Elon makes all-cash offer to take Twitter private

358,080 Views | 2862 Replies | Last: 5 days ago by titan
samurai_science
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awinlonghorn said:

So what??? Why don't they support free speech?

Company a stops advertising on Twitter. Dosent support free speech

Company b also does no advertising on Twitter , bastion of free speech.

Both spend zero but one is worse because the owner says so. Apple also has its own ad platform . Maybe they decided to spend on their own platforms. Or better yet spend where they get a return for their money.
Twitter was not a private company until Elon bought it, they had a portal setup up so the Federal Government could censor speech.
awinlonghorn
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There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?
pdc093
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FrioAg 00
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nandoodles is an immigrant child whose family came from India to the US for a better life - and then immediately she turned into an anti-American woke leftist (raised in DC).

She tries to hold companies hostage under the threat of PR assault if they don't pull back any ads they run on platforms she deems to be misinformation (I.e. conservative)

Old McDonald
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EXEC: mr. musk sir, we're losing our biggest advertisers

MUSK: have we tried publicly insulting them?
fka ftc
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awinlonghorn said:

There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?
Reread my example. I didnt ask if Twitter got paid for placing ads on peoples Twitter feeds. That's obvious and normal.

I am asking if Twitter gets a cut when Boudreaux asks her to pimp his butt paste on HER twitter feed or simply agrees to retweet their latest promo.

When you answer that question you realize where twitter messed up. They never made themselves part of the deal and have no way to destroy reach… i mean monetize reach.

Worries me a bit you are in the business and do not see that.
BudFox7
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awinlonghorn said:

There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?


Pretty sure Elon will show you the point in the coming months
Adverse Event
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awinlonghorn said:

There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?
I think the point of Twitter is there is none too holy, no matter the price.

I'm pretty excited to see the dirt come out, get tossed in the public square and the fluffers get punched a little bit.
. . .
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Since January 2020:
11.72M accounts challenged
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September 2022:
520 accounts challenged
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nortex97
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AG
awinlonghorn said:

There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?
The assumption is that Elon risks Twitter in a dispute with Apple. Maybe, or maybe he is uniquely suited/able to become a real challenger/threat to Apple, unlike the bozo's at Amazon or in China.

Quote:

Should Apple CEO Tim Cook take such a threat seriously, or can he laugh it off?
I think he'd best take it very seriously.

In Tesla, Elon Musk has the only 'tech' brand name that comes close to Apple in terms of panache. A Tesla Phone actually has a chance of becoming The Next Big Thing. More worrisome for Apple, Tesla could realistically blossom into a complete lifestyle brand with phones, tablets, home security… all the toys. And Musk already has the car, something Apple has been tinkering with in a "skunk works" for years.

Also in Tesla, Musk has what everyone agrees is the best battery technology in the world, bar none, in terms of cost, capacity, and lifespan. This is an important consideration when buying a phone. Many people who are perfectly happy with their smartphones otherwise would switch brands tomorrow if they could get one that would go all day without a charge. A smartphone with noticeably superior battery technology would immediately become a formidable competitor in the segment.

Musk also has Something Interesting that only he has, in the form of a nearly-completed worldwide network of communications satellites in low Earth orbit. This may or may not be applicable to smartphones; I am not privy to the "feeds and speeds" of Starlink. At a minimum, he has a way to offer "no dead zones… anywhere" that would be unique in the industry.
Now, I think that writer is a bit technologically ignorant, as the limited/promised ability to use an omnidirectional little iphone antenna to transmit to a starlink satellite (even in LEO) is…supplemental as an emergency feature, and probably not very good (certainly can't video stream etc. from inside a building), but I don't think Apple should just in a spit of political rage/spite dismiss this as an empty threat.

Further though, I think Tesla's battery tech is class-leading, yet their inherent advantages are not entirely applicable to a mobile device; this matters most for energy density and cost in a vehicle with a huge $10-20K battery bolted to the bottom. Tiny cell phone batteries we don't care if they cost an extra 10 bucks, we mainly want them to just last a couple years. The battery cost in a $1,000 iphone is…marginal (something less than 10 percent).

