Since Twitter’s leadership overhaul in October 2022, a lot of water has flown, not towards a positive direction though. Take the rebranding exercise for example. While the micro-blogging platform got renamed as ‘X’ and the logo change reflected on the Apple App Store before July 31, media strategist Eric Seufert found out that the social media platform’s ranking on the Apple App Store’s “Top Downloaded” chart from July 27 to August 15 showing what the ‘X’ leadership didn’t anticipate, a downfall in the average app ranking.

“My hypothesis is that, while the terminally online are entirely aware of Twitter’s rebrand to X, most consumers aren’t, and their searches for ‘Twitter’ on platform stores surface ads and genuine search results that are in no way redolent of Twitter,” Seufert explained the phenomenon.

Yes, Twitter’s rebranding has likely caused confusion among its users, with a search for “Twitter” on the App Store now offering up ‘X’ as the first result, and “the bold, black listing is practically unrecognisable as the new evolution of Twitter,” as per the words of MashableIndia.

More embarrassment

As per Elon Musk’s latest statement, X’s block feature is now on the chopping block.

“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Musk stated on ‘X’, as for the tech billionaire, “it makes no sense.”

It is to be noted that the ‘block’ feature is used to protect ‘X’ users from online trolling, harassment and threats. If one goes through the community guidelines framed by Apple and Google app stores, both tech giants have made it mandatory for social networking apps to include a block feature.

Also as per the data collected by third-party researcher Travis Brown, Musk has over 153 million ‘X’ followers but most of these ‘followers’ are fake and the count is being bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts.

Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk, around 42% of his followers, or over 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own accounts.

The average number of followers for all 153 million accounts following Elon Musk is just around 187, Brown’s data stated further, while only 453,000 Musk followers or 0.3% have subscribed to ‘X Premium.’

Over 72%, or nearly 112 million, of these users, following Musk, have less than 10 followers on their account, the data revealed further.

The Tesla CEO recently claimed that X now has over 540 million “monthly users”. However, the above finding may now present a huge question mark over this statement.

Meanwhile, ‘X’ has fixed the bug that prevented the platform from displaying images tweeted before 2014.

“Over the weekend (August 19 and 20) we had a bug that prevented us from displaying images from before 2014. No images or data were lost. We fixed the bug, and the issue will be fully resolved in the coming days,” the company stated.

‘X’ users complained about their tweets published prior to December 2014 disappearing. Legendary American television personality Ellen DeGeneres stated on the micro-blogging platform that her famous 2014 Academy Awards ceremony selfie with celebrities like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence also went missing from her tweet.

X is suing its way out of accountability?

In July 2023, Bloomberg reported about X losing advertisers, partly due to its lax enforcement against hate speech. The report carried inputs from Callum Hood, the head of research at the non-profit organisation called ‘Centre for Countering Digital Hate’. CCDH has been highlighting instances in which the micro-blogging platform has allowed violent, hateful, or misleading content to remain on its portal.

How did X reacted to this? It informed the media about filing a lawsuit against CCDH and the European Climate Foundation. The charge? ‘Misuse’ of X data leading to the loss of the latter’s advertising revenue. X also alleged that the data used for the CCDH research was obtained using the login credentials from the European Climate Foundation, which had an account with the third-party social listening tool Brandwatch.

“Brandwatch has a licence to use Twitter’s data through its API. X alleges that the CCDH was not authorised to access the Twitter/X data. The suit also accuses the CCDH of scraping Twitter’s platform without proper authorisation, in violation of the company’s terms of service,” stated a WIRED article.

“The Centre for Countering Digital Hate’s research shows that hate and disinformation is spreading like wildfire on the platform under Musk’s ownership, and this lawsuit is a direct attempt to silence those efforts,” remarked CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed.

In December 2022, Elon Musk claimed that the hate speech on Twitter was down by a third, contrary to the claims of many of the former employees that the social media company was not doing enough to counter hate speech and misinformation.

When BBC did its investigation into Musk’s claims of hate speeches going down on X, they found out that banned accounts of polarising characters like Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, and Liz Crokin, one of the biggest propagators of the QAnon conspiracy theory, have been reinstated.

“Other lesser-known Twitter users have taken advantage of the new ownership. One account with a racial slur in its user name was able to get a blue checkmark. Another one was purchased by a neo-Nazi who tweets videos of himself reciting Mein Kampf – Hitler’s autobiography,” the report stated further.

