Cover Image by Anja from Pixabay
Can Twitter become the next Tesla, and can Musk create another legend of change?
Author | Liu Huafang
Tesla founder Elon Musk bought Twitter and started mass layoffs, even cashing out some Tesla stock to help Twitter. It is reported that Twitter currently has 7,500 people left, and the loss is still huge. A large number of Indian employees have been laid off, causing a great sensation in Silicon Valley.
After Twitter’s decisive layoffs, Facebook’s parent company Meta announced large-scale layoffs, Zuckerberg made a public video to apologize, and Silicon Valley ushered in a wave of layoffs to deal with the coming recession.
In Musk’s eyes, Twitter should become a platform for freedom of speech, and at the same time, it has the ability to realize business, so the $8 Twitter blue membership certification mechanism was released. Of course, this is only the first step.
Twitter layoffs, first step in change
Elon Musk himself is a highly intelligent technologist and a top entrepreneur. Before Tesla’s great success, he has been under a lot of financial pressure, but he has done a lot of incredible things. Maybe Jobs is not as good as him.
Twitter is not a young platform, the product prototype was born in 2006, and it became popular in 2007. In 2006, Obvious, a startup founded by blogger technology pioneer Evan Williams (Evan Williams), launched the Twitter service. The co-founders of Twitter were Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Jack Dorsey. Because Jack Dorsey is the first CEO of Twitter, many people in China think that he is the single founder of Twitter. Evan is not well-known in China, and many people only know that blogger later belongs to Google.
In Beijing in 2007, two graduates of Tsinghua University each founded a short message platform. Wang Xing (now the owner of Meituan, who previously founded the Chinese version of Facebook’s intranet) founded Fanfo (which can still be accessed, but will not be updated anymore). ), Li Zhuohuan founded Jiwai (which has long since closed).
In 2009, companies such as Twitter and Google rejected some localization policy requirements of China’s g.o.v, and have since stood outside the wall. At this time, Sina seized the opportunity and launched Weibo, and became the leader of similar products in China (to date). Of course, because Twitter is not very commercialized and the product has not changed, Weibo later changed its name to China’s facebook. Weibo is not as simple as twitter, but its exploration of products and business is much stronger than twitter. It was once a platform that had the hope of overthrowing Tencent.
Write here, make a mark.
For platforms with high information sensitivity, such as Twitter and Google, localization challenges are enormous. Globalization does not equal global market profitability.
Twitter does not have the user scale and profitability of Google, and the product form has not changed much for more than ten years. It is not enough to survive. To break through, you must have the courage to rebulid.
You can’t expect the early founding team of twitter, their obsession is too deep, and Musk has always been a master trader. The famous Tesla was not founded by elon musk. Elon was an early investor. Later, the founder’s ability was short, and elon chose himself to become the Tesla of today.
So, whether Twitter can become the next Tesla is an interesting point, and layoffs are the first step in Twitter’s transformation. Musk chose to optimize the revenue structure and will make some basic preparations for the next stronger transformation.
Change is difficult, globalization is a double-edged sword
The Twitter Blue revolution, starting the paid membership mechanism, is the first step in Musk’s Twitter product revolution. The purpose is to bring a variety of endogenous membership payments, reduce reliance on advertising models, and gain greater product autonomy and operation. autonomy.
As a global platform, Twitter has only 217 million users, less than one-tenth of Facebook. There are about 10 million users in mainland China, and most of the users are in developed countries such as North America and Europe.
Before Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Twitter’s Indian-born CEO was carrying out an ambitious India plan. After all, India is already the world’s most populous country and has great room for user growth.
However, Musk has laid off a large number of Indian employees, and there may be a major adjustment to the India plan.
I think Musk’s approach is correct. India is different from China. China has a very high proportion of its population receiving higher education. However, India is still in a state where the language is not unified and the racial value system is not unified. At the level of business development, the value of users’ The proportion may not be very high.