Me, for one, I love my apple devices, hate the company's political/privacy policies, and would love a real competitor more attuned to free speech/individual privacy.
nortex97
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AG
He's pinned this one;





I wonder if a new Musk phone would somehow align more with the youth/gamers, as that is of course a key advertiser demographic.
Premium
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AG
nortex97 said:

awinlonghorn said:

There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?
The assumption is that Elon risks Twitter in a dispute with Apple. Maybe, or maybe he is uniquely suited/able to become a real challenger/threat to Apple, unlike the bozo's at Amazon or in China.

Quote:

Should Apple CEO Tim Cook take such a threat seriously, or can he laugh it off?
I think he'd best take it very seriously.

In Tesla, Elon Musk has the only 'tech' brand name that comes close to Apple in terms of panache. A Tesla Phone actually has a chance of becoming The Next Big Thing. More worrisome for Apple, Tesla could realistically blossom into a complete lifestyle brand with phones, tablets, home security… all the toys. And Musk already has the car, something Apple has been tinkering with in a "skunk works" for years.

Also in Tesla, Musk has what everyone agrees is the best battery technology in the world, bar none, in terms of cost, capacity, and lifespan. This is an important consideration when buying a phone. Many people who are perfectly happy with their smartphones otherwise would switch brands tomorrow if they could get one that would go all day without a charge. A smartphone with noticeably superior battery technology would immediately become a formidable competitor in the segment.

Musk also has Something Interesting that only he has, in the form of a nearly-completed worldwide network of communications satellites in low Earth orbit. This may or may not be applicable to smartphones; I am not privy to the "feeds and speeds" of Starlink. At a minimum, he has a way to offer "no dead zones… anywhere" that would be unique in the industry.
Now, I think that writer is a bit technologically ignorant, as the limited/promised ability to use an omnidirectional little iphone antenna to transmit to a starlink satellite (even in LEO) is…supplemental as an emergency feature, and probably not very good (certainly can't video stream etc. from inside a building), but I don't think Apple should just in a spit of political rage/spite dismiss this as an empty threat.

Further though, I think Tesla's battery tech is class-leading, yet their inherent advantages are not entirely applicable to a mobile device; this matters most for energy density and cost in a vehicle with a huge $10-20K battery bolted to the bottom. Tiny cell phone batteries we don't care if they cost an extra 10 bucks, we mainly want them to just last a couple years. The battery cost in a $1,000 iphone is…marginal (something less than 10 percent).

Me, for one, I love my apple devices, hate the company's political/privacy policies, and would love a real competitor more attuned to free speech/individual privacy.


1. Dead spots are when you're driving. Sirius transmits everywhere with satellites and so could Elon. It only takes a receiver / antennae in the car.

2. If Elon can simultaneously land two rockets to be reused, and built a car company from the ground up, I'm sure optimizing a battery for a phone is a walk in the park.
TexasAggie_02
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AG
Sirius radios don't transmit, they only receive. A phone would have to be able to transmit and receive.

GPS devices do transmit and receive, so it is possible I suppose.
nortex97
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Yes, it will work fine for receiving a signal, as things like XM Radio/directv have shown for a long time (though, usually with equatorial/geostationary satellites.) Sending a RF signal from a little, unsteady phone to a satellite and establishing/maintaining a data link, from inside a building, using a 10 dBm radio transmission from your hand reliably...well, it's gonna be tough, and I'd have to see it to believe it.

If you work really hard at it you can do incredible things (think, Voyager II beaming back a faint signal to earth from way past pluto), but it's not very easy.

To your second point, optimizing a battery is fine, but again it's a give and take balance; it you want a phone optimized to send a signal to a satellite for internet use/calls, you're gonna need a LOT more power and the battery isn't going to last real long. Oh, and there are things like FCC limits around transmission power.

There are breakthroughs coming for cell phone batteries, including dry electrode batteries, but not all of the tech is analogous or directly portable over from what Tesla is doing with their car batteries. They are very different applications; for instance the latest Tesla 4680 cells are...larger than their predecessors, and that's not something I seek in a phone battery.
nortex97
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TexasAggie_02 said:

Sirius radios don't transmit, they only receive. A phone would have to be able to transmit and receive.

GPS devices do transmit and receive, so it is possible I suppose.
GPS devices don't actually transmit to the satellites. They calculate their position based on signals received from 4 or more birds.
VitruvianAg
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Elon didn't build Tesla, he improved it and then took over.

