In short
Big Technology Podcast Episode Summary
Episode Details
- Title: Debate: Has Elon’s Twitter Takeover Worked?
- Host: Alex Kantrowitz
- Guests:
- Ryan Mac (Reporter, The New York Times)
- Kate Conger (Reporter, The New York Times)
- Zach Coelius (Managing Partner, Coelius Capital)
- Episode Description: A debate on Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter (now X), featuring perspectives from reporters critical of Musk's management and a venture capitalist who supports his approach.
Key Themes and Discussions
Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover
- Provocative Book Title: The subtitle of the guests' book, *Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter*, is designed to spark debate.
- Current State of Twitter/X: Despite the name change and some ongoing controversies, the platform remains operational, but at a significantly reduced valuation since Musk's acquisition.
- Original purchase price: $44 billion
- Current valuation estimates: between $19 billion to as low as $11-12 billion.
Perspectives on Musk's Management
- Criticism from Authors:
- Ryan and Kate argue that while Twitter was not perfect pre-Musk, significant value has been lost under his leadership.
- The implications of Musk's decisions have narrowed the platform's discourse and alienated advertisers.
- Support from Zach:
- Believes Musk’s acquisition provides political influence that could outweigh financial considerations.
- Suggests that Musk's goal may not be about immediate financial success, but rather, shaping political discourse.
Financial and Operational Challenges
- Revenue Decline: Significant reduction in advertising revenue and investor confidence post-acquisition.
- Impact of Layoffs:
- Elon Musk laid off approximately 80% of Twitter's workforce, raising questions about operational sustainability.
- Despite this, the platform remains functional, which some see as evidence of prior inefficiencies in the company’s operations.
Cultural and Normative Shifts
- Ownership and Influence:
- Ownership of Twitter has led to influential shifts in political and social norms, with Musk's management style drawing mixed reactions.
- The debate around whether norms continue to be shaped primarily by Twitter's user base or by Musk's personal ideologies.
Future of Twitter/X
- Potential for Innovation:
- The conversation suggests that despite ambitions for new features (like encrypted DMs and an everything app), little substantial innovation has been executed since Musk took over.
- Speculation on Ownership Duration:
- Guests speculate on how long Musk will retain ownership, with opinions ranging from indefinite ownership to a 10-year timeframe.
Key Takeaways
- Diverse Opinions: The guests present contrasting views on whether Musk's management is effective or detrimental.
- Continued Relevance: Despite operational challenges, many still view Twitter/X as a vital platform for news and discourse.
- Long-term Impact: The decisions made under Musk's leadership may have enduring effects on the platform's role in political and social discussions.
Closing Remarks
- The episode provides a nuanced discussion about the complexities of Musk's takeover, the challenges faced by Twitter/X, and the broader implications for social media as a whole. The differing perspectives illustrate the ongoing debate about the intersection of technology, politics, and public discourse.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Let's debate how Elon Musk's Twitter takeover is going with the authors of a new book critical of his stewardship of the social media site and a VC who thinks it's going pretty well. That's coming up right after this.
0:42Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Let's talk about Elon's takeover of Twitter. We're going to do it again, this time with the authors of a new book that has revealing new details about Elon's Twitter takeover. Ryan Mack and Kate Conger here. They're both reporters for The New York Times, and they're the author of Character Limit, How Elon Must Destroy Twitter. And lest you think this is a one-sided discussion, it won't be. We do nuance here. We do debate on this show. And we are lucky to have, once again, Zach Colias here.
1:15He's the managing partner of Colias Capital. Zach, Ryan, Kate, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Thanks for having us. This is going to be fun. Yes, it will. And I think that, like, I should say for the audience that, at least from my standpoint, I have friendships with the three of you. I would say that. So that's my perspective. Hopefully we can have a constructive, good conversation about this. And there's, you know, even we can have different feelings about the way that this is going. We all like each other in the end. So let me ask the first question. The subtitle of the book is How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.
1:54I like picked the book up and I said, is Twitter really destroyed? Because it's still functioning as a site. It's still like when scandals break, like the Olivia Nuzzi thing with RFK. I wasn't on threads. I was on Twitter. So the concept of Twitter being destroyed, maybe it seemed like it was heading that way during book proposal stage. But is it really destroyed? Let's go to you, authors. I mean, I think we meant for that subtitle to be provocative. You know, it's meant to cause a debate. What we should say is that Twitter was never a perfect place. It was actually a very interestingly run company.
2:30It's had a lot of issues. But what Elon has done with it since buying the company for$44 billion, you know, has kind of been undeniable. I mean, first of all, the company is no longer called Twitter. It's called X. So on that basis alone, you know, Twitter is gone, you know. From a financial standpoint as well, you know, he bought it for$44 billion. It's now worth$19 billion, I think, internally based on his own valuations. Fidelity has marked down to, I think,$11 or$12 billion. That's a lot of loss of value that he has erased in less than two years of ownership. We can go into the other reasons, but that as a starting point is why we think that kind of subtitle is defensible.
3:15Let's go to Zach and then Kate. What do you think about the premise of a book with that subtitle? I mean, look, the goal is to sell books. And they wrote a good book. I mean, I'm just finishing it right now. And it's amazing the level of reporting that was done in this book. I mean, I don't know how many hours you two spent. I mean, the level of detail you get into, it's very impressive. Thank you. Yeah. And, you know, hating on Elon right now is a very, very popular vibe. And a lot of people would be excited to buy a book that enables them to hate on Elon. So I understand the goal. I think it still remains to be seen if Twitter will be successful.
