Thank You, Elon Musk

Dear Elon...

I owe you a debt of gratitude.

I’ve been on Twitter since 2008, well before Twitter was Twitter. I’ve been on LinkedIn and Facebook for almost just as long, but Twitter became my primary go-to for news, ideas and online social engagement.

For years it was my first scroll of the morning, replacing formal newspaper websites as the quickest way to see what I might have missed overnight.

Whether sitting at my desk looking for a reason to procrastinate, or standing in a checkout line waiting for groceries– or even walking the dog – I would check Twitter throughout the day. It was a fantastic time-waster, and I enjoyed allowing myself to be sucked into the social media vortex... in the process, often learning something I didn’t know in 280 characters or less.

As a journalist and later as a stock researcher, I even used it to instantly post news and even a scoop or two...

It was also an exceptional way to informally interact directly with my readers.

In the process, it helped me expand my readership and personal “brand,” so to speak... and not just in the U.S., but around the world. At my peak, I had nearly 400,000 followers, and didn’t lose many when the company did a bot cleanse several years ago.

I also had  a legacy “blue check,” which reflected my public persona.

Twitter also helped me find new sources, and it linked me to stories in publications I ordinarily would not have seen... or everyday people whose views I felt were worth including in my orbit.

More than anything else, as somebody who has worked in the silo of my home for the better part of a few decades, it provided a sense of community that pierced the isolation of being in an office of one.

I also like to think I was an active player in Financial Twitter, or FinTwit as it became known...

FinTwit had a built-in audience to talk stocks, markets and the economy.

Above all, though, Twitter was the perfect place to “pop off” about something in the moment, or gripe about customer service that was subpar... or even to simply share a quick photo of a rainbow, sunset, an incredible meal or something else that might have inspired me in that moment.

And Twitter seemed to work, warts and all. Even with its dark and increasingly toxic dark side, it was firmly entrenched in my personal, professional and online social life.

Then you came along, Elon...

In a world that I would argue already was spiraling toward social media fatigue, the new Twitter left me exhausted.

It’s like your newfound “power” went to your head, and you believed your own press clippings or, put more simply, your own B.S.

You had no filter, no editor, and nobody obviously willing to tell you, “No, please don’t say that.”

You became polarizing, and instead of reeling in the toxicity that was turning Twitter into a cesspool, you seemed to relish in adding more arsenic and stink.

It was like I was watching Back to the Future and Biff somehow had emerged as the hero.

Twitter, instead of being a digital town hall, turned devolved into Dysfunction Junction.

While all this was going on, things started to change...

I can’t identify exactly what it was, but there seems to be less “there, there.

Suddenly, I realized Twitter wasn’t my first read of the day... or even my second or third. Almost organically, I was back to first checking out the newspapers and emails I get from various news sites linking me to stories I might find interesting.

At the same time, I realized I was spending considerably less time scrolling through my personally curated Twitter news feed. And I don’t think I’m alone, because my chronological feed of the 1,056 people I follow has become a shell of its former self.

That seemed to be confirmed by a post over the weekend on Threads, the new Twitter rival launched by Meta Platforms (META)… from Cloudflare (NET) CEO Matthew Prince…

Source: Threads

For me, obviously losing my blue check as part of your purge of legacy blue checks helped magnify what I was feeling. It meant that unless I posted something that organically went viral, Twitter’s new algorithms would throttle back my potential audience.

Indeed, the number of views for my typical post fell off a cliff, creating a natural disincentive for me to post and engage as much as I used to...

Like anything else, this proved to me just how vulnerable Twitter is, because it turned me more into an observer than an active participant.

One of the best explanations of what I’ve been seeing was a post from over the weekend on Threads by Box (BOX) CEO Aaron Levie…

As part of a list of “Twitter’s mistakes,” he specifically called out the “removal of verification or a large swatch of accounts that were a main source of the best content, replaced by some of the worst.”

Source: Threads

To be sure, Elon, it seems you realized almost immediately that the blue check purge was a mistake. Why else would you return the blue checks to users who had more than one million followers?

You were no doubt counting on the rest of us to pay to get our blue checks back...

But that assumed Twitter was the center of our lives, and guess what? It wasn’t...

Instead, as Levie went on to explain, it merely exposed Twitter for having  “a confused business model of emphasizing a paid plan that only a fraction of users will ever care about.”

I certainly see no reason to pay... certainly not right now. I like the “edit” function, and would have paid for that alone before things got weird, but beyond that... why?

I’m sure everybody who bought a blue check will make up for those of us who post less, and I’m also pretty sure our absence won’t be noted.

That said, I continue to post on Twitter, just not nearly as much as I used to...

And as I’m sure will be borne out by your stats, I also continue to check out my news feed every now and then – again, much less than I used to.

In the meantime, I’m also paying close attention to Threads, and have posted a few things there. (But I have almost zero bandwidth and it’s clearly a work in progress.) And a few months ago I put in a request in for a code to Bluesky. (I’m still waiting.) I tried out Mastodon. (That lasted about a week.) And early on, I also signed up for Post.news. (Never used it.)

Beyond that, I’m still somewhat active on LinkedIn, where I have a good presence, and where the quality of my news feed inexplicably seems to be getting better. I post on Facebook occasionally, mostly limited to friends and family. (Yes, I’m in that age group.) And while I have an Instagram account, I haven’t posted on it in a very long time.

That’s because I was all-in on Twitter and you can only manage so many social media accounts.

The truth is, at this point I’m not sure I want to recreate myself there or anywhere else because it takes work, and I’ve already put in my time.

On the other hand, I’ve been around long enough to know you never know how things will evolve. Or not. If I’ve learned anything it’s to never say never. Threads may become the Twitter killer, especially if it creates a desktop version and lets you curate your own feed.

Or maybe Twitter will regain its former glory. It is, after all, still Twitter. (But then again, My Space was My Space.)

What I do know is that I no longer have the loyalty I once did. Thanks to your constant drama, following years of being beaten down by Trump turmoil, aided and abetted by Twitter, I simply got burned out by anything that polarizing.  

That’s why I’m thanking you, Elon…

You helped me break my Twitter habit.

By spending less time there, I learned something else....

Life without Twitter is a still a life worth living... in fact, I would argue, a better one.

Regards,

Herb Greenberg

P.S.: I’ve written about you, generally critically, for years. Here’s my confession: I got Tesla (TSLA) wrong. I should’ve realized that when I saw that every other car I was squeezed between in San Diego was a Tesla. There’s no doubting your brilliance, or your wealth. Your money sends people into space, after all. But brilliance and wealth hasn’t prevented you from being tone deaf and certainly not from being infallible. Hopefully new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino can fix this mess, assuming you let her. I keep an open mind.

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DISCLAIMER: This is solely my opinion based on my observations and interpretations of events, based on published facts, and should not be construed as investment advice.

(I write two investment newsletters for Empire Financial Research, Empire Real Wealth and Herb Greenberg’s Quant-X System. For more information, click here and here.)

Feel free to contact me at herbgreenberg@substack.com. You can follow me on Twitter and Threads @herbgreenberg.