On 10/30/2022 11:05 PM, "Jerry Osage"@osage.com wrote:
Twitter posts fact checking Brandon's and the left's lies are allowed to stand. However, just as important are the thousands of posts attacking
Musk that are up and the posters are not being suspended of shadow
banned...
And --- Elon trolled Hillary, The Old Cow, Clinton with a story of the
Paul Pelosi attack being a gay lovers quarrel - after Hillary tries to
paint a hippie nudist from Berkeley as some kind of militant right
winger. Elon has now taken down his troll post.
Pelosi being attacked by a hippie in his underwear, at least to me,
gives a whole new meaning to, "Hey, how's your hammer hangin'?"
YES, INDEED! I'm enjoying the hell out of the "improvements" Elon
is making. My current favorite is the $8 fee, marked down from $20, that
Mr. Musk is going to try to charge for a blue check mark. He's really
down to begging. "Come on guys, someone has to pay for all this new debt
that Twitter has taken on." LOL, it proves that Mr.Musk doesn't
understand the business he just bought. The person who needs those blue
check marks the most is Mr. Musk. They help give the business some
semblance of order. Without verified accounts Twitter descends further
into anarchy. He also doesn't seem to understand that the only people
who care whether or not Twitter makes a profit are him and his fellow investors.
Mr. Musk has a "come to Jesus" moment scheduled with his new
bosses this week. The people who keep Twitter alive--the advertisers.
The results should be interesting. Who knows? Now that he owns it maybe
Mr. Musk will be more careful about what he tweets? ROFLMAO
"Elon Musk courts Twitter advertisers as he seeks new streams of revenue Twitter’s new owner is in New York to meet with executives, but even if
he can keep them on the site, he’ll need more revenue sources to pay off
the massive debt he incurred buying the company
By Gerrit De Vynck and Adela Suliman
Updated November 1, 2022 at 6:58 p.m. EDT|Published November 1, 2022 at
7:20 a.m. EDT
Elon Musk, seen at a Tesla event in 2019, last week posted an open
letter to advertisers promising that Twitter wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape.” (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Less than a week into Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, the advertisers
that provide most of the company’s revenue are getting antsy.
Industry leaders were encouraged last week when Musk tweeted an open
letter to advertisers promising the site wouldn’t become a “free-for-all hellscape,” said an executive from one of the biggest advertising agencies.
But then on Sunday the billionaire boosted a conspiracy theory about the
attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul. That gave rise to doubts among advertisers, who are hypersensitive to the type of content
that might show up next to their ads, said the executive, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity to share internal details.
“Actions speak so much louder than words,” the executive said. Musk has meetings scheduled with advertising leaders this week in New York, where
they plan to ask him about how he will change the platform. Meanwhile, advertising trade groups and ad agencies are threatening to pump the
brakes. Two of the biggest ad agencies, IPG and Havas Media, told their
clients to pause spending on Twitter while they wait to see how the site changes, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Elon Musk deleted a tweet about Paul Pelosi. Here’s why that matters.
And on Monday, a trade group established by major advertisers to push
tech platforms to keep harmful content off their sites posted a letter
to Musk asking that he stick to the commitments Twitter’s previous
leaders made to work with the industry.
“Platforms should be safe for all, and suitable for advertisers,” Robert Rakowitz, head of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, said in the letter. “For advertisers this is non-negotiable — and we expect Twitter
to uphold its commitments.”
Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter begins
2:44
On Oct. 27, Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter and began taking control of the social media company, firing several key executives.
(Video: Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
Spokespeople for Havas and IPG did not respond to requests for comment.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk closed on his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter last week,
cementing a deal that has been on-again, off-again for months. At the
time of the closing, some analysts put the value at roughly half that
figure, saying he overpaid. But investors have lined up to join Musk in
taking the company private, gambling that the tech mogul and Tesla and
SpaceX CEO has the vision to transform the social media company.
Now, he has to deliver, shoring up Twitter’s revenue and finding new
ways to make money. Twitter now owes roughly $1 billion a year in
interest payments on the debt Musk accrued when buying it. Musk is
expected to cut costs through layoffs and other methods. But he also
needs advertisers to stay on the site, while also finding new ways to
make money.
