So Elon now is leading innovation at Twitter! Going to be fun to watch what he does. Innovating in cars and rockets and tunnels take decades to bring to life. Software innovations can come very quickly so I don't think we will need to wait long to see him work his magic.
What ideas do we have for him? Add yours in the comments.
A few starters:
- UI: clone facebook, tiktok, insta UIs and let folks toggle between them on twitter. same backend social network which is the hard part, just different front ends that are easy to build
- On the facebook-clone UI, bias the feed algorithm to your most trusted friends. Small group social networks drive feelings of belonging which help vs hurt mental health.
- Ads: be link friendly for advertisers. Facebook has stopped working for b2c startups. Tiktok is taking the consumer attention, but is not link friendly to advertisers. Fill the void with a tiktok-like UI option that is link friendly.
- Give vc-backed startups 9 month payment terms on their ads. Lets them have infinite budget for twitter ads as they get enough gross margin from acquired users before having to pay back the CAC. They will move their ad budget away from facebook and be able to grow fast with zero dilution. Twitter could take 10% equity positions in any startup getting $1M+ per month in ads with long payment terms, and become Berkshire for tech.
CEO/Co-Founder @ Rhiz
I see a lot of "bring back Vine" comments on Twitter et al and am struggling to remember why it was acquire/killed. Anyone know, ostensibly, why?
Serial ClimateTech Entrepreneur, Investor & Ecosystem Builder @ Infiniblaze
@Tim Connors 4th point could happen. They appear to be trying a version of this with OpenAI.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/02/openai-will-give-roughly-ten-ai-startups-1m-each-and-early-access-to-its-systems
Serial ClimateTech Entrepreneur, Investor & Ecosystem Builder @ Infiniblaze
I love all of the ideas being generated, but how can we apply them in a different or new platform that works across all social media and allows the individuals to apply the filtering or reinforcing mechanisms they want in their hands? Could we also make it learning so that algorithms are improved upon or new ones created based on the evolving ways people use or want to use it? I also love the "interventionist bot" idea from @Jeremy Burton here which encourages users to try new ways of looking at things or interacting with others.
Founder, MD @ PivotNorth Capital
this makes me curious if Elon would make twitter subscription only vs ad-based revenue model. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-loses-over-twitter-040836233.html.
I wonder if that might be tough with the public square argument, especially globally.
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
We know the ideological echo chamber is a problem so why not show people who is influencing them with data and encourage them to broaden out.
e.g. "We notice that 95% of the people you follow are regarded as on the X side of the political spectrum, why not try following some of these other voices".
I Iove this problem space - most media clearly leans into bubbles - but I notice that projects in the space almost all struggle to gain traction even when well funded/strong teams. Is it possible people *want* emotionally charged content they agree with and don’t wan’t to know if their opinions are not their own? What’s a good metric to in/validate this?
CEO | Founder | Managing Partner @ Platform Venture Studio
I think there is already fairly clear evidence that you are correct in people wanting to have their opinions confirmed. It brings a nice dopamine hit from a feeling of validation and belonging.
I think Twitter has a unique opportunity to run these kinds of experiments. The first metric would be what % of people end up actually following people who disagree with them when prompted to do so.
Maybe the key here is using AI on twitter’s data to identify “crossover points” - like which issues a person might be most malleable on and start the dialogue there.
VC @ Antler | Investing in Founders at Day Zero @ Antler
1 - give people options for what shows up in their feed so they know what kind of algo they are dealing with. Something like what Reddit does (hot, popular with friends, recent, etc)
2 - transparent, pizza tracker style reporting so you know what happens to a post you report or if your post is reported. This is where people's eyeballs are and doing this well will be key to prevent people leaving or being hesitant to join.
3 - +1 on copying UI from other platforms.
Founder, MD @ PivotNorth Capital
on #1, i'd love to be able to toggle off "politics" and not see those posts.
CEO / Founder @ Coale Cookware
Good idea, fun to think about..
Founder, MD @ PivotNorth Capital
in first week he is working to get breakeven with staff cuts, and wants to launch $8/mo to get verified, so say 2% of the 100m non-bot users pay $8/mo for verified and other "+" features. so $200m a year new revenue in a week x elon's 20x sales multiples he gets and he has his $40b purchase price covered. then ads are another $4b a year. get costs cut to run breakeven. if he loves running it, he can keep it private. if he doesn't, could take it public again soon profitable with good growth rate and 3-5x his investment.
CEO / Founder @ Coale Cookware
Chartr's analysis of the same: https://read.chartr.co/newsletters/2022/11/2/blue-tick-business
Goes bigger on the % of paying users
Senior Data Analytics Manager @ Platform Venture Studio
I guess we found the price of free speech.
I am not sure why someone who doesn't tweet often (only reads tweets) would pay for twitter blue. Content creators are closer to 10m users, and I am guessing a fair number of them don't wish to get verified. My hunch is that most people that would pay for this are those trying to sell OnlyFans subscriptions or running scams which would hurt advertising revenue. As someone who rarely tweets but spends a lot of time on twitter, I think 5x the number of verified users would diminish the experience not enhance it.
Chief Growth Officer @ Platform Venture Studio
I think the 8/month is probably the right price for a premium twitter product, but I think it should be separate from verification. There's no reason verification shouldn't be a free option that is specifically designed to remove/dissuade bots. Removing paywalls from articles alone is probably worth 8/month for a premium twitter subscription let alone removal of some ads, and maybe some other perks.
I agree with Phil that he's setting up a system right now where the only people who are going to pay for verification are the ones who want to promote/shill in people's replies/comments and want to get better placement in the feed which has the potential to decimate the value of Twitter.