If Twitter began a smooth but rapid evolution towards customisable paywalling, with drastic improvements to the search interface, it could absolutely batter Google as an ecosystem.
When Elon Musk declared, on 28th October, that "Comedy is now legal on Twitter", he evidently meant the "now" very literally indeed. Less than a week later his moderation nervecentre would embark on a run of suspensions, banning verified Twitter users for what can only be described as "assaults on a billionaire's ego".
Over the past few days, a parody trend has seen blue-tickers with large-to-huge fanbases changing their screen names to Elon Musk, replacing their profile pictures with Musk portraits, and then (mostly) posting satirical Tweets that mocked the new boss, his private life and his calamitous platform purchase. Here's an example from the now suspended comic artist Jeph Jacques...
"the remaining staff at twitter are actively bullying me now. Jed from accounting called me "little baby bitchboy" to my face and nobody even said anything. I mean obviously I fired him and I'm having my goons break his wife's legs, but still. it hurts :(" - @JephJacques
Among the prominent account holders suspended were Si Young (@iamsimonyoung), "brand voice" groundbreaker Amy Brown (@arb), Rich Sommer (@RichSommer), Ethan Klein (@h3h3productions) and Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin). Both Klein and Griffin had over two million followers, and there are various other suspendees in the casualty list. Other adopters of the boss's screen name narrowly escaped a ban. They include Sonia Saraiya (@soniasaraiya), Valerie Bertinelli (@Wolfiesmom) and Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman). Bertinelli was probably saved only by the fact that she retained her own profile picture and merely changed her screen name. A very fortunate survivor considering she was Tweeting election prompts rather than satire.
The suspensions - in particular those of the very high-profile Klein and Griffin - appear to have stalled the trend. But the action has deepened the rift between Musk and the creative profession, and the entrepreneur clearly has no perceptible grip on Twitter's steering wheel as I write.
It seems the more he types into the Tweet box, the more damage he does. An election recommendation Tweet posted by Musk this afternoon could have dramatic consequences for advertising revenue. One might think the owner of a primary source of public influence would have the sense to stay off politics lest he be accused of taking bribes and/or misusing his power, but this would be to overlook Musk's phenomenal impulsiveness and inability to think before he speaks.
This afternoon's salvo has heightened speculation that Musk bought Twitter for political purposes, but I think this is false for two reasons. One: he spent months trying to wriggle out of the deal on grounds of revenue potential. Had his interest been political, there would have been no reason to renege. And two: political speech was never against the Twitter rules, so Musk didn't actually need to buy the platform in order to influence political opinion.
Nevertheless, disseminating a political nudge on the doorstep of an election is not a particularly good way for a platform boss to affirm the neutrality of his intent, and this is likely to prompt more advertisers to consider their options.
Indeed, the move was almost immediately followed by another major ad withdrawal announcement - this time from Allianz. The long list of advertisers who have suspended business with Twitter also includes American Express, Audi, Coca Cola, CVS, General Mills, United Airlines, Ford, Porsche, Volkswagen, Mazda, Spotify, Unilever, Nintendo, Dyson, Johnson & Johnson, Forbes, Levi Strauss, along with hundreds of others.
Meanwhile, two Twitter executives quit their jobs with the company today, as circulating reports claim that Twitter is busy trying to re-engage workers that Musk booted out on Friday. It's fair to say that the super-rich tycoon doesn't need anyone to satirise him. This would be an embarrassment for an Apprentice audition reject, let alone a star business magnate.
As one might imagine, given the whirlpool of mismanagement, the introduction of Twitter's revised Blue package has been steeped in disorganisation, and is now meeting with delay. In the slightly longer term, Musk looks to be planning a leap onto the video bandwagon, in the hope of attracting massive YouTube creators on better terms than YT currently offers them. This would definitely be profitable if Musk could bait over a sizeable chunk of the business, but it would probably be the end of Twitter as a "microblogging" site, since the algorithms would inevitably start to push video, rendering Twitter just another spoke in the saturated TikTok, Instagram, YouTube wheel.
And it's a big "if". Musk is paying lipservice to "content creators", but we've already seen he has no affinity at all with their mindset. In this Tweet, posted Saturday...
"Twitter will soon add ability to attach long-form text to tweets, ending absurdity of notepad screenshots" - @elonmusk
...Musk showed that he sees the expansion of Tweet capacity not as a vehicle for new content, but as another option for posters of secondhand content, stolen from elsewhere. No one would expect a bloke like Musk to give a shit about the authors whose content will be stolen. But to tacitly state that he condones the theft of entire articles shows how completely out of touch he is. Not just with the creator's mindset, but with basic issues such as copyright law. This was yet another statement that could deter advertisers, since most "brand safety" policies do not sign off on plunging ads into dens of rampant plagiarism. It would definitely concern sites that have paywalls or other types of gating.
To clarify, the problem is not that Musk wants to expand Tweet capacity - it's that he envisions the extra space as a dump for whatever shit random users happen to find elsewhere. The whole of Silicon Valley sees stolen content as a business model, but not even Zuckerberg is stupid enough to actually admit it.
As the Twitter crisis has deepened, we've seen the expected signs of Google's characteristic back-seat interference. Make no mistake, Google will be petrified by Musk's complete oblivion to the Silicon Valley way. The fear? Well, there's the damage he could do to YouTube with a predatory scheme on video. But perhaps even worse (for Google), there's the chance that Musk could go apeshit with paywalls and actually succeed - prompting more platforms to follow his lead, and locking another huge chunk of the Internet out of Google's reach.
Google, as an advertising network, relies on content being freely distributable and available to stoke the search engines. How many Twitter photos do you find near the top of the Google Images results? For some of the most popular search types they're ever-present - and they're often among the real "cherries". Pictures of celebs, etc, that get the public dashing back to Google time after time. Without those Twitter photos, some interesting people, bands, etc, are not really represented at all. If Musk walls off that goldmine (and in my opinion it would benefit him to block search bots, regardless of whether the pictures are paywalled), Google would stumble another big step closer to irrelevance.
And Twitter's own future? The best hope is...
Elon Musk shuts his face, listens to some actual creators and publishers as opposed to blue-tick chuds, restores staffing to adequate levels, and appoints a PR rep who can communicate professionally. Then Twitter begins a smooth but rapid evolution towards customisable paywalling, with drastic improvements to the search interface so that Twitter can detach from the Google ecosystem and become a superior-class discovery system in its own right. Done well, this would absolutely batter Google. It would also be very wise to ban and block all automated posting, then re-think Twitter Blue so that it doesn't divide the platform into antagonistic, "them" and "us" opposition groups.
I went back onto Tumblr yesterday, and I found it more limited than I remembered. Twitter has come a long way since I last used Tumblr with any real purpose, and realistically, the Automattic property could not serve as a substitute for today's Twitter without massive revision and a seismic boost in resources. Mastodon has neither the capacity nor the accessibility to replace Twitter, and its discovery mechanism is a standing joke. So Twitter users are not going to find a replacement at this point in time. But that does not, Mr Musk, mean they'll continue to log in.