“Our own reporting also provides some clues. The BBC analysed over 1,100 previously banned Twitter accounts that were reinstated under Mr Musk. A third appeared to violate Twitter’s own guidelines. [Violent] content was also a scourge on Twitter for years before Mr Musk acquired the platform,” it remarked.

In July 2023, X reinstated American rapper Kanye West after an almost eight-month ban for a series of offencive tweets, including the one showing a symbol combining a swastika and the Star of David.

X Corp lawyer Alex Spiro rejected CCDH’s allegations of Twitter “failing to act on 99%” of hateful messages from accounts with Twitter Blue subscriptions. He also criticised the organisation’s methodology, writing that “the article is little more than a series of inflammatory, misleading, and unsupported claims based on a cursory review of random tweets.”

Sprio didn’t stop there, as he alleged further that CCDH was supported by funding from “X Corp’s commercial competitors, as well as government entities and their affiliates”, thus accusing the non-profit of attempting to drive away advertisers. But, CCDH refused all these charges.

Experts told that the legal action was the latest move by social media platforms to shrink access to their data by researchers and civil society organisations.

“We’re talking about access not just for researchers or academics, but it could also potentially be extended to advocates and journalists and even policymakers,” says Liz Woolery, digital policy lead at PEN America, a non-profit that advocates for free expression.

“Without that kind of access, it is really difficult for us to engage in the research necessary to better understand the scope and scale of the problem that we face, of how social media is affecting our daily life, and make it better,” she stated further.

Twitter following Meta example

In 2021, Meta blocked researchers at New York University’s Ad Observatory from collecting data about political ads and COVID-19 misinformation. In 2022, the Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant company announced winding down its monitoring tool CrowdTangle, which has been instrumental in allowing researchers and journalists to monitor Facebook.

Meta and X rivalries went to that extent a month back, when Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg challenged each other in a cage fight. However, the reality is that both ventures are suing Israeli data collection firm Bright Data, for scraping their sites to collect data. Meta itself contracted the same company to scrape the data of the social media company’s rivals.

“Musk announced in March that the company would begin charging USD 42,000 per month for its API, pricing out the vast majority of researchers and academics who have used it to study issues like disinformation and hate speech in more than 17,000 academic studies,” stated the article.

Social media platforms vs researchers

“For years, advocacy organisations have used examples of violative content on social platforms as a way to pressure advertisers to withdraw their support, forcing companies to address problems or change their policies. Without the underlying research into hate speech, disinformation, and other harmful content on social media, these organisations would have little ability to force companies to change,” WIRED noted.

In 2020, advertisers, including Starbucks, Patagonia, and Honda, left Facebook over the social media company’s lax approach against misinformation, particularly posts by former United States president Donald Trump.

After taking over Twitter in October 2022, Elon Musk fired many of the staffers responsible for keeping the micro-blogging platform safe from hate speeches and misinformation. The tech billionaire also reinstated the accounts of banned users like Trump and influencer Andrew Tate, currently indicted under human trafficking laws in Romania.

The University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute, along with Oregon State University, UCLA, and University of California Merced, released a study in 2023, which found that hate speech increased dramatically after Musk took over Twitter’s reigns. Also, the company saw its advertising revenue slashed in half as brands got concerned about their products appearing next to misinformation and hate speech.

The study got vindicated as in November 2022, Elon Musk tweeted, “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Woolery worried that the cost of fighting the lawsuits may intimidate research bodies and non-profits doing the work of exposing hate speeches and misinformation in the domain of social media.

“Lawsuits like this, especially when we are talking about a non-profit, are definitely seen as an attempt to silence critics. If a non-profit or another individual is not in a financial position where they can really, truly give it all it takes to defend themselves, then they run the risk of either having a poor defence or of simply settling and just trying to get out of it to avoid incurring further costs and reputational damage,” she stated further.

A tough road ahead?

“But the lawsuit doesn’t just put pressure on researchers themselves. It also highlights another avenue through which it now may be more difficult for advocates to access data: third-party social listening platforms. These companies access and analyse data from social platforms to allow their clients—from national security contractors to marketing agencies—to gain insights into their audiences and target messages,” stated the WIRED
article.

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, founder and executive director of CyberWell, a non-profit tracking anti-Semitism online in both English and Arabic, stated that in November 2022, his company reached out to Talkwalker, a third-party social listening company, to get a subscription that would allow them to analyse anti-Semitic speech on the then Twitter.

Montemayor told that Talkwalker informed her that the company could not take the non-profit on as a client because of the nature of CyberWell’s work. Montemayor also suspected that “the existing open source tools and social listening tools are being reserved and paywalled only for advertisers and paid researchers. Non-profit organisations are actively being blocked from using these resources.”

