Musk can't limit his silly polls to Twitter Blue subscribers without showing how few there are.

[highplainsdem]

If he tried redoing his "Should I step down as head of Twitter?" poll that way, the total votes would probably be closer to 100,000 than the 17.5 million who voted in yesterday's poll.

I doubt he wants to make people aware of how few subscribers he has.

I don't know if there's any info on how many signed up for Twitter Blue this month, since it was launched again. The launch last month resulted in only about 140,000 subscribers in the first several days.

By comparison, the original Twitter Blue, pre-Musk, had about 100,000 subscribers paying only a few dollars a month.

A Mashable article a month ago pointed out that if Twitter is losing $4 million a day, as Musk claimed then, he would need 15 million subscribers paying $8/mo to cover that.

Btw, I don't think Musk is considering letting legacy verified accounts (there are a few hundred thousand of those) vote in restricted polls, if they aren't paying him anything. He's already made it clear that they'll be losing those blue checkmarks soon. And comments from him and his fans indicate they don't trust the previously verified Twitter users to be on their side.

[ColinC]

1. He may do it as a sales tactic

Simply to sell more blue check marks.

[mahina]

2. I don't remember the guest on pod save America recently, but he said that there are x million subscr

ribers total.

Worldwide.
Fb has billions.
Twitter is tiny but what it did have going for it is a strong network OF networks of progressive and diverse communities.

So there’s no 15 million subscribers coming.

But trashing our networks holds value for some.

/ I had the number way wrong. Will listen again. Thank you responder below.

[Emrys]

4. I'm not clear what you mean by Twitter "subscribers".

If you mean active users, that 2 million figure is way wrong. These were the figures last summer:

The figures below are based on Twitter’s advertising audience data for July 2022.

Note: our regions follow the United Nations Geoscheme. Click here to learn which countries belong to each region.

Number of active Twitter users in Northern America: 92.1 million

Number of active Twitter users in Central America: 19.1 million

Number of active Twitter users in the Caribbean: 3.3 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southern America: 43.1 million

Number of active Twitter users in Western Europe: 30.6 million

Number of active Twitter users in Northern Europe: 27.2 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southern Europe: 20.4 million

Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Europe: 8.2 million

Number of active Twitter users in Northern Africa: 8.0 million

Number of active Twitter users in Western Africa: 6.3 million

Number of active Twitter users in Middle Africa: 551 thousand

Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Africa: 4.0 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southern Africa: 3.4 million

Number of active Twitter users in Western Asia: 44.7 million

Number of active Twitter users in Central Asia: 377 thousand

Number of active Twitter users in Southern Asia: 30.9 million

Number of active Twitter users in Southeastern Asia: 57.6 million

Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Asia: 81.6 million

Number of active Twitter users in Oceania: 4.9 million

https://datareportal.com/essential-twitter-stats

Despite the exodus after Musk took over, the overall figures won't have changed much.

[mahina]

6. I'll go listen again. I must have misunderstood the number.

Your post makes sense.

[Kablooie]

3. He may assume that right wingers will be the biggest blue customers.

Now that he's established Twitter as a Qanaon/Fox News wannabe, liberal numbers will dwindle while conservative ones could increase.

[Emrys]

5. The fact Musk has developed this vision of Twitter as having "sides",

and that he identifies with one "side" over another and sees the other as some sort of an enemy says it all.

Nobody can serve as a successful moderator of a community with that dynamic going on, and he'll have an enormously tough time ahead trying to forge anything like a functional Twitter if he carries on like that (which he will, because I don't think he's capable of changing). Any successor will also face a huge task because Musk's poisoned the well.

With the majority of Twitter's active users seemingly utterly fed up (or worse) with Musk and paid blue-tickers rapidly gaining pariah status and being blocked by some on sight, it's not exactly a well thought out recruitment campaign for the paying customers he's fixated on getting.

Divisions obviously exist on Twitter, always have. But they're not as simple as that bipolar framing.

Musk pissed off a number of users he'd probably assume to be on his "side" with that stupid and shortlived scheme to ban outlinks to rival platforms. Opposition came from all quarters - and that's what you'd expect given the libertarian populist rhetoric he's been spouting.

It's like his commitment to free speech - the more you pay, the freer it is, unless he takes something you post personally, in which case you'll be forced to go take your speech elsewhere and be free with it.

It's been fun watching him trying to rationalize his decisive defeat in the poll about whether he should quit as CEO or not. Kim Dotcom (yes, he's still around) insisted it was down to liberal bot activity, and pointed out that Musk now had data from the poll to identify those bots and eliminate them. Musk's response was the reply "Interesting."

This on a platform where he was gloating a few weeks ago at having conquered the bot problem, posting a GIF of him gurning and gesticulating over a bot grave!

What he did when he posted that poll was fire the starting pistol for a competition between those who wanted him to remain as CEO and those who didn't. Both sides of opinion had access to similar tools to spread the word and mobilize votes. It just so happens that one side is more numerous on Twitter and has better networks (including DU). If the result came as a surprise to him, then he should take it as a wake up call. His reaction since doesn't convince me that the poll was a clever ruse to let him back away from Twitter gracefully. He's moaning that nobody who could fulfil the role wants to take it on. He's trapped himself, with nobody involved in any of his three main businesses happy with what he's doing, and like quicksand, the more he struggles at the moment, the more trapped he becomes.

So now you have his acolytes wandering around Twitter moaning after the event that they didn't know about the poll, that 12 hours was too short for it to run, that it was held at the wrong time of day on the wrong day of the week, etc. etc. Some have even been driven to frame the poll as a brilliant trap set by Musk to weed out users who're disloyal to him! Whether that means they think he's going to kick off those millions who voted to fire him, I've no idea, but some of them are crazy enough.

Most of Musk's angst at the moment seems to be to do with money (despite the fact he's a nominal multibillionaire), and more notably, Twitter's looming bankruptcy, which he's discussed openly with some on Twitter itself. It's almost like he has no pals or trusted peers to turn to in his everyday life.

It's incredible, but less and less surprising as we watch him flailing in action, that he didn't realize from the start that Twitter's been very good for many things over the years. It's just that making money hasn't been one of them.

[DonCoquixote]

7. in other words

No fast food franchise would refuse to sell to one party or another. Chik fil-a may be very Red-State political, but if I wanted to get a chicken sandwich there, they would sell it, smiles on their faces. Not that I would, because I do not want to fund "conversion therapy" aka "torture the gay away."

[Emrys]

8. Careful.

Display business acumen as blatantly as that, and Musk might send the boys round to pressgang you into being Twitter CEO.