At the very core, Elon Musk seems determined to shake things up during his run as Twitter’s prime shareholder and see just exactly what he can make happen. This could set the platform up to go on a course filled with internal angst and user disruption as Twitter’s various chiefs would then have to find ways to try and placate the latest member of their board.

“I Was Thinking”

Before we go over Elon’s latest recommendations for the platform, it’s important to note where Twitter is currently at as imposed by the stringent goals fixed on it by the Elliot Group that purchased 4% of its stake back in 2020. Skipping much of the technical headaches and jargon, Elliott Management basically assigned the following objectives for Twitter:

  • 315 million monetizable daily active users (DAUs) by Q4 2023. (Now at 217 mDAU as of 2021)

  • $7.5 billion revenue in 2023. (Currently at $5.1 billion as of 2021)

It’s obvious that some of these targets are downright ridiculous, eventually leading to Jack Dorsey’s resignation in November of last year. Replaced by then-CTO Parag Agrawal, the latter saw it as a good decision to maintain these growth targets. This is where Elon eventually comes in, muscling his way through by instantly purchasing 9% of Twitter’s stake just last week.

Barely a day after his investment, Musk was immediately offered a new post on Twitter’s board – a move made by the company to prevent him from buying no more than 14.9% of the company’s shares. While this would momentarily neutralize Musk from directly buying out ownership of Twitter, the new position also gives him a significantly more influential voice on the platform, which could hold great sway in the company’s future direction. Let’s take a look at a couple of points Musk has so far noted:

  • The most popular accounts on Twitter, based on follower numbers, are not very active, having Musk question whether or not it’s ‘dying’?

  • He thinks that Twitter Blue subscribers should also get a verification checkmark, but it would be a different variation than the current blue checkmark for verified users. Musk does advocate that Blue subscribers shouldn’t see ads.

  • He questioned whether or not Twitter’s San Francisco home base should be converted into a homeless shelter since ‘nobody’s showing up anyway’.

  • Musk also noted the prevalence of bots, particularly ‘crypto spam’ accounts, skewing Twitter’s active user numbers.

These all came after Musk shared a poll last week, asking if users wanted an ‘Edit’ button, to which more than 4.4 million users responded (74% said YES). Twitter had been working on an edit button for some time now and Musk’s poll worked to only underline the public pressure that he could put on the company – his range of ideas could certainly cause headaches and planning restructures within Twitter HQ.

Twitter is already working on Musk’s first point about how its most popular accounts aren’t too active – Twitter knows that it has to create more ways for its top stars to generate more engagement, integrating new functions such as ‘Super Follows’ and even newsletters to improve creator versatility and reach.

Second, the idea of adding a variation of the ‘Blue Tick’ to all Blue subscribers has been raised before, but there are better ways to go about flaunting the benefits of paid subscriptions than merely adding expanded account verification markers. Though such identifiers do have their merits; for example, they help lessen the impact of bot and fake accounts.

On Musk’s last point, that there are so many bot accounts on the platform, it has little choice but to concede because, unfortunately for Twitter, Musk’s claim is true. It’s a significant problem, but removing all bot accounts entirely could cause equally significant issues.

The Wrap

At this point, there’s so much for Twitter to absorb with its most recent development. Its goals remain unchanged, but its structure continues to occasionally shift to give it a better chance at hitting unrealistically auspicious targets. Though Twitter is in clear need of better guidance, throwing Elon Musk into the mix isn’t exactly a fool-proof solution.

Yes, Elon Musk might be one of the most influential and revolutionary billionaires in the last few decades, but even his ideas are not so easily realized. It’s unclear as to how effective Musk’s suggested reforms would be, but what is clear is that Twitter and all its teams would have to cross a river of Lava if they mean to try them out. There are certainly loads to take in, which Twitter might just be able to afford given that in the end, Musk decided to not accept Twitter’s offer to appoint him as a new board member.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/373vr9n