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One of the real world limitations of certain network effects is simply human bandwidth coupled with the learning curve to master a new platform.

I checked out Threads, but I'm never going to actually use it. I was just curious.

JLM

www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

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Learning curve is a big deal and thank you for interjecting it.

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Aug 14, 2023Liked by Jeffrey Carter

Musk is easily the most interesting man in my lifetime and I am no spring chicken. Maybe Steve Jobs is a distant second. He has personally totally transformed 2 huge industries (auto and space) and has knowingly walked into a political and cultural hornet's nest with the Twitter acquisition. He is not like most of the tech giants- his companies actually make things. I think the Twitter purchase was driven by two things;

1) He knows he will lose billions over the short term but feels that X will be a platform for something bigger that he wants to do long term.

2) He knows he will lose billions short term and doesn't care because he feels that it is better for humanity to support free speech and this is the only way he can contribute to that fight.

While I don't think he believes that he will take a loss on his investment in Twitter over time, I think that if he did take a loss of billions and still accomplished his goal of pushing society back towards free speech he would shrug and take the loss gladly. This is a man who thinks long term and who thinks of humanity. Remarkable.

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He has no fear because he has confidence in himself. I think he will 3X the Twitter investment

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We old guys appreciate Musk. We know that, yeah, he may of had some good luck, but he's a smart cookie, and then some. Younger mob just call him stupid. You can call the guy a lot of things but stupid is not one of them. They are just jealous. He probably overpaid by 10-20 bil? Who knows? His timing was not perfect. Maybe in a few years, he takes it public again and we find out.

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I don’t think he keeps score by money and net worth. He has larger issues in his mind. That’s what makes him unique.

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Great point!

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Aug 14, 2023Liked by Jeffrey Carter

[Trump] "also knows he won’t be throttled by a left-wing politicized management team."

Don't bet on that; Musk may have bought Twitter, but he doesn't actually CONTROL it. There are still lots of lefty censors there, still plenty of commies there who will ban you for a joke, and still millions of lines of code written by the previous management and censors, and it's all still running in the background. And a lot of Musk's big promises, like "amnesty" from the Dorsey-era bans, never happened.

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Aug 14, 2023Liked by Jeffrey Carter

Great observations Mr Carter. Been reading a bit about the woman Elon hired to run Twitter/X on a daily basis saying they would identify and suppress opinions that are hurtful, though not necessarily wrong, to assuage advertisers concerns. Your thoughts?

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Depends. Outright hateful things maybe but it's really hard to draw the lines. I wouldn't let the KKK have a Twitter account for example (and maybe not the Southern Poverty Law Center either). But, advertisers advertise on all sorts of mediums that have some potentially "hurtful" opinions expressed on them.

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Aug 14, 2023Liked by Jeffrey Carter

I think it's probably (hopefully) Elon getting in front of the pushback from Twitter no longer being a reliable "useful idiot" site. You're right about his money making skill set. Having grown up in the era of Nazi's marching in Skokie IL and being taught "I don't agree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it" I find it hard to square the circle with modern discourse. An analog dinosaur I am!

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Us "analog dinosaurs" still serve a purpose. 😁

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Reading today's Brownstone Institute review of "When McKinsey Comes to Town" immediately made me think of network effects. Why build networks when you can hire the network's puppet master?

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Hubris. Musk popped off and ended up overpaying for Twitter by a lot. That said, he will reimagine, re-engineer it and hopefully, probably make it a much better toll (site).

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