“Talkwalker did not respond to a request for comment about whether its agreements with X prohibit it from taking on organisations doing hate speech monitoring as clients. X did not respond to questions about what parameters it sets for the kinds of customers that third-party social listening companies can take on,” the article pointed out.

X’s lawsuit against CCDH also cited a 2023 agreement between Brandwatch and X that outlined that any breach of the micro-blogging platform’s data via Brandwatch’s customers would be considered the responsibility of the social listening company.

Yoel Roth, X’s former senior director of trust and safety at Twitter, stated on BlueSky, “Brandwatch’s social listening business is entirely, completely, 100% dependant on Twitter data access, so I guess it’s not surprising to see how far backwards they’re bending to placate the company.”

A representative from another third-party social listening tool that uses X data, confirmed to WIRED that companies like theirs are heavily reliant on Twitter/X data.

“A lot of the services that are very Twitter-centric, a lot of them are 100% Twitter,” the anonymous source stated.

“In terms of data, Twitter continues to play a significant role in providing data to analytics companies,” the company added further, while noting that X’s new paid-for API has put the squeeze on third-party analytics companies, as losing access to the micro-blogging platform’s data will destroy these research companies.

The source even talked about specific “know your customer” guidelines prohibiting sharing X data with government agencies without prior permission.

After publishing a report on the increasing anti-Semitic content on Twitter since Musk’s takeover, London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), experienced a deluge of abusive tweets, with Musk himself taking potshots at the think-tank with a Tweet carrying poop emoji.

In December 2022, came out ‘Twitter Files’, a declassification of internal documents showing that pre-Musk Twitter had ‘silenced’ conservative users on its platform. Some of these declassified documents even included the names and emails of disinformation researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Some of these individuals have now reportedly become the targets of online hate.

Sasha Havlicek, cofounder and CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), now pins her hopes on the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which will eventually mandate access for researchers to data from large social platforms. And yes, such laws should be made mandatory in other parts of the world.

In light of the numerous challenges discussed, the trajectory of Elon Musk’s leadership and its ultimate outcome remains intriguing. Overcoming the array of obstacles will determine his success in steering the platform forward.

The post X-Man Elon Musk’s Apocalypse appeared first on International Finance.

Bank customers and airline passengers are among those being exposed to the risk of suffering due to phishing scams as these individuals complain to companies via X, stated a Guardian report, while adding that the fraudsters, masquerading as customer service agents, are responding under fake X handles and trick victims into disclosing their bank details to get a promised refund.

“They (fraudsters) typically win the trust of victims by displaying the blue checkmark icon, which until this year denoted accounts that had been officially verified by X,” the report explained the phenomenon.

“Changes introduced this year allow the icon to be bought by anyone who pays an 11 pounds monthly fee for the site’s subscription service, renamed this month from Twitter Blue to X Premium. Businesses that pay 950 pounds a month receive a gold tick. X’s terms and conditions do not state whether subscriber accounts are pre-vetted,” the report remarked further.

Guardian contacted an individual named Andrew Thomas, who was contacted by a scam account after posting a complaint to the travel platform Booking.com.

“I’d been trying since April to get a refund after our holiday flights were cancelled and finally resorted to X,” he told the media outlet.

“I received a response asking me to follow them, and DM [direct message] them with a contact number. They then called me via WhatsApp asking for my reference number so they could investigate. Later they called back to say that I would be refunded via their payment partner for which I’d need to download an app,” the person added further.

“It looked like the real thing, but I noticed that there was an unexpected hyphen in the Twitter handle and that it had only joined X in July 2023,” Thomas said, as he became suspicious and checked the X profile of the ‘travel platform’.

“I then checked the WhatsApp caller ID and found it was a Kenyan number. I’ve since come across other fake Booking.com Twitter accounts which are following customers who are at their wits’ end trying to get a refund and have resorted to X to air their grievance with the company,” he narrated further.

Booking.com has now reportedly refunded Thomas after the incident caught media attention.

In June 2023, passengers suffering from easyJet and British Airways flight cancellations were targeted by cybercriminals using fake profiles after they resorted to X to demand refunds.

Both the airlines informed the Observer about reporting the accounts to X. BA has even a pinned tweet alerting users to fake accounts.

Not only the tourism industry, but even bank customers in the United Kingdom have now reportedly been warned to be vigilant as scammers are on the lookout for tweets that they can exploit to obtain personal account details.