4:00But I come at this from a different perspective, which is that Elon bought Twitter in the same way that owning the New York Times or owning the Wall Street Journal or owning the Washington Post is valuable. The influence that it gives him at an international level is profound. And so for him, I don't think this is about the dollar amounts. I don't think he cares what the value of Twitter is. I think the way he's dealt with his advertisers is a testament to the fact that he doesn't really give a shit about the revenue of this business. And it's about influencing the political discussion for his wider goals.
4:41And there, I think he would consider this to be probably successful. I mean, you know, it's an open question. I don't think it's clear-cut success, but I don't think it's a failure by any stretch. Okay. And we're definitely going to talk about the influence of the platform. But Kate, let's just go to you on this one. I mean, Zach is, I think, suggesting that the subtitle is just meant to sell books and, you know, you're the author, so you can respond to this one. What do you think? I think Zach's actually right. I think, you know, from an ideological perspective, Elon is absolutely getting what he wants out of this purchase.
5:16But, you know, I think as a platform for open discourse and conversation from multiple angles. I feel like we've had a real narrowing of what's possible on X these days, you know, specifically tailored to that ideological perspective that Elon Musk holds. And I also think, you know, as Ryan mentioned, there's a significant destruction of value here. And I can't remember if it was Bloomberg or someone else reporting that it's, you know, one of the worst buyouts in history now at this point. So I think the destruction from, like you said earlier, a capitalist perspective, there's really no arguing with that.
5:55Yeah, I think it's a fair question. I mean, if someone came along and wanted to buy the company, he bought it at the very, very top of the market back when money was free and the entire tech ecosystem was marked at very high valuations. And so you have a sort of a macro drop in the valuation that's, you know, independent of his ownership. And I think that's an interesting question of where it would be if it continued to operate where it was before. Given the fact that it was losing money hand over fist and was, as you guys reported very accurately, made up a whole bunch of targets and then had no hope of actually hitting them.
6:27I would be skeptical that it would have a valuation substantially higher than$19 billion today as an independent company. I think it could be lower because given the way the company was operating, it wasn't good. But yeah, I would be curious to see if it did go on the market, what it would be worth. I think that's a fair question. Yeah, I think it's an interesting point. And what is also interesting about this is, you know, even if he has done this ideologically, if this is his goal to control, you know, the narrative or, you know, control a media outlet, he still has investors, right? He has investors who are sovereign wealth funds.
7:04He has major valley VC funds. He, you know, large individuals. And, you know, I don't think these people gave him money just so he could prove an ideological point. I mean, maybe some did, but like I'm assuming a lot of them did so because they thought it'd be a good investment. And I think, you know, to mislead, I guess, in that way or maybe change his mind on what the intent of the company is, is quite interesting. And I don't know, I look back on those projections that you just talked about that he had, that Morgan Stanley put in front of investors. and these were like you know massive numbers he was projecting a lot of growth a lot of revenue um a lot of revenue growth as well um so i guess just for him to go and say you know this is not uh you know financial uh end game for me is is kind of you know moving the goalposts a little bit well i'm putting those words in his mouth i don't i don't think i don't think that he he has come out and said hey this was never about the financial outcome um my view for is that for For him, owning Twitter was substantially more than the financial outcome.
8:11But yeah, the Morgan Stanley numbers were... Well, I think he has, though, right? I remember the TED conference. He went and spoke right as he was announcing the deal. And he says, you know, this is not about the money for me. You know, this is about freedom of speech. Exactly. Freedom of speech. But he said that before. He was open about that before the investors got along for that ride. but yeah I think there's I think that this is what makes this story so complicated is that there's so many different interweaving elements and Elon is such an enigmatic figure that it's very difficult to know where the truth is and where any number of possible explanations could be.
8:52I think there's he has a lot of explanations depending on his audience. But this is interesting though this idea that he did go out in that TED conference and said he didn't care about revenue. And yet all these people within Silicon Valley put all this money into Twitter, knowing Elon didn't care as much about the finances. And then it was ideological. Like this is a company that I just want to put out there. This was a company that like did that struggled mightily from a business standpoint was finally turning it around. Right. It was went from like 3.7 to five something billion in the year before it sold.
9:26Now Musk is taking a projection of them that it's going to have by 2028, 932 million users and 26.4 billion in revenue. This is coming from the book. And my question is, do the investors really think that that was going to happen or was investing in Twitter just a ticket to be close to Elon and to have a chance to get involved in the other projects, for instance, maybe SpaceX or Tesla or Neuralink or whatever this guy comes up with next because he has had a knack at finding the next big thing. So, Kate, I put that to you. I mean, And, you know, do you think that the investors, even by losing money on this deal, might be getting their money's worth in some other way by associating with Elon?
10:08Yeah, definitely. I think there are some investors on the Twitter deal who maybe saw those projections and thought they were a little ambitious, but wanted to be first in line when the SpaceX IPO rolls around. But I think some people really did buy into the power of Elon. This is someone who is seen as a generational entrepreneur who's been able to do really incredible things with Tesla and SpaceX. And so I think there are some people that looked at that sheet and thought, yeah, sure. He's been able to do so much other incredible stuff that no one thought he could do. Maybe the turnaround will happen at Twitter.
10:46I think there's a little bit of a flaw there in just understanding the businesses of social media companies. Elon's someone who's famously rejected advertising. I think Tesla has never advertised up until very recently that they ran a couple of ads on X to kind of help them out. And then I think the other potential avenue for the investors on this deal to recoup some of their money is through XAI. Elon has said that he's going to try to kick some of that back over to them. And XAI is obviously using Twitter as its training data. So maybe there's a silver lining there for folks who lost money on the Twitter deal.
