Microsoft nopes out after Twitter starts charging $$$ for API access "Is Elon on crack? I'm not paying $42K PER MONTH for Twitter API access." These were the words of a Reddit user last night when it emerged that this was indeed the starting price for any more than zero pull requests on the "cheap" tier. Microsoft wasn't keen on paying up either, though when it swiftly erased Twitter access from …
Problem is that unlike SpaceX, Boring Company, Neuralink and to a degree Tesla, Twitter is 100% his without any minders or babysitters. And he isn't about to quit either, so... he'll ruin the company and take it down before he quits to go back to building his Cybertruck or whatever else takes his fancy.
Ruining twitter is well underway. If elom ultimately takes it down all the way, is that really a problem at this point?
I do agree, freeing up his time to re-focus his maniacally short attention span on tesla et al is likely not a positive thing for those companies, but the world is probably better off without twitter. Or titter. Whatever he's calling it this week.
Actually, I'm beginning to fear it will survive. The determination of the Twitter addicts seems to know no bounds. Intelligent, rational (insofar as anyone is) people who ought to have been smart enough to leave it instead seem to be doubling down even as reports suggest it's getting objectively worse. I can foresee a much-reduced Twitter limping along for years on marginal revenue, with the remaining users congratulating themselves on having accurately predicted how Musk would "save" it.
Twitter could become the next Myspace. (Yeah, Myspace is still around.)
No, he has people who lent him the money to do the deal. Running the business into the ground to be able to seek bankruptcy protection, seize whatever IP the business has and then going bust is a well-established practice in Silicon Valley. And, for all his tantrums, Musk is a money man so he does have a plan for something.
"Running the business into the ground to be able to seek bankruptcy protection, seize whatever IP the business has and then going bust is a well-established practice in Silicon Valley."
And the operators of the Middle East investment funds that have put money into this venture have the infamously well-established practice of taking offense and notice of people that do them wrong.
Even the banks that have lent Elon money for this won't be happen to see that debt discharged by the courts. They aren't as likely to sever their relationship in the same way as the people above, but they can start calling loans and lines of credit for other venture of Mr Musk, requiring more surety and making all sorts of financial difficulties. They could have a private chat with the well compensated Tesla board and suggest that if Elon continues in a management role that the bank might tighten up on the company in various ways. I have to wonder how fast the board will amend the bylaws so not all votes have to be unanimous anymore and then vote to oust Elon from the company. I'm sure the founders of the company would see some karma in that sort of move.
"Company A puts it's prices up and company B ceases to buy from them. Company A then threatens to sue. Have I got that right?"
Not quite. You missed a step.
Company A puts it's prices up and company B ceases to buy from them. Company A would, if run by a competent person, consider whether the price decision was a good idea or not and might change things. Company A is not run by a competent person, so their response is to try to find some other cause to sue. They don't have one, so Musk had to make one up, which is now something about training AI on Twitter data, whether or not that actually happened. This is probably also not a basis for a lawsuit since Twitter's terms of service give them the right to host the content, not all the copyright rights to that content, so they may not be allowed to sue for copyright violation unless it's Twitter-generated content.
Interestingly enough, if Twitter data was used to train an AI, it's most likely GPT. That's not owned by Microsoft even though they have a lucrative partnership, so Musk would have to sue OpenAI, which he originally funded. Maybe they'll find some other cause for a lawsuit that will make more sense, but I doubt it.
No.
Company A puts prices up.
Company B ceases to buy from them.
So Company A threatens to sue Comapny B for something that unrelated Company C (OpenAI) may have done that was not illegal.
It would seem Elon doesn't understand what investing means or that different companies are in fact separate entities. This probably explains all the Tesla employees writing code at Twitter.
"So Company A threatens to sue Comapny B for something that unrelated Company C (OpenAI) may have done that was not illegal."
It would be interesting to see if there is anything in contracts or user agreements surrounding the use of the API's that contemplated using data for training AI. If there wasn't a prohibition, there is no question of legality. It could also come done to a provision that is so vaguely worded that both sides could use the clause in an argument in their favor. It wouldn't be so much it being 'illegal' but in violation of contract terms (Civil vs. Criminal).
Musk has been down this road of threatening advertisers, even moaning that not spending money is somehow tantamount to censorship. Given how obnoxious the platform has become, with engagement becoming toxic, it is no wonder that advertisers are running for the hills.
