Everyone\u2019s heard that Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter and convert it into a privately held company.\u00a0 And if you asked me my opinion about this situation I\u2019d have to say, \u201cWhat the hell is Twitter and why should I care?\u201d\u00a0 I looked up Twitter and what I learned is that it\u2019s a social media website that allows any idiot to post a message up to a maximum of 288 characters long (but somehow this doesn\u2019t count any enormously larger attached video clip).<\/p>\n
But the proviso is that the poster has to be a brain-dead doofus.\u00a0 For non-doofuses your every utterance will be scrutinized by uber-leftist social justice warriors who will report any violations against Democrat party talking points to the commissars at Twitter\u2019s Ministry of Truth where you will be suspended either temporarily or permanently and then cast into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.<\/p>\n
So, the supposedly smartest and richest man in the world wants to buy this company.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 What will be accomplished if he owns this weird network?\u00a0 Will he somehow level the playing field?\u00a0 Will his employees allow this to happen?\u00a0 Will the government allow this to happen or will they instead administer a death by a thousand paper cuts?\u00a0 And is Twitter really of any value to the world?\u00a0 Does it have an impact?<\/p>\n
I have to confess I\u2019ve never really understood the allure of a 288-character snippet of information.\u00a0 That\u2019s like forty, fifty words.\u00a0 So far, this post is about 250 words and I haven\u2019t really finished the initial idea.\u00a0 If a tweet is really just a headline for an attached normal sized post, I guess that would make sense.\u00a0 Is it just that Twitter has such a large user base that it acts as a global bulletin board?<\/p>\n
Okay, but if you were the richest man in the world and also supposedly one of the most technologically savvy individuals couldn\u2019t you just build something better from the ground up?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And you wouldn\u2019t even have to do it alone.\u00a0 Peter Thiel is another tech billionaire who is interested in free speech concerns with the social media platforms.\u00a0 Couldn\u2019t these two titans of industry capitalize on the demand of a public that is hungry for a level political playing field and build something much, much better than Twitter, YouTube or Facebook?\u00a0 After all, much less savvy people have begun to create alternates to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.<\/p>\n
Surely the financial and intellectual resources that an Elon Musk or a Peter Thiel can bring to bear on this kind of opportunity must be considerable.\u00a0 And if Musk is seriously considering buying Twitter, then he has identified it as a viable business opportunity.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t need to spend tens of billions of dollars to create an exciting and profitable business that already has a large population of people who would make up its user base.\u00a0 Probably one billion dollars would get the job done.\u00a0 And what\u2019s one crummy billion dollars to Elon Musk?<\/p>\n
I hold out the possibility that Musk is hoping that Twitter rejects his offer and that he plans to build his own platform.\u00a0 Maybe this whole bid is a publicity stunt to advertise his own entry into the social media business.\u00a0 I hope it is.\u00a0 Places like Gab and Truth don\u2019t have the clout needed to compete with the established social media platforms.\u00a0 And, honestly, it\u2019s not enough to just provide a similar product.\u00a0 Twitter and Facebook aren\u2019t providing a satisfying product.\u00a0 They thrive merely because they currently enjoy a monopolistic stranglehold on the niches they created.\u00a0 What\u2019s needed is something that provides a healthier environment for people on-line.\u00a0 A truly honest marketplace of ideas would be that healthier environment.<\/p>\n
So, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and any other entrepreneurs out there who see an opportunity in Twitter\u2019s partisan methods; don\u2019t try to fix Twitter.\u00a0 Instead, bury it with a superior platform.\u00a0 And make obscene amounts of money doing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone\u2019s heard that Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter and convert it into a privately held company.\u00a0 And if you asked me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2517,800,104,466,801],"class_list":["post-18576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-elon-musk","tag-facebook","tag-peter-thiel","tag-twitter","tag-youtube"],"yoast_head":"\n