Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

TheBostonPops t1_iuq15tk wrote

This is pretty big, IPG owns a lot of large ad agencies with huge clients so this will have a downstream ripple effect. To be honest, a lot of digital marketers have been pushing their clients to divest from Twitter anyway - as there’s not much conversion value - which is why this was such a bad acquisition in the first place!

171

Xiang_allard t1_iuq4jpj wrote

That last part can't be understated. His absurdly large ego caused his mouth to write a check he never actually wanted cashed because of course Twitter isn't worth 44 fkn billion dollars.

86

Deceptiveideas t1_iuqje42 wrote

What if this is just 5D chess move in Elon helping fix income inequality by dumping 44b of his own dollars into the trash

23

skankhunt402 t1_iuqme4i wrote

Yeah no there are far better ways to do that than buy Twitter

11

Deceptiveideas t1_iurauix wrote

It was an obvious joke… the whole “5D chess” is a meme.

13

Gone213 t1_ius67wj wrote

Unless you count income inequality in Saudi Arabia because that's where most of Musk got his money from.

2

DataCassette t1_iuqohsp wrote

https://davetroy.medium.com/no-elon-and-jack-are-not-competitors-theyre-collaborating-3e88cde5267d

Depressing reality check for everyone.

Will this grand scheme really work? That part I don't know, but he never bought it to make money.

11

thunderkhawk t1_iuteqpx wrote

I'm even more confused after just reading that. Of fucking course the billionaire elites are part of some weird ass Mars cult that steals blankets from the poors of today to make sure the poors of tomorrow can vote from space with an app. I swear, truth is stranger than fiction. I'd post this in Conspiracy but all I'd get in reply is "Nuh-uh, you!."

6

DataCassette t1_iutg7pe wrote

There's nothing conspiracy theorists hate more then actual conspiracies. They aren't as fun and the bad guys tend to be people the conspiracy theorists like.

There aren't too many people I hate more than Steve Bannon, but I laughed out loud when he said the elite tech bros are "man children" and their companies should be nationalized.

4

lavalampmaster t1_iuvs4a7 wrote

>They aren't as fun and the bad guys tend to be people the conspiracy theorists like

I.e. not Jewish or women

2

catsloveart t1_iuri51v wrote

what is conversion value?

6

TheBostonPops t1_iurjjgr wrote

In advertising, when we put money into anything we expect a return on that investment. Depending on the type of campaign or ad this can be measured in a lot of ways, but most commonly this is measured by conversion: I.e, how many users who see the ad CLICK the ad and then CONVERT into actual customers for the client by purchasing whatever it is they’re selling or signing up for whatever it is they’re pitching.

Long story short, users on Twitter largely don’t click ads or convert to actual customers, so Twitter is largely used for awareness campaigns (where success is measured in VIEWS or IMPRESSIONS not actual conversions, and are expensive), which are not very lucrative when the site is constantly going down the toilet.

21

tomz17 t1_iussj7z wrote

> which are not very lucrative dangerous when the site is constantly going down the toilet.

FTFY... Because nobody wants their brand "awareness" campaign to end up next to anything remotely controversial. They want polar bears drinking coca cola in the winter fuzzy feelings when you see/think of their brand. NOT associations with white-supremacist, nazi, fascist disinfo...

3

TheBostonPops t1_iusu7xk wrote

I mean, as someone in the industry, most clients don’t even think about that, even when things are bad, because they have no idea what they’re doing, which is why agencies usually have to advise them. They only really think of things in terms of money and return. If all the Nazis online were buying Coca-Colas all the time they’d probably still want us on the platform, regardless of the aesthetics. I wish it was the way you described though.

2

HungryGiantMan t1_iuuek9y wrote

It's simpler than that, most liberals in America hate Elon Musk and will never buy what he sells now.

Liberals are the majority and the future. Every year the population as a whole gets more liberal and the brands are thinking long term. Coca Cola wants your kids drinking coke.