11:27Maybe they'll get some of that back if XAI succeeds. But again, that's also a company that's, you know, second, third, fourth comer behind OpenAI and other competitors that have a pretty significant head start. So, Zach, I'm curious, go to you on this one. Do you think that that was worth the price of admission to investors, even if they don't make back their Twitter investment? do you think that Elon still has a chance of turning around the Twitter business? And should we believe that XAI is going to be the big business breakthrough that's going to save this deal in the end? I think if you were to go into any of the companies that Elon has started or run, at this point in their life cycle, they would not be considered to be successes.
12:12And a large number of people would consider them to be basically doomed to failure. SpaceX certainly, Tesla was not particularly successful for many years and then almost died many times. So I think it's way, way, way too early to say where Twitter is going to end up. I agree it's a very different, much harder problem. It's very different than physics and manufacturing and launching rockets into space. Dealing with humans is a giant, colossal clusterfuck of a mess. So him biting this off is a big lift. But I do think it's very early. We'll see how it plays out. And then when it comes to XAI, yeah, that could be the thing that saves the whole thing.
13:00I don't know. The great thing about these businesses I've learned over and over again is that when you're outside, when you're looking at it from the outside and you don't actually have your hands on the metal, you're not inside these businesses, you're not dealing with them on a day-to-day basis, it's almost impossible to know what's actually going on. And the outward sort of perception and vibe around a business can be so far off of the reality that I've learned a lot of humility when it comes to trying to understand where these things are going to go because I have no idea. Zach, let me ask you this.
13:28So you and I met when you were working for an advertising technology company back in the day. When Elon Musk took the stage with Andrew Ross Sorkin, and we already have the explicit thing on this episode, I'm just going to say, when he took the stage and told advertisers to go fuck themselves, and then looked at Disney and said, yes, you go fuck yourself. How did you respond there? Like, what did you react when you saw that? You couldn't do that back in the day, could you? Well, I mean, the Twitter advertising business, because just to kind of give a little bit of background here, Twitter at the very beginning of its business had a decision to make about whether or not it wanted to build an effective ad platform or if it wanted to basically kowtow to a set of beliefs about what Twitter was and put advertising in a little box and be like, this is what advertising is and it will never be what works.
14:18And they made the choice because they believed in Twitter being a bigger, more important thing to not build an effective ad platform and instead to basically force advertisers to play inside of a very narrow, confined operating system for their ads that made it highly ineffective. It didn't work very well. And so in order to make that work, Adam Bain and the rest of his crew had to go out and sell big brand advertisers on the conception of the value of Twitter, not on the measurable reality of Twitter. The ad platform sucked. And so they had to basically be sold on this idea. The problem is, is that when you have advertisers who can't measure their outcomes and who actually don't get good outcomes, they can be very flighty.
14:57They can go wherever they want, whenever they want to go. And they're there because they get to go to the Super Bowl with you and they get to hang out with celebrities with you. And like, they're cool, but not because it's like it actually matters. And so when you have a platform like Google or Facebook who can measure all of their ads, the advertisers, you could tell them to go fuck themselves and they would keep buying from you because they don't have any other choice. But when you're someone like Twitter who doesn't have a good platform, you do that and you're basically shooting yourself in both feet.
15:23And yeah, so colossally dumb. I think he was responding to his belief that there were a conspiracy of sort of left-wing advocates and advertisers getting together trying to force him to do certain things. And he was like, fuck them. I don't need to do that. I'm just going to keep going the direction I'm going. Do you think that was true? The belief that I don't have any, I don't, they would, Ryan and Kate would know better. And I, they've done so much reporting on this stuff. Like I, yeah, I have no idea. So yeah, Ryan, let's go to you. I want to hear if you think there's any merit to that, but also you and Kate did some good reporting on the state of the business of Twitter itself, sort of the repercussions of laying off a lot of the sales team, telling the advertisers to shove it where it hurts and then trying to build but failing to build new revenue streams within Twitter.
16:11So what is the financial state of the company right now? How are they measuring up those goals? It's not pretty. I think revenue has dropped dramatically. You're at a point where large brands have significantly cut back on their spending on the platform. They might not have completely left. And what a lot of brands are doing is maybe they're keeping a little bit of spending on the platform just to kind of placate and not draw the eye of soar onto them with Elon. But they are spending a lot less. I look at something like the Explore page, for example, that kind of large banner ad that you see across the top.
16:47A lot of times these days, it's empty. That used to be the next Disney movie. It used to be the next TV show, the next Apple product. That goes unsold pretty regularly. That's about a$500 ,000 ad spend a day or it's being filled by a lot of um political advertisers now you get a lot of trump um um ads there um but for the most part it's not the same as it was before and that is is just kind of one signal i guess for us um you know after elon goes and does these kinds of you know crazy go fuck yourself moments we've also seen a drop in expenditures um we had a story in the New York Times that ran that showed, you know, he lost, you know, I think more than$50 million in spending during the holiday period after those comments.
17:37You know, so the picture inside the company is not a good one. And it's, it's, it goes back to something that Zach said earlier, which is like, you know, you, we don't know what what's going on in these companies until you get your hands on the metal, essentially. And I think there was a incredible amount of hubris from someone like Elon to believe, you know, he could get into this place. He didn't, first of all, he didn't sign any NDAs before he signed the deal. So he wasn't getting any non-public information. He wanted to rush this deal through. And, you know, he, it was just this kind of hubris.
18:09He thought he could run the company better than, than the current management team. There was no understanding of advertising. And it wasn't until he got inside that, you know, he, he realized this company is completely reliant on advertising and he's going to need to kind of play ball. And, you know, that has gone every which way. And it's kind of just been an absolute mess for him. So just to go back to Zach here, Zach, before we hopped on, we were talking about like, how's Elon doing? Like, you know, between one and 10 and you're, you said he's like a six, 10 being great. One is not so great.
18:45And you said you're like at a six or seven. So it seems like you're agreeing with like a lot of like the business issues. So where are you seeing him doing a good job? Well, I think the question goes back to is buying Twitter for him, will it be a success? I think there's two separate questions, obviously. Is it a business success for his investors? Is it a success for him personally? I think if you look at what's happening with Twitter or with Elon and the Biden administration, if you're Elon and he publicly says and I just take him at his word that his goal is to make humans a multi-planetary species and he really really really cares about that if that's your goal you have this wider objective the Biden administration has been a disaster for that and his goal of trying to basically create a more centrist or potentially right-leaning political administration that would support him in basically launching rockets and doing the things that he wants to do, I think can only be helped by owning Twitter.
19:55Twitter is a incredibly powerful platform and influence it provides in helping to push forward that agenda is incredibly meaningful. And so if that's his wider goal, then yeah, then owning Twitter is useful in that process, both from a personal perspective and also from helping to shift the total sort of dialogue in the general population. I mean, Twitter is the place that the conversations happen. And if you're in there basically allowing the conversations to move in one direction versus another, that's a pretty substantial influence. So from that perspective, I think he's probably succeeding.
20:29The business, yeah, we'll see if he can figure out how to make this business work. So far, it doesn't look like he's doing a great job of that. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that's sort of, I don't know, just sort of interesting to see because people do have this view of him as such a successful business mind. And it's something we really dove into in sort of in the second act of the book, the middle section, we're talking about Jack Dorsey, one of the co-founders, thinking that Twitter had really gone astray and wanting to change a lot and kind of wanting to almost tear the company down to the studs and rebuild.
21:05And then his successor, Parag Agarwal, trying to push a lot of those visions through and make really drastic changes to the way the company operated. And I think it's interesting to see Elon talk so much about how much Twitter and now X needed to change without really implementing a lot of those plans. He said he doesn't want advertisers' money. He said that he wants to build a subscription business, but we're not really seeing a lot more than that. We're not seeing him actually walk away from the advertising industry and try to develop new revenue streams. We're seeing him sue advertisers and try to force them back onto the platform.
21:43And so it's just not the kind of innovation that I think people expect from him. And I think that's where it's sort of damaging a little bit to his public image. You're right that he is gaining a lot of political clout. X certainly opens a lot of doors for him all around the world. But I do think his stewardship so far has been really chipping away at the idea that he does have this, you know, really strong future vision and a really strong innovative mind when it comes to figuring out these tough problems. Zach, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think your book does a great job of explaining the chaos that happened when he took over Twitter.
22:24I mean, you had a staff of people that they cut by an insane amount. And And then I think the majority of the people that were there actively hated Twitter. In fact, most of my friends who were there definitely hated, not Twitter, hated Elon. And so shifting a culture is like literally one of the most impossible things ever to do in a business. And then getting a new set of staff in place and then getting them up to speed and then getting them executing is a non-trivial endeavor. so I think it's too early to to say that they haven't done anything because I I don't think they're going to be able to to know we're not going to be able to know if we're there for another couple years but um I think that's a that was a hard lift um I think I think I think I think he definitely his image has definitely taken a beating a massive beating uh through this whole process um he certainly probably would have been not probably he would have been better off not owning Twitter from his image perspective.
23:23But influence is a long term game. I think, I think if you take him at his word, he is very worried about the sort of political discourse in this country and the ideological bent of where this country is headed. And he's equally unhappy with the regulatory morass that we have that makes us so that we can't build housing anymore, we can't build trains anymore, we can't build anything in this country anymore. the fact that our government has become incapable of not spending money, but at the same time, doesn't actually get anything for that money. So you can look at, you know, their electrification program to build basically like car charging across the country, they spent billions and done nothing, or their installation of fiber into homes across the country where they spent billions and done nothing, or on and on and on and on.
24:09If you take him in his word that he's unhappy about those things, if you if you think you only have one life to live, his goal may be simply to try to shift the dialogue towards a different direction and then he may consider that to be a very long-term agenda and pattern for him um so kate and ryan do you think the trade-off you know for image loss but uh influence gain has been worth it for him it's hard to quantify that in any way i you know you go to more liberal cities these days and you see these bumper stickers that say you know i bought this car knew he was an asshole or something like that yeah exactly and it's like i don't know i mean everybody he was an asshole beforehand he was just like very effective at you know running businesses but not everybody knew he was an asshole before exactly or he was he was an asshole that supported you know clean energy and yeah exactly and i think this is a very important point to make is that prior to this recent election he hasn't been very overtly political i mean this is a this is a development that happened in the last two years I think of something like 2016, a very tepid endorsement for Hillary Clinton.
25:172020, he kind of stayed out of it. You know, I think he realized back then that, you know, politics wasn't his game. He would rather not alienate folks, rather have them support his companies or his causes, whether that was clean energy or getting to Mars, and not have to engage with politics because he knew that, you know, by doing so, it would alienate half the country. And I think at this point, you know, he's kind of obviously thrown that all out the window, you know, and it's a complete shift for him. And, you know, he's dealing with the effects of that now, you know, people that won't buy a Tesla because of who he is or what he what he says, you know, people that won't use Twitter anymore.
26:00X, they'll go to Blue Sky or Threads because of his politics. And I think this is it's like a relatively new development. We'll see where this goes. um but yeah i just think for yeah for his own personal brand has certainly taken a hit you know he's now telling people you know maybe we should drill for more oil or you know maybe we shouldn't phase out like um you know gas-powered cars and that's a dramatic message change from that kind of you know what he was saying year like a couple years ago when he built that massive fan base among among Tesla supporters so um you know i think we'll we'll continue to see the effects of that.
