In the Igbo Nation, the elders will remind young men that “uwa bu ahia’ [the world is a marketplace]. To win in that market, you need to have products and services, and also figure out how to convince customers to buy them.
In America, their entrepreneurs understand that also at a bigger level. They create the aspirations that they have the NEXT big thing in the market. Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter is after Elon Musk, criticizing his fintechnolization of Twitter: ““Payment as a proof of human is a trap and I am not aligned with that at all. The payment systems being used for that proof exclude millions if not billions of people.” Specifically, Dorsey does not think that Twitter should be monetized via subscription since according to him, Twitter is a public square.
In his words, “Payment as a proof of human is a trap and I am not aligned with that at all. The payment systems being used for that proof exclude millions if not billions of people.”
Jack’s criticism of Musk’s leadership at Twitter is coming after he had openly supported Musk in 2022 when he described him as the singular person he trusted to handle the company, also noting that had faith in him.
Jack tweeted in 2022, “In principle, I don’t believe anyone should run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving the problem of it being a company, however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness”.
The question is this: why did Dorsey introduce the blue tick to start with, discriminating against millions who did not get any from him? He excluded millions with the checkmark because they were not working in CNN, Goldman Sachs, White House, etc. He began the “trap” and Musk just extended it by adding “money” in the midst. Dorsey used “influence”, “popularity”, celeb status, etc which are also factors in determining who got one. He has no right to criticize Musk because he excluded many when he ran Twitter.
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Dorsey picked his friends, pals and desired, and gave them checkmarks using an arbitrary model; Musk gave me the opportunity to buy one. He cannot fault Musk’s model without acknowledging his own role of giving checkmarks to celebs while ignoring local teachers, firefighters, and hardworking garbage collectors. Today, it is “open” for all! Indeed, no model is perfect.
And the big one, Dorsey is doing this because he has a new product in the market – Bluesky – and he wants to position it as the next big thing for Twitter.
Bluesky Social is having a moment. The invite-only social media app, co-founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has begun to lure an influential and an especially vocal crowd of tech media figures and influencers. The app doubled its new user base in a single day late last week. Its mix of exclusivity —Vox notes a “scramble for people to secure a coveted invite code” in social media circles in recent days —and a collective eagerness to unearth a viable alternative to Twitter.
So far, The Washington Post writes,Bluesky “could be Twitter’s doppelganger,” with posts that read like tweets, and a user base which is largely “using it mostly to poke fun” at Twitter. Many users are calling posts “skeets,” Vox notes.
As you evaluate Dorsey’s recent postulations, remember that Musk also thinks that OpenAI ChatGPT needs to be put in order as it has deviated from the original thesis of “open”. So, he is organizing a team to take up the company in order to save the future of AI.
You get the idea. It is a marketplace. When you come with a new product, you need to have a story while the existing ones do not meet the market needs. From Dorsey to Musk and to the next, it is a continuum – the best company has not been started, and the next entrepreneur will have a story. It is a marketplace. Everyone wants to win and part of it is the story part; they’re all friends, just trying to confuse us to make them richer. The destination: #winning.
Comment on Feed
Comment: The blue tick has a threshold on fan base or followers hip before you earn it. Was it monetized at the onset???
My Response: That is also not good. That means a garbage collector will not get it. It is better if we have many options. Today, paying to get it is one and Jack cannot fault that. I just made it back here and happy with the extra space to write; that was my main issue, not the tick. But in the past, though, you could have 100k followers in Kenya and not get it while someone in New York with 50k made the cut. Nothing is perfect!!!
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If Dorsey says that everything on Musk’s Twitter is great, what will people be coming to his Bluesky to do? I don’t see how PepsiCo can declare that Coca-Cola is the greatest brand out there.
The rationale that popularity or ‘influence’ was the basis for blue tick on Twitter is neither here nor there, since neither confers the holder with additional wisdom or good sense, so we ended up having lots of creatures with large following and voice, but with near zero sense.
Options matter, because they give diverse people more opportunities and routes to compete, I do not see how a sports or movie star holds a superior knowledge or opinion to that of a technician that knows his craft; it’s a rigged outcome.
Anyway, stories are what make brands great, and if you cannot craft and tell compelling stories, you may not be able to break in and capture some market share.
“If Dorsey says that everything on Musk’s Twitter is great, what will people be coming to his Bluesky to do? I don’t see how PepsiCo can declare that Coca-Cola is the greatest brand out there” – that is it