2

RobotCatCo t1_iutbmbs wrote

Twitter advertising is by far the worst out of the major social medias. However, twitter retweets are extremely powerful and I know people who charge businesses 3k for a simple retweet.

Basically, twitter had a powerful way of advertising but they didn't have any control over it or able to make money off. The whole company is just poorly run hence why they were never profitable.

4

TheBostonPops t1_iutd9rm wrote

Retweets are valuable for awareness for sure, as are influencers who charge for them, but there's plenty of platforms for that. We're talking bread and butter advertising, and Twitter just doesn't have that conversion value.

I actually don't think that Twitter was that poorly run (at least, not any worse than any other tech company at that scale), it's just the value that it has is not in advertising, and it faced the same problem any other tech company at that scale does: the price of acquisition eventually catches up with everyone.

1

RobotCatCo t1_iutgb2q wrote

Retweets are significantly more powerful than what instagram or facebook has as equivalents. That's because in twitter retweets appear almost as if the retweeter posted it, but the interaction goes directly to the original post, as opposed to facebook/instagram where its obviously a share and only a fraction of the interaction ends up with the original post (similar to a quote retweet in twitter).

Users are also conditioned to retweet in twitter, hence why getting something retweeted by someone big can easily make a tweet go viral, hence why you see all kinds of viral tweets by someone with like 1k followers appearing all the time.

The entire 18+ adult content community is powered by retweets alone, as they're all shadowbanned by twitter but retweeting between the 18+ community has allowed adult content creators to gain hundreds of thousands of followers and funnel into their patreons/onlyfans. All of this Twitter doesn't see a cent of, while their own ad tools are nearly useless in comparison.

Facebook/Instagram/Tik Tok are profitable, hence why Twitter is poorly run compared to them. It has models it can follow but seems to be unable to do it well. I remember when super follows released last year. Almost all onlyfan accounts use twitter as thier main funnel, so had this been actually pushed it could easily put onlyfans out of business, but there's basically been zero talk of it after its initial launch and I don't know anyone who uses it.

I know a lot of artists who have to funnel twitter users into their shops, and its really hard as twitter deboosts any posts with any kind of link or even the words that mention buy or shop in the text. So a new image post can get 100k+ likes but its basically impossible to funnel people who are interested in purchasing the product to an actual link. There should be a way for people to pay to embed a buy button on the post or something. Instagram introduced that feature a few years ago and it seemed to have worked out pretty well.

There are just so many things twitter should be doing to monetize but the platform is barely changed from 5 years ago.

1

TheBostonPops t1_iutkt7w wrote

You do not need to explain how social media works to me. I literally work in the advertising industry, bud. I know what I'm talking about, I'm sorry. What you're talking about, and what I'm talking about, are completely different things.

0

RobotCatCo t1_iutptmu wrote

You said yourself your company is not finding advertising with twitter to be worth doing. So how is it not badly run if it is worst than its competitors at selling ads, and it's not profitable while its main competitors are?

1

TheBostonPops t1_iuu35cn wrote

We’re having a difference of opinion because of our definitions of success. You’re talking about success and conversions as they relate to the business of being a personal artist or having an Only Fans, where retweets equal conversions for sure and are super valuable, but I’m talking about success and conversions for multinational brands, where it is much harder to create actual new value. Of course there is more value and conversions for some markets and audiences on Twitter versus older social media like Facebook, so agencies like the one I work for use targeting to determine where to spend our dollars.

When it comes to how Twitter is badly run or not comes down to how we define success for their business - you’re arguing that success is defined simply by how much money they make on things like ads, whereas I’m defining success by growth of the product itself. As a product Twitter was being run pretty well, it has lots of power users with dedicated audiences and integration as a multinational brand with many other brands and plenty of potential. And, as you point out, plenty of room to grow and get better, but that seems pretty unlikely now.

1