X -Where Twitter goes to die.

[raison de arizona]

etc. down to Level Twenty. An interesting read.

Everything is simple when it is someone else's job.

And the less you know about something, the easier it is. Write code to do the magic you request? Easy-peasy.

I don't think Musk even knows what questions to ask in order to effectively run Twitter.

That’s the trick I use in interviewing people to figure out their skill level. Give them a problem and see where they start. If they immediately jump to how they are going to code it, I know where they’re at. A more senior person starts with what I guess I would call Why questions, they start with looking at the bigger picture.

[pipistrelle]

I don't see it as "lords and peasants" so much as "is this account claiming to be Dan Rather's actually Dan Rather's"?

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[pipistrelle]

Money for Musk at $8/month.

I hope he tanks fast and hard.

[Suranis]

Hmm. Thinking about it asking $8 a month for "prividged status" is not really a massive amount as such. its not necessarily a terrible idea if you want to break twitter free of advertisers. It really, really depends on Implementation, and implementation is always where a gasbag like Musk screws up.

The Problem is that the "blue mark" is actually to identify the account as belonging to the person they say it is. Like for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger would have a blue mark saying that this is really the Ahnold. If they lose that check mark it is actually opening up twitter to 15 different Ahnolds talking all kinds of crap.

That is the real prise of twitter, such as it is, that you can have at least the illusion of communicating with the person you want.

[RTH10260]

Twitter’s Blue Check Subscription Service Can Generate Almost $1B Annually If Subscribers Feel Special
If it goes wrong, then the financial consequences could be disastrous.

By STEVEN CHUNG
November 2, 2022 at 3:49 PM

Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, announced that the platform will have a subscription service for $8 per month (down from $20) where users will have various enhanced features such as priority in replies, mentions, and searches, ability to post long videos and audios, limited ads, and paywall bypasses for partner publications.

In addition to the above, subscribers will receive the elusive “verified” badge which some consider to be the crowning achievement of Twitter. Those who already have it will have 90 days to subscribe or lose their badge.




https://abovethelaw.com/2022/11/twitter ... l-special/

[Dr. Ken]

[RTH10260]

Twitter exodus: company faces murky future as top managers flee the nest
In the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, rumors of job cuts swirl and employees report being left in the dark

Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles and agencies
Thu 3 Nov 2022 02.12 GMT

Twitter is facing fresh uncertainty amid a growing exodus of top management and reports that mass layoffs and major changes to the platform could be coming within days.

The company’s advertising and marketing chiefs have recently announced their departures, as well as the chief people and diversity officer, the general manager for core technologies, the head of product and vice-president of global sales. Last week, Elon Musk fired the CEO, Parag Agrawal, the chief financial officer, Ned Segal, and the legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde, shortly after taking over the company.

Sarah Personette, the chief customer officer and ad boss who had said she was looking forward to working with Musk, tweeted on Tuesday that she had resigned, adding to advertisers’ uncertainty over how the social media company will change under its new owner.

Dalana Brand, the chief people and diversity officer announced on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post that she had also resigned last week. The general manager for core technologies, Nick Caldwell, confirmed his departure on Twitter, changing his profile bio to “former Twitter exec” by Monday night.

Chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, Twitter’s head of product Jay Sullivan, and its vicepresident of global sales, Jean-Philippe Maheu, have also left, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. It was not immediately clear whether they quit or were asked to leave.

Reports about job cuts have swirled since even before Musk officially took over. The latest report from Bloomberg said on Wednesday that Twitter’s new billionaire owner would cut about 3,700 jobs – amounting to half of Twitter’s workforce, in order to reduce costs, and would also ask workers to return to the office. The outlet further reported that Musk planned to start charging for Twitter “blue check mark” verification by next week.

Multiple employees told Reuters they continue to receive little communication about the future of the company. Twitter cancelled a check-in call last week as well as an all-staff meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday.




https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... sk-layoffs

[neeneko]

That’s the trick I use in interviewing people to figure out their skill level. Give them a problem and see where they start. If they immediately jump to how they are going to code it, I know where they’re at. A more senior person starts with what I guess I would call Why questions, they start with looking at the bigger picture.