Lisa Webb, a consumer law expert at the campaign organisation Which?, blamed the recent changes to X’s verification processes, which she believed, had made it harder for users to identify trusted accounts.

“Complaining to a company on social media can be an effective tactic to get a quick response, but check to make sure this is coming from its official account and, if in doubt, get in touch with the company directly using the contact details on their official website,” she said, while urging the Rishi Sunak government to pass the online safety bill on an immediate priority basis and ensure “it delivers meaningful protections for consumers against a flood of online fraud infiltrating the world’s biggest social media sites and search engines”.

Threat Actors Running Riot On X

As per the recent study by researchers from Indiana University, around 1,140 AI-powered accounts have been identified on X, which the research team has named the “Fox8” botnet. These accounts are reportedly using technology like ChatGPT to create fake content and steal pictures to create fake profiles.

As per the New York Post, these bot accounts are aiming to trick people into investing in fake cryptocurrencies. The Indiana University researchers even suspect that the bots might have stolen from real crypto wallets, while using hashtags like #bitcoin and #crypto and interacting with real human-run accounts focusing on crypto news.

The Fox8 botnet accounts are also spreading misinformation on various topics, including health and politics.

The bots are using the tactics of flooding the micro-blogging platform with numerous AI-generated posts, to increase the chances of these ‘posts’ being seen by real X users and ultimately, increasing the likelihood of someone clicking on harmful links.

These bots are not only using stolen photos but are also interacting with each other and have a certain number of followers and friends. The Indiana University researchers further noted that these accounts have improved in their believability due to advancements in language models like ChatGPT.

The post Fake customer service agents, “Fox8” botnets: Scammers run riot on X appeared first on International Finance.

Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino stated, “Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past eight months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting started.”

However, today International Finance will talk about a topic that, in the coming days, may become the central theme of Twitter’s rebranding efforts.

Is ‘Revenue Generation’ The New Theme?

A recent Wall Street Journal report stated about the micro-blogging platform now offering advertisers in the United States and the United Kingdom a 50% discount on video ads running beside trending topics under the platform’s “Explore” tab, “among other discounts.”

From August 7, brands need to spend at least USD 1,000 on advertisements within the prior 30 days or USD 6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark, a checkmark that identifies that the account belongs to a verified brand.

Also, Twitter has introduced a new ads revenue sharing program for creators to help people earn a living directly on the micro-blogging platform. Content creators will now be able to earn a share in ad revenue starting from replies to their posts.

This revenue-sharing programme will also be applied to ‘Verified Organizations’ or ‘Twitter Blue Subscribers’ with at least five million post impressions in each of the past three months.

Sad state of financial affairs

In July 2023, Elon Musk informed about cash flow remaining negative in the popular micro-blogging platform, as it was witnessing a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load. These developments have derailed the tech billionaire’s hopes of making Twitter a cash-flow-positive entity by June.

Elon Musk also said in another tweet that Twitter did not see the expected increase in advertising revenue in June. Twitter Spaces too is witnessing a poor run of revenue generation.

Twitter has reduced its non-debt expenditures to USD 1.5 billion from a projected USD 4.5 billion in 2023. Twitter also faces annual interest payments of about USD 1.5 billion due to the debt it took on in the USD 44 billion deal that turned the company private in October 2022, as per a Guardian report.

Elon Musk, however, remarked that Twitter was on track to post USD 3 billion in revenue in 2023, down from the 2021 figure of USD 5.1 billion.

Recently, a CNN report stated that over half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers were no longer spending on the platform in the first weeks of January 2023.

Monthly revenue from these advertisers plummeted by over 60% from October 2022 through January 25, 2023, from around USD 127 million to just over USD 48 million. Before Elon Musk’s takeover, the same entities used to pump USD 4.5 billion worth of yearly revenue into the micro-blogging platform.

Twitter reportedly offered a Super Bowl “fire sale” deal for advertisers. It also partnered with a third-party “brand safety” firm, which would show advertisers if their ads appear alongside inappropriate/unsafe content on Twitter.

However, none of these worked. After Linda Yaccarino took over the leadership reigns of Twitter in June 2023, she too signalled that ad sales were a priority for her venture amid efforts to increase subscription revenue. Twitter is now reportedly focusing on video, creator and commerce partnerships and is in talks with public figures, payments services, and media outlets.

After taking over Twitter’s helm in October 2022, Elon Musk sold verified checks as a part of ‘Twitter Blue Subscriptions,’ However, the move backfired as “verified” accounts parodying brands occupied the micro-blogging space, thus making the platform a ‘High-Risk Zone’ for businesses.

