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Musk and Twitter. Figure

　　At 2 a.m. Beijing time on November 14, Musk opened Twitter as usual, but this time to apologize.

　　"I want to apologize for Twitter's slow operation speed in many countries, because applications are performing more than 1,000 bad RPCs (remote process call protocols), just to render the timeline of the homepage." The tweet was retweeted by many netizens, some of whom said, "Are you sure it's not because you fired an employee?" and received more than 3,600 likes.

　　Behind this small dispute is Musk's drastic layoffs at Twitter. On November 14th, the news that Musk fired more than 80% of Twitter's contract workers became a hot topic. Among Twitter's 5,500 employees, 4,400 people are expected to be layoffs. Before, Twitter Blue V's charging certification was suspended after suffering, and Musk's transformation of Twitter seemed to have encountered complex situation.

　　Why did Musk lay off employees, and where will Twitter go after the layoffs?

　　Behind the layoffs : Poor macro , or to lay off naysayers ?

　　Zhang Xiaorong, president of the Deepin Science and Technology Research Institute, said that Musk believes that Twitter has been losing money for a long time, and the layoffs are to reduce costs. The advantage of this is that Musk hopes that the transformation Twitter will become a smaller resistance to the new global social platform. The layoffs can remove the opponents and promote the transformation plan.

　　The negative impact is that there are too few people and unstable transfer that makes the company's internal control mechanism fail. For example, Twitter issued a loophole when the transformation of the blue V charging certification, and a large number of machine accounts appeared. The implementation can only be suspended.

　　From a more macro perspective, Pan Helin, co-director of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of Zhejiang University International Business School, told reporters that inflation in the United States is high, the Federal Reserve is aggressively raising interest rates, and the U.S. economy is now in a process of transition from overheating to recession. , the poor macro economy has led to an increase in the number of companies laying off employees. From the point of view of business model, American social network applications have encountered competitors, including emerging social applications such as Tik Tok, which has reduced the user share of social network giants, especially the competition for user time and attention.

　　Regarding the widespread impact of this layoff, Professor Shen Yi, director of Fudan University's Cyberspace International Governance Research Base, told reporters that Musk's actions after acquiring Twitter were indeed dramatic, but objectively speaking, this behavior is also an acquisition. Large-scale reorganizations, which are common after companies, have so far not been reported to have violated domestic laws in the United States, or that there are clear compliance deficiencies.

　　Shen Yi said that for a long time, social media represented by Twitter, as well as most Western mainstream media, have had typical liberal or neoliberal ideological stances, or have a relatively solid so-called progress in the United States. Socialist values orientation, elites who perceive themselves as the mainstream will take the monopoly of media platforms on the value position and narrative framework as "natural". From the perspective of cognition and endogenous emotion, relevant discussions are essentially rejection and An external projection of anxiety that rejects Musk's acquisitions and fears losing control of social media platforms.

　　Another part of the reason is more directly related to Musk's personal views and style. Because Musk is considered to be an active individual with significant ideological differences with the founding team of Twitter, the discussion of his acquisitions and layoffs, from a certain perspective, is to express his disapproval of Musk's values and positions. It has gone beyond mere discussions of business practices.

　　Can Musk create an "American version of WeChat" after the fee certification is broken  ?

　　Since Musk entered Twitter, he has carried out a lot of reforms, and video and paid certification may be the more certain direction at present.

　　Jason Calacanis, a close partner with Musk, started a Twitter poll asking how much people would accept to spend on a Blue Label service for Twitter certification, and he offered between 5 and 15 per month. dollar option. But as of 4:30 p.m. on October 31, in more than 530,000 votes, 79% of users were unwilling to pay, and only 12% chose to pay $5 a month.

　　After voting, on November 5, Twitter launched a new Blue Label subscription service to users, where users can pay $7.99 a month to buy a Blue Label to authenticate their identity. But in fact, due to loopholes in the authentication system, a large number of fake accounts appeared. Subsequently, the charging certification was urgently stopped.

　　On the other hand, as a "fan" of WeChat, the market speculates that Musk may want to make Twitter into another WeChat in the future.

　　When Musk participated in an interview on May 17 this year, he praised WeChat, thinking that WeChat is a good sample - in China you can almost live in WeChat, it can do almost everything, similar to A combination of Twitter, PayPal and many things. WeChat has no spam, can post comments, post videos, and creators can even split.

　　"If Musk wants to make Twitter into WeChat, it may be necessary to change the overall application logic, which I personally think is very difficult," Fang Xingdong, a distinguished professor at Zhejiang Media College and director of the Internet and Society Research Center, told reporters that Twitter's own positioning, The level of activity is different from Facebook. It is more inclined to mass communication at the news level, similar to my country's Weibo, while Facebook is more inclined to interpersonal communication, more like my country's WeChat.

　　Fang Xingdong said that WeChat's interpersonal communication positioning helps to realize local functions such as payment and small programs, while Twitter, whose positioning is similar to Weibo, may have to make major changes in terms of user level and function itself. If Musk really wants to go in this direction, he suggested that Musk can introduce new applications and new products, rather than make major adjustments on the original basis, otherwise it may not be conducive to retaining old users.

　　Looking back on previous tweets, Shen Yi said that Musk also talked about optimizing the control of false information during the acquisition, but the situation after the acquisition showed some deterioration. "As for the identification of real accounts, It is actually necessary to control the release of specific information content. For example, the recent news on Twitter of falsely releasing information on free vaccines and falsely announcing to stop selling products has caused the stock prices of many companies to fall.”

　　Behind this kind of false information triggering financial market turmoil, it is also closely related to the intelligent high-frequency quantitative trading model in European and American financial markets. The relevant system has the automatic function of content identification and public opinion judgment on Twitter and other platforms. There are significant deficiencies and defects in the ability to identify false information. The close connection between media platforms and financial market trading activities further reminds people to attach great importance to the effective supervision of the release of information content on social media platforms to avoid greater losses.

　　Want a 10% raise to poach people from YouTube  ? Can digital currency be introduced

　　On the afternoon of November 14, Beijing time, a netizen who claimed to be a Tesla investor said on Twitter, "Let's find some cool content creators on YouTube and pay them 10% more." Ryan Wyatt said on Twitter that he was in charge of YouTube for nearly 8 years as the game director, and YouTube's monetization was very good. At that time, the game sector alone could attract 350 million account logins. Musk responded to the two above on Twitter: Join us!

　　The reporter learned that Ryan Wyatt has now resigned from YouTube to become the CEO of Polygon Studios. According to reports, this is a cryptocurrency startup company dedicated to building an ecosystem on the Ethereum sidechain Polygon, and focusing on blockchain games and NFT fields.

　　Musk has been concerned about digital currency for a long time, will he bring digital currency to Twitter?

　　In this regard, Fang Xingdong believes that if the changes are too large in the short term, it also means risks for the company itself. After Musk spent $44 billion on the acquisition, he also needs to consider the issue of profitability. The introduction of the above method will be challenging in the short term, and it is difficult to see the prospect of profitability. It is not expected to be realized so quickly.

　　Shen Yi also said that in terms of the specific incident of Musk's acquisition of Twitter, from the point of view of the procedure, it is currently in a period of adjustment and running-in after the acquisition. He said that Twitter is currently in the business of formulating new rules and re-trial operation It remains to be seen what the ultimate impact on global social media will be during the cycle.