Free Twitter!

For the last few weeks, the media landscape has been full of chatter about Elon Musk buying Twitter. The narrative? Depends who you ask. Removing any censorship and turning it into a free speech bastion with an 'anything goes' mentality? Some say it’s just about adhering to the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Others contend it’s about destroying all the good which Twitter represents.

Some say it’s about attracting more users. Others predict that millions will leave. Maybe this is just about allowing Mr. Musk to fight the SEC? That’s another narrative.

I’ve written about Twitter in the past. As recently in March, 2022 Could Twitter make it rain with blockchain?. Long before that, I wrote in January, 2018 about Twitter - the should, the could, the would company.

Here is my narrative on the story of Twitter and Mr. Musk today.

Would you spend $44 billion to defend free speech or influence the world?

I remember the last time a well-known business guy bought a newspaper for $250 million as a personal hobby. I am not sure how that has changed things. Perhaps it was mostly for the better, but you tell me.

Back to Twitter. This acquisition is not about freedom or freedom of speech.

This acquisition is about money. Lots of money.

Twitter is a 16 year old company that started in March, 2006 and went public November, 2013. It currently has over 220 million users on its platform, down from a peak of 319 million in 2017. Except for 2018 and 2019, Twitter has reported losses, despite earning revenue of over $5 billion in 2021.

Why would anyone want to spend their (and others’) billions of dollars on a company which still can't define what exactly it is? Why invest in a company which has been subsidizing its users for 16 years to exchange 140 characters and pictures of talking dogs? It’s just useless.

Showing annoying ads on Twitter and interrupting a stream of 140 characters proved to be a barely-winning strategy. There is nothing exciting and innovative happening on the platform. So we see, users are leaving.

Twitter has amazing technology behind the scenes that would allow it to turn into a commercial platform. I don’t mean one where you can click on a link which takes you to some website and a stupid shopping cart.

Maybe you remember Mr. Musk on various occasions promoting different types of cryptocurrencies. Now imagine if every Twitter user, on creating their account, also gets a digital wallet. It comes preloaded with a digital token which they are free to spend on anything they want on Twitter. Imagine if Twitter allows for various cryptocurrencies to be used interchangeably with complete ease.

Nothing is easier than to plug in one (or several) of the new exchanges (FTX, Coinbase, Gemini, Binance) to provide the money flow. Then you open the API connectivity to Twitter (something that Twitter was famous for at the beginning) for business to connect to their eCommerce platforms. Twitter’s logo is ubiquitous on every web property out there. With the click of a button, anything can be shared, reviewed, commented on, or purchased. If you think that Google knows everything about what’s happening on your website, Twitter knows the same and more.

Think about it this way. Mr. Musk is part of the PayPal mafia. If nothing else, he understands payment platforms and he understands how to disrupt the status quo. Strange but true - and tied to this, Jack Dorsey (the founder of Twitter) has been far more successful with his other venture, Block, formerly known as Square - the payment platform company.

What about the 140 characters of free speech? Your digital wallet will be linked to your identity. People won't be able to hide behind anonymous accounts. Their activity will stay recorded on blockchain forever, which even AI won't be able to forget.

Will that eliminate hate speech and personal attacks? Of course not. That's not the role of technology. It will create better transparency and tie your words to your money. You decide then how much free speech is worth to you.

We are at the end of the old social network platforms era. Facebook is trying to move itself to the utopia of Metaverse and the new kids like TikTok are desperately trying to get your attention. They all know that in order to survive they need to get money from you. Otherwise, they are done. That's the recurrent pattern and that's my narrative.