This is a good example of people who think they understand how to build an application the scale of Twitter but have never done so.
It's not as simple as many people seem to think (Elon and yourself included) and I suspect the world is going to find out just how complicated it actually is to build and operate an application of Twitter's scale.
Oh, I don’t think it’s going to be easy for them. I agree that the company has lost so much knowledge that it is going to be extremely difficult to keep the existing system running and perhaps impossible to develop new software on the existing system. That’s why I think their only option at this point is to keep the old thing running *somehow* and start anew.
But that's my point. You make it sound like this is a trivial thing to do.
Spinning up an application the scale of Twitter isn't something you casually decide to do and pull off in a short period of time with a fraction the original folks.
Exactly.
I mean...you can...but it's likely to be a garbage product and social media users are notoriously demanding and fickle.
The value of a social media company isn't in its IP, none of them have produced a software product that's particularly impressive, but they do produce enormous systems that work well, and that takes people...a lot of people.
The value of the company is in the continued participation of the users, and the users will bail if the not particularly original software doesn't work properly and if a reasonable alternative presents itself.
So yeah, it *can* be done, but can it be done well enough to retain the actual value of the company??? Not likely considering the other value of the company was the workforce and they're already gone.
I'm not quite as curious about what's going to happen with Twitter as what's going to happen with Musk himself. He does have the resources to kill and resurrect Twitter if he wants to, that is very possible, especially if he takes time to do it. But that will essentially be the equivalent of him just building his own social media platform and taking down Twitter to eliminate the competition.
Is that the plan? Was that always the plan? I have no idea, and am not overly concerned about it, but curious to see what happens.
What is more interesting is to see how Musk himself rebrands after this. He was inching steadily away from his "genius world saviour" image, but this really cements his status as "weird impulsive billionaire who is completely out of touch."
What will be the next incarnation of Musk? How will he brand himself moving forward after this? What will be his angle and his impact?
I think history will summarize him as the wunderkind Tesla/Rocket guy who then got weird during the pandemic and that lead to his transition to...???
I'm just curious what the "???" will be.
What does someone like him do when they divorce themselves from public approval?? What happens?