Roses are red, bye bird’s eye view, Elon Musk removed the X from Twitter HQ

Elon Musk’s handling of Twitter raises concerns about how tech moguls with deep pockets and seemingly unlimited funds can destabilise the platforms so crucial in our information ecosystem.

First, a disclaimer: I cannot take credit for this headline, it has been inspired by F You I Quit on Twitter.

But yes. After the billionaire and former genius made a big brouhaha over X (formerly known as Twitter), he swiftly veered the social media platform completely off orbit.

Elon Musk’s misguided meddling

His latest stunt? Stripping the iconic bird-logo from the Twitter headquarters, replacing it with a glaring X, then just as abruptly having it removed.

Perhaps this short-lived love affair with the X is a testament to his whimsical approach to Twitter’s evolution.

My colleague Devina Haripersad said the new logo is very similar to Checkers’ Sixty60 logo, and you know, she’s not wrong.

But I digress.

‘Digital town square’ no more

Musk’s ambitious promise to transform Twitter into a “digital town square” seems to be spiraling into something much less appealing.

It’s now become a haphazard maze barren of ideas, driven by the ever-changing whims of the Technoking himself.

As the platform sheds its feathers and dons a more cryptic persona – the mysterious ‘Everything App – it’s losing its credibility as a reliable hub for news and balanced discourse.

I might be lying it on thick here with the “credibility as a reliable hub.”

Let’s be honest, Twitter was always a mess.

But Sithis hear me, it was never this bad. It’s fast becoming an echo chamber, drifting away from the platform’s initial mission.

The Twitter Blue saga

One of the many recent changes include a paywall of sorts which limited the total posts a non-Twitter-Blue subscribers can view to 600 per day.

Those who are subscribed to Twitter Blue were given a cap of 6 000 posts per day. It’s a move that smacks of classism and undermines the democratic spirit of the platform.

I won’t lie, the loss of my verified badge on Twitter stung a little bit, but Musk fixed that in no time by rendering the blue check virtually meaningless.

EDITORIAL: X marks the spot of Musk mastery

And then… Threads

The timing couldn’t be more off, shame. Just needed a shot of innovation to compete with Meta’s newly launched Threads.

Unfortunately, the platform seems to be floundering, giving Meta the perfect opportunity to swoop in, boasting about 100 million signups within the first five days.

For perspective, OpenAI’s widely popular ChatGPT reached the same number of users in two months…

And even though Twitter has around 200 million regular users (estimated). But given the repeated tech failures, how long will those users stay loyal?

Financial losses

Not only has Musk’s reign dealt a blow to Twitter’s fundamental structure, but it’s also seen a significant impact on its financial health.

The platform’s once-thriving ad business has seen a slump under Musk’s watch, which he unabashedly acknowledges.

We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2023

He recently tweeted that Twitter lost roughly half of its advertising revenue, since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion (approximately R797 billion) in October 2022.

Adding to the tweet (or should we say, adding to the ‘X’), Musk said: “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else”.

X: Everything App

Perhaps the most alarming of Musk’s changes is his attempt to remodel Twitter into an ‘everything app,’ a one-stop-shop for all your online needs.

While ambitious, it seems a bit optimistic to expect a single app to master all these varied tasks when our tech ecosystem is designed to support specialised apps for different purposes.

The risk here is that Twitter becomes a one-size-fits-all platform which fails to serve any purpose effectively.

Twitter’s uniqueness has always been its function as a real-time news hub and a platform for interaction among varied demographics.

It was the ‘people’s app,’ where journalists, activists, business tycoons, celebrities, and everyday users converged in conversation.

But now, the people’s app seems to be turning its back on its very citizens and bulldozing the digital town square.

Twitter’s trajectory

It’s undeniable that Twitter, like any other platform, needed innovation and change.

But the current trajectory, driven by the whims of a billionaire technocrat, feels less like evolution and more like unnecessary disruption.

The hope is that Twitter can retain its soul and purpose amidst these drastic transformations.

But as for now, it seems Musk is playing a game of Russian Roulette with one of the internet’s most influential platforms.