Thomas Ricker
‘Please fix this.’
Interesting.
Twitter Archive
Archives for September 2023
Alex Heath
Alex Heath
Why isn’t X on Linda Yaccarino’s home screen?
During her bizarre interview at the Code Conference yesterday, Yaccarino held up her iPhone to the audience while seemingly indicating that it was supposed to represent X. I was sitting near the front of the stage and squinting to try and see what was on it.
Thanks to the magic of video and this screengrab from my colleague Vjeran, we have the goods. X doesn’t appear to be on her home screen but, incredibly, Facebook and Instagram are. I also spot Signal — Elon Musk’s messaging app of choice — and the Holy Bible, which really is the original super app if you think about it. (Also, Settings in the dock? What are you doing, Linda!)
Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Jacob Kastrenakes
Jay Peters
Yoel Roth and Linda Yaccarino made the end of Code... interesting, to say the least.
Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, was a late add to the agenda, and that meant two of the last sessions of the event were a kind of meta conversation about Twitter’s past and X’s future.
Catch clips of both interviews and some of my thoughts in our video recapping the interviews, and you can read more real-time thoughts in our storystream. If you want to watch the interviews yourself, virtual passes are available here right now.
Jay Peters
Linda Yaccarino says she hasn’t seen Elon Musk’s “demon mode” described in Walter Isaacson’s book.
She mostly talked about the value of spirited debate, but did say this: “All I’m saying is that the the idea of the inability to have a debate or feedback, I haven’t experienced or I’ll say I haven’t experienced it yet.”
Jay Peters
“Who wouldn’t want Elon Musk sitting by their side running product?”
An actual question Linda Yaccarino has posed to the audience. Not me!
Jay Peters
Linda Yaccarino is not confirming if the company plans to go to an all-subscription model.
She’s completely dodged Julia Boorstin’s question about if everyone will be charged to use X.
Jay Peters
Some metrics about X, according to Linda Yaccarino.
From an “operating cash flow perspective,” the company is “just about break even.” In early 2024, “we’ll be turning a profit.”
90 percent of the top 100 advertisers have returned to the platform. In the last 12 weeks, about 1,500 have returned.
Jay Peters
Linda Yaccarino, unsurprisingly, thinks things are going great at X.
“There is no analog for the book that is being written right now,” she said onstage at Code. That sounds like a ridiculously lofty claim to me! She says that there have been over 100 products shipped since the acquisition.
Jay Peters
“I’m rooting for you and I’m rooting for Twitter.”
Yoel Roth said he said that to Elon Musk when he left the company. He’s rooting for CEO Linda Yaccarino, the current CEO of X — who will be speaking at Code in just a bit.
Jay Peters
Yoel Roth thinks that something like Twitter needs to exist in the world.
I asked him if there would ever be a platform that’s as culturally relevant as Twitter, now X. “I do hope somebody can capture that,” he said. “I hope they can do it better than Twitter.”
Jay Peters
Yoel Roth thinks that TikTok is doing the best at trust and safety right now.
At Code 2023, he noted that of all the VLOPs, TikTok hasn’t laid off members of its trust and safety team and that it continues to invest heavily in identifying inauthentic behavior. Not the answer I was expecting!
Jay Peters
“That was a warning sign.”
That’s how Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, characterized the decision immediately after Elon Musk took over the company to change the logged out experience to the explore page.