26:35I have like three questions that are coming up now. So we've talked about the business. We've talked about whether this is good for Elon and we've, we've taken as sort of granted that Twitter is influential. And one of the things that I thought about is while I was reading is, is Twitter as influential as it was under Elon, because a lot of, a lot of the dialogue has left the platform. But then again, this is that was question one. Now question two is, does it really matter who who's running Twitter? Because like I was talking about earlier with the Olivia Nuzzi thing or with the I've been hooked to it for the P.
27:14Diddy updates. I mean, it is just the one real time feed in the world. And it's gonna, you know, do its thing no matter what. And, you know, I remember one time talking about talking with Mark Zuckerberg about how powerful he is and, you know, the powerful hand he wields, you know, controlling Facebook. And he's like, listen, it's not that simple because ultimately it's like user generated content. And, you know, it's harder than you think to put your thumb on the scale of a platform like this. Clearly, you're seeing discussion from all angles on Twitter. It's not like truth social. It's a big deal, I mean, for everybody.
Read the full transcript
27:58So let's just start with those. Is Twitter still influential and does it matter who runs it? And whoever wants can grab that one. Yeah, I mean, I think Twitter is still incredibly influential, although, you know, I think those of us in the media have always overestimated that influence a little bit because it's so enmeshed with the way that we pursue the news these days. But yeah, I mean, I think it's still sort of the destination for those breaking news moments. Um, you know, but there is this very, um, tight relationship that has existed for a long time between the news media and Twitter. Uh, it's been a place for breaking news.
28:37And some of these stories you mentioned, the P Diddy stuff, the Olivia Nizzi stuff, um, those are all coming from media outlets and then being discussed on Twitter. Um, and I think that that might shift, you know, As Elon has sort of driven a wedge between himself and the media, really criticized the media, and tried to shift the primary use case of X to be eyewitness news kind of citizen journalism, the discussion and the utility might change a little bit. So, you know, if people are breaking stories not on X but on other platforms, there's still going to be discussion of them on X. But if you think about the kinds of breaking news that you can get from sort of eyewitness account, you're thinking more maybe natural disasters, protests, kind of moments on the street, right?
29:35That's where X will still be very effective. But some of these other bigger conversations that involve global participation might begin to happen somewhere else. Does it matter who owns the platform? I think yes, especially as Elon Musk has really changed the platform to almost be synonymous with himself. you know I don't know that everyone who was using Twitter back in the day could necessarily name the CEO but I think that's quite different now with Elon owning X people really think of it as his megaphone his place to be and and so they're going to associate it with him for for better for worse and I think it also matters who owns it because you know they ultimately get to decide the direction of the platform, Elon's decided to shift it more to the right and to really throw the weight of the platform behind Donald Trump's campaign.
30:36Maybe it mattered a little bit less in the past since Dorsey was kind of an ineffectual leader. But I think it does matter. And I think he's really, you know, put his stamp on it as an owner. All right, Zach, I'm curious what you think about those two. um yeah i i think i think the owning the platform i think you can you can really have an effect on cultural norms um so i think we've seen it in a number of different sort of edge um sort of or newly sort of accepted norms where when twitter was um twitter before it became elons it pushed aggressively um towards a set of beliefs largely progressive beliefs that it then normalized and then extended across, you know, everyone who's on it and then theoretically everyone who's not on it.
31:30And so I think the power from a normative setting perspective is massive. And it's always hard to sort of see the direct correlations behind all of that because it is obviously a dynamic social order that we live in. but yeah it's a really powerful platform and okay yeah let me let me ask you a question about that then I mean yeah I would say yeah a lot of a lot of liberal norms became mainstream through Twitter but also Donald Trump right probably became president because of his Twitter account or with a lot of help from it yeah so what makes you say that it was mostly a left-leaning norm establisher versus look this is this is humans getting together and debating and talking and engaging in what humans do which is a messy thing um and so everyone is part of that conversation um but norms you know can be basically set both from a rule perspective and then also from an enforcement of the rule perspective and also from an amplification perspective.
32:37And so at each of those levels at the platform, you can make changes either on the margins or you can make pretty dramatic changes that have very consequential effects on how the platform operates. And then if you then zoom out and come back from a sociological or political science or whatever sort of perspective and do the research, you know, 10 years later, you could be like oh here's where we started to say that this was okay or not okay and then here's how we can then see how that norm then spreads across culture and then changes but you know these are these are very difficult anthropological questions which are non-trivial and certainly we can't basically say cause and effect but um from a just from a impact perspective the number of people who are impacted on a daily basis as a result of those decisions that are made at the Twitter level is so big that it would be shocking to me if we didn't have very, very significant long-term consequences.
33:35I mean, I think you can look at it from a partisan perspective, which is where, you know, Elon leaning to the right, as opposed to the left leaning of the former administration, I think has had a really significant impact on the number of people from that perspective on the platform, the way that they engage with each other, the way that that conversation happens. And then the same thing on the left, a lot of the people who were formerly very, very comfortable on Twitter have now fled to other places. And that has had a very significant impact on the dialogue and discussion that comes from those people from a partisan perspective.
34:08Same thing from an ideas perspective. Now you see a whole bunch of ideas that could be considered to be very problematic by those on the left being very normalized on Twitter, whereas the inverse didn't happen when the left controlled Twitter. So they're very, ideas spreading is a very powerful thing. Yeah. I mean, I think of an idea like the dogs and cats thing in Springfield, you know, that has spread on Twitter or an X, you know, at the behest. And TikTok, but, you know, almost at the behest of Elon Musk, who has pushed it himself. You know, I think that can't be ignored either. And that's, I don't know, I just think those, you know, there's a stickiness to Twitter or X.