Off Topic

I wonder how much of that is generational rather than skill based though. interview questions involve a lot of metathinking, figuring out what the interviewer is thinking and respond based off that. Thus people tend to pull from 'how did this work when I was starting off?' and work from there. Something I have always hated about coding questions is they tend to be less about 'solve a problem' and more about 'guess which coding practices were in fashion when interviewer went to school and follow them'

[bill_g]

I found Mike Masnick's blog post on TechDirt to be interesting. He talked about all the things you have to think about when you are in charge of moderating a social media site such as Twitter -

Thanks! Good read.

[Foggy]

Moderation is not rocket surgery.

This is something that forum admins do every day, and there are many, many thousands of discussion forums. I'm lucky - or sumpin' - because this community is mostly cohesive and I rarely need to step in anymore. But I am one of literally tens of thousands of Earthlings who run a discussion board, and we all deal with the same issues. Ask WebHick if'n you doubt me. (She runs our twin sister by a different mother, Quatloos, where many of us are members.)

Admittedly, Twitter is a whole different scale of discussion board. Moderation has to be scaled up, and Earthlings will make mistakes. Lots of us weren't happy with the moderation at Twitter before Musk took over. Both here and on Quatloos, you can call Tomi Lahren a bimbo, if the occasion calls for it.

But these are not new issues. It's almost 2023.

[bill_g]

Moderation has never been easy. King George had a go at it, and it led to losing a colony, and later a continent.

[Suranis]

Moderation has never been easy. King George had a go at it, and it led to losing a colony, and later a continent.

But he was insane. Literally.

[Suranis]

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/stat ... Et_vaGyKpw

Some commentators on that are saying that is incorrect, she created a new account.

[bill_g]

Off Topic

poskabul

Is that a Pogoism?

Popeyeism as in "Gollix Golive, anyting is poskabul. Ah ga ga ga ga"

[Foggy]

So let's do our sums here for a minnit.

Heretofore, the blue check mark meant "We at Twitter have investigated this person who is important and/or famous for whatever reason, and this is the actual person and not an impostor. You can trust this person is authentic."

But hereinafter, the blue check mark means "This person is paying us $8 a month."

Huge improvement there, much economy of thought and language.

[raison de arizona]

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/stat ... Et_vaGyKpw

Some commentators on that are saying that is incorrect, she created a new account.

Can’t put my finger in it at the second, but I read that Musk said account reinstatements are still weeks away. So… Yeah.

[noblepa]

So let's do our sums here for a minnit.

Heretofore, the blue check mark meant "We at Twitter have investigated this person who is important and/or famous for whatever reason, and this is the actual person and not an impostor. You can trust this person is authentic."

But hereinafter, the blue check mark means "This person is paying us $8 a month."

Huge improvement there, much economy of thought and language.

To be fair, I haven't seen anything Musk has said that indicates that they will NOT continue to investigate those requesting for the blue check mark, in order to make sure it is really the person they purport to be.

A generous interpretation would be that Twitter will still investigate as they have been, but that they are now going to charge for the service. IMHO, this is not an altogether unreasonable idea. It may be a bad idea, but, under this interpretation, not evil.

However, as someone pointed out in another post, the devil is in the implementation. If it simply becomes a premium membership, available to anyone willing to pony up the $8/month, that is quite another thing. Especially if they still refer to that user as "verified". With the rumors that he plans to lay off 1/2 to 3/4 of his work force, there won't be very many people left to do the investigations.

Of course, I don't do Twitter, so I don't have a dog in this fight. The only time I look at twitter is when someone posts a link here. Frankly, I wasn't even aware of the existence of the blue check mark until this kerfuffle began.

It doesn't seem like a huge source of revenue, either. It is my understanding that there are about 400,000 verified users. If all of them kick in $8/month ($96/year), that's only about $38.4M per year. Steven Colbert pointed out that that will be enough to pay off Musk's $44B investment in 1,145 years. I've also heard that the interest on his debt is going to be around $1B per year, so $38M is a drop in the bucket.

[raison de arizona]

It doesn't seem like a huge source of revenue, either. It is my understanding that there are about 400,000 verified users. If all of them kick in $8/month ($96/year), that's only about $38.4M per year. Steven Colbert pointed out that that will be enough to pay off Musk's $44B investment in 1,145 years. I've also heard that the interest on his debt is going to be around $1B per year, so $38M is a drop in the bucket.

