Play Store. Apple is playing a different game entirely. No one is complaining about the Play Store.
Also iTunes’ fee structure is the worst in the business as well. That would be up for legislative actions next or in tandem. This is a massive can of worms for Apple.
Why did Motley Fool give up the subscription based social media model they tried out for a few months? Was any old-timer here around for that mess and willing to describe what the boards reseembled back at the subscription model launch?
Thanks for adding that. It is minor in comparison to any case against Apple. But it is news to me that people are complaining. A few years ago when I studied this to add my own app Google was free but worthless to me. Apple was a headache and expensive.
How are 21 million people effected? There are not 21 million apps.
Below these are minor matters…but there is one thing missing the 30% fee rate. There was an article three or four months ago on the rate but I am not sure if Google was charging it. Apple most definitely and it is highway robbery.
snippet
In arguing against class-action certification, attorneys for Google said the plaintiffs failed to show how they were harmed, an argument that Donato rejected.
A lead attorney for the class at plaintiffs’ firm Bartlit Beck declined to comment.
The class attorneys allege among other things that Google prohibited app developers from steering customers to competitors and used “misleading warnings to deter customers from downloading apps outside the Google Play Store.”
They claimed that “but for Google’s anticompetitive conduct, plaintiffs and class members would have paid lower prices for apps and in-app purchases and would have benefited from expanded choice.”
The biggest issue for Musk, if Twitter becomes a Web3 platform for all sorts of apps would Apple take 30% if the Twitter install is an app store download?
I don’t know what it looked like in the Fool’s back office. When they started charging for access to the boards, they realized that it was we old timer/frequent posters, that were providing the content that others came to read, so many of us, including me, were “comped” free access, a year at a time, for as long as they were trying to charge for board access.
Now that the Fool has joined “the wise” and creates it’s own content, who knows where we fit in their plans?
Whatever the fool’s plans it involves another generation coming in here obviously. How the fools manages that, well we know one thing the board redux to this state was for a much larger crowd of people. I get the small boards are gone. But the server abilities on this platform far exceed the older systems.
It was more than a few months, and it was a disaster. Posting levels dropped immediately (and never fully recovered, I think). They had to comp the heaviest users to keep the content going, the light users weren’t going to pay for it, and hardly anyone new showed up and decided “Heck yes, I’ll pay for this even though I don’t know what it is and there are 20 other places I can read/write for free on the internet.”
While the Fool had a pretty good thing going when AOL was flinging millions of users at them and the market was in full bubble mode in the 90’s, both of those things evaporated in the aughts and the numbers have been declining pretty much ever since. (Still a successful business, Wikipedia says they have over 300 employees, so that’s something. But all the dough comes from the newsletters now.) None of the new ventures have turned into rocket ships, although they are additive, I presume (radio show, podcasts, newspaper column, free boards, etc.)
Apple’s long been under criticism for its App store practices. That’s nothing new, and will likely continue. It’s unclear whether any of that criticism will result in any actual changes. So far, it hasn’t. Epic lost their lawsuit. Congress has declined to act on the matter (under both GOP and Democratic controlled governments). They’re even less likely to do so in a split government. Regulators have similarly declined to act. Neither Facebook nor Netflix (to say nothing of scores of smaller companies) have been able to move the needle either.
There’s no reason to think that Twitter is going to be able to do anything to affect that situation. Which is why Apple is not going to need to “compromise on the app store fees” in response to his public tantrum. Twitter is a relatively small company, and it doesn’t/wouldn’t generate a lot of revenue for Apple. Neither Twitter nor Musk have a lot of power on the Hill, nor a lot of goodwill with regulators. And of course, Musk isn’t going to be able to develop either an App Store or an iPhone alternative.
I suspect that this is just part of Musk speedrunning the social media learning curve. He’s now learning the content moderation lessons that every other site has had to learn. He’s figuring out that Twitter’s content moderation policies weren’t just coming from the political preferences of senior management - that there were regulatory and economic reasons for why these policies looked the way they did. He’s not going to be able to change things as much as he postured. So he wants someone to blame for that.
Based on what would it continue? Just because it is? The entire pantheon of powers is saying no more…the reason they are saying no more is because it is.