At some point it's going to go under or the creditors are going to get rid of Musk and try and sell the thing as a going concern. Hopefully whoever buys it does a better job. And failing that, there are plenty of other viable social media platforms that will take over.
At some point it's going to go under or the creditors are going to get rid of Musk and try and sell the thing as a going concern. Hopefully whoever buys it does a better job.
Twitter was already circling the drain, and like a lot of 'Big Tech', there's only so much revenue you can generate from a free service. AFAIK, Musk is currently the creditor, or at least the largest/majority creditor or shareholder though. Plus there's added protection from activist investors if he's folded it into his X corp.
And failing that, there are plenty of other viable social media platforms that will take over.
Are there? I think many are facing exactly the same problem. Advertisers are slowly realising 'social' media isn't a great investment, and there's cost cutting anyway due to inflation reducing consumer spending. Regulators are steadily piling on pressure for regulatory changes that'll increase opex and probably reduce revenues. The seismic event will probably be a regulatory collision between privacy and censorship/anti-privacy regulations though.
Weirdest thing to me is, as a brilliant financial analyst once said, "Much sound and fury, signifying nothing". So why there's been so much media attention around M&A activity for a cash-bleeding chat app. And not the censorship issues that were going on under previous ownership. It's also been amusing to see how fast the media turned on someone who was once their darling visionary. The best thing the media could probably do is just ignore Twitter... like most sane people do.
There wasn't any censorship, Twitter was acting within its rights as owner of the platform to choose whether something should be published on it or not.
Of course.. So when various US government agencies told Twitter to censor posts, or subjects, Twitter was entirely within it's rights to ignore those requests from government, wasn't it?
"Weirdest thing to me is, as a brilliant financial analyst once said, "Much sound and fury, signifying nothing". So why there's been so much media attention around M&A activity for a cash-bleeding chat app."
Because it's a chat app that's used by hundreds of millions of people frequently. It may seem weird to people like me and possibly you who have never had accounts there, but some people really like it. It is also being acquired by a famous person who makes it clear through pathological public statements that he has no clue what he's talking about and would like to make things worse, which he has now done. Of course people paid attention to it. Had one of those things been different: Musk buys an app that only a few people use or Twitter is to be bought by QWER Communication Investments Holdings Group, a really uninteresting company that wasn't planning to change much user-facing details, the attention would have been much smaller.
"And not the censorship issues that were going on under previous ownership."
Oh, that's where we were going. Talking to you feels kind of pointless. So you think that Twitter is worth a lot of attention, but only when it serves your political views (even if you have to make things up to support them), but when it might point the other way, you think everyone should shut up?
Oh, that's where we were going. Talking to you feels kind of pointless.
Yep. Talking to people usually is. Especially when they're not listening. Talking with people is much more productive.
So you think that Twitter is worth a lot of attention, but only when it serves your political views (even if you have to make things up to support them), but when it might point the other way, you think everyone should shut up?
Sometimes there are interesting things that happen on Twitter, like Mark Hamill. Or even Netflix, who're currently promoting their 'Cleopatra' show. Supposed to be 'factual', very much isn't, and comments disabled. I'm curious what you think I've made up though. Twitter's censorship is a clear matter of record, and were clearly done to serve certain political views. Obviously censorship, shadow banning or censorship are methods to make people shut up.. and they're outraged that Musk has taken away their bully pulpit.
"Yep. Talking to people usually is [pointless]. Especially when they're not listening. Talking with people is much more productive."
Since it tends to be pointless, I'm going to just review this little grammatical disagreement. Talking with someone, to me, is an activity that includes the whole conversation. It involves a loop of components: you talk to me and I listen to you, then I talk to you and you listen to me. Between those talking parts or simultaneously, we think about, understand, and create responses to what the other person said. I don't think "talk to" is opposed to "talk with", and would argue that you have to have the former in order to get the latter. I've been part of "conversations" where one person wants to talk and wants the other people not to talk, and although we're both there, it doesn't really work unless everyone is talking and listening.
In our case, I think it's the "me talking" part that isn't worth doing. You listen, but we don't seem to agree on any axioms which can be used to advance the conversation.
In our case, I think it's the "me talking" part that isn't worth doing. You listen, but we don't seem to agree on any axioms which can be used to advance the conversation.
