My partner's ecommerce business spends millions a year on marketing and is typical of the type of SME that represents the bulk of total advertising spend.
Twitter/X has always been a far distant third to Meta and Google. It's targeting performance is poor, return on ad spend poor and the capabilities of the ad platform poor. Maybe for some niches e.g. AI startup it was useful but for most SME it was useless and their percentage of overall ad spend reflects this.
For large brands what it was good for was brand awareness. Nothing makes you appear relevant than being alongside the latest trends or news which Twitter excelled it. Which is why when their ads appeared alongside hate speech they were so quick to move. Because they didn't have any real money being generated with them anyway.
You can't put the Elon BS aside because it continually impacts the efficacy of ads on the X/Twitter.
A larger percentage of the ads are scams surrounding trends like NFTs because of his dictated moderation and staffing changes.
Views are amplified for himself and his preferred posters - which for all you know may land your company's logo next to Alex Jones.
> Putting all of the Elon BS aside. Can someone in marketing shine some light on how does X compare to other platforms?
Brand/PR/Reputation is a liability and most big enterprises will continue to optimize for diminishing liabilities by moving to more reliable platforms.
The “BS” label is important though: that hints that GP does indeed think it can be ignored/doesn’t exist. A retort to this isn’t unwarranted if you believe that Musk’s actions does impact ad spending.
I agree, for the purpose of scholarly dissection of the subject, it’s perfectly fine.
My point was that lining it up by calling it “BS” invites counter arguments, which is what happened here. If you’re not happy to implicitly accept the “BS”, you’ll have to address it.
Dropping the “BS” label would have led to a more focused discussion. It matters _how_ you ask a question.
I see your point and agree that clarity may have helped. I read "BS" a little differently, as acknowledgement that all of the Elon stuff is a shambolic mess.
It also seems to be the case that some people didnt just disagree with the BS classification, but fundamentally disagree that anything besides Elon is a valid topic of conversation.
IT does matters how you ask a question, but some people will reject or change the topic no matter how you ask it.
Right, it might read as "Musk's bullshit" or "the bullshit aimed at Musk." Either way, the ambiguity doesn't help. It might tick off both Musk-huggers and Musk-whippers, depending on how they read it.
Comes off as abrasive IMO. Someone might as well reply "I don't care that you don't care" then. You're more likely to get a good response from cutting all of that out and just leaving the meat: "I want to know about the current ROI for Twitter advertising, in standard marketing metrics."
The abrasiveness picks up in your replies. It comes off as if you went in looking for a fight. I don't know if you did or not, but the quality of the response reflects the attitude in which your question was posed. In my opinion.
And he's saying there's almost no point in asking that question because Elon's way of running the company has been so impactlful to the platform that considering it without him is pointless.
Musk fired the majority of people working at Twitter, changed the brand, unbanned very controversial users, alienated most of the advertisers, etc etc etc. Talking about Twitter without talking about his leadership is to have a conversation without merit. What other topics are there? He owns the company. Every policy change over the past year has been his personal decision.
Most of the major corporations who were advertising on Twitter seem to be worried about their brand getting placed next to some neo-nazi shit right now. That is directly related to decisions Musk has made. Additionally, he took it private so it's not like we can read their quarterly reports. It's impossible to have a meaningful conversation about this company without talking about the new owner. Any conversation that doesn't somehow relate to him is going to be incomplete. That's much less true if we were talking about Meta, or Google, or Apple. But we're talking about Twitter, which is currently in the process of being managed into the ground.
It seems like you simply cant imagine that someone else might have a different conversational topic or interest. I genuinely feel sorry for you.
It is like people that interject wokeism, Obama, or Trump into any conversation, even if you are talking about the weather. A conversation about the sunset is not "complete" or "meaningful" without ranting about what they want. They just cant comprehend someone having a different interest.
It seems almost obsessive compulsive. Someone asks what letter comes after X, and they cant talk about Y, because any discussion of the alphabet is "incomplete" or "meaningless" without starting at A, B, & C and discussing it at length. All letters come after A, so all conversations are about A.
IF you tried, can you even come up with 3 questions and answers about twitter without making it about Musk?
IIRC Twitter charges a fair bit more per impression than IG/FB/etc. (like $3 vs $.50?) but they also average higher engagement/click-through's than their contemporaries, like 10-15x (again if memory serves). It's been a while since I looked at these stats though.
What I don't recall is the amount of ads flowing on each site. I do believe facebook generally has more ads happening than the rest.
The thing is you can't put it aside. People are leaving in droves, as are advertisers. At this point brands don't want to even be on X, much less advertise there. That compares _badly_ to other platforms, needless to say.
I was chatting with someone recently who is still on Xitter and he was wondering why so many of his followers had recently been "suspended". I got to wondering: if a lot of people are leaving and X doesn't want that to be something the remaining people focus on are they just calling people who have deleted their accounts "suspended"?
