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The only way out for social platforms is to "sell yourself"?
Written/Meteor
Editor/Chen Dengxin
Mr. Elon Musk, an old acquaintance of domestic netizens and Tesla's Internet celebrity CEO, once again successfully grabbed the front page headlines.
On April 25, just as people were still wondering how the farce between Musk and Twitter would end, Twitter suddenly announced that it would accept Musk's $54.20 per share, valuing itself at about $44 billion, which is expected to be completed in 2022. At that time, Twitter, a 16-year-old head social platform product, will become the private enterprise of "tech madman" Musk.
However, at first glance, Musk's business map seems to be all about the technology industry such as energy, aviation, brain-computer interfaces, etc., which give people a sense of distance and awe, and the "tacky" social platform is obviously something different in Musk's family business. However, after understanding the "love-hate love" between Musk and Twitter, it is not difficult for us to find the reason why Musk "showed his fangs" to Twitter.
With a hefty $44 billion, Musk reached his most loyal Twitter
2022 should perhaps be renamed "The Big Guys Are Richer Than Who" Year. Before the January Microsoft decided to angrily smash the 68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and then in April Musk threw 44 billion to buy Twitter, as for the rest of the year in the second 2/3 of the time will be made what big news, it is really dare not think.
Of course, the above two acquisitions eventually require the approval of the regulatory authorities to be counted. However, even if the boots have not finally landed, these two acquisitions have still successfully attracted the attention of the market, especially the recent Musk acquisition of Twitter.
Musk's acquisition of Twitter is indeed amazing, but it is not abrupt, and the whole process is clear. As a CEO who is proficient in marketing, Musk has long been a heavyweight of "calling the wind and rain" on Twitter, and its influence is so great that it even only needs to send an emoji of the "Idol Master" character to raise the stock price of Bandai Namco by about 4%, and a short tweet can affect the market trend of the cryptocurrency market and stir up Dogecoin, which was once regarded as a joke, to the sky.
At the end of March this year, Musk began to tweet the "yin and yang weird" Twitter review mechanism, suggesting that Twitter did not follow the principle of "freedom of speech", and quickly tweeted whether Twitter users needed a new social platform.
At that time, netizens saw Musk's remarks, and most of them thought that he was doing market research for entering the social product track. However, Musk is not false to stare at the social product track, but he does not intend to "start from scratch". While criticizing Twitter, he did not know in what form he