To steal a phrase from The Clash - "Should I stay or should I go"
We hear lots of news lately about Elon Musk's heavy hand blazing a trail of destruction through his newly acquired company Twitter.
He fired half his staff and with his heavy hand he has been monitoring and spying on staff internal conversations on private slack channels and firing people that have said negative things about him.
He has demanded people to work in office and to commit to long hours at high intensity or leave. Early reporting is suggesting that the majority of staff are choosing to leave.
Way to go Elon, how to, within the space of two weeks turn a workforce from highly engaged, passionate, valued, proud and excited, to disgusted, disengaged, unvalued, disappointed and wanting to leave.
Anyway, this thread isn't about staff. This is about users and how they might be answering the question "Should I stay or should I go"
There doesn't seem to be much media focus on this.
We have heard about the Blue Check fiasco, where user's could trust that celebreties and people and organisations with official positions had been verified by Twitter and so the messages coming from accounts with the Blue Check could be trusted as coming from the people and organisations that user think these are coming from. But now with the Blue Check just meaning that a subscription fee has been paid, now users have no idea who is saying what.
But other than this Blue Check, we don't really hear much about the impact on users.
Are users staying or leaving?
Around 40% of those polled claimed they were going nowhere.
www.digitalinformationworld.com
After Elon Musk’s abrupt takeover of Twitter, many people saw and heard so many SEOs and marketers take the bold but necessary step of leaving the platform.
But a recent poll that was conducted in this regard proved that users are not ready to leave just yet.
The bizzareness of the above narrative is that from that linked to poll, 21% have said that they have left already (which is massive) and a further 12% have said that they are planning to leave. This makes 33% of the user base (at least those responding to the poll) have said that they have already left or are planning to leave. Which completely contradicts the article which says "proved that users are not ready to leave just yet"
The heaviest tweeters, vital to its business, have been in "absolute decline" since the pandemic began, an internal researcher wrote. It underscores a challenge for Elon Musk.
www.reuters.com
Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users - who are vital to the business - engaged, underscoring a challenge faced by the Tesla chief executive as he approaches a deadline to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.
These "heavy tweeters" account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in "absolute decline" since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled “Where did the Tweeters Go?”
...interest in news, sports and entertainment is waning among those users. Tweets on those topics, which have helped Twitter burnish an image as the world’s "digital town square," as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers.
So it seems that Twitter was facing some big problems (even before Musk's takeover) of the active users becoming disengaged and less active and moving towards links and conversations that are less appealing to advertisers.
TV powerhouse Shonda Rhimes, "Madam Secretary" actor Téa Leoni and others in the entertainment world say they're dropping the platform after Elon Musk's takeover.
www.nbcnews.com
Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter has some in Hollywood heading for the exit.
"Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes and others in the entertainment industry say they plan to quit the platform now that it is owned by Musk, a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" who has vowed to make sweeping changes — including potentially reversing the ban on former President Donald Trump.
"Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye," Rhimes tweeted to her nearly 2 million Twitter followers Saturday afternoon, two days after Musk closed his $44 billion deal to purchase the service.
I don't know what the above means. Is this just a few anecdotes. Are all celebreties thinking this way, or just some? Are celebretities significant to keeping Twitter interesting for other users????
Anyway, I'm not a Twitter user, I don't have an account. I am just interested in whether Musk is destroying this platform or not. Twitter is obviously a very significant platform to many people.
not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.