this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
25 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It's not just lemmy that's benefiting from Elon Musk.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sure there were a huge swath of people who used Twitter and didn't care at all about Musk one way or the other.

Then he rebranded and threw his ego and control in everyone's face. And all the people who like Twitter IN SPITE of Elon were now forced to acknowledge that their Twitter is gone.

Just like over at reddit now, the latest move has alienated the people who really cared about the platform itself. If they rebranded to "Spez's World", though, a lot of the people who didn't give a shit before would suddenly be ready to bail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I like the idea of referring to it only as "The social media site formerly known as Twitter" from here on out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Is this migration already called xit? Because it should..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

IMO X is shorter, easier to say and cooler. I like it!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He has so thoroughly ruined Twitter that you can't help but wonder if that was his goal from the outset.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Narcissists like him would never seek failure intentionally.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You've obviously never played a board game with a narcissist. Flipping over the table and calling everyone, including the game they themselves purchased, cheaters is a totally expected move.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're not doing that to lose. They're doing that because they already lost.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I GUESS YOU'RE RIGHT, LIKE YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE!

- Knocks phone over -

Fucking cheaters

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

To what end, though? The man blew 44b on a site that apparently was only worth 5-10b, and that was before he ran it into the ground. He also destroyed his reputation and the mystique as "genius entrepreneur" which the world can now clearly see he never was.

I can't think of a single net positive. I think it's an age old tale with people with too much money: he fell victim to an over inflated ego and too many yes men aiming to please. He started to believe he really was brilliant.

Sad thing is the man has so much money he still can't fail, personally. He'll have destroyed Twitter and even more people will lose their jobs. And autocrats around the world will be pleased. Musk will just shrug, tell himself it wasn't his fault, "it was the libs" or something, and move on.

Eta: the only winners here, as per usual, are the shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

44b sounds like a lot of money (it is!), but his net worth right now is 219b after this fiasco. At this point it's just a score between rich assholes who got the bigger number.

You could take 200b away from his evaluation and he could still retire on a yacht and not work a single day in the next 100 years. Same for his children and his children's children.

So yeah, "bad" financial investment, but it might be worth for him to kill one of the biggest platforms where he was called out for his bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That 44b had to be paid in real cash, not just the current theoretical value of the sum of his shares. He sold quite a lot of Tesla shares afaik to banks to give them a “small loan”.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Lol, "real cash", look it up what he actually did. He took a loan in the name of Twitter, so he didn't even use his own money. Pretty much financing half of the deal with the theoretical value of the company he just bought. And he took in extra money from Saudi investors, it's not all his money.

There was never a 44b "real cash" transaction.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Cool, but the article is from July 24th

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I find Mastodon very stuffy and boring, is there a way to shake up my feed? I feel like I'm missing something about how the app works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Tools help, and because the Fediverse API is completely accessible, folks have already come up with awesome stuff.

  • Populate your following list by finding friends, the Fedifinder still appears to work and helps find friends from Twitter on Masto: https://fedifinder.glitch.me/
  • Now find friends of friends, the wider social graph. Followgraph works wonders: https://followgraph.vercel.app/
  • Now you will likely miss posts, so try following updates of people if you really enjoy their content, plus of course pinning hashtags. PLUS. Up your game with an algorithm, either in the dedicated Mastodon app (trending posts) or with more customisation through the app Fediview: https://fediview.com/ Using Mastodon Digest (GitHub), you could also set up your own automation script.
  • Folks have created lists and groups you can mass subscribe. The most successful one I know is from and for academics, perhaps there is a field for you in there. Journalists have similar stuff. See https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon
  • There are many awesome apps out there to access your content, improving the experience. I recommend Phanpy because of its unique and sleek design, see https://phanpy.social/. If you miss Quote Tweets and other stuff, try an app like Elk.
  • Mastodon is only one option, if you want all of Twitter's tools and more cool stuff, try Firefish. You can migrate followers and posts. This way, you can skip many external tools.

And that's just the beginning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'd recommend following the hashtags you want to see. It's sort of a build-your-own algorithm

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy would be soaring too if it weren't for terrible database code allowing for easy ddos.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hopefully they can fix that issue and the communist communities stop having hissy fits.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

they're prob ddosing themselves for failing the purity tests.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s not the rebrand that’s killing Twitter. Elon is. He’s proving to himself that he cannot, in fact, run Twitter better than the prior owners.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I wonder if previous twitter execs are feeling a bit bad to have sold him twitter to see it destroyed like that.

I mean it certainly proves Elon is an idiot as he used fraud to manipulate the price and got played instead.

But was it worth it to let him destroy Twitter just because he tried to defraud it?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I root for Mastodon like everyone else but as long as there is some very good improvement in discoverability and intelligent feeds, it will never be the same in function as Twitter (not X, Twitter). Especially when it currently has a fraction of the creators Twitter had.