Elon Musk at the All-In-Podcast

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Elon Musk was at the All-in-Podcast.

The highlights:
Elon says Twitter’s cost structure has been improved by 3 or 4 times. This would seem to mean that the annual burn rate has gone from $3.5 billion per year to less than $1 billion per year. He previously had said on a Twitter space that Twitter should be at breakeven in 2023.

Elon cut deep in the employees at Twitter by asking who is critical, who is exceptional and who is willing to work hard.

Elon focuses on hitting home runs and having a good batting average in his business decisions.

Twitter was focused on the metric Monetizable Daily Active Users (MDAU). Elon says the monetizable part was mostly false. They focused on increasing the appearance of more MDAU which led to turning a blind eye to bots. The incentive structure was wrong.

Michael Shellenberger discusses how the FBI pushed the boundaries of asking for more and more information and requests to remove and control messages. They also discussed how they used as a Russian boogeyman. In 2016 they were likely as inept technically as they are inept militarily in Ukraine.

8 thoughts on “Elon Musk at the All-In-Podcast”

  1. I think Elon will use Twitter as a gateway to other services. A competitor to PayPal first, next as a creator platform (a mix between YouTube and Substack), then as a SMS messaging platform no matter where you are in the world. Two way video / walkie talkie communication from anywhere in the world using SpaceX.

  3. What is important is attracting advertisers to the platform. Real people with money to spend attracts advertisers, their politics are not important. Now, if advertisers/advertisements can be pointed towards those more likely to need, or desire their products twitter will thrive.

    • I’d rank subscription based platforms best, because they are fully motivated to serve the customer. Sadly, they have a hard time competing with platforms that don’t explicitly charge anything. So they end up being used mostly in areas where there isn’t a lot of competition.

      Second best are advertising based platforms. They serve two masters, but at least one of them IS the user. The problem here is that the user wants to use the platform while avoiding the advertising, so advertising based platforms tend to take control away from users to prevent that, and the habit of taking control away from users gets generalized. And the user ends up the subsidiary master. (Brian seems to be avoiding this trap due to regularly engaging with the users. But that’s not scalable…)

      Worst are the platforms which monetize user data, they tend to serve one master, and it isn’t the user. We’re also seeing the rise of a somewhat different sort of model, where what’s monetized isn’t user data, but manipulation of user beliefs and attitudes. Basically, they sell skewing politics to political backers.

      Twitter and FB were openly in group two, semi-openly in group 3a, and, as we’ve been learning lately, very covertly in group 3b.

      The expanded Blue Check program seems to be an attempt to move Twitter up this scale, away from the really destructive 3a and 3b.

  4. “They also discussed how they used [] as a Russian boogeyman.”
    Who? Who was used as a Russian boogeyman?

    “In 2016 they were likely as inept technically as they are inept militarily in Ukraine.”
    Was the FBI doing military operations in Ukraine? I hadn’t heard that.

  5. stupidest sentence you ever wrote “Elon focuses on hitting home runs and having a good batting average in his business decisions.”

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