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Elon Musk imposing on Twitter: is it effective?
Elon Musk got himself a tough nut to crack.
It's an interesting saga to watch.
And many lessons learned, including:
- Self-development and the dangers of hubris: this may turn out to be the dumbest thing he's ever done, including ruining his reputation and legacy (as a "genius")
- Business strategies: how to position the company, how to turn it around?
- Social strategies / PR: Musk has (successfully) used his own persona and fame to grow his businesses and net worth. But with Twitter it may turn against him. He has now become more political and more divisive.
And how they all overlap, which they sure do.
Impinging On The Homepage
Since he took over, Musk's Tweets are on the homepage.
I found that annoying and impinging on my personal choice.
And he puts on your face a type of culture you may not even want to deal with:
Memes, (anti)wokeness and "perennial outrage", Elon Musk cult of personality, and just meaningless shit he tweets that I have no interest in.
And the guy is constantly Tweeting.
Personally, while I used to see Musk as an effective human being, I now started seeing him more as a geek (and potentially a time-waster, too).
Sure, you can probably mute him, but it's an additional step and it still feels annoying that I must take action to avoid him.
So, at least with me, he's losing the PR game.
On the other hand, he's reaching a lot more people now so if I'm the exception, it may help him.
Interesting to see how that's going to pan out but so far, it seems to me it's working against him.
Yeah, totally agree with what you're saying here, Lucio.
And I think one of the biggest decisions he made that could heavily impact his perceived credibility/authority as an entrepreneur is the rebranding of Twitter to X:
It feels like he's taking Twitter and making it his social media platform by imposing his own personality/preferences onto it which is OK, but only up to a certain point.
And I can see this big move backfiring if he's not careful (especially with Zuckerberg capitalizing on people's dislike for Twitter right now by establishing his own Twitter-like platform through Instagram, called Threads).
Quote from Ali Scarlett on August 4, 2023, 12:58 pmIt feels like he's taking Twitter and making it his social media platform by imposing his own personality/preferences onto it which is OK, but only up to a certain point.
And I can see this big move backfiring if he's not careful (especially with Zuckerberg capitalizing on people's dislike for Twitter right now by establishing his own Twitter-like platform through Instagram, called Threads).
Yes, eaxctly, you said it.
And it turned out, he also got a rather political/divisive stance.
Not going into whether he's right or wrong at all here, but purely assessing the "business effectiveness":
- A strong and divisive opinions can give you niche support within the people who agree with your stance, and general-public popularity at the potentially heavy cost of much dislike and hatred
- A neutral strategy allows you for full-population success, albeit it's harder to pull off
So for the unknown upstart, the divisive stance works.
See for example Andrew Tate.
But for a platform like Twitter that already has mass market penetration the upside of the divisive strategy are more limited.
For Twitter that needs adspend from the bigger businesses, most of which want "ultra-safe" and apolitical environment, the divisive stance also present heavy downside risks.
A platform like Twitter probably benefits more from a neutral strategy and/or a muted and milder "follow the main cultural diktats" strategy.
So, in our current culture, the Machiavellian business player would police more the conservative / male-chauvinist side and less the woke / feminist side, just to align slightly more with the more powerful forces (the opposite of what Musk is doing).
Yeah, it's overall bad. Everything you guys said.
To me it shows that despite all his intelligence he fell for the common traps:
- Thinking too high of himself: then he develops blind spots when he cannot see what he does is stupid and obviously stupid to everyone (stupid as in lose-lose)
- Comfort: now that he achieved a lot he's in a state of personal comfort as he's in a psychological bubble where he thinks that what he thinks is so awesome (goes back to one). I think that leads to a decrease in critical thinking and therefore in decision making that we're witnessing.
- Believing his own hype: same as 1 and 2
I did not know he went so political but that's a huge mistake especially for a businessman. So the cult of Elon Musk really went to his own head.
