In this Acceleration Economy Growth Swarm, John Siefert, Bob Evans, Tony Uphoff, and Scott Vaughan have a conversation about the recent news involving Elon Musk acquiring Twitter.
Highlights
00:50 — Twitter is now owned by Elon Musk after a $44 billion deal that the board just approved. With this news, are we in for an entirely new era?
01:31 — Initially, Musk had bought a 9% stake in the company. It appeared that he had been asked to join the board. Then, as he backed up, rumors began that he was going to try to buy it.
02:20 — There’s a major gap between Twitter’s clout and its revenue. For instance, a scalable ad model was never built for the platform.
04:30 — A reason for Musk buying Twitter could be an infrastructure play. Much like many markets, this needs disruption of some kind. It’s a chance for big tech. It will enable not just disruptive but transformative work and rethink what media distribution is.
07:10 — Twitter hasn’t often been viewed as ‘big tech,’ but it certainly has a range of opportunities here.
07:55 — Musk is a remake, reshape, and reimagine type of person. He doesn’t dabble and try to make things a little better than they were before. There are many possibilities of what he can do with the Twitter platform.
09:12 — With the rise of the Metaverse and Web3, what opportunities might this acquisition lead to in terms of immersive news environments with social and engagement elements?
10:38 — For early adopters of Twitter, the experience could have seemed degrading as bot traffic joined the platform as well as the anonymity of users within Twitter threads. Musk has already said he will be confronting those.
12:24 — Bob predicts that the number of users, within the first few months, is going to plummet, as Musk promises to clear out many bot accounts. He further suggests that as it trims down to real people, Musk will also make an aggressive move toward a Metaverse-type experience.
13:11 — While business models are important, Scott predicts the next 90 days will involve Musk bringing the right community of users.
14:31 — Tony predicts that Musk will experiment with subscriptions, such as tiered subscriptions, for the distribution side of Twitter.
16:35 — Although this will most likely span past the first 90 days, John predicts they will be working on revenue models, subscriptions, an education platform, and many other areas, and aligning it with the Metaverse.
Want more tech insights for the top execs? Visit the Leadership channel:
