Thread by @justinkan

I’ve worked on social products for a long time, and even seen some successes! Here’s why I think the take that Elon is crashing and burning Twitter into the ground is overrated, and Twitter is likely to survive just fine (and potentially thrive!)

Users are unlikely to flee the platform. There’s lots of talk from the blue check set about quitting Twitter and going to Mastodon or some other bullshit but in practice it never happens. Most users just don’t care about Twitter company drama.

When Uber and United had extremely bad press cycles and user backlash there was no lasting usage hits to their businesses. Unlike those businesses, Twitter not only has a brand but also has a strong network effect.

High profile users leaving the platform is largely irrelevant for social apps w/ network effects. Ex: when Mixer lured away Ninja from Twitch big contract, almost no fans followed him. Avg viewers on Mixer was a fraction of former Twitch avg. Eventually he came back to Twitch

Everyone claims advertisers are leaving Twitter, but my guess is that has to do more with the economy and Twitter ads’ low efficacy than Elon antics. By changing product velocity he has the potential to fix this.

In fact, for small startups Twitter ad spend is increasing:

https://twitter.com/eglyman/status/1590385689895784448?s=46&t=0ea70fCcgYBB3tLwL43-qQ

Lots of people are claiming that Twitter can never get to 50% user payments, but I believe it’s possible. Twitch shifted its revenue mix from mainly advertising to user payments by innovating heavily on the product. Twitter can do the same by helping creators monetize fans.

Elon is using his famous first principle’s thinking to rebuild Twitter the company. There is no reason that operating Twitter requires the headcount it had at sale.

Twitter headcount grew 2x in the last 5 years and everyone externally could see the product was relatively stagnant.

Every founder and executive in Silicon Valley has looked around at the bigger companies and wondered “what are all these people doing?”

To be fair this is headcount inflation is widespread across Silicon Valley. Elon is just the most high profile CEO to say it out loud and start ruthlessly making cuts.

Forcing change in Twitter’s speed of shipping gives the company more shots on goal to make product changes that increase revenue / usage / retention.

Like it or not, Elon’s changes to the company will be a flag to attract certain kinds of engineers (the ones who care about shipping fast over anything else). Everyone else will probably leave or be fired.

I predict that after this Twitter news cycle blows over, the app will remain largely the same for the majority of people. The company will find a new sustainable equilibrium at a much lower operating cost. Shipping speed will go up, and they will have more shots to grow rev/DAU.