34:50It's built up years of this karma where people think of it as this kind of place you go for breaking news. And it still is, you know, whether that's the Gaza protests on campuses or, you know, the Olivia Nitzli stuff or so, you know. But, you know, as more, I guess, misinformation or these kinds of like one-off events that cause people to lose trust on the platform, I think of like, you know, the Springfield stuff, you know, I think people will migrate away and they'll start to lose that belief that Twitter or X is the place for them. So I have some more questions. We're going through a difficult transition, right?
35:26Where, you know, if you go back 50 years, news was largely controlled by local print monopolies who basically controlled what was true in their geographic distribution areas. and federally mandated broadcasters who basically had to maintain their broadcasting license by fitting into a very narrow, basically, spectrum of information that they distributed. And basically that largely was controlled by a consensus setting amongst a relatively small number of people within basically the management of those news organizations. And so you had a largely agreed upon set of facts that were distributed. And effectively, the average American watch is more than 40 hours of television a week.
36:09So brainwashed into the American population. And so you had this normalization of a truth that everyone in this country believed and everyone sort of agreed with that. Now we've gone to a world where anything can be potentially true and everyone believes whatever the hell that they want to believe. And confirmation bias leads them to crazy, crazy out of the world outcomes that are not necessarily correlated to any sort of measure of truth. And we have this incredible world now where truth has become widely skewed and the fighting over that truth is very, very difficult. So it's a weird transition state for us to go through over the last 30 years.
36:46Yes, okay, I have some questions. We have to take a break, but I want to know when we come back how Twitter's managed to stay running despite cutting 80 % of its infrastructure engineers. And we've talked a little bit about how much of a shit show the company was before Elon took over. And there's plenty of detail in the book about that. So let's cover that and more when we're back right after this. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now, imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value.
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38:14You're used to hearing my voice on the world bringing you interviews from around the globe. And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Buehler. And I'm Marco Werman. We're now with you hosting the world together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound. Listen to the world on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts.
38:41And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Zach Coleus from Coleus Capital. And we also have Ryan Mack and Kate Conger. You can get their new book, Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. Twitter it's out in all bookshops today uh it's been out for a week so definitely Zach and I have both read it Ryan and Kate wrote it um recommend it it's very interesting okay so like we've talked a little bit about the Jack Dorsey era of Twitter and I think one of the things that comes out in the book is just how much of a disaster that was I mean I'm someone who also like covered Jack Jack Dorsey as a beat reporter at BuzzFeed covering Twitter.
39:25And I think that the guy, we always knew Twitter was a disaster, but it was even worse than it sort of appeared to be. I mean, Jack comes out with all these like weird statements like, you know, Twitter shouldn't be a company despite the fact that he found it as a company, became a billionaire because it was a company. He also like talked about how Elon should be like the singular solution that that takes Twitter ahead, but then started to boost a competing network in Noster. He also like handpicked Parag Agarwal to be his successor and then just repeatedly threw him under the bus, like through the entire process.
40:06And basically like Elon talked about how much he hated Parag and Jack's like, well, I guess you now know that you can't work together. Okay, next. So let's just talk about Jack Dorsey. What's going on with that guy? Ryan? Oh, man. Oh, man. Where do we start? I remember we, Alex, we reported on a story where he went to Myanmar, I think in like December of 2016 or 17 or 18. And he just like disappeared for two weeks and decided to do like a meditation retreat as like Trump was ascendant. And like, he just, you know, he went off the grid, no, no contact. and you know i i just feel like there are so many moments like that with him where you're just like why are you still running companies like why are you still why do you want to be the ceo of twitter why do you want to lead square it's just such a i don't know maybe it's refreshing and like sure he's like a unique character but he clearly doesn't seem cut out for this and i think through our book we show that he just gets fed up with running this company he doesn't like you know making these decisions to ban Donald Trump, for example.
41:22He actually infringed Polynesia, kind of dodging COVID and the COVID restrictions while that decision is coming down during January 6th. And I think he realizes this company that he built is no longer one he wants to be a part of. And he just becomes more and more alienated by it. I also don't think we can underestimate how much he loved Elon Musk. Like he brought Elon to this one team event, which is this kind of global gathering of Twitter employees and has said, you know, he's my favorite tweeter. You know, we have a lot to learn from him. But by the end of the book, he's he's a very kind of sad character.
42:04He's alone. He is he's on some days in favor of Elon's leadership. On other days, he is, you know, posting about how Elon has made a terrible decision by banning whatever account or making whatever rule up, you know, and he's tweeting conspiracy theories. He's sharing a 9-11 truther conspiracy on Noster. He's also posting links to a blog that is openly pushing the QAnon conspiracies and, you know, great replacement theory stuff. You know, it's just kind of batshit stuff that you're wondering, how did he get here? And yeah, that's Jack Dorsey in a nutshell. I just don't know. I mean, I'd love to know what he's thinking because he didn't talk to us for this book.
42:51And he has such, you know, it's just gone off the deep end in some ways. Yeah, let's go to Zach and then Kate. I mean, Zach, you mentioned you had friends that had worked for Dorsey's era of Twitter. I think we might all agree on this one, by the way. Yeah, no, let's do at least one thing of common ground. I think we have a lot in common. For instance, I think they wrote a great book, so probably have that in common. Thank you, thank you. No, no, we have a lot in common here. I think, yeah, I've only met Jack a couple times. I don't know him that well, and so I can't really opine on Jack's thinking whatsoever.
