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Notes -
Twitter's been acting weird for several hours. Turns out that Musk has done something extraordinary:
Of course everyone on Twitter knows that 600 posts/day is basically nothing, so it's basically something to get people to pay for Twitter and get that blue check, but even then it's not an unlimited offer.
Is Musk knowingly just trying to run the website down, or is there some logic here that I'm not seeing? Is this, finally, the much-predicted Death of Twitter?
updates:
It gets better
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675214274627530754
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675260424109928449
all within the span of a few hours
I saw someone semi-jokingly say that the rate limits were increasing as Elon ran into them himself, and at this point I find that distressingly likely.
Man should have stuck to rockets and electric cars, though a more based Twitter is still nice to have.
Consider the idea that he's not actually running the rockets and electric cars any better...
SpaceX succeded with things where many others failed, did things considered basically impossible and Musk's takes on spaceflight seems to make more sense.
Maybe simply "disregard common opinion, order company to do weird stuff because you thing that it is a good idea and double down on everything" worked in case of SpaceX and imploded in case of Twitter? After all such strategy cannot work every time?
Or Musk started to believe fanboys, thinks he is smarter than God himself and stopped listening to others? Or is surrounded by bunch of sycophants?
Or for Twitter there is no way for profitability and task is impossible and Musk flails trying to achieve it?
What was that, reusability? Other people have done it, the only question is whether it makes sense. People always point to how much the costs to orbit have fallen, but I'm not sure I buy it's because of reusability. He also does some interesting things with accounting, like overcharging governments by 2-3 times, and with that I wonder if the private launches aren't just subsidized by government contracts.
Of all the companies I would have expected it to work, it was Twitter. There's no way they needed all the people they were hiring, so trimming the fat was a good move. Alternative sources of funding like Blue, and letting people put tweets behind a paywall was a pretty good idea. Maybe it was the advertiser boycott, maybe Twitter was in a lot worse shape at the time of purchase than anyone let on, but as good as his initial ideas were, it seems they're not enough.
Yes. Or more specifically, reusability that reduces costs unlike space shuttle failed attempt.
And some smaller changes that resulted in overall reduced costs.
Starting and running private company building brand new rocket is also really unique achievement. Also human spaceflight as private profitable company.
Not in way that makes sense. Space shuttle was a major prior attempt and ended more expensive than disposable rockets.
Well, they still launch cheaper than competition or launch at all. It is hard to say how much overcharging is here, given that almost all activity in this space is governmental.
There is possibility that Twitter was fundamentally unprofitable or that Musk is worse fit, or that he started to believe that he is perfect and makes no mistakes.
Is there an official breakdown of costs on Falcon 9, showing that they are actually saving money on reusability?
Not aware of anything so detailed (and would be happy to read it!) though not saving on that just means that they managed to
In theory they may run with the same rocket costs and less bloated company and/or less outrageous profits than ULA etc, but it also would be impressive.
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