Elon Musk Outlines His Vision for Twitter at Morgan Stanley Tech Conference

So what’s Elon Musk’s long run imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and the way does he plan to transform the app right into a billion-user, money-making machine, as he’s repeatedly stated in interviews?

As we speak, we obtained a glance at Elon’s broader strategic considering across the app, together with some new updates on how Twitter 2.0 is progressing on numerous components.

Musk made a brand new presentation on Twitter, and his different companies, to the Morgan Stanley Tech, Media and Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco, the place Musk provided perception into a number of key points, together with their work on mitigating hate speech, the expansion in utilization of the app, and the grander imaginative and prescient to transform Twitter right into a key funds and commerce app.

First off, Musk outlined his normal imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and making it the ‘international city sq.’ as soon as once more.

Twitter has all the time had this as a defining purpose, of types, although it moved away from the ‘town square’ framing within the latter years underneath former CEO Jack Dorsey, who turned disillusioned with the inevitable calls that needed to be made by Twitter administration on what may and couldn’t be shared within the app.

That’s been a defining factor of Musk’s push to reform Twitter’s strategy, by permitting extra free and open speech, and ideally, letting the customers resolve what ought to be allowed, with Group Notes set to play an even bigger function in enabling Twitter customers themselves to police misinformation and untruths by including contextual explainers to particular person tweets.

Musk additionally laid out Twitter 2.0’s core rules, which he hopes will finally make Twitter a supply of fact, by empowering enter from all folks.

As per Musk:

“So the purpose is to have Twitter be the perfect supply of fact, essentially the most well timed and correct supply of fact, even when the reality is one thing we do not wish to hear or disagreeable or no matter, however have or not it’s well timed and correct and the place you’ll be able to actually perceive what is going on on.”

Musk additional defined that the media is at present capable of management key narratives by selecting what to cowl, and what will get prime precedence. However Twitter permits all folks to resolve what’s related sooner, by facilitating extra inputs. Which is why, in Musk’s view, it’s essential that Twitter permits free and open speech, as a lot as potential.

“The bedrock of a functioning democracy needs to be free speech and a degree enjoying discipline. That is why it is the primary modification. It was the very first thing they did, like we have got to make sure freedom of speech. And why did they do this? As a result of the place they got here from there wasn’t freedom of speech, and when you lose freedom of speech, you do not get it again. In order that’s why we should shield it at all prices.”

This has been a key factor of Musk’s broader push at the app, which he’s strengthened along with his personal tweets on numerous controversial matters.

Which then results in considerations round what folks would possibly truly say within the app, and the way that might result in hurt and detrimental behaviors. On this entrance, Musk additionally outlined Twitter’s progress in addressing hate speech, which Musk says is now down 50% from when he took over at the app.

Some consultants have questioned Twitter’s metrics on this, and we don’t have entry to precisely what this information means – however primarily based on the important thing components that the Twitter 2.0 workforce is measuring, it’s working to deal with probably dangerous components, which ought to result in an improved consumer expertise.

In fact, letting tens of thousands of previously banned users again on the app appears to work counter to this purpose, however once more, primarily based on the metrics that Musk and his workforce are monitoring, it’s seemingly seeing enchancment.

The identical will also be mentioned for little one exploitation content material.

Musk has repeatedly claimed, as this graph exhibits, that Twitter is doing extra to deal with CSE content material than Twitter has ever executed previously. Specialists have refuted these figures as effectively, however Twitter is seemingly, by at least some measures, taking extra motion to deal with this factor, which Musk says will all the time be precedence primary at the app.

Although bigger modifications stay problematic. As we noticed earlier this week, Twitter does appear to be changing into more and more unstable, resulting in bigger outages and impacts, probably resulting from decreased oversight because of employees cuts.

Musk admitted that this can be a downside, noting that the present code base is vulnerable to failure when making even the slightest change.

However nonetheless, even with elevated error charges, Musk says that Twitter utilization is at an all-time excessive, with greater than 250 million every day energetic customers.

It’s value noting that this chart measures as much as This fall, and reviews have instructed that Twitter utilization has declined significantly since then. Besides, Twitter’s reputation has elevated underneath Musk – to not the degrees that Musk would clearly like (with regard to that billion-user goal), however it’s on observe to see enchancment, if it may possibly get all of its components into line.

On that entrance, Musk briefly mentioned his plans to enhance Twitter’s advert relevance, and drive higher efficiency by numerous concentrating on measures.

A few of this revolved round easy measures, like key phrase concentrating on, which Twitter has beforehand moved away from resulting from decreased advertiser efficiency. Elon is now trying to implement extra direct concentrating on choices like this, with advertisers capable of spotlight their content material inside associated discussions within the app.

Lastly, Musk mentioned his longer-term imaginative and prescient for Twitter, and making it into the ‘every part app’, which largely revolves round integrating funds.

“I think it is potential to create a really highly effective finance expertise. Mainly, PayPal is type of like a midway model of what I believe might be executed in funds and finance. So, for instance you need to have the ability to ship cash simply from one account on Twitter to a different account effortlessly, with one click on, you need to have the ability to earn curiosity on that cash, you need to have the ability to have debt, so you’ll be able to let your curiosity can go detrimental. Mainly, I believe it is potential to change into the most important monetary establishment on this planet, simply by offering folks with handy fee choices. We do not have the time to enter it intimately right here, but when we simply make the app increasingly helpful, folks will use it extra and it will be nice.”

The imaginative and prescient is that, finally, by enabling funds by way of tweet, Twitter will be capable of facilitate extra sorts of transactions, which is able to make it a extra helpful app, for all completely different functions, much like how Chinese language messaging apps like WeChat have change into important utilities in that area.

In fact, Meta’s additionally attempting to facilitate the identical factor, and only in the near past obtained approval to expand WhatsApp payments usage in Brazil, whereas it’s additionally gaining traction with WhatsApp funds in India, probably the important thing market for such a shift.

However success on this space is not going to come simple, particularly amid ongoing regulatory scrutiny, and given Musk’s defiant perspective to different regulatory teams, just like the SEC, it’s exhausting to see Twitter ever gaining the approval required to facilitate such.

Nonetheless, that’s the longer-term imaginative and prescient, that Twitter will change into a key supply of fact in journalism, and a key utility in facilitating extra sorts of funds, which is able to then make it a essential app for many extra folks. It’s an optimistic technique, which requires many issues to go proper, however Musk says that, after huge cost-cutting, the app is, probably, on observe to be money optimistic by the top of this yr.

That, at the least, provides him firmer footing to construct from, and perhaps, Elon’s imaginative and prescient is past what others can but see for the app.

You possibly can try Elon’s full presentation to the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference here.