43:29He does not appear to be a particularly good manager, and my friends who still work for him basically corroborate that. And that shows that companies are about their leadership and Twitter during his leadership was an unmitigated disaster. Kate, any thoughts on Jack? Jack is such a fascinating character. And I think when the Elon takeover began, there was this narrative flattening that occurred where all of a sudden it was good, perfect Twitter versus bad, evil Elon. And I think it was really frustrating to me as a beat reporter who had covered the company for so long. I was like, are we talking about the same company here?
44:11This company is not doing well. And a lot of that is to do with Jack. I think that, you know, I spoke earlier about how Elon seems to be just sort of missing innovation in the way that he leads X, he seems to kind of be missing any ideas beyond just making it a platform for himself and his politics. And doesn't seem very interested in creating a user experience that's attractive to people who are looking for some, you know, excitement from social media. And I think that's the one thing you can say for Jack is he was really thinking about how to build the platform, how to change the platform, how to evolve the platform into something new.
44:57But he really lacked the execution for that. You know, like others have said, he's not a strong manager, not someone who was very good at making change in the company. I think one of the biggest changes under his leadership was going from 140 characters to 280, which, you know. He also introduced the algorithm. So he was like very early to 4U in feeds. Right, right, right, right. Which was actually a Parag Agarwal project. and one of the reasons why Jack liked him as a CEO candidate. But yeah, I mean, he just really struggled, I think, to execute on some of his grand ideas. And he seems to me sort of like a messy artist type that has a lot of this genius and a lot of this brilliance that has led him to found these really important companies, but not much of the follow through to make it happen.
45:44But this is the thing that I was talking about in terms of Twitter product and maybe to put a finer point on it. I mean, Twitter today looks just like Twitter did in 2016. It's that feed. It's the now there's an algorithm before there was it was just following. But effectively, the product is the same. It's the network that matters. And so, you know, I feel like we've been having this discussion of like, what could Twitter's product do to get better for like decades or, you know, decade plus. And it's just like actually maybe like the core limitation of it's just not different is actually the future.
46:15I do this light exercise in trolling every year. The beginning of every year on this beat, I would write a story about Twitter's product innovations and their product roadmap for the year. And then I would come back a year later and it would be a brand new story, a whole new list of product innovations and things that were on the roadmap. I don't know. I mean, they were serious pieces of reporting, but I was definitely trolling a little bit in doing those and just seeing all these lists of products. and grand ideas that weren't coming to fruition. It's, I think, quite frustrating for the people who love and are really addicted to the platform, want to see something move forward and grow, and it just hasn't been able to deliver on that.
47:00Zach, you had a big smile with this whole Twitter product thing. I mean, it's basically a feed and DMs. It's the famous saying, it was a cloud car that drove into a gold mine. It continues to be true. Remains to be seen if Elon can fix that. I think a lot of people bet on him expecting that he could fix that, but it's a very, very hard thing to pull off. I mean, not to mention, I mean, look at TikTok, right? Like TikTok was right in the spotlight and Twitter could have done and been TikTok and failed miserably. Maybe it becomes TikTok in the end because it does have that for you algorithm and TikTok is about to be banned.
47:38And you get into that Twitter video tab and you just keep scrolling. oh my god that tab is i've been getting horrible stuff and i mean it's like murder videos people getting by getting hit by buses like i don't know what is going on in there ryan it's all based off your previous viewing habits so you're telling on yourself here yeah face like it's like that faces of death website um mine's all sf politics and just like all the things that i like want to hate on i'm just like ah yeah anger it's an anger machine yeah it really is i mean social media does just generate rage. But sorry, go ahead, Ryan.
48:14No, I was going to say, you know, Elon came in with this idea of the everything app, right? He was going to add all these features, encrypted DMs, you can watch TV and movies, you can, you know, order your taxi through Twitter. And like, that just hasn't happened. Even something like encrypted DMs, where he, you know, he brought a team together, there was someone inside the company was really all in on it, and supposedly had the resources, that has completely fallen by the wayside. You think of something like Vine, he promised he'd bring that back. That's dead in the water. And so even though Elon has said, like, I'm going to be the product innovator, I'm going to have all these features, I'm going to really add the kind of pizzazz that this company needs, like none of that has happened.
48:56And I don't know, I don't know if that's a Twitter issue. I don't know if it's because he's laid off everyone. But, you know, even the great product mind who's, you know, electrified vehicles and launch things into space hasn't figured out this problem. And I, you know, I don't know if he'll ever get around to doing that stuff that he promised. Right. Okay. I want to talk about the layoffs before we leave. There was this moment where Twitter, where Elon laid off like what, 80 % of the company. And I remember it happened at the time of the World Cup. I read in the book, man, I like went on CNBC and they were like talking about what was going on with Elon, I'm like, this thing is not going to survive the World Cup.
49:34They don't have any infra engineers anymore. This thing's going down. It's not coming back. I mean, there's even scenes in your book and Walter Isaacson's book about him where Elon basically packs up a server, a server room or his big database warehouse, data warehouse, and puts it in a truck himself with like his cousins or something. But, you know, just all that being said, the site's still running. And, you know, it's, I think, fairly reliable. Yes, there have been some outages, but it's been nothing close to what you would imagine if you laid off 80 % of your infra engineers. So how did Twitter continue to stay up?
50:11Well, I think that's not by accident, right? There was a number of employees when Elon flew up to the data center in Sacramento and started unplugging things, who then had to come in after the fact and try to work very hard to keep that system online. And we're working for months to pack up that data center, tie things off there, ship everything out to Atlanta, set it back up, get everything reestablished. There's a lot of work behind the scenes that went into making sure that the site did stay online. And a lot of things that were sort of built with resilience under Twitter 1.0. But I also think the core things are still there, right?
