Elon Musk Outlines His Imaginative and prescient for Twitter at Morgan Stanley Tech Convention

So what’s Elon Musk’s long run imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and the way does he plan to transform the app right into a billion-user, money-making machine, as he’s repeatedly said in interviews?

At this time, we bought a have a look at Elon’s broader strategic pondering across the app, together with some new updates on how Twitter 2.0 is progressing on numerous parts.

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Musk made a brand new presentation on Twitter, and his different companies, to the Morgan Stanley Tech, Media and Telecommunications Convention in San Francisco, the place Musk provided perception into a number of key features, together with their work on mitigating hate speech, the expansion in utilization of the app, and the grander imaginative and prescient to transform Twitter right into a key funds and commerce app.

First off, Musk outlined his basic imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and making it the ‘international city sq.’ as soon as once more.

Twitter has all the time had this as a defining objective, of kinds, although it moved away from the ‘city sq.’ framing within the latter years underneath former CEO Jack Dorsey, who grew to become disillusioned with the inevitable calls that needed to be made by Twitter administration on what might and couldn’t be shared within the app.

That’s been a defining component of Musk’s push to reform Twitter’s strategy, by permitting extra free and open speech, and ideally, letting the customers determine what must be allowed, with Group Notes set to play a much bigger position in enabling Twitter customers themselves to police misinformation and untruths by including contextual explainers to particular person tweets.

Musk additionally laid out Twitter 2.0’s core ideas, which he hopes will finally make Twitter a supply of fact, by empowering enter from all folks.

As per Musk:

“So the objective is to have Twitter be the most effective supply of fact, probably the most well timed and correct supply of fact, even when the reality is one thing we don’t need to hear or disagreeable or no matter, however have or not it’s well timed and correct and the place you’ll be able to actually perceive what’s happening.”

Musk additional defined that the media is presently capable of management key narratives by selecting what to cowl, and what will get high precedence. However Twitter allows all folks to determine what’s related quicker, by facilitating extra inputs. Which is why, in Musk’s view, it’s vital that Twitter permits free and open speech, as a lot as attainable.

“The bedrock of a functioning democracy needs to be free speech and a degree enjoying subject. That’s why it’s the primary modification. It was the very first thing they did, like we’ve bought to make sure freedom of speech. And why did they do this? As a result of the place they got here from there wasn’t freedom of speech, and when you lose freedom of speech, you don’t get it again. In order that’s why we should shield it in any respect prices.”

This has been a key component of Musk’s broader push on the app, which he’s bolstered along with his personal tweets on numerous controversial subjects.

Which then results in issues round what folks would possibly really say within the app, and the way that would result in hurt and destructive behaviors. On this entrance, Musk additionally outlined Twitter’s progress in addressing hate speech, which Musk says is now down 50% from when he took over on the app.

Some specialists have questioned Twitter’s metrics on this, and we don’t have entry to precisely what this knowledge means – however based mostly on the important thing parts that the Twitter 2.0 group is measuring, it’s working to handle doubtlessly dangerous parts, which ought to result in an improved consumer expertise.

After all, letting tens of 1000’s of beforehand banned customers again on the app appears to work counter to this objective, however once more, based mostly on the metrics that Musk and his group are monitoring, it’s seemingly seeing enchancment.

The identical can be stated for baby exploitation content material.

Musk has repeatedly claimed, as this graph exhibits, that Twitter is doing extra to handle CSE content material than Twitter has ever finished previously. Consultants have refuted these figures as properly, however Twitter is seemingly, by not less than some measures, taking extra motion to handle this component, which Musk says will all the time be precedence primary on the app.

Although bigger modifications stay problematic. As we noticed earlier this week, Twitter does appear to be turning into more and more unstable, resulting in bigger outages and impacts, doubtless resulting from decreased oversight because of employees cuts.

Musk admitted that it is a downside, noting that the present code base is susceptible to failure when making even the slightest change.

However nonetheless, even with elevated error charges, Musk says that Twitter utilization is at an all-time excessive, with greater than 250 million day by day lively customers.

It’s value noting that this chart measures as much as This fall, and stories have advised that Twitter utilization has declined considerably since then. Besides, Twitter’s recognition has elevated underneath Musk – to not the degrees that Musk would clearly like (with regard to that billion-user goal), however it’s on observe to see enchancment, if it could get all of its parts into line.

On that entrance, Musk briefly mentioned his plans to enhance Twitter’s advert relevance, and drive higher efficiency by numerous focusing on measures.

A few of this revolved round easy measures, like key phrase focusing on, which Twitter has beforehand moved away from resulting from decreased advertiser efficiency. Elon is now trying to implement extra direct focusing on choices like this, with advertisers capable of spotlight their content material inside associated discussions within the app.

Lastly, Musk mentioned his longer-term imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and making it into the ‘all the things app’, which largely revolves round integrating funds.

“I think it’s attainable to create a really highly effective finance expertise. Mainly, PayPal is type of like a midway model of what I believe may very well be finished in funds and finance. So, let’s say you need to have the ability to ship cash simply from one account on Twitter to a different account effortlessly, with one click on, you need to have the ability to earn curiosity on that cash, you need to have the ability to have debt, so you’ll be able to let your curiosity can go destructive. Mainly, I believe it’s attainable to grow to be the largest monetary establishment on the earth, simply by offering folks with handy fee choices. We don’t have the time to enter it intimately right here, but when we simply make the app increasingly more helpful, folks will use it extra and it’ll be nice.”

The imaginative and prescient is that, finally, by enabling funds by way of tweet, Twitter will be capable of facilitate extra varieties of transactions, which can make it a extra helpful app, for all totally different functions, much like how Chinese language messaging apps like WeChat have grow to be important utilities in that area.

After all, Meta’s additionally attempting to facilitate the identical factor, and only recently bought approval to broaden WhatsApp funds utilization in Brazil, whereas it’s additionally gaining traction with WhatsApp funds in India, doubtless the important thing marketplace for such a shift.

However success on this space is not going to come simple, particularly amid ongoing regulatory scrutiny, and given Musk’s defiant angle to different regulatory teams, just like the SEC, it’s exhausting to see Twitter ever gaining the approval required to facilitate such.

Nonetheless, that’s the longer-term imaginative and prescient, that Twitter will grow to be a key supply of fact in journalism, and a key utility in facilitating extra varieties of funds, which can then make it a vital app for a lot of extra folks. It’s an optimistic technique, which requires many issues to go proper, however Musk says that, after large cost-cutting, the app is, doubtlessly, on observe to be money optimistic by the top of this yr.

That, in any case, offers him firmer footing to construct from, and perhaps, Elon’s imaginative and prescient is past what others can but see for the app.

You possibly can take a look at Elon’s full presentation to the Morgan Stanley TMT Convention right here.