I stopped posting to Twitter some time last year but most of the people I follow on Twitter/X are still active and haven't moved. It is still the biggest platform compared to any of the alternatives (Mastodon/Bluesky) and despite the downward spiral it will be with us for a long time (just like Facebook).
I am not and have never been on Twitter so I can't speak for what's happening on the platform but the places I frequent that post news that's broken on Twitter haven't stopped doing that so, at the very least, influential people are still breaking news there at the same place.
I can't help but think that the people leaving Twitter meme is wishful thinking by people who dislike Musk.
The valuation really tells the story, I think. There's no way to square "Twitter's valuation drops 75%" and "everyone is still on Twitter and just as engaged as ever". These cannot possibly both be true at once.
Sure they can. You assume the valuation is directly proportional to the traffic of twitter. It's likely more about the ad customers on twitter, and they very much are leaving in droves from what I'm hearing. That doesn't mean the users aren't still there.
I'll ask the corollary question to rein this in: where are people going if they aren't on twitter anymore? Tiktok? Instagram? It sure isn't Bluesky at the moment.
I sure wish they were. I think that's exactly why for this brief moment the GP wants to focus more on he business realities than the same drama that's happened for the past 6 months.
Anyone still left on Twitter at this point has clearly signaled that the terminally online nature of it is more important than anything else. IE, they are signalling that getting the most banal comments from important people the very second they make them is more important to them than getting quality content, or not supporting an actively hostile system, or doing actual journalism.
I really really don't need up to the second information about whatever Corey Doctorow is saying, as I read his books almost twenty years ago and they still seem to accurately portray his thoughts on many things, also he has a blog. Doomscrolling a tiny cachet of "important to me" people, isn't actually important or useful. You lived just fine before Twitter, surely you will do okay getting your news 24 hours behind some person who hasn't left twitter but somehow is able to sort through all the dross to pull out what little signal is still there.
Sure, I agree. And I also think that the lion's share of people prefer convenience over quality 99.99% of the time. I don't know if that's a mentality that can be changed, and Twitter captured most of that market.
You can only become the next twitter and be subject to the same flaws or try to seek out the relative minority that is seeking quality over noise.
Twitter/X seems to have good engagement and there are active Geopolitics, Israeli/Zionist, Palestinian/Muslim, Russian, Ukrainian (NAFO), Covid, anti-MSM, anti-Disinfo, populist, Crypto/NFT, Black American, sports, and many Indian and African spaces on an ongoing regular basis, several running concurrently at many times of the day. I like that I can go into multiple spaces at different times and hear radically different perspectives unfiltered. This is why the platform appears to be getting much more sticky.
The Spaces bug where you can't hear people is the most annoying thing about it, other than the link interception.
I'm bothered by the 3 levels of subscription - the basic, premium and premium+. The premium still has ads everywhere, and the + does not, but costs more. I think both should be ad-free. I hate ads particularly when I am already paying for the service!
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/x-premium#tbpricing-byco...
Given that Premium users are supposed to see 50% less ads, I cannot imagine what kind of ad hellscape it would be if I was not at premium level. I block every ad X account I see.
It is a good place for breaking news and unfiltered data. There is still weaponization of the CommunityNotes, and active shilling and astroturfing by intelligence agencies doing propaganda online.
I have not used Grok at all so I cannot comment there
Many of the people that I engage with on Twitter have been censored on other platforms, folks that are described as the Classical Left, Libertarian Left, Libertarian Right, Populists, the Antiwar types, and now it includes both Palestinian and Zionist perspectives,
I'd like to hear these viewpoints without going through gatekeeper MSM
Since I am a paying customer and I block all ads, I am not sure how much the ad stuff matters. I hate ads!
Twitter/X hasn't traditionally been cheaper than other brand-awareness ad spends, and has performed worse. The best argument for Twitter/X was always that the audience size mattered less than the audience influence.
This is why the abandonment of Twitter/X by large audience segments has been such a compounding effect. Even if they can replace 1:1 people they're losing with new users, if the users aren't the right type of demographic, ad spend is going to collapse.
It will depend on what you are looking to get out of advertising - immediate sales or engagement/awareness.
If you are an eCommerce business selling a widget then you can easily get a cost per conversion, and then it's pretty easy to optimise your spend to maximise profits (i.e. If I spend $30 on ads, I can sell a product I buy for $40 for $90 making $20). I've seen businesses with this revenue model who will spend the equivalent of c.30-40% of revenue to get the sales due to the high margins often involved.
Your conversion will depend a lot on your product, target market, the ad etc (if you are selling a business rolodex your CPC might be better on linkedin, if you are selling a selfie-stick your CPC might be better on insta etc).
The effectiveness of advertising for engagement/brand awareness is much softer, and the spend will be much more discretionary as it is harder to track. It's these ads which are more likely to fall away IMO.
This could not have been better timed for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD yesterday.
Apparently for me, the working memory is a major issue.
If anyone has any tips here I really appreciate it if you could comment your suggestions here.
My biggest technique is just making indented outlines. The most important thing is having low friction to getting started on them. All other parts of 'the system' basically do not matter and you dont need to spend any time on it.
I either use a sticky note (I keep a few loose ones in my wallet), or I activate onenote with win+n and can type on that immediately. Anything higher friction than that isn't gonna work, which is why I don't use a phone app. Getting to the writing screen in any notes app is too much.
I also like to take meeting minutes because I otherwise cannot focus on meetings at all.
* Create your own reminders, like setting alarms and reminders. Leave Post-It notes on areas you frequently look at.
* Habit stacking. If you constantly forget chores, you can stack them on top of something you regularly do. For example, you may put a load of laundry in while brewing your usual cup of coffee.
It's basically pomodoro, but with different way to visualize about it, and it somehow feels...better? At least for my ADHD brain. The author wrote blogs for years, and just diagnosed with ADHD a couple years ago, and somehow his lifelong struggle suddenly explainable(you know, like many of us ADHDer did)
That aside, his blog is usually a joy to read.
This is me talking. I have more problems than just ADHD.
This is a long comment. If you just want a strategy for dealing with working memory inside your head, skip to the end and read 3.
For me increasing working memory was a dead end and I found it far more effective to optimize how do use what I have. The vast majority of my advice and strategies revolve around mental health. Mental and physical health alone can add one or two slots of working memory because your brain is working better.
Some advice:
- Do not limit yourself to doing daily things the normal or accepted way. Do not let yourself or other people tell you that you need to do things a certain way. If you can find a way to not lose your keys, it doesn't matter how crazy or stupid that way is because the end result is you don't lose your keys. (Please be considerate of other people.)
- Half measures are okay.
- Half done is usually better than not done. If you're stuck, walk away and get something else done. The feeling of accomplishment on a small task can recharge you. Then you can go back and finish the other task.
- Failing doesn't mean you need to fail completely. For example, if you're on diet and start annihilating a large number of small high-calorie snacks, that's not an excuse to finish the bag. :)
Strategies
1. Reduce your baseline cognitive load. That's basically what my advice is trying to do. The less you are fighting your own expectations and limitations, the more you can focus on getting things done. (Cognitive behavioral therapy is solution here.)
2. Remove stress or distractions. This is the same strategy as cognitive load, only applied to your environment. For me sometimes I just have to clean before I can get work done.
3. Map and reduce. This is involved and difficult to explain. I recommend using paper until you get good at this.
The goal is you need to do is take complex ideas that use multiple slots of working memory and make them take one or zero slots. There are several ways to do this.
Paper is the easiest method to explain. Write out what is in your memory and then rewrite it so that it compacts into one thing you understand. What you should be able to do is look at the paper and immediately understand what is going on without having to think about it. This frees up all your working memory to make connections to other things.
This can also be done with short term memory. You think about the problem and reduce it to a single idea or process. When you understand something well enough, you can hold a pointer to it in a slot of working memory.
Long-term memory is just regular learning. Programming languages and that embarrassing thing you said eight years ago are stored in long-term memory.
Is this good going to be readable on Kindle? It might be just me, but some software engineering books are hard to read on Kindle due to codes sections could end up with strange format.
This is fantastic.
Unfortunately decision makers usually go with what they already know. No one was ever fired for choosing Salesforce.
Hopefully over time more people get exposure to this and increase the adoption.
I wonder if there will be a mass resignation at Microsoft as a new job might pay more.
To me, it sounds like they considered this, and thought majority would not resign and go work for someone else that pays more. Some of those will not be replaced and some might need more pay. Over all this might be cheaper for MS.
Thanks for posting that, very helpful and interesting.
I actually think the estimate there for "software engineers" is too high, because it's likely that a very large number of layoffs in "software engineering" was engineering management, especially middle management and director level roles. Meta was perhaps the most transparent about their desire for a flatter org structure.
Obviously this is not always the case (Amazon, for example, canned much of the Alexa devices division), but I think companies realized that in many cases there were "too many cooks in the kitchen".
When it comes to Iranian government, there are two types of people that run it.
First group are the fanatic idiots who consider themselves at war with the west. They see anyone who who is not aligned with their view as enemy and therefore must be removed/killed.
The second group are opportunists who probably have assets abroad and will do and say anything to stay in power as long as possible to milk every last penny.
I think it's important to identify them and their families abroad. Deporting their families and freezing their assets inorder to change their behaviour.
This is very much the case. There are a ton of people in the Iranian government and power structure who don't believe in the mission, but go along because the money is great.
If the west cracked down on Iran's powerful grifters half as hard as it is going after Russian oligarchs, the regime would be under a lot of pressure. The oligarchs, in comparison, don't seem to mind - they are more afraid of Putin.