50:51The timeline works when you want to go to it. You're seeing the newsfeed as intended. But things like search are often broken. If you try to scroll back more than like 20 or 30 tweets in someone's timeline, often you can't get further back than that because, you know, whatever's supposed to be loading that isn't working. Spaces has been a huge flop, you know, and when he, when Elon Musk had DeSantis on to launch his campaign, there was a ton of glitches with that. He just had this big, important interview with Trump that was delayed by almost 45 minutes because they couldn't get the technology to work.
51:24These are not the kinds of performances that we would expect from a top tier social network. If you're going to have the former president of the United States doing a live appearance on your platform, he better appear. And that didn't happen here. So I think there are quite a few infrastructure problems at this point that it's not really noticeable if you're just scrolling through the feed a couple times a day but if you really want to use this platform as a power user you're going to run into those problems right yeah i mean in fairness i guess the spaces wasn't all that great even before he took over and this is the company that also popularized the fail well so there's that and fleets we're not even we haven't talked about fleets yet remember oh my god fleets yeah they had uh instagram story type things up there but they don't anymore so yeah like i said it's really the timeline and dms uh do you need more maybe spaces i don't know zach what do you think i mean oh so ryan and kate in their book report that uh prague agarwal was going to go through a massive layoff on his in his own right like 25 of employees it was called project prism which is like that i don't know i mean i guess you can't have like a good layoff code name but that just seems like particularly devious um but zach i'm curious it's like a bond movie right yes we will evaporate 25 through project prison but then elon ended up he cut like 80 of the employees um so i'm curious like what you make of that you know from a couple of i think we might have spoken this about this in the past but from like a couple of angles first of all has that been successful for him uh second what do you think about the site the site staying up and third has it been you know an inspiration to leaders in silicon valley to be able to do their own type of cuts working backwards i mean i think you know my friends who worked at twitter told me over and over again that there was literally nothing that happened there it was like it was about basically politics and about trying to get as many reports as possible and about literally the engineers would say that if you submitted code because no one submitted code that they would depend on you to basically remain an IC.
53:36And so the goal would be to submit no code so that you could become a manager so that you get paid more versus if you actually did submit code. And I think like that, that org literally shipped very little and was, was largely ineffectual. And so I think, you know, cutting, cutting the number of people that they did in the site remaining to operate at the way that it operates, I think is a, is a testament to how bloated that company had gotten. And I think a lot of people considered that a lot of companies during the period where money was free and companies were growing like crazy all became a little or a lot overstaffed.
54:14And so trying to figure out how to bring them down to a level that's more comparable to where they are has been definitely a Silicon Valley-wide phenomenon, not just at Twitter. But yeah, I think Ryan and Kate's point about where is this thing going and what is it going to do? and like the future and you know is is right on like the it's not about basically just keeping the timeline running they should be able to do that it's like what are you doing to take this to the next level how do you basically grow this business um and that that remains to be seen okay so lindy acarino is currently the ceo of twitter uh but it does seem that elon is still calling the shots.
54:55So let's just end with this. How many more years does Elon own Twitter for? Everybody should just guess the number. I feel like that's a fun way to end it. I mean, I think there's like a possibility that he can just run it indefinitely, right? This is the thing about this deal is that it defies any logic of any other merger acquisition in history. Elon is the richest man on earth. And if he wants to keep this thing afloat, he can continue to do so. He might really infuriate his Tesla investors along the way. He might lose a ton of money, but he can keep it chugging if he wants to. And I think the question is, will he get bored of that?
55:35Will he decide he doesn't want to run it anymore? And I think if his political play does not work out for him, if Trump does not win the election and he hasn't been able to use this as a tool of political influence in the way that he intended. Maybe he gets bored after that. But I mean, he seems he seems quite happy with the purchase. So I don't know. Okay, but give me a number best like if you're we want to hold you to it. How many years? When do you think he's actually going to go to Mars? Let's say like 20 years. Maybe when he goes to Mars, he gets bored. He has other things to do. Okay. Ryan?
56:15Is this owning it or running it? owning it 10 okay not just complete shot in the dark yeah yeah we won't hold you to it um won't bring you back here and make you apologize if he holds it for 9 you can you should 10 years yeah and Zach I'm with Kate forever forever this is yeah this is a toy this is what billionaires do they buy toys and they like to keep playing with their toys forever this is this is the most powerful literally the most powerful uh tool for public influence in the world. There's no newspaper. There's no media organization. There is nothing more powerful than this. There's no way that he's ever going to give this up.
56:56You can find Zach at Zach Coleus, Z-A-C-H-C-O-E-L-I-U-S on X, not Twitter. Has Twitter been destroyed? I don't know. It's X now. And you can find the book, Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroy Twitter, in your bookstore of choice. Thank you, Zach. Thank you, Ryan and Kate for joining. Look, we had a discussion about whether Elon's doing a good job or not of Twitter. We had differing viewpoints and no one yelled. So I think that's pretty good. It's positive. Thanks for coming on, everyone. Thank you so much for having us. It was really fun. Zach, thanks for doing it. Oh, my pleasure. It was super fun.
57:32I enjoyed this conversation. It was really good. Yeah, me too. All right, everybody. We will be back on Friday, breaking down the week's news. Thank you for listening. And we'll see you then on Big Technology Podcast.
From the publisher
Ryan Mac and Kate Conger are reporters at The New York Times and the authors of a new book, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. Zach Coelius is managing partner at Coelius Capital — and a VC who thinks Elon is doing a pretty good job with the social media company. In this episode, our guests debate whether Musk’s Twitter takeover is going to plan, with respectful back and forth about one of the most controversial projects from one of the world’s most controversial business leaders.
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