He also didn't start @ zero with SpaceX, he modified and improved Russian rocket engines.

It's what Elon does, he selects a product, improves and innovates.

He should just buy Motorola (I have one), it uses the google OS (android) but at least he'd have the hardware, IIRC, he already has a Tesla phone prototype. It needs a standalone OS, that's the hard part, I would assume.
Adverse Event
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Premium said:

nortex97 said:

awinlonghorn said:

There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?
The assumption is that Elon risks Twitter in a dispute with Apple. Maybe, or maybe he is uniquely suited/able to become a real challenger/threat to Apple, unlike the bozo's at Amazon or in China.

Quote:

Should Apple CEO Tim Cook take such a threat seriously, or can he laugh it off?
I think he'd best take it very seriously.

In Tesla, Elon Musk has the only 'tech' brand name that comes close to Apple in terms of panache. A Tesla Phone actually has a chance of becoming The Next Big Thing. More worrisome for Apple, Tesla could realistically blossom into a complete lifestyle brand with phones, tablets, home security… all the toys. And Musk already has the car, something Apple has been tinkering with in a "skunk works" for years.

Also in Tesla, Musk has what everyone agrees is the best battery technology in the world, bar none, in terms of cost, capacity, and lifespan. This is an important consideration when buying a phone. Many people who are perfectly happy with their smartphones otherwise would switch brands tomorrow if they could get one that would go all day without a charge. A smartphone with noticeably superior battery technology would immediately become a formidable competitor in the segment.

Musk also has Something Interesting that only he has, in the form of a nearly-completed worldwide network of communications satellites in low Earth orbit. This may or may not be applicable to smartphones; I am not privy to the "feeds and speeds" of Starlink. At a minimum, he has a way to offer "no dead zones… anywhere" that would be unique in the industry.
Now, I think that writer is a bit technologically ignorant, as the limited/promised ability to use an omnidirectional little iphone antenna to transmit to a starlink satellite (even in LEO) is…supplemental as an emergency feature, and probably not very good (certainly can't video stream etc. from inside a building), but I don't think Apple should just in a spit of political rage/spite dismiss this as an empty threat.

Further though, I think Tesla's battery tech is class-leading, yet their inherent advantages are not entirely applicable to a mobile device; this matters most for energy density and cost in a vehicle with a huge $10-20K battery bolted to the bottom. Tiny cell phone batteries we don't care if they cost an extra 10 bucks, we mainly want them to just last a couple years. The battery cost in a $1,000 iphone is…marginal (something less than 10 percent).

Me, for one, I love my apple devices, hate the company's political/privacy policies, and would love a real competitor more attuned to free speech/individual privacy.


1. Dead spots are when you're driving. Sirius transmits everywhere with satellites and so could Elon. It only takes a receiver / antennae in the car.

2. If Elon can simultaneously land two rockets to be reused, and built a car company from the ground up, I'm sure optimizing a battery for a phone is a walk in the park.
elon:
Quote:

phones?
where we are going we don't need phones.

DeLaHonta
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AG
Obviously fake, but funny.

TexasAggie_02
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AG
Android is open source, shouldn't be a problem to use it. He could even create his own appstore (like Amazon did) if he wanted to. Unlike Apple, Android allows you to sideload apps that aren't in the appstore very easily.
Premium
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AG
Can't wait until he does an alternative phone and hell, why not take on Amazon, Netflix and Spotify while you're at it!
. . .
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Adverse Event
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Speaking to the tail end of that video; Interestingly, Elon hasn't mentioned China since June.

Ag with kids
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I liked how he used the term "vassal of the CCP" in that.

Nice....
nortex97
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AG


Yet again, a lot of truth in that comedy/joke.
TexAgs91
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Old McDonald said:

EXEC: mr. musk sir, we're losing our biggest advertisers

MUSK: have we tried publicly insulting them?
So you missed the part where Apple is threatening to remove twitter from their app store? That's an anti-competitive practice that is likely illegal.
"Freedom is never more than one election away from extinction"
Fight! Fight! Fight!
TexAgs91
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nortex97 said:

awinlonghorn said:

There is not a single platform anywhere where reach is free. Twitter absolutely gets a significant cut of every ad placed on its platform: problem for twitter is other tech companies are better at providing ad products and analytics corresponding to the ads. Twitter has never been well run. Ever.

