Musk’s bet to make money with Twitter

Being on Twitter is an experience unlike any other you can have on the internet. It’s always been like this: either because it’s a continuous flow of updates, or because it’s so big but not like its competitors. If that were not enough, the new ownership of Elon Musk has been disruptive given the many changes that have come to the platform.

The new schizophrenic Twitter

Now the rules change continuously, even several times during the same day, as in the infernal last weekend when – in addition to denying read access to those who were not registered – the tweet limits that can be viewed according to one’s membership level: 6,000, then 8,000 for those who pay the monthly blue check, a tenth for the others and even a twentieth for newcomers.

We are not discussing whether or not Musk can be the boss in his own home, the answer is less obvious than one thinks, these schizophrenic choices certainly show a certain weakness. The market speaks ruthlessly, the investment is not paying off. “A few deregulation it is essential or everything will end up becoming illegal in Europe!” Musk told TG1. But what does it have to do with Twitter? At first sight nothing, in reality the question of European rules is fundamental for its development.

Rules and laws, money comes before education

Those who have been online for some time hope that Twitter can become a more frequent place than it is now where, due to the heterogeneity of purposes, the new blue check gave more space to trolls than to those who are committed to a less confrontational society. This is probably just one of the many bets by Elon Musk who, in recent months, had announced his intention to exploit the platform to attract “micropayments”. The potential is all there, after all even the new Twitter Blue opens up to some services, such as charging for the next new (and already old) Tweetdeck. Publishers permitting, behind this announcement there is also the desire to create a sort of paywalls to read the news, a version “pay for use” to be supplied to the newspapers. The road is difficult, journalists are always in the sights of Musk, while the way to link the platform to some cryptocurrency to facilitate exchanges seems more concrete.

In short, there is no intention to make Twitter more civil and polite but only more profitable. Indeed, if there is one thing that is worth a lot on Twitter, it is data; they are precious to everyone, Musk is well aware of this, so much so that he has said that he wants to make access by third parties increasingly difficult (unless they pay, ça va sans dire). Too bad that, in doing so, he is also limiting subscribers from tweeting.

If the web has “broken” it is not Elon Musk’s fault

‘Generation Z has never experienced the decentralized nature of the technologies that make the apps they use work,’ wrote Professor Markus Luczak-Roesch a few months ago. If blogs gave the ability to write online to a large number of people, it was social media that gave the ability to become a content producer to anyone with access to the Internet. “Everything has broken down since then,” says Luczak-Roesch. If Musk can’t make sense of Twitter, it’s because the platforms have taken content beyond the control of those who created it, while at the same time becoming a kind of monolithic interface between an entire generation and the web. All victims of their own success, except Twitter which has never made any money. The war on social media was won by Mark Zuckerberg, let’s hope the revenge is not at the Colosseum.