If you listen to much of the chatter on Twitter surrounding Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in October, you might think the world were coming to an abrupt end with Twitter burning to the ground. There’s been much whining and gnashing of teeth along with a significant number of people claiming they are leaving the platform forever. Most of the people I follow are migrating to one of several Mastodon instances – Infosec.exchange and DefCon.social. Why the rush to judgement? Why the apparent mass exodus?
Unless you are new to Twitter, you realize that there is a great deal of toxicity, and what we would call in the old days, flaming. Twitter users will let you know when your words offend them in the slightest, when you disagree with their point of view or when you call them out for their behavior or misinformation. I find the degree of hypocrisy displayed on Twitter confounding. The masses predict that under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter will crash and burn.
I tend to be a bit more pragmatic. I don’t necessarily see a change in ownership or leadership a Twitter as a bad thing. It’s ironic that most of the people fleeing Twitter were the same people chastising the pre-Musk leadership after Peiter Zatko (aka Mudge) released his analysis of the security deficiencies he found just after he left the company. While Twitter might have been a bit left leaning, it became apparent that their security practices were subpar. This didn’t change when a second incident happened late last year prior to the acquisition by Musk.
I didn’t agree with a number of Twitter practices prior to the Musk acquisition. My biggest concerns were the lack of a clear and defined process for verifying accounts and the almost complete lack of effort to remove fake accounts and accounts used for the promotion of false information. Having a revenue model based upon ad exposure doesn’t necessarily promote the most thoughtful and rigorous account validation and clean-up practices as removed accounts equate to less potential for ad exposure and less corporate revenue.
The changes brought about by Musk’s acquisition seem to me to be a mixed bag. At every step, Musk was met with what amounted to vile bashing by those who didn’t agree with his decisions. What people forget is that Twitter is first and foremost a business. They are in business to make money for their shareholders and investors first. They are not in business to coddle to the feelings of the masses. Users are free to use Twitter or not use Twitter. Twitter is free to choose and enforce their own terms of service (TOS).
In 2022, Twitter generated $4.4 billion in revenue with 90% of that revenue coming from advertising. 2022 revenue was down 11% year-on-year. Q3 2022 revenue was $917 million with Q4 2022 revenue increasing to $1.16 billion. Remember, Musk acquired Twitter in late October 2022! He did exactly what any fiscally responsible CEO /CFO would for a company that saw an 11% decline in revenue. There only two ways to fix the impact that decreased revenue has on profitability – increase sales or decrease costs. Musk did both. Unfortunately, decisions that reduce costs impact employees. That’s life. From what I read, Twitter was more than fair with their severance packages. Keep in mind as well, most employees at Twitter had a good deal of restricted stock units (RSUs) issued to them. Most times companies accelerate the vesting on those shares when an employee is terminated without cause. This would mean a full payout on all shares granted. The article does state that Musk wanted to terminate some executive positions with cause as he felt their lack of leadership put the company in a bad financial position and they should not be compensated for bad performance. Other cost-cutting measures impacted entitlements or non-vital benefits.
Most of the negativity flying around on Twitter about demise of Twitter comes from a small group of active users. Remember, Twitter had 365 million users as of January 2022 and continues to grow! A few thousand loud and frequent Tweeters don’t speak for everyone.
Twitter will continue to play a vital role in communication around the world and will remain a critical tool for many professionals in need of keeping up to date with news, trends and other time-sensitive information. Twitter’s leadership will continue to refine business practices, optimize costs and test new revenue streams. In the end, Twitter will do what is needed to do to service the bulk of its paying customers first while working to entice those that are non-paying to convert or provide value in other ways through content or the patronage of paying advertisers.
Leaving a platform simply due to fears about what might happen at some point in the future seems short-sighted. and dystopian. People are free to make their own choices. Twitter was here long before most of today’s users knew about social media and Twitter will survive with or without them. And the funny thing is, a lot of those who left for what they thought were greener pastures elsewhere are either returning or learning that they aren’t missed too much back on Twitter.
Be good to one another!
