Boz (he/him)

I love the Gangnam Style reference, lol.

U.S., and I don’t know how many businesses here use it, but I think it’s quite possible to avoid using it socially here. I’m not sure if I even know anyone who does use it, and certainly no one has asked me to get one.

Aren’t pictures the point of Instagram, though? I don’t use Instagram, but I would not expect people to like something that is basically a picture sharing service without the pictures.

And in my opinion, the ChatGPT summary is a pretty good condensation of those 500 words. There are some things that are said more than once, and some details that are interesting, but not crucial for having a discussion about the topic, particularly with a focus on privacy.

Sure, 500 words isn’t a big ask, but I think when 500 words really conveys 300 words worth of content, and easily boils down to more like 100, it is reasonable to choose to read 100. I enjoyed reading 500, but that doesn’t mean everyone should.

[/I took a lot more words than necessary, lol, it’s because I am a degenerate]

I don’t know, I think Musk might actually have an inferiority complex. He’s obsessed with himself, but he puts an awful lot of effort into trying to prove that he’s cool. But yeah, they’re both terrible, it doesn’t really matter who’s worse.

Probably the shirtless pic was a carefully calculated move to short-circuit theories about his lack of humanity, by showing that he has a navel. [/s]

…for real, though, at least the man utilizes his paid PR staff.

You’ve lost me on the precise breakdown of growth types, but I don’t think there’s any kind of growth that can be sustained indefinitely without fundamental changes to a business. If you sell widgets, you are eventually going to hit the limit to how many widgets are going to be purchased anywhere, by anyone, and then you’re going to have change something in order to grow.

And sure, I’ll accept that it could be all right to grow past the point where your business model has to change. Some businesses do spread into multiple fields and do reasonably well in all of them, although at a certain point it might start violating anti-trust laws. My point is just that “infinite growth” as a long-term strategy can go down some bad roads, regardless of how innocent the starting point is. Even a benign tumor can be life-threatening if it grows in the wrong place, and I think that can apply to growing businesses as well.

I think all the companies in that field are equally shitty, it’s just a matter of what your (least) favorite kind of shittiness is, and/or who has the monopoly in your area.

Yeesh, this just gets worse and worse. :-(. I have zero respect for a company that can’t even make it easy for you to pay them. It doesn’t even benefit them to make it hard to pay. It’s just a failure.

Yeah, at first I was like, “well, they probably have a separate receiving email, which is not that weird…” but on a paper letter?! Send them back an ad for fire insurance or something. (Not shredded paper, that can damage post office sorting equipment).

I’d say it’s mostly formatting, and what brands have to do to get them. Sponsored posts are the ones disguised as regular posts, which is easier on some platforms than others.

You mean if the stable state is to have a layer of management on top of daily operations, and the management never mixes with operations? Yeah, although to be strictly fair, someone has to do the annoying financials, and those people would not be helpful to people doing other kinds of work. I think that’s just a way of restating the problem.

I think another part of the problem is that business don’t want to have a stable state, they want to grow constantly, which becomes a problem for an increasing number of people no matter how a business is structured. It never really surprises me when ambition gets businesses in trouble, though sometimes I wonder how they manage to make the mistakes they do.

A company whose billionaire quits can usually get a millionaire replacement, without much loss of utility. CEOs get shuffled around all the time without any particular effect on the company they “run.” I think they mostly run lower executives, who run managers, who run lower/middle managers, who run supervisors who know something about what the company actually does, and run the people who do tangible work. The CEOs who get into the news for doing something dramatic to a company are the exception.

She’s not just chilling, she made a press release saying Twitter just had its most successful day (I think by user engagement, I don’t remember the metric she mentioned) right when Threads was blowing up. If she wasn’t straight up lying, she was looking at some reeeeallly well-massaged data.

…of course, there’s a market for CEOs who do that, too, but I admit, I was a little shocked. I thought she was supposed to be the Responsible Adult ™ here.

No, they’re going to start with some kind of sponsored post arrangement similar to Instagram’s, iirc, and put in ads when they get a bit bigger.

Initially, I expect you’re right, but advertisers also monitor whether users see ads, click on them, and make purchases once they click. Advertisers might not drop it as fast as users, but they will eventually go where the users go.

I think this is where the big numbers came from, yeah. That, and cleverly pushing up the launch date to practically the same day Elon limited access to Twitter, so everyone was looking for doomscroll methadone.

This is a good point. It makes me wonder if maybe “engagement” isn’t going to be a metric for whether Threads succeeds or fails. (Other things I have read suggests that it’s hot garbage in ways other than lack of dialogue, so I still think people are dropping it, but they might be able to fix those things).

We were younger. There’s no shame in being young, and liking things then that seem stupid now.

And, unless your Playstation is broken, less fun.

…wait, scratch, that, even if your Playstation is broken, he’s less fun.