> This is 44bn of musks backing investors finally waking up to the fact that the willy-wonka they trusted to shepherd a communications platform was in fact just a billionaire heir to an emerald mine
In his investors’ defense, Elon had a singular track record prior to Twitter. And his proposal to turn Twitter into X, aka US—based WeChat, was not a terrible one. It was an expensive investment, but there was a plausible positive outcome.
His complete and total bungling of it all would have been difficult to predict in advance based only on what was known then. He is seemingly oblivious to the unintended consequences and second order effects of both his actual decisions, and their rash and heavy-handed manner. It’s odd, and not surprising they forced a professional CEO on him.
The thing is he really could have done it. But he went "rich person crazy" and lost it all instead. Really sad to see. Marc Andreessen said something like "
Taylor Swift announces her concert on Twitter and then you go buy the tickets on Ticketmaster - why not buy them on Twitter?"
In his investors’ defense, Elon had a singular track record prior to Twitter. And his proposal to turn Twitter into X, aka US—based WeChat, was not a terrible one. It was an expensive investment, but there was a plausible positive outcome.
His complete and total bungling of it all would have been difficult to predict in advance based only on what was known then. He is seemingly oblivious to the unintended consequences and second order effects of both his actual decisions, and their rash and heavy-handed manner. It’s odd, and not surprising they forced a professional CEO on him.