Maybe Elon fixes that but I can promise you no big advertiser will go back to twitter if their CEO talks smack about your company vs working it out behind the scenes. What's the point of Elon is gonna talk crap? Beats the point of advertising no?
The assumption is that Elon risks Twitter in a dispute with Apple. Maybe, or maybe he is uniquely suited/able to become a real challenger/threat to Apple, unlike the bozo's at Amazon or in China.

Quote:

Should Apple CEO Tim Cook take such a threat seriously, or can he laugh it off?
I think he'd best take it very seriously.

In Tesla, Elon Musk has the only 'tech' brand name that comes close to Apple in terms of panache. A Tesla Phone actually has a chance of becoming The Next Big Thing. More worrisome for Apple, Tesla could realistically blossom into a complete lifestyle brand with phones, tablets, home security… all the toys. And Musk already has the car, something Apple has been tinkering with in a "skunk works" for years.

Also in Tesla, Musk has what everyone agrees is the best battery technology in the world, bar none, in terms of cost, capacity, and lifespan. This is an important consideration when buying a phone. Many people who are perfectly happy with their smartphones otherwise would switch brands tomorrow if they could get one that would go all day without a charge. A smartphone with noticeably superior battery technology would immediately become a formidable competitor in the segment.

Musk also has Something Interesting that only he has, in the form of a nearly-completed worldwide network of communications satellites in low Earth orbit. This may or may not be applicable to smartphones; I am not privy to the "feeds and speeds" of Starlink. At a minimum, he has a way to offer "no dead zones… anywhere" that would be unique in the industry.
Now, I think that writer is a bit technologically ignorant, as the limited/promised ability to use an omnidirectional little iphone antenna to transmit to a starlink satellite (even in LEO) is…supplemental as an emergency feature, and probably not very good (certainly can't video stream etc. from inside a building), but I don't think Apple should just in a spit of political rage/spite dismiss this as an empty threat.
FYI

TMobile Takes Coverage Above and Beyond With SpaceX

Quote:

Starbase, TX August 25, 2022 In a live event today, T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) CEO and President Mike Sievert and SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk announced Coverage Above and Beyond: a breakthrough new plan to bring cell phone connectivity everywhere. Leveraging Starlink, SpaceX's constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, and T-Mobile's industry-leading wireless network, the Un-carrier plans to provide near complete coverage in most places in the U.S. even in many of the most remote locations previously unreachable by traditional cell signals.

Today, despite powerful LTE and 5G wireless networks, well over half a million square miles of the U.S. in addition to vast stretches of ocean are untouched by cell signals … from ANY provider. And as anyone who has ever encountered a mobile dead zone knows, the wireless industry has struggled to cover these areas with traditional terrestrial cellular technology, most often due to land-use restrictions (e.g. National Parks), terrain limits (e.g. mountains, deserts and other topographical realities) and America's sheer vastness. In those areas, people are either disconnected or pay exorbitant rates to lug around a sat phone. SpaceX and T-Mobile share a vision where these uncovered areas are a relic of the past, and today, the companies are taking a first step to make that vision a reality.


"Freedom is never more than one election away from extinction"
Fight! Fight! Fight!
TexAgs91
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AG
Adverse Event said:

Speaking to the tail end of that video; Interestingly, Elon hasn't mentioned China since June.
I never speak to any part of a video. They don't talk back.
"Freedom is never more than one election away from extinction"
Fight! Fight! Fight!
nortex97
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Yeah I saw that but I am still very skeptical. An emergency feature or out on the ocean is not really the same thing as a 5g cell service we all basically expect to work 99.9 percent of the time instantaneously.
Ol_Ag_02
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nortex97 said:

Yeah I saw that but I am still very skeptical. An emergency feature or out on the ocean is not really the same thing as a 5g cell service we all basically expect to work 99.9 percent of the time instantaneously.


If I ever get stranded in a life boat in the middle of the pacific it would be nice to stream Netflix while I wait.
will25u
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will25u
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aggiehawg
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will25u said:


I think Musk is digging into twitter's role in this Time story.

will25u
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Just a few days after calling out Apple...

will25u
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TomFoolery
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will25u said:




"Instead 4 human beings that I agree with should" - probably also Elizabeth Warren
 
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