So what’s Elon Musk’s long run imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and the way does he plan to transform the app right into a billion-user, money-making machine, as he’s repeatedly said in interviews?
As we speak, we acquired a have a look at Elon’s broader strategic pondering across the app, together with some new updates on how Twitter 2.0 is progressing on varied components.
Musk made a brand new presentation on Twitter, and his different companies, to the Morgan Stanley Tech, Media and Telecommunications Convention in San Francisco, the place Musk supplied perception into a number of key facets, together with their work on mitigating hate speech, the expansion in utilization of the app, and the grander imaginative and prescient to transform Twitter right into a key funds and commerce app.
First off, Musk outlined his common imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and making it the ‘world city sq.’ as soon as once more.
Twitter has at all times had this as a defining aim, of types, although it moved away from the ‘city sq.’ framing within the latter years below former CEO Jack Dorsey, who turned disillusioned with the inevitable calls that needed to be made by Twitter administration on what might and couldn’t be shared within the app.
That’s been a defining factor of Musk’s push to reform Twitter’s method, by permitting extra free and open speech, and ideally, letting the customers resolve what ought to be allowed, with Neighborhood Notes set to play a much bigger function in enabling Twitter customers themselves to police misinformation and untruths by including contextual explainers to particular person tweets.
Musk additionally laid out Twitter 2.0’s core rules, which he hopes will ultimately make Twitter a supply of reality, by empowering enter from all folks.
As per Musk:
“So the aim is to have Twitter be the most effective supply of reality, essentially the most well timed and correct supply of reality, even when the reality is one thing we do not wish to hear or disagreeable or no matter, however have it’s well timed and correct and the place you’ll be able to actually perceive what is going on on.”
Musk additional defined that the media is at present in a position to management key narratives by selecting what to cowl, and what will get high precedence. However Twitter allows all folks to resolve what’s related sooner, by facilitating extra inputs. Which is why, in Musk’s view, it’s vital that Twitter permits free and open speech, as a lot as doable.
“The bedrock of a functioning democracy needs to be free speech and a stage taking part in subject. That is why it is the primary modification. It was the very first thing they did, like we have to make sure freedom of speech. And why did they do this? As a result of the place they got here from there wasn’t freedom of speech, and when you lose freedom of speech, you do not get it again. In order that’s why we should shield it in any respect prices.”
This has been a key factor of Musk’s broader push on the app, which he’s strengthened along with his personal tweets on varied controversial subjects.
Which then results in issues round what folks may really say within the app, and the way that would result in hurt and destructive behaviors. On this entrance, Musk additionally outlined Twitter’s progress in addressing hate speech, which Musk says is now down 50% from when he took over on the app.
Some specialists have questioned Twitter’s metrics on this, and we don’t have entry to precisely what this knowledge means – however based mostly on the important thing components that the Twitter 2.0 staff is measuring, it’s working to deal with probably dangerous components, which ought to result in an improved person expertise.
After all, letting tens of hundreds of beforehand banned customers again on the app appears to work counter to this aim, however once more, based mostly on the metrics that Musk and his staff are monitoring, it’s seemingly seeing enchancment.
The identical will also be mentioned for youngster exploitation content material.
Musk has repeatedly claimed, as this graph reveals, that Twitter is doing extra to deal with CSE content material than Twitter has ever performed up to now. Consultants have refuted these figures as nicely, however Twitter is seemingly, by at the least some measures, taking extra motion to deal with this factor, which Musk says will at all times be precedence primary on the app.
Although bigger modifications stay problematic. As we noticed earlier this week, Twitter does appear to be turning into more and more unstable, resulting in bigger outages and impacts, doubtless attributable to decreased oversight because of workers cuts.
Musk admitted that this can be a downside, noting that the present code base is susceptible to failure when making even the slightest change.
However nonetheless, even with elevated error charges, Musk says that Twitter utilization is at an all-time excessive, with greater than 250 million each day energetic customers.
It’s value noting that this chart measures as much as This fall, and stories have urged that Twitter utilization has declined considerably since then. Besides, Twitter’s reputation has elevated below Musk – to not the degrees that Musk would clearly like (with regard to that billion-user goal), however it’s on monitor to see enchancment, if it could possibly get all of its components into line.
On that entrance, Musk briefly mentioned his plans to enhance Twitter’s advert relevance, and drive higher efficiency by means of varied concentrating on measures.
A few of this revolved round easy measures, like key phrase concentrating on, which Twitter has beforehand moved away from attributable to decreased advertiser efficiency. Elon is now seeking to implement extra direct concentrating on choices like this, with advertisers in a position to spotlight their content material inside associated discussions within the app.
Lastly, Musk mentioned his longer-term imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and making it into the ‘the whole lot app’, which largely revolves round integrating funds.
“I think it is doable to create a really highly effective finance expertise. Mainly, PayPal is type of like a midway model of what I believe could possibly be performed in funds and finance. So, for instance you need to have the ability to ship cash simply from one account on Twitter to a different account effortlessly, with one click on, you need to have the ability to earn curiosity on that cash, you need to have the ability to have debt, so you’ll be able to let your curiosity can go destructive. Mainly, I believe it is doable to develop into the largest monetary establishment on the planet, simply by offering folks with handy fee choices. We do not have the time to enter it intimately right here, but when we simply make the app an increasing number of helpful, folks will use it extra and it will be nice.”
The imaginative and prescient is that, ultimately, by enabling funds by way of tweet, Twitter will have the ability to facilitate extra forms of transactions, which is able to make it a extra helpful app, for all totally different functions, much like how Chinese language messaging apps like WeChat have develop into important utilities in that area.
After all, Meta’s additionally attempting to facilitate the identical factor, and only recently acquired approval to develop WhatsApp funds utilization in Brazil, whereas it’s additionally gaining traction with WhatsApp funds in India, doubtless the important thing marketplace for such a shift.
However success on this space is not going to come straightforward, particularly amid ongoing regulatory scrutiny, and given Musk’s defiant perspective to different regulatory teams, just like the SEC, it’s exhausting to see Twitter ever gaining the approval required to facilitate such.
Nonetheless, that’s the longer-term imaginative and prescient, that Twitter will develop into a key supply of reality in journalism, and a key utility in facilitating extra forms of funds, which is able to then make it a vital app for a lot of extra folks. It’s an optimistic technique, which requires many issues to go proper, however Musk says that, after large cost-cutting, the app is, probably, on monitor to be money optimistic by the top of this yr.
That, as a minimum, provides him firmer footing to construct from, and possibly, Elon’s imaginative and prescient is past what others can but see for the app.
You may try Elon’s full presentation to the Morgan Stanley TMT Convention right here.