Musk took some of those actions Tuesday. Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, one of the highest-paid C-suite officers in the company, left
the company Tuesday, as did JP Maheu, the head of ad sales in the United States, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Twitter’s
advertising chief, Sarah Personette, tweeted Tuesday that she had
resigned her post last week.
Twitter wants to charge for verification. Here’s what you need to know.
The Twitter boss himself has said ads won’t be enough to meet his
aggressive growth targets. While Musk was pitching the acquisition to co-investors, he committed to diversifying the company’s business and
rapidly increasing revenue and profit. He painted Twitter as a
dysfunctional company that had missed clear opportunities for new
revenue streams and growth opportunities.
Over the weekend, Musk ordered employees to merge the company’s current
paid tier — known as Twitter Blue — with the verification program, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
On Tuesday, he appeared to confirm the plan, tweeting, “Power to the
people! Blue for $8/month.”
Minutes later he tweeted out that the new paid product would also
include the ability to post longer videos and audio clips, fewer ads,
and having one’s tweets appear more prominently in search results and
replies to other tweets. Public figures will have another tag as well,
he said.
Before Musk announced the plan, novelist Stephen King lambasted the idea
of paying to keep the blue check mark Twitter uses to show it has
verified users’ real identity, tweeting to his almost 7 million
followers on Monday that the platform “should pay me.”
“If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron,” he said, alluding to the energy company that collapsed in scandal and filed for bankruptcy.
Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans
Musk responded, suggesting that charging for verification would help the
site make a profit and appearing to negotiate with King. He tweeted: “We
need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on
advertisers. How about $8?” King didn’t reply.
The blue verification badge signifies that an account is “authentic,
notable, and active,” according to Twitter, and the check mark is
generally held by public figures in government, news and entertainment.
Making users pay for premium features is a common business strategy in
the tech world. LinkedIn charges users for the ability to send messages
to other people on the platform, a tool used by sales people and
recruiters. Dating apps charge their users to have their profiles appear
at the top of other people’s feeds, increasing the number of people who
see them.
But Twitter began verifying its users years ago as a way to build trust
in the platform. The site doesn’t require people to use their real name,
so it’s easy to impersonate another account and try to trick people into thinking a famous person or journalist said something they didn’t. Verification helps stop that by giving people more assurance that
someone claiming to be a politician, news source or famous actor really
is who they say they are.
King was one of many Twitter users who said making well-known figures
pay for verification was a bad idea. Other social media sites, such as
YouTube and even Facebook and TikTok, pay their most popular users to
keep them there. The idea is that encouraging content creators to stay
on the site brings more users and then allows the company to charge more
for ads.
Musk has said he wants to begin paying content creators and said in a
tweet on Tuesday that charging for verification and other features would
bring in new money to do just that.
Before Musk announced his plans, tech investor and longtime Musk
associate Jason Calacanis, who has been working with Musk to enact his
plans at Twitter, asked his followers about what they would pay for a
check mark. More than 80 percent of respondents said they would not pay.
Musk responded to Calacanis’s poll, saying: “Interesting.”
Echoing Musk’s rationale, Calacanis tweeted that “having many more
people verified on Twitter, while removing the bot armies, is the
quickest path to making the platform safer & more usable for everyone.”
Musk formally took over as Twitter CEO after last week firing several of Twitter’s executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal.
Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that members of Musk’s
inner circle, alongside Twitter’s remaining senior executives, conducted detailed discussions about the site’s approach to content moderation and
spam as well as plans for a first round of layoffs for some 25 percent
of the workforce.
A financial filing on Monday also showed that Twitter co-founder Jack
Dorsey rolled over his Twitter shares into the company, making him one
of Musk’s investors."
[snip]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/01/elon-musk-twitter-verification-stephen-king/
I snipped out the part about #45 because I don't think anyone here
is interested in that stuff.
I liked that phrase: "Suitable for advertisers". It says a lot
about the media in this country.
TB
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)