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Tell HN: Musk's Twitter Plan is Proceeding as Stated

28 points by metadat ↗ HN
Back in April, Mr. Musk plainly stated his idea to restructure and then flip Twitter back to the public:

> Elon: It is better, in my opinion, to take Twitter private, restructure and return to the public markets once that is done. That was also Jack's view when I talked to him.

https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/#41

--

It's also worth perusing this exchange with the delightful kitten know as Jason C.; So far things seem to be going "according to plan":

https://danluu.com/elon-twitter-texts/#47

> Jason: 5 Teams: 5 Northstar metrics 1. Legacy Opps: uptime, speed 2. Membership team: remove bots while getting users to pay far "Real Name Memberships" $5 a month $SO a year. Includes 24 hours response to customer service 3. Payments: % of users that have connected a bank account/made a deposit 4. Creator Team: get creators to publish to twitter first (musicians, You Tubers, tiktokers, etc) by giving them the best % split in the industry (and promotion) 5. Transparency Team: make the Algorithm & Moderation understandable and fair

> Jason: I think those are the 5 critical pieces ... everyone agrees to "year one" sprint, including coming back to offices within the first 60 days (unless given special dispensation for extraordinary contribution)

> Jason: Hard Reboot the organization

> Jason: Feels like no one is setting priorities ruthlessly .. 12,000 working on whatever they want?!? No projects being cancelled?!

> Jason: Move HQ to Austin, rent gigafactory excess space

> Elon: Want to be a strategic advisor if this works out?

> Jason: Board member, advisor, whatever ... you have my sword

> Elon: ["loved" above]

> Jason: If 2, 3 or 4 unlock they are each 250b+ markets

> Jason: Payments is $250-500b, YouTube/creators is $250b+

> Jason: Membership no one has tried really .... So hard to estimate. 1-5m paid members maybe @ Jason $50-100 a year? 250k corporate memberships @ 10k a year?

> Elon: You are a mind reader

Classic old-school PE (Private Equity) strategy. No 5d chess.

12 comments

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mikkergp
It's not a bad idea, but I don't think they'll get close to 5 million memberships. Maybe 250K corporate memberships? That's a lot too, probably 10-20k to start. And I think they're deluding themselves on how hard the transparency piece will be (much easier if they can eliminate the "public square" component) And then the creator team, that is very greenfield and I can't imagine it won't depend on lots of moderator tools and "brand safety". But really if they push hard on ending the public square element of it and create much better personal moderation tools. But I think to get this they'll have a lot of work to do in building tools to get to those numbers.

This article says Twitter blue has only made 6.4 million dollars? https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/31/twitter-blues-troubles-twi...

So that's a million subscribers divided by the number of months it's around. Will Musk's verified really be that popular? Do they have the time financially to build the credibility necessary to make the new twitter blue a success?

s1k3
5 million would be like 2% of their user base.

You don’t think they can’t get that? I bet they could closer to 10% in the long term. Which would be closer to 30-40 million paid users.

There are many paid add ons for Twitter. Imagining bringing that all in house with a native experience and then charging for it. There’s plenty of money to be made.

mikkergp
In the long term anything is possible but I think given their billion dollar per annum interest payments, they’re thinking short term, and I don’t know why this new service would do significantly better than Twitter blue until they can deliver some features.
ehBut
They live in a filter bubble of entitlement, so it’s easy to assume it’s valid everyone will be on board.

Surrounded by yes men, nothing is impossible!

pfdietz
I suggest Musk sell the right to suppress someone else's tweets, and also sell protection against that. Start an arms race and sell weapons to both sides.
togaen
The world would be a better place if everyone just stopped paying attention to both Musk and Twitter.
MrMan
it will be mildly interesting to see if twitter can be re-ipoed at a growth multiple near above the purchase price. I guess anything is possible
random314
Jason Calcanis always had the worst ideas. Classic example of failing upwards.

I remember mahalo which was supposedly a "human powered" search engine which would out compete flawed algorithmic search of Google. Mahalo eventually became a spam content generator for SEO.

ehBut
def isThoughtLeader(person): if person.is_wealthy == true: obey()