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So it looks like Elon Musk officially owns all of Twitter now, and he's already fired the CEO, CFO, and policy chief. I don't have any strong opinions on this, but does anyone want to stake some predictions?
Musk presents himself as a free speech absolutist, which is encouraging to me, but I'd be concerned about the conflict of interest. I anticipate there will be some accusations of throttling unfavorable opinions about either him or his companies (RIP rogue driverless Tesla videos). I think the tension between unrestricted speech and a quality user experience will continue to be a problem, as I can't identify an obvious solution. Blue checkmarks are making hilariously cataclysmic remarks but I predict Twitter will remain a favored haven for the journalist class.
There’s a piece from the Verge that I think does a decent job describing the situation.
I think the author starts out strong. Saying Twitter has political problems, not tech problems, and Elon is now the King of Twitter are statements I fully agree with.
I think he’s wrong to assume that Twitter is still going to utilize an advertising based model. Twitter’s power user base seems a lot closer to Substack than Instagram or Facebook, in that it is preferred by the intelligentsia. The value of the platform is in these power users and the audiences of people who want to hear what they have to say. I think Twitter could probably also steal some business from OnlyFans, since the platform is already a major funnel for creators on that platform. A creator based model probably makes a lot more sense than an advertising model, since the platform is far less visual than, say, Instagram.
The cryptocurrency exchange Binance is reportedly one of the investors in Twitter, hoping to turn it into a cryptocurrency friendly platform and fulfill the promise of web3. Quite frankly I’m not sure how much crypto is needed to fulfill much of the promise of web3 (letting people own their own data, essentially), but I think in the long run letting users monetize themselves rather than relying on advertisers is a winning strategy for some platforms in the long term.
Running some quick numbers: Twitter has about 400M users, 200M are daily active users. Twitter’s revenue in 2021 was $5 billion.
Let’s say one million Twitter users (half of one percent) are popular enough that they can charge for the content they produce. Lets also assume an 80/20 revenue split between users and Twitter (the same as OnlyFans). If those one million users can generate an average of $2100/month in revenue (at $10/month this is only around 200 people), then that’s about $5 billion in annual revenue (1M users * $2100/month * 12 months/year * 20%).
Is this enough to justify Elon buying the company? No, but the point of the exercise is to demonstrate that given that it isn’t hard to replicate Twitter’s current revenue without an advertising model. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that a shift to a creator business model could unlock far greater revenue for the company and make the purchase both worthwhile.
The author goes on to say that Elon will have trouble dealing with governments in Germany and the Middle East…frankly, they need Twitter more than Twitter needs them. Social media is absolutely part of a government’s power projection tools, and Twitter is arguably the most important for verified government officials.
My predictions would be that if Twitter shifts to a creator business model rather than an advertising model, it will double its revenue by 2025. I’d also predict that while one or two countries may ban Twitter, most fears about governmental retribution against Twitter will turn out to be unwarranted.
Advertisers are paying so much per click or 1000 impression that it's hard to think how they can diversify away from it . Maybe a 'premium tweets' option, like Substack.
If advertisers are willing to pay so much, maybe Elon can just ignore their demands to control what kind of content is allowed on the platform?
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