[outsb]

> easily build a much better rival

Bootstrapping a network the size of Twitter is nothing like easy, and might even be impossible this late in the game. Gold rushes of new users tend to wear off as new areas calcify into established concepts.

(The same would be true for launching a modern day FriendFeed / Bebo / MySpace etc)

[version_five]

I'd add that even if by doing this he ends up destroying twitter, it will still leave room for the growth of something new. Twitter has a lot of legacy baggage, and either it had to be shaken up dramatically or burned to the ground in order for this social media landscape to change. This could go either way.

[nonrandomstring]

> Gold rushes of new users tend to wear off as new areas calcify into established concepts.

I hear ya. It's the crowd he's buying. But to me Twitter has no "established concept". Maybe I'm the stupidest person on the planet right now, but what exactly is Twitter? Does Musk have a brilliant solution looking for a problem. Or is this just playing games with money and power for it's own sake?

[outsb]

It is a bit like coal mining.. even the default new account experience encourages subscribing to a bunch of spam, when what is needed is mining one seam in that mess containing just the desired content (people).

Finding a tight-knit specialist community goes against everything the Twitter UI encourages, but it's how most folk who are deeply loyal to the platform actually use it. When configured well, the timeline should be significantly comprised of conversations between known people talking about desirable topics.

Personally I think this is the core of the tool - free, open access to specialist communities with no membership requirements, and no need for upfront reputation. If some conversation between experts interests you and you have a question, you can just ask.

One approach is to start by following one account you really like, then mining their replies following the folk they actively engage with. Do this for a few iterations and the result will quickly become an extremely intimate, engaging, and topical timeline. It only takes a few meaningful questions and comments added to these conversations for the follows and inclusion to start flowing your way.

[fsloth]

"but what exactly is Twitter?"

It's like a watercooler around which a huge bunch of people with interesting takes and things to say on lots of different interesting things have gathered. It takes a while to find the information streams as they are not made obvious, but at least for me I got much better first hand information of both Covid and Ukrainian war from the people I follow before media.

[hammyhavoc]

Simultaneously, Twitter is an algorithmic echo chamber. I had the opposite experience: fear porn scaremongering throughout the pandemic with microchips in the vaccines, 5G nonsense, graphene in the vaccines, the evils of Bill Gates, and far more. My interest in Twitter has declined massively year-on-year. I used to use it as an IRC replacement with hashtags in TweetDeck in place of channels. Now all the fun stuff is happening on Matrix protocol in Matrix Spaces.

[fsloth]

"fear porn scaremongering throughout the pandemic with microchips in the vaccines,"

Any of the algorithmic timelines are generally horrible, agreed.

I follow only people who tweet and retweet reasonable things. I use the timeline with content only from the people I choose to follow ("Latest"), and don't follow lunatics. This is a fairly nice experience, but needs a curated list of people to follow, building of which needs a while.

[hammyhavoc]

The only way I can stomach Twitter is using a browser extension that removes retweets and likes from others, and recommended stuff from Twitter. Also removed the Trending/News area, and the Explore tab. Added a chronological timeline back too, but really don't use it much, and feel a lot better for it.

I don't think it's even necessarily about who you follow, there's a lot of pushing celebrities who are into this rubbish.

[chiggsy]

You should consider this approach with some caution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

[wyre]

My conspiracy theory is that Musk foresees the decline of society and owning a massive platform of communication provides him with a lot of power. Why buy a newspaper when you can buy the communication of so-much-more?

[paulcole]

> Or is this just playing games with money and power for it's own sake?

Can’t be. This doesn’t sound like something Elon Musk would do.

[ClumsyPilot]

Cant tell if this is written in jest

[paulcole]

That's the vibe I'm going for here.

[WJW]

Musk has had success with Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX. All of those are/were mostly engineering problems first and then marketing problems second. None of the major problems at Twitter these days are engineering problems, but rather they are all related to politics and human group psychology. I don't see what Elon could bring to the table that Twitter does not already have.

[shafyy]

PayPal wasn't rally an engineering problem, at least not at the scale of Tesla and SpaceX.

I'm torn. I think he has some good ideas (more open, paid vs. ads, crack down on bots), and for sure the necessary leadership to focus resources on those topics. On the other hand, it's not good that rich people own more media.

[kylecordes]

For PayPal to succeed it had to viciously hammer on a huge number of users who it algorithmically suspected might maybe be scammers. Blocking a tremendous amount of free activity in the process, punishing many innocent in addition to the guilty. This was done to create something that felt safe enough to get mainstream use.

That sounds somewhat like the Twitter of today, and not much like a hypothetical super-free-ified twitter.

[Aeolun]

If there is anyone on the planet that can start a new social network and get millions to join just by asking it’s probably Elon.

[themitigating]

I would have thought that before it failed to happen for "Truth Social"

[bdavis__]

The main draw for Truth Social is not posting on it. If he was "truthing" 50 times a day, they would be doing a lot better. I suspect some negotiation is going on. The main content creator wants a bigger slice of the business.

[themitigating]

What makes your suspect this?

[HWR_14]

Trump never posting on TruthSocial seems to be a pretty low commitment from him. Or maybe he sent a welcome/test message. Meanwhile, he doesn't even have someone crossload his blog entries.