On October 26, 2022, the world’s richest man Elon Musk carried a big porcelain kitchen fixture into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
‘Let that sink in,’ he famously tweeted, after displaying as much as work with an precise sink and asserting that he was the brand new proprietor of Twitter.
Now, after 12 rollercoaster months, the affect of his choice has positively sunk in.
Musk was already an enormous social media star when he determined to purchase Twitter in April 2022, starting a posh acquisition course of. He tried to tug out after claiming the social community had did not crack down on spambots – automated accounts which mimic human profiles with a view to unfold content material on social media – however a choose compelled him to undergo with the $44 billion sale.
Then he moved rapidly, sacking senior workers together with former CEO Parag Agrawal and beginning an extended sequence of layoffs during which staff have been fired by electronic mail and others got their marching orders after criticising the Tesla and SpaceX founder on Twitter.
What got here subsequent was a dramatic overhaul of the social community, scrapping the blue tick and changing it with a paid scheme during which customers may confirm their account beginning at £9.60 a month.
It was the primary salvo in a string of typically controversial updates which included a bid to restrict the variety of tweets customers may view in in the future.
By September 2023, Musk was suggesting all customers must pay to entry his social community, and earlier this week started charging new customers in New Zealand and the Philippines $1 a 12 months for fundamental accounts.
Nevertheless, maybe essentially the most talked-about replace got here in July, when he determined to scrap the title Twitter and rename his social community X – leaving customers confused about what to name tweets within the billionaire’s courageous new world.
It additionally gave option to the photograph opp of paparazzi’s goals when Musk stopped visitors to tug down the outdated Twitter signal from its San Francisco HQ, which at one level with the signal half eliminated, solely the phrases ‘twit’ and ‘er’ have been left seen.
The awkward juxtaposition served as a neat visible illustration of the incredulous response sparked by his choice to rebrand Twitter – a much-loved and iconic social community famed for its blue chicken and ‘fail whale’ icons.
Reflecting on the final 12 months of Elon’s Twitter takeover, Dr Annmarie Hanlon, senior lecturer in digital and social media advertising at Cranfield College of Administration, tells Metro.co.uk how Twitter was as soon as ‘the breaking information channel and a spot you might hear a variety of opinions’.
Nevertheless, she warns that the platform’s future now seems to be ‘more and more unsure and risky’ and calls on the billionaire to ‘construct the neighborhood quite than destroy it’.
‘For a lot of the hasty rebrand to “X” left the platform with a malevolent and uninviting aesthetic,’ she continued.
‘Some regard its look as a drive for dangerous, as an alternative of an supposed drive for good. Musk’s takeover of Twitter has profoundly impacted consumer expertise, particularly by means of a surge in hate speech, misinformation, and bots throughout the platform.
‘Restoring civility and belief needs to be his prime precedence. Customers and types need a secure, constructive platform.’
Free speech zone or ‘cesspit’ of hate and misinformation?
Only a few weeks after shopping for Twitter, Musk requested customers to vote on whether or not there needs to be an ‘amnesty’ for individuals who had been banned from the location, so long as they weren’t spammers or had damaged the regulation. After the vote, he then allowed figures comparable to Kanye West, Andrew Tate, Donald Trump and the far-right extremist Nick Fuentes again onto the platform.
It was a transfer that prompted outcry from many campaigners who declare that hate speech has proliferated on Twitter and X during the last 12 months.
On the finish of 2022, analysts from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) alleged that the variety of tweets containing the n-word had tripled since Musk’s takeover. Nevertheless, Musk claimed the alternative was true and that hate speech had been diminished on his watch. His firm X Corp is now suing CCDH, claiming it value the platform ‘tens of tens of millions of {dollars}’ in promoting income. CCDH didn’t reply to our requests for additional remark.
The fault traces of the free speech debate have been by no means extra apparent following Hamas terrorists’ assault on Israel earlier this month, prompting the EU to open a proper investigation into X in relation to the unfold of ‘terrorist and violent content material’ regarding the battle – and disinformation.
Once more, Musk questioned the allegations and wrote: ‘Our coverage is that every little thing is open supply and clear, an strategy that I do know the EU helps. Please listing the violations you allude to on X, in order that that [sic] the general public can see them.
‘Merci beaucoup.’
Linda Yaccarino, appointed CEO of X in Could after Musk posted a ballot asking if he ought to step down, did present a extra complete response.
Following the assaults, Countdown maths whizz Rachel Riley posted: ‘Twitter is a cesspit, even worse than earlier than Musk took over.’
Nevertheless, Musk nonetheless has many supporters who again his campaign free of charge speech.
On the day of Hamas’s assault, Dominic Cummings, Brexit architect and grand vizier to Boris Johnson, posted: ‘At the moment jogs my memory how glad I’m @ElonMusk purchased Twitter – for those who take a look at mainstream information, together with BBC, you see censorship and propaganda in every single place to restrict injury to Hamas.’
Metro.co.uk approached Cummings for remark however he didn’t reply.
Michael Fertik, a well known Silicon Valley enterprise investor who’s the founder and managing director of enterprise capital agency Heroic Ventures, tells Metro.co.uk: ‘The query is just not whether or not Elon has run Twitter and X higher than an armchair commentator on X would have finished. It’s whether or not he ran it higher than the apparently self-unaware woke junta did earlier than he purchased it.