Advertising accounts for over 90% of Twittter's revenue. And yeah, those numbers match what I have seen. Makes one wonder why Musk would risk a large scale rebellion over something so small in revenue.

[noblepa]

It doesn't seem like a huge source of revenue, either. It is my understanding that there are about 400,000 verified users. If all of them kick in $8/month ($96/year), that's only about $38.4M per year. Steven Colbert pointed out that that will be enough to pay off Musk's $44B investment in 1,145 years. I've also heard that the interest on his debt is going to be around $1B per year, so $38M is a drop in the bucket.

Advertising accounts for over 90% of Twittter's revenue. And yeah, those numbers match what I have seen. Makes one wonder why Musk would risk a large scale rebellion over something so small in revenue.

And I wonder how many of that 400,000 will pay? At least a couple of high-profile users (e.g. Horror author Stephen King) have already said that they would not.

OTOH, maybe he IS planning on turning it into some sort of "premium" membership, with benefits that others don't get. He may think that he can expand far beyond the current number by offering goodies. If that is his plan, why base in on the current verification scheme? Just create a second tier plan from scratch. Why risk destroying any shred of credibility that he might have left?

[neonzx]

It doesn't seem like a huge source of revenue, either. It is my understanding that there are about 400,000 verified users. If all of them kick in $8/month ($96/year), that's only about $38.4M per year. Steven Colbert pointed out that that will be enough to pay off Musk's $44B investment in 1,145 years. I've also heard that the interest on his debt is going to be around $1B per year, so $38M is a drop in the bucket.

Advertising accounts for over 90% of Twittter's revenue. And yeah, those numbers match what I have seen. Makes one wonder why Musk would risk a large scale rebellion over something so small in revenue.

My phony twitter account is filled with 99% blue-check accounts I follow. They provide the content I am interested in and bring me to the platform. And, thus, it exposes me to the advertising.

Chief Twit is shooting himself in the foot if he wants to charge the content creators that bring the traffic.

[noblepa]

It doesn't seem like a huge source of revenue, either. It is my understanding that there are about 400,000 verified users. If all of them kick in $8/month ($96/year), that's only about $38.4M per year. Steven Colbert pointed out that that will be enough to pay off Musk's $44B investment in 1,145 years. I've also heard that the interest on his debt is going to be around $1B per year, so $38M is a drop in the bucket.

Advertising accounts for over 90% of Twittter's revenue. And yeah, those numbers match what I have seen. Makes one wonder why Musk would risk a large scale rebellion over something so small in revenue.

My phony twitter account is filled with 99% blue-check accounts I follow. They provide the content I am interested in and bring me to the platform. And, thus, it exposes me to the advertising.

Chief Twit is shooting himself in the foot if he wants to charge the content creators that bring the traffic.

Even at the $20/month that he first suggested, it would only raise $96M per year, assuming that all 400,000 signed up. I suspect that, even at $8 per month, he's going to lose at least half of them.

How long do you think it is going to be before he backs down? Even if he does, the damage is done, and with all the layoffs, who is going to vet those requesting the blue check mark?

[Chilidog]

...The Problem is that the "blue mark" is actually to identify the account as belonging to the person they say it is. Like for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger would have a blue mark saying that this is really the Ahnold. If they lose that check mark it is actually opening up twitter to 15 different Ahnolds talking all kinds of crap....

So what happens if those 15 Ahhhnolds all apply for, pay for and get the check mark?

You know that's what is going to happen.

Will the $1440 per year in revenue cover the legal liability?

[p0rtia]

Putting the points made above together, I think the point (his theory) is that he will be selling blue check marks to millions (not just the 400,00, not just the famous, and would thus be making serious bucks from the charge.

Which means that, if indeed all blue checks were to be vetted, that would be a serious investment in staff time to accomplish that. And since he's in the process of cutting the number of employees in half...

I'm having trouble making the numbers work.

[Phoenix520]

He’s doing all these things because he can. He seems to be in serious payback mode. Like tfg, he keeps a scorecard and his, too, is decades long.

Have Bannon and the Disruptors won?

[bob]

There's no indication the paid-for blue checkmarks would be investigated and verified.

It looks to be just "VIP access," i.e., preferential treatment from the algo (as the kids say).

Eight bucks a month will be a low barrier to entry for a large number of hucksters. But it'll also drive away legitimate advertisers.