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 stated in interviews?
As we speak, we obtained a have a look at Elon’s broader strategic considering across the app, together with some new updates on how Twitter 2.0 is progressing on numerous parts.
Musk made a brand new presentation on Twitter, and his different companies, to the Morgan Stanley Tech, Media and Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco, the place Musk supplied perception into a number of key features, 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 normal 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 objective, of kinds, although it moved away from the ‘town square’ framing within the latter years beneath 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 aspect of Musk’s push to reform Twitter’s strategy, by permitting extra free and open speech, and ideally, letting the customers resolve what must be allowed, with Group Notes set to play an even 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 fact, by empowering enter from all folks.
As per Musk:
“So the objective is to have Twitter be the perfect supply of fact, probably the most well timed and correct supply of fact, even when the reality is one thing we do not need to hear or disagreeable or no matter, however have it’s well timed and correct and the place you may actually perceive what is going on on.”
Musk additional defined that the media is presently capable of management key narratives by selecting what to cowl, and what will get prime precedence. However Twitter allows all folks to resolve what’s related quicker, by facilitating extra inputs. Which is why, in Musk’s view, it’s crucial that Twitter permits free and open speech, as a lot as doable.
“The bedrock of a functioning democracy must be free speech and a stage taking part in area. 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 defend it in any respect prices.”
This has been a key aspect of Musk’s broader push on the app, which he’s bolstered together with his personal tweets on numerous controversial subjects.
Which then results in considerations round what folks would possibly truly say within the app, and the way that might result in hurt and adverse 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 information means – however based mostly on the important thing parts that the Twitter 2.0 crew is measuring, it’s working to handle doubtlessly dangerous parts, which ought to result in an improved consumer expertise.
In fact, letting tens of thousands of previously banned users again on the app appears to work counter to this objective, however once more, based mostly on the metrics that Musk and his crew are monitoring, it’s seemingly seeing enchancment.
The identical may also be mentioned for little one exploitation content material.
Musk has repeatedly claimed, as this graph reveals, that Twitter is doing extra to handle CSE content material than Twitter has ever executed up to now. Specialists have refuted these figures as properly, however Twitter is seemingly, by at the least some measures, taking extra motion to handle this aspect, 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 changing into more and more unstable, resulting in bigger outages and impacts, seemingly resulting from decreased oversight on account of employees cuts.
Musk admitted that this can be a drawback, noting that the present code base is vulnerable 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 every day energetic customers.
It’s value noting that this chart measures as much as This fall, and experiences have urged that Twitter utilization has declined significantly since then. Besides, Twitter’s reputation has elevated beneath Musk – to not the degrees that Musk would clearly like (with reference to that billion-user goal), however it’s on monitor to see enchancment, if it could possibly get all of its parts into line.
On that entrance, Musk briefly mentioned his plans to enhance Twitter’s advert relevance, and drive higher efficiency via numerous concentrating on measures.
A few of this revolved round easy measures, like key phrase concentrating on, which Twitter has beforehand moved away from resulting from decreased advertiser efficiency. Elon is now trying to implement extra direct concentrating on choices like this, with advertisers capable of 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 ‘all the pieces app’, which principally 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 may very well be executed 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 may let your curiosity can go adverse. Mainly, I believe it is doable to grow to be the most important monetary establishment on this 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 through tweet, Twitter will have the ability to facilitate extra varieties of transactions, which is able to make it a extra helpful app, for all completely different functions, just like how Chinese language messaging apps like WeChat have grow to be important utilities in that area.
In fact, Meta’s additionally attempting to facilitate the identical factor, and only recently obtained approval to expand WhatsApp payments usage in Brazil, whereas it’s additionally gaining traction with WhatsApp funds in India, seemingly 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 grow to be a key supply of fact in journalism, and a key utility in facilitating extra varieties of funds, which is able to then make it a crucial app for a lot of extra folks. It’s an optimistic technique, which requires many issues to go proper, however Musk says that, after huge cost-cutting, the app is, doubtlessly, on monitor to be money constructive by the tip of this yr.
That, as a minimum, provides him firmer footing to construct from, and perhaps, 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 here.
