So, the Financial Times dropped an interesting news story behind their paywall about Twitter’s new self valuation. The company, purchased for 40 billion dollars is now valued internally at $19B. News headlines like these make one quite thankful about being completely desensitized to the wealthiest making and losing more imaginary money every year than most will ever see in their entire life. Nevertheless, it does merit at least an additional look.
Except it’s impossible to take an objective look. Every decision regarding content comes with a side of angry people spouting their personal take on the situation as though it’s the god’s honest truth. Out of the millions of words made about a single year of Eloning there’s a couple of important ones that stand out.
1. The name change: This was the biggest one for me. And the one that looks the most like Elon buying a toy instead of a media platform. If Twitter were something that had little in the way of brand support? Sure. But as one of the most recognizable brands on the planet? When your company’s logo graces every website, it should perhaps take a little bit more than a thought to change it.
2. That Whole ElonJet nonsense: This should’ve been the moment where even the most ardent Elon stans would’ve had to admit that their dreams of a completely unmoderated utopia where absolute freedom and no responsibility were not going to happen. The problem with extreme fans and extreme haters is, unfortunately, their complete inability to stare at the facts in the face. This has always been the weak spot for cult leaders as well.
3. The immediate firing of most staff: Okay. Credit where due. Evidently Twitter didn’t really need all of that staff. If it had been a quiet takeover and they had done layoffs in batches the average user wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
In between these, a million other annoyances, bombastic claims, and the crushing mediocrity that always bubbles up when marketing intersects with real life. But the simple fact of the matter is this. For all the screaming and complaining and ever more wild claims about how this time Twitter is absolutely, completely going to die, it’s still going on. Politicians and key public figures never stopped using it. Most of the functionality that people wanted is still there. Even the frankly stupid decision to throw away interesting and unique branding for this latest brush with Elon’s fascination with the letter X hasn’t stopped it. It’s very amusing to see newscasters reading “X, Formerly Twitter” from their teleprompter without the slightest visible tinge of self-reflection. If people thought Elon would tank twitter, they should by now realize that Twitter needs a lot more than a year of questionable business decisions to tank.
Besides which, it continues to provide us with hours upon hours of entertainment in the form of contentious comment sections arguing for or against the regime.