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‘The reply is, up to now, a powerful sure.
‘Freer speech is profitable once more. And economically, he had the center to cut back an clearly enormously bloated workers, which loss-making corporations ought to most likely do extra usually. I don’t love all of his off-the-cuff “philosophy”, however most likely neither does he, after sleeping on it.’
The long run for Twitter
Ever for the reason that Musk takeover, his political and ideological opponents have threatened to depart X and signal as much as different platforms, comparable to Mastodon. Mark Zuckerberg even launched a Twitter competitor, Threads, which doesn’t seem to have been the success its founder hoped for.
To this point, the anticipated exodus has not taken place. In June 2023, Musk posted figures displaying that the variety of month-to-month customers of X had reached a ‘new excessive’ and soared to greater than 540 million.
Latest figures from the analytics and enterprise intelligence agency GWS revealed that X’s common each day consumer numbers have ‘remained regular’ in each the US and UK since early July. It continues to common round 22 million energetic customers every day within the US and 6 million energetic customers every day within the UK. Every day energetic customers of Meta’s Threads have ‘fallen considerably’ in each markets.
Dr Paul Carter, CEO of GWS, tells Metro: ‘Elon Musk’s main overhaul of Twitter’s branding, adopting the X title and emblem, may need attracted controversy, particularly at a time when the corporate faces the looming risk of a well-funded rival in Threads.
‘Nevertheless, real-time cell knowledge from social media customers throughout the UK and the US reveals Twitter continues to carry regular regardless of exterior threats.
‘The identical, nonetheless, can’t be mentioned for its major new rival Threads and its guardian firm Meta. The mass exodus from one platform to the opposite simply hasn’t occurred.’
Dr Alex Gunz, lecturer in advertising at Alliance Manchester Enterprise College, mentioned Twitter is protected against competitors by a phenomenon generally known as a ‘community lock-in’ impact.
‘Essentially the most worthwhile side about social media platforms is the truth that everybody else is there too,’ he says. ‘This herd impact appears to have helped Twitter to remain afloat since Musk’s takeover. Membership has shrunk considerably, however the exodus by no means hit a important mass.’
This case may change if sufficient folks resolve to leap ship and transfer to a unique social community.
‘If sufficient customers are dissatisfied with Twitter and switch to a sufficiently believable different, then the trickle of migration may properly hit a tipping level,’ Dr Gunz continued. ‘If sufficient folks transfer to a brand new place, then the lock-in goes with them, and so does Twitter’s monopoly.’
Though the consumer base has not but abandoned X, it faces ‘a major problem relating to attracting and retaining customers’, Arden College’s Dr Syed Tarek tells Metro.
‘With Elon Musk’s current strategy of prioritising blue tick subscribers over advertisements, it’s potential that many non-subscribers, who’re accountable for creating and consuming the vast majority of the platform’s content material, might really feel alienated,’ says Dr Tarek, deputy head of faculty of management and administration on the non-public college.
‘It appears that evidently X customers are actively searching for alternate options, nevertheless it’s seemingly that the platform will expertise a gradual decline quite than a sudden collapse. There’s a transparent want for different platforms to catch as much as Twitter’s capabilities earlier than customers decide to the change for the long-term.’
Is there hassle forward for X?
Whereas Elon needs to show X right into a ‘tremendous app’ – the title of ‘one app to rule all of them’ companies like WeChat in China, which permits customers to do every little thing from sharing images to creating funds – the street forward seems to be removed from easy for the social media web site.
Kirsty Minns, govt artistic director and companion at Mom Design, tells Metro.co.uk that Elon’s distinctive administration type poses its personal dangers.
‘He seems to be utilizing the identical “break it til you make it” playbook seen within the early days of each Tesla and SpaceX – however the large downside is that this playbook applies to start-ups, not a globally recognised model with an already established set of values,’ she says.
‘Twitter already meant one thing to folks, they’d given it a function. Now, it seems that customers will not be on the centre of the model and Musk has complete freedom to do what he likes, with none accountability”.
A touch of a possible problem forward got here in August 2023, when Musk introduced plans to gather and retailer customers’ biometric knowledge for security, safety and identification functions.
Alex Laurie, SVP on the digital identification platform ForgeRock, informed Metro.co.uk about one instance of a possible downside which may push customers into shifting to a different social community. He mentioned {that a} ‘refined change’ to X’s privateness coverage like this implies Elon Musk is able to ‘performing on whims with out considering issues by means of’.
Laurie says: ‘This might trigger critical income points for X as our personal analysis, carried out earlier this 12 months, reveals that 44% of UK customers would cease utilizing X if it applied a requirement for identification verification. Given current shopper mistrust of social media corporations, particularly when dealing with credentials and on-line identities, we might witness an acceleration in consumer drop-off if X implements this choice.’
The biometric knowledge concern is only one instance of the numerous challenges Musk faces as he strives to construct the primary tremendous app within the West.
As we transfer into the second 12 months of Musk’s possession of X, little is definite about its future and it is kind of not possible to foretell the plans of its proprietor.
‘What’s subsequent?’ Olivia Wedderburn, govt social affect director at TMW Limitless, a artistic company primarily based in London, tells Metro. ‘It’s exhausting to say, however my wager is within the chilly exhausting floor.’
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