Elon Musk has also introduced limits on how many posts people can read, with verified users receiving preferential treatment to see more tweets. As per the Wall Street Journal, this limitation has resulted in fewer people seeing ads, thus causing advertising prices to rise, as the brands are bleeding due to a reduced audience reach.

The Threads challenge

Amid the financial mess around Twitter, the Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta introduced its ‘Threads’ in July 2023. The app has features similar to Twitter. Threads reached 100 million downloads in the first five days of its launch, breaking records for the explosion of sign-ups on any app ever.

Threads is now taking advantage of its connection with Instagram and Meta to attract advertisers. It is offering various ad formats, like sponsored threads, promoted replies, and branded stickers. The app is also experimenting with new ways of monetizing content, such as tipping, subscriptions, and e-commerce.

If the app manages to retain users, Threads could achieve USD 5 billion in annual ad revenue by 2023 end, equalling Twitter’s 2021 earnings, wealth management firm Bernstein stated. Morningstar analysts predict that Threads could add between USD 2 billion and USD 3 billion to Meta’s revenue every year between 2024 and 2027. Evercore ISI analysts believe that Threads could generate annual revenue worth USD 8 billion by 2025.

Mark Zuckerberg, however, has said his company would only think about monetizing Threads once “there was a clear path to 1 billion users”.

Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users as of July 2022. So Threads has a long road ahead.

Meta has been investing to upgrade its AI capacity to boost traffic to Facebook and Instagram and increase ad sales. Even though Threads lacks features like direct messaging, hashtags or keyword searches, expect these to be added to the app in the coming days, which in turn, will increase its appeal to advertisers further.

Taylor Michelle Gerard, a senior executive at content marketing firm Blue Hour Studios, told Reuters some of her clients are considering adding a Threads post along with TikTok or Instagram posts as part of sponsored deals with influencers.

Final Observation

Elon Musk has dubbed X as an ‘everything app’ that will enable messaging, payments and banking. However, his way of running Twitter’s affairs has been an amateurish one. The changes which he has introduced in the venture since October 2022 have been short-sighted and chaotic.

What Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino need to understand is that more than the rebranding gimmick, Twitter’s time and efforts need to be invested to consolidate its market position against potential rivals like Threads and Bluesky. A good brand thrives on the back of administrative stability, which Twitter lags right now.

The post IF Insights: Will rebranding help Twitter improve its ailing financial health? appeared first on International Finance.

Yes, the fight has indeed started, but not in the ring. On July 5, Mark Zuckerberg posted his first tweet in 11 years, while posting the popular meme of identical Spider-Men facing off.

Elon Musk replied with a laughing face emoticon in reply to a tweet that said Meta’s new ‘Threads’ app has been made using a keyword with only the keys for Copy and Paste features.

However, the ‘News of The 2023’ is that Mark Zuckerberg, after taking on Snapchat and TikTok through Instagram’s ‘Story’ and ‘Reel’, has now chosen his next target in the form of Elon Musk, by launching ‘Threads’.

‘Threads’ Is An Instant Hit

While alternatives like ‘Mastodon’ and ‘Blue Sky’ saw an uptick in subscribers after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, none of them has been able to pose any problem for the micro-blogging platform, which, as per the 2023 stats, has 353.90 million users (3.93% decrease from 2022). It is worth mentioning that ‘Mastodon’ and ‘Blue Sky’ work on a new phenomenon called ‘Decentralized Social Media Protocols’.

However, things have been different for ‘Threads’. It has garnered 10 million subscribers (and the number is still growing), since its July 6 launch. However, regulatory constraints have ensured that the European Union countries won’t be able to enjoy the services of the app.

Brands like Billboard, HBO, NPR and Netflix have already set up their accounts on Threads.

Thread users will need an Instagram account to log in. After signing up, they can follow the same accounts they follow on Instagram.

The app has similarities with Twitter. Retweets will be called “Reposts” and tweets will be mentioned as “Threads”. Posts on Threads can be 500 characters long, compared to Twitter’s 280, while videos with a maximum span of five minutes can also be posted. Also, a post can be shared as a link on other platforms. Along with these, users can unfollow, block, restrict or report profiles/accounts. Post replies will have the ‘Filter’ option as well.

While Threads will have similarities with Mastodon, Meta is also reportedly planning to make the app compatible with ActivityPub, thus entering the domain of ‘Decentralized Social Media’, where social networks are going to be interoperable, and thus allowing the Threads users to take their accounts and followers to other ActivityPub-supported apps.

Zuckerburg’s First Punch A Well-Timed One

As per the Guardian, Meta won’t accept ads on Threads for 2023.

“Currently, the main feed is a mixture of content that users follow, as well as content recommended from the algorithm. There are currently no plans to allow people to limit that to only people they follow. People will keep their usernames from Instagram, reducing the possibility of people name-squatting high-profile usernames,” the report stated.

While people are entitled to call ‘Threads’ the copycat version of Twitter, due to the similarities between the two, Mark Zuckerberg followed similar practices when he took on TikTok and Snapchat. However, the timing of the app’s launch couldn’t have been a better one, as since October 2022, Twitter’s brand value has taken a nosedive due to Elon Musk’s erratic way of handling the micro-blogging platform’s affairs.

It all started with Elon Musk firing the micro-blogging firm’s entire leadership and 70% of the staffers (it has gone over 80% now). These were followed by the chaotic launch of ‘Twitter Blue’. In the meantime, advertisers started pulling out of the platform.

Facing hate speech-related lawsuits across the countries due to its updated content moderation policy, failure to pay property rents, frequent service glitches and the list of troubles has only got bigger for the social media platform in the last nine months. Its valuation has gone down to USD 20 billion in March 2023, way down from the USD 44 billion, which Elon Musk paid while buying the platform in October 2022.

Elon Musk also admitted the difficulties faced by him while running Twitter’s administrative affairs. To address this, American media executive Linda Yaccarino was brought in as the micro-blogging platform’s new CEO a month back.

While analysts thought that the move will bring some sort of administrative sanity to the micro-blogging platform, things have gone southwards since then.

Twitter has now limited how much content users can view on a daily basis. Also, the users are now required to log in to view the site. Also, the platform restricted unverified accounts to viewing 600 tweets a day. The cap was later upped to 1,000.

Elon Musk defended these changes as “temporary limits” meant to address “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation”, while stating that AI companies were taking “vast amounts of data” from Twitter, which forced the latter to perform the ‘costly operation’ of deploying more servers.

The Final Words

Changes are always good and welcome, when they are backed by informed decision-making and employed in a smooth manner. For Twitter, unfortunately, policy changes since October 2022 have brought only frustration for the users and the latter have been pushed to quit the platform.

Mark Zuckerberg has chosen the right moment to pounce upon his rival. Thread has been immensely popular on day one itself. Those, who got tired of Elon Musk’s erratic way of running Twitter’s affairs and were looking out for alternatives, are now bracing the app.

If the duel between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg gets compared with a cage fight, it’s right now standing at the 1-0 scoreline in the favour of the Meta boss. Will his Tesla counterpart, known for his online shenanigans, come up with a response? Let’s wait and watch.

The post IF Insights: Threads vs Twitter: Mark Zuckerberg delivers first punch to Elon Musk appeared first on International Finance.

The micro-blogging platform was founded in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. In 2012, more than 100 million users were tweeting 340 million tweets daily, and the service processed an average of 1.6 billion searches per day. The company went public in November 2013 and by the year 2019, Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.

In 2022, Twitter agreed to a USD 44 billion buyout by Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, in one of the biggest deals ever to take a company private. From July to September that year, Twitter hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, as Elon Musk initially cancelled the deal, then got dragged to the court by the then leadership of the micro-blogging platform.

In October 2022, Elon Musk finally gave his nod for the USD 44 billion deal. As soon as he took over the company, he fired the micro-blogging platform’s CEO Parag Agarwal, head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal.

After the leadership change, Twitter has been regularly criticized for an increase in hate speech. His takeover of the company was marked by sweeping policy changes, mass layoffs, resignations, mounting losses, frequent technical glitches, declining brand value and a dramatic shift in the company’s work culture. Twitter also got merged into X Holdings and Twitter was no longer an independent company but part of X Corp.

As the micro-blogging platform saw its ‘Twitter Blue’ initiative backfiring horribly, Elon Musk was frank enough to admit that the pain level of Twitter has been “extremely high”, and that owning the micro-blogging platform hasn’t been “some sort of party” for him. Also, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO getting too involved in the social media platform’s daily administration worried the stakeholders of his other ventures.

Elon Musk has now appointed Linda Yaccarino as the new Twitter CEO, while planning to maintain his firm grip over the social media platform’s leadership ranks. He said that Linda Yaccarino, an American media executive, would start in the next six weeks.

Who Is Linda Yaccarino?
• Linda Yaccarino, of Italian descent, was born and brought up in Deer Park, New York, USA
• She completed her graduation from Pennsylvania State University’s Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications with a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications in 1985
• Following her graduation, Linda Yaccarino worked with Turner Entertainment for 15 years, becoming executive vice-president and chief operating officer of ad sales where she played a key role in developing innovative advertising and marketing solutions
• In 2011, she joined NBCUniversal as the head of the company’s advertising sales. She played a key role in the launch of Peacock streaming service
• In 2014, Linda Yaccarino took up an offer from the Ad Council, an American non-profit organization that produces, distributes, and promotes public service announcements
• In 2018, former US President Donald Trump appointed her to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition
• In 2021, Linda Yaccarino became Chairman of the Ad Council’s board of directors till June 2022, where she partnered with the Biden administration to create a coronavirus vaccine campaign
• The same year, she also chaired the future of work task force for the World Economic Forum
• On 12 May 2023, Linda Yaccarino resigned from NBCUniversal and on the same day Elon Musk announced that she would be the new Chief Executive Officer of X Corp. and Twitter
• According to Forbes, Linda Yaccarino’s annual net worth is around USD 40 Million Dollars as of January 2023

Linda Yaccarino Would Focus On Business Operations

Joe Marchese, the former head of ad sales at the Fox Networks Group, who has known Linda Yaccarino for at least a decade said that by electing her, Elon Musk is signalling what has priority for him on Twitter: The advertising business and not the social media know-how.

Linda Yaccarino has been one of Madison Avenue’s power brokers for decades. And Twitter, which derives the bulk of its revenue from advertising, has struggled to grow that business, particularly after Elon Musk spooked advertisers in 2022 with the micro-blogging platform’s takeover. A lion’s share of the industrial biggies left the platform immediately, expressing concern about the rise in hate speech content on Twitter. Even though the billionaire claimed in his recent BBC interview that the advertisers were returning to Twitter, the tale of the micro-blogging platform’s financial struggles is not over yet.

In an interview with New York Times, Joe Marchese said, “Linda’s a force. She has one of the biggest jobs in advertising, and the ad market is as hard as it has ever been.”

He also said, above all, Linda Yaccarino has to contend with Elon Musk as he is a moody and unpredictable boss. The 51-year-old billionaire has a track record of firing executives who don’t meet his goals. Sometimes, without warning, he tweets news about his various businesses, which include electric car maker Tesla.

Meanwhile, Lou Paskalis, a longtime ad executive and friend of Yaccarino, likened her move to Twitter to take a “step into the lion’s mouth.”

“With her stature in the industry as probably one of the most beloved and trusted people on the revenue side, I question why she would subject herself to that kind of potential reputational risk,” he said.

The post Business Leader of the Week: Meet Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s new CEO appeared first on International Finance.

In an interview with the BBC, Elon Musk stated that the criticism he’s faced recently has been “rough”, while adding that the pain level of Twitter has been “extremely high”, and that owning the micro-blogging platform hasn’t been “some sort of party”.

It is worth mentioning that the media portal, to which Elon Musk gave the interview, got embroiled in a controversy with the micro-blogging platform as its verified account label was abruptly changed to “government-funded media”.

Elon Musk has been honest enough about Twitter’s current state of affairs. Its ex-CEO Parag Agrawal and the other former executives have sued the portal over fees incurred in a recent storm of legal battles.

Then there was a standoff between Twitter and Substack over the micro-blogging platform censoring links and searches for the newsletter platform. Substack announced a new feature, “Substack Notes”, providing a Twitter-like experience for its user base, something which didn’t please Twitter.

And The List Extends Further

As per media reports, Twitter is now potentially facing fines to the tune of tens of billions of euros in Germany for its inability to take down hate speech posts. Over 600 cases are pending before German courts, with the country announcing an investigation into “suspected systemic failures under the country’s hate speech takedowns law”. The act allows for fines of up to 50 million euros per case.

Twitter has also reportedly been attempting to limit the visibility of tweets including terms describing gender identity and sexual orientation. The micro-blogging platform also cut the API accesses of third-party developers, including those who agreed to pay the new monthly fees which start at a whooping USD 42,000.

The most notable ‘change’ one noticed on the web version of the micro-blogging platform, was the iconic ‘Blue Bird’ logo getting replaced with a doge meme. The move was influenced by a promise Elon Musk reportedly made to a user before taking over the social media giant’s leadership mantle.

The logo change shot the value of cryptocurrency ‘Dogecoin’ to its new high of 10.5%, adding some USD 4 billion to its market value. However, it then fell to a new low of nearly 9%, all in the first week of April 2023, as the iconic ‘Blue Bird’ logo made a comeback again.

Although Elon Musk stopped the crisis over the BBC Twitter label from being snowballed further, the micro-blogging platform hasn’t been that lucky with US-based broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR), as the latter has quit the portal after being labelled “State-Affiliated”.

What About ‘Twitter Blue’?

On April 11, Elon Musk announced that legacy blue checkmarks would be purged from Twitter accounts verified under the company’s previous regime, and the deadline for this is April 20. The only accounts that will keep their blue checkmarks are those subscribed to the new ‘Twitter Blue’.

Confusion is still reigning supreme here. On April 1, it was announced that the portal would begin removing the blue check-mark badges from legacy verified accounts, then on the next day; the micro-blogging platform modified the wording in the description of verified users, stating that “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue or is a legacy verified account.”

It led to a confusing situation where distinguishing which users have paid for a blue checkmark and which have not got difficult.

And ‘Twitter Blue’ hasn’t been a game changer either. As per researcher Travis Brown, around half of all users subscribed to ‘Twitter Blue’ have less than 1,000 followers. Furthermore, 78,059 paying ‘Twitter Blue’ subscribers have less than 100 users following their accounts (that’s 17.6% of all ‘Twitter Blue’ subscribers). There are 2,270 paying ‘Twitter Blue’ subscribers who have zero followers.

Brown’s methodology was proven to be very accurate when ‘Twitter Blue’ subscriber numbers got leaked from the micro-blogging platform. There are approximately 420,000 legacy verified accounts, which received the checkmark badge for free under the old verification system, but now will lose the feature. That’s a solid bloodbath, to be honest.

Twitter’s Financial Health Going Downhill

In November 2022, Elon Musk said that Twitter has been losing USD 4 million in revenue daily. Fast forward to April 2023, Insider Intelligence claims that the micro-blogging platform’s advertising revenue will fall by 28% by year-end. Analysts also slashed an earlier worldwide revenue estimate of USD 4.74 billion by more than a third to USD 2.98 billion as trust in the Elon Musk-led platform deteriorates.

Insider Intelligence has also noted that The Twitter CEO’s efforts to build up a subscription service “won’t make up for the lost ad revenue.”

Elon Musk also estimated Twitter’s current value at USD 20 billion dollars, which is less than half the USD 44 billion dollars he spent in 2022 while buying the portal. Measures like offering free ads, lifting a ban on political advertising and companies having greater control over the positioning of their ads haven’t worked either, with updates about the portal’s deteriorating financial health dominating the headlines since 2022.

Conclusion

Twitter has been merged with Elon Musk’s other venture X Corp, which also controls Tesla, SpaceX Neuralink, and The Boring Company. More than a merger, the micro-blogging platform needs stability on all fronts (and less of Elon Musk’s antics). While it has introduced enticing features for ‘Twitter Blue’, along with new API pricing, there is no second guessing on the fact that Twitter is under the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, resulting in its brand image getting hit further.

The post IF Insights: Elon Musk is right about Twitter’s ‘extremely high’ pain level appeared first on International Finance.

Jack Dorsey recently tweeted, “No one knows anything,” in an apparent indication to the social media platform.

The billionaire responded to it by saying, “Magic knows it all.”

The first two weeks of Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter have been characterized by quick, drastic changes and subsequent volatility.

Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey got into a fight recently over the “Birdwatch” function.

Elon Musk stated that Twitter must develop into the most reliable news source.

“Who is accurate?” asked Jack Dorsey.

The two giants also collided on the Twitter function that the Tesla CEO had rebranded as “community notes.”

However, Jack Dorsey admitted to hastily broadening the micro-blogging platform.

“Past and existing Twitter employees are hardworking and tenacious. No matter how severe the situation, they will always find a way. I am aware that many are upset with me. I built the company too quickly, which is my fault and why everyone is in this predicament. I’m sorry about that,” tweeted Jack Dorsey.

“Everyone who has ever worked on Twitter has my gratitude and love. I understand that I don’t expect that ever to be the case,” he added.

Jack Dorsey ended his formal affiliation in May, 2022 with the company he co-founded in 2006, as he resigned from the Twitter board.

Since 2007, he has served as a director. Most recently, from mid-2015 to 2021, he served as the CEO of the social networking platform.

The post Elon Musk responds to Jack Dorsey’s tweet appeared first on International Finance.