In the past year, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have suffered great setbacks in India, including not being able to get their money back, being slapped with various tax issues, etc. In short, India is an immature and stable market with a large population and many problems. Although there is a foundation of English, it cannot represent the real value.
It is not easy to establish innovative products and new business models among the mature European and American user groups, especially since they are always arrogant and self-righteous, and are sensitive to the boundaries of freedom of speech.
Because the product is too single, the added value of Twitter to users is not high. Not everyone is keen on online discussions and debates, especially the grassroots, who need happy and relaxed entertainment content.
On the basis of human logic, ByteDance moved Douyin abroad, tiktok achieved unprecedented super success, and the Chinese product thinking has been recognized by the public in the European and American markets.
Learn WeChat, go to super APP?
Earlier, there was a video that said Musk “buy twitter, copy wechat”, which seems to be a joke, but it’s not a joke.
In the forefront of the smart car field, Tesla’s competitors are not BBW and Toyota, but new automotive forces from China, such as Weilai, AITO (Huawei background), Ideal… and a lot more later. Obviously, Musk is the one who understands China the most among American tech giants such as Zuckerberg, Brin, and Bezos, and is also the entrepreneur who knows China’s technological strength the most.
Most importantly, Musk has a big heart that transcends American pride and prejudice to see the real world, the real value.
In the past, China’s Internet was copy from us, comparing who copied faster, who copied better, and who localized better; now, China’s mobile Internet is far ahead of the world, and smart Americans will face up to the problem of copy to us. The WeChat wechat display is the greatest and best product of the Chinese Internet.
Why learn WeChat?
Because WeChat is a super APP, under one APP, it includes a huge ecosystem, users, content, small programs (lightweight apps), payment, red envelopes, and urban life services. In the WeChat program, you can create all kinds of imaginative products, you don’t even need to build an APP, you only need to do a good job in the operation of the WeChat ecosystem.
In China, WeChat has a very high coverage rate, including the elderly. Behind WeChat payment is the world’s best real-name authentication system and the best payment network.
During the new crown pneumonia epidemic, China’s health code was not built as an independent APP, but based on the two real-name authentication systems of WeChat and Alipay, making WeChat truly become a national APP and a basic project for a digital world.
I think Elon Musk is a smart Musk, and learning WeChat is the right way. After all, Musk once founded X.com, the predecessor of paypal, if twitter+X.com will be an interesting thing.
With Americans working on futuristic cryptocurrencies while using clunky, antique bank credit cards, there is a huge opportunity for innovation.
Of course, if Twitter goes to a super APP, it will face a contest with Apple, but this is not a problem, because WeChat wechat has come.
A key step in the bird’s dream, paying for innovation and habit formation
The greatness and success of WeChat is not only the success of social IM products, but the core element is the mobile payment system, which has built a credible and real-name system. On top of the mobile payment system, various APIs such as the payment of urban infrastructure services can be connected, and by the way, the digitization of urban governance can be promoted. This is a huge space.
If Twitter is just a quarrel platform, it really has no practical significance. Speech is very important, but life and survival are more important. Therefore, according to Musk’s hierarchy of needs theory, payment needs to be used to solve some underlying psychological safety consumption. It is a necessary condition for the birth of super APP.
wechat = whatsapp+paypal+telegram+discord+twitter+facebook+medium
If Musk wants to make the Twitter bird take off and take his girlfriend to watch the big rocket again, he needs to take a decisive and courageous step: pay for innovation and habit formation.
Of course, payment involves the rules and interests of the banking and financial industry. The specific product form and solution need to look at the laws of the United States, and carry out relatively complex localized design.
If elon musk can read this article of mine, I will translate it into English and send it to twitter @ him, it’s up to him to read it or not.
If he sees it, I suggest him to recruit China’s outstanding technical talents and product managers as soon as possible. The Chinese are very harmonious, smart, and hardworking. The United States has no shortage of geniuses, but sometimes Americans’ Internet products are as schizophrenic as American elections. They want both great business success and super simplicity and purity, while mass netizens just need more convenient life and entertainment.