I think it's a problem that we've created as a society, and enabled via 'social' media. Society has changed pretty rapidly as the Internet has allowed the spread of ideas faster than at any point in history. That's lead to some Internet-specific oddities as well. There is the perception that content on the Internet should be 'free', even though there are costs involved in creating that content. Twitter was bleeding cash, that isn't sustainable, so monetising customers is a necessity, ie charging a general subscription, or charging for the tick. People don't want to pay for the service, so it would seem reasonable to withdraw it. Then there's whatever's behind the API spat with MS. I have no idea what the contracts for that service stated, but it again seems reasonable to charge for it if the users are getting commercial value from it.
The rest is just the political divide that 'social' media has enabled. You don't believe Twitter had a widespread policy of stifling debate and supressing opinion, even though there seems ample evidence that Twitter was simply following orders. Governments have this power. Do as we say or we'll regulate or fine you. But that's also lead to some potentially extremely dubious uses of 'social', and media in general. So the Clinton campaign created the 'Steele Dossier' and spread a lot of fake news. More recently we're discovering that a Biden campaign manager persuaded a CIA DDI to create the 'Russian misinformation' letter around the Biden laptop, which was then used to censor and stifle debate on that subject. Blinken of course got rewarded, but it would seem to have been fake news and arguably interferring with an election.
And people are campaigning and lobbying to make free speech even harder on the Internet. This isn't good for society, or democracy, regardless of which side of the political divide you sit on.
"but it again seems reasonable to charge for it if the users are getting commercial value from it."
Yes and no. Is Twitter also getting good value from providing the tools? It would seem that M$'s multi-platform social media tool made it much easier for a company to manage a social media presence (why, I have no idea) and that was a good thing for Twitter as well. The use of the API's seems to have gone from $0 to $42,000 overnight. That tends to annoy. Google has done this sort of thing too in ways that feel like they've allowed smaller companies to build their businesses around some free or low cost tools and then jack the price through the roof with no notice once they appear to have them by the short and curlies.
The use of the API's seems to have gone from $0 to $42,000 overnight. That tends to annoy. Google has done this sort of thing too in ways that feel like they've allowed smaller companies to build their businesses around some free or low cost tools and then jack the price through the roof with no notice once they appear to have them by the short and curlies.
Sadly normal for tech and business. Once upon a time we could buy (ok, license) software packages and use them untethered. So I could load Photoshop on a laptop, take it on location and work remotely. Now it's all 'Creative' with a monthly subscription and a load of cloudybollox dependencies. I once thought about using iPads to let clients preview images, but then discovered it was virtually impossible to transfer an image from camera to iPad without an iCloud intermediary. Now, there's a slew of dependencies on permanent Internet connectivity, and creative price gouging. A special circle of hell for Autodesk who charge for 'points' packs to render images in their cloud, which is something that could and should be possible locally. Now even car manufacturers are getting in on the game with options-as-a-service.
Here endeth the rant..
But ultimately I think it boils down to a mismatch between expectations for service pricing. Hooking customers with special offers is nothing new. See printer ink for more info. Charging a 'fair' price for a service isn't either. There are also examples from other industries where API-like services have become regulated, eg in telecomms setting prices for C7/SS7/SIP interconnects. For regulated carriers (ie the incuments), that's often set on an LRIC basis, so a cost+ model to avoid anti-competitive or predatory pricing. Similar principles applied to voice settlement for inter-carrier and international traffic, but is still a.. bit of an issue when it comes to peering costs.
But that requires regulators to step in, and 'big tech' doesn't like that. Until then it's just a commercial dispute, and if MS doesn't want to pay, it doesn't have to. Or can try to litigate based on whatever contractual agreements they have in place for API usage, which almost certainly contain some language regarding charges.
"The best thing the media could probably do is just ignore Twitter... like most sane people do."
I see so many "news" posts that are just cut and paste twitter screen grabs that I want to hurl. The modern journalist can't be bothered to correct the bad spelling their spell-checker has highlighted and they can't even be bothered to write much of anything either.
I see so many "news" posts that are just cut and paste twitter screen grabs that I want to hurl. The modern journalist can't be bothered to correct the bad spelling their spell-checker has highlighted and they can't even be bothered to write much of anything either.
Agreed. I amuse myself looking at the DM sometimes, and they go so far as to include a screen grab.. and then repeat the text. One way to pad out an article I guess. In other situations, eg Mark Hamill, I think tweets should be presented as-is. Altering them, even if it's just to correct or (sic) them is probably a bad thing, if the content of the tweet is what the story relies on.
"Are there any lawyers willing to risk it, or do they ask for cash in advance when it come to dealing with this manchild?"
There will always be a retainer that must be paid up front in cash. Credit cards aren't accepted.
One of the worst things you could ever do is NOT pay your attorney's bill.
As of today I'm unable to search for anything on Twitter unless I'm logged in. Mobile also spits out errors when I even try to view a timeline.
If these changes are deliberate then that's it for me. If they're not, then it's another example of Twitter's wobbly reliability since Musk took over.
As of today I'm unable to search for anything on Twitter unless I'm logged in. Mobile also spits out errors when I even try to view a timeline.
Try using your favorite search engine instead ? I've seen a couple of interesting discussions in the last couple of days. One concerning Luke Skywalker's journey to the dark side. The other from the "DaVinci Wolves" showing the brutality of the fighting in Ukraine, and the valuable way social media can be used to document evidence of war crimes.
"f Musk was right about Twitter's "value", could someone explain why they're still bleeding billions?"
As a private company it's hard to see where you might be accessing their financial data.
Even if they aren't paying rents (King Charles is one of Elon's landlords I've heard), it's still due and will be accruing interest and penalties. If you keep company buildings in the most expensive downtown areas, you are frittering away money for no return. There's no difference between Twitter being headquartered in San Francisco, CA or Kenosha, WI in the service they deliver so why pay SF rents and need to pay premium salaries so employees can afford to work there?
Rents aren't the only money pit, there are also contracts for all sorts of things that still have to be serviced so Twitter stays online that also don't add any value. Many of those would have been more proper to close out properly before taking an axe to headcount. Shifting office locations to more reasonably priced digs would have wound up shedding a bunch of employees. Two birds and all that. A hiring freeze and some normal attrition would have reduced payroll even more. I believe that it's not change the causes problems, but the rate of change. Do you stay on if every few days colleagues that you interact and work with go missing until you find it hard to do your own job? If instead that same number of people leave the company over the course of a year, you can figure out where the work you are assigned will be coming from and where you hand it off when done with it. The office can even move hundreds of miles away but with some notice, you can start making arrangements to move as well if you'd like to stay with the company rather than getting a notice on Friday that the company is shifting locations on Monday and you had just signed another year lease on your flat.
Mush might be able to do arithmetic, but he doesn't understand reality.
He makes the assumption that is n clients use a service for free then n clients will pay for it. So if n people have a blue tick for free and we start charging 8 bucks a month that will be $8n additional revenue a month. Nope. High profile celebs might be able to afford 8 bucks a month, but they are high profile, they have millions of followers, so the blue tick is meaningless for them so they won't pay. Then there are folks with many fewer followers. They are going to do a quick cost benefit analysis - is that blue tick worth 8 bucks a month to them? Simple solution let the blue tick lapse and see if you actually lose any revenue as a result. If you do then start paying for the blue tick. If not then do nothing.
Same with the API. Mush has clearly assumed that n users means $42000n of revenue. Likewise clients are immediately going to question whether twitter API access is worth $42K a month.
Then there's the assumption he clearly made that advertising revenue would remain flat or even increase after he bought the company. Unsurprisingly when he started to make changes to the platform some existing advertisers took the decision to review their advertising spend with Twitter. Some withdrew and some "paused" their spending.
In every case Mush's first response has been to start making threats. This is not how you carry on in business if you are wise. Start making threats and not only are you unlikely to win people back, but you are also likely to frighten away people who are wavering.
When Mush valued Twitter at a lot less than he paid for it some people said it proved he was an idiot, I wondered if it was actually some sort of ruse to get a tax write down. I'm actually starting to side more and more with those who say he's an idiot.
The reason that Youtube is absolutely rammed with advertising is that Google's plan to get loads of premium subscribers failed and continues to fail. This is an absolutely perfect example of the fact that most people are not willing to pay for a service that they get for free. It also shows that people will put up with advertising rather than pay for a service - most of us were raised on TV with advertising every few minutes. The final thing that it shows is that Google are very good at dealing with advertisers and rule one is don't alienate your advertisers. But then they've always been an advertising company.
Mush doesn't understand any of this, but his arrogance means he looked at a business about which he knew almost nothing and decided that he knew everything.
I'm not one of those people who's predicting that twitter will totally collapse and disapear. However at some point Mush will realise that there's no way he's getting a quick ROI. The question is whether he'll change tack and try to grow revenue slowly as a long term plan or whether he admits defeat and sells up at a (massive) loss. One thing's for sure, whatever he does he will never admit that any of the failings were his fault.
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