This will probably be slightly worse than old media journalism. Think a very large NYT op-ed system. It will chop off the fat tail of prescient rightness and interesting wrongness.
It may start out skewing slightly red, but will eventually just be a bit like LinkedIn banality.
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LinkedIn opinions are notable for 3 things: being incredibly banal, very late, and very derivative. Many people seem to fuel their LinkedIn by taking stuff trending on twitter, dumbing it down, and reposting it. Very little alpha (though I’ve occasionally found stuff there)
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If this works, it will become a dull, Karen-powered money-harvesting machine allowing Space Karen to turn a profit on his expensive bet.
Frankly, I don’t grudge him that.
This is a nice place but there’s better emerging alternatives so let somebody downcycle and harvest.
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There’s a reason marketers distinguish between earned vs paid media. If you pay $8/mo for reach or a commission on newsletter subs, you’re a marketer competing zero-sum for an audience, not a poster or hive-mind sensemaker.
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Replying to @vgr
I think what will happen is ~10% of users will sign up including 90%+ of actual posters. It’s a trivial amount of money in an era where we all carry multiple $8/mos streaming services. Anyone that wants to speak and not read will. It will just delineate speakers vs listeners.
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Which is fine. I pay for mailchimp and write a substack. Just means twitter is regressing to a primitive biz model.
This is classic authoritarian high-modernist legibilization and yield farming. Lumber yield will boom for a while, then a monoculture disease will kill the forest.
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People asking what alternatives, see this other thread on mastodon and farcaster
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This is actually a good test. If a little friction stops you you’ll end up with twitter “alternatives” that offer distinctions without differences. It’s not a coincidence that the 2 serious options, mastodon and farcaster, have friction. twitter.com/ibogost/status…
Show this thread
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Irony: the illegible part of twitter he seems blind/hostile to has already made more sense of the acquisition in a week than external scrutiny usually would in 3 months. Before he took over, Matt Levine was the best source of intelligence on twitter. Now it’s twitter twitter.
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Many Great Man theologian-priests are saying they wouldn’t bet against Elon Musk.
I wouldn’t bet against the Twitter Twitter blackhole computer.
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Tldr: Current hypothesis: he’s pivoting to a sort of budget LinkedIn paid-reach marketing and opinion distribution network with a vague hangover aura of edginess. Bluecheck will shortly be something akin to “LinkedIn recruiter” but for things like election outreach.
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George Hearst in town. Prospectors and colorful saloon owners out. Industrial mining in.
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There’s an element of a big developer buying up lots of small waterfront lots here that I haven’t yet entirely worked through. Reach aggregation and turning attention owners into renters etc which I’ve alluded to before. Haven’t quite worked that part out. For future TT episode.
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What do you think will happen to the many covert marketers in here (authors etc)?
If you're paying 8 dollars, you can no longer pretend not to be chasing clout for some ulterior end.
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Seems more like rich guy in the penthouse gets tired of crappy HOA and buys the building



