Twitter co-founder Evan “Ev” Williams has broken his silence and joined other co-founders in voicing his displeasure with how Elon Musk is running the platform.
In his first public comments on Musk’s leadership since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Williams told Bloomberg’s “The Circuit” yesterday that he felt “sad” after Musk’s purchase went through.
Since then he has not been encouraged by developments on Twitter. The company’s ongoing financial troubles most recently included a five-week period from April to May in which ad revenue fell 59 percent, compared to ad revenue at the same time last year.
Many believed that new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, who started this week, would bring advertisers back to the platform. But Twitter’s ad staff thinks advertisers could still shy away from shifting Twitter policies that lead to more controversial content, such as pornography and hate speech, as well as more controversial ads promoting things like gambling and marijuana, The New York Times reported. . It seems many top advertisers are still hesitant to risk brand damage by reinvesting in Musk’s Twitter.
“I don’t think he’s keyed it in quite right yet,” Williams told Bloomberg, warning that Twitter’s potential to recover as a brand is now “much harder” now that “the brand is very linked to Elon.”
Williams said poor leadership caused once-popular platforms like Yahoo and MySpace to fail, suggesting it’s appropriate to compare Twitter to Yahoo today. He said that while Yahoo still exists and could be considered “thriving,” “it’s very different by reputation,” and that’s the path Musk appears to be taking on Twitter.
Williams’ comments come just a few months after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted that he didn’t think Musk was an ideal leader for Twitter, The Washington Post reported. When a Twitter user told Dorsey that “it’s pretty sad how it all turned out” in regards to Musk’s Twitter purchase, Dorsey tweeted in agreement: “Yeah.”
Williams and Dorsey might have been most optimistic about Musk becoming, as Musk described his role at Twitter, Chief Twit. Another co-founder, Biz Stone, was the first to voice his disapproval in a dim December 2022 tweet which Musk never mentioned by name.
“He’s not a serious person,” Stone tweeted. “He’s doing things for the sport that have serious consequences for real people. This is an open, global service.”
The only other Twitter co-founder, Noah Glass, rarely speaks on Twitter and is seemingly the only one refusing to share an opinion on Musk’s leadership.
Williams has a “weird relationship” with Twitter
Williams was joined on “The Circuit” by former Twitter vice president of product Jason Goldman, who told Bloomberg that Twitter has already survived several attempts by its founders to “kill the product.” Williams agreed that Twitter is a resilient product and called Twitter “antifragile.”
Williams then suggested that emerging Twitter alternatives could easily take Twitter’s place if Musk doesn’t improve the product or if they just offer better services or more innovative products.
But Williams also said he’s had “a weird relationship with Twitter” that seems to be between an appreciation for what it is and a disinterest in what it could become.
In 2022, he said he was “excited” that Musk would take over the platform, while warning that Musk should “respect the people who have run the company”, “especially in terms of trust and security”. Musk disobeyed that advice, disbanded Twitter’s Trust and Security Board, drastically downsized the Trust and Security team, and then seemingly led to the firing of Trust and Security Chiefs Yoel Roth and Ella Irwin. And that’s apparently a big part of what makes Williams “sad” about Twitter these days.
Of Musk, Williams said, “I think he’s brilliant. But nobody’s brilliant at everything.”
However, it seems Williams doesn’t find social media as relevant today as it used to be.
Williams said that in the early days of social media, “We thought, oh, it would be best if we got media from our friends,” but now TikTok’s growing popularity shows him that, for many users, “they showing media from your friends is probably not as good as the media from some super talented person you’ve never met before.”
“I actually think there’s a lot of interesting things right now as we think about how we can use the internet to help people be more social without consuming or creating media, so maybe the future of social media is the separation of social media and media,” Williams suggested. , which seems to indicate that Twitter and other traditional social media platforms may not feature as prominently in that hypothetical version of the future.
For Musk to succeed, Williams said the Twitter owner would probably have to be willing to continue taking a huge loss.
“I don’t know how comfortable Elon is with losing billions of dollars,” Williams told Bloomberg. “Maybe he’s – fine. Maybe he can break even and then just play with it. If a hundred million people in the world share the most interesting idea or thought, and the computers could tell you algorithmically the most interesting part of that that’s a great media service, but I also think the new generally doesn’t come out of the old.”
Williams did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Twitter is not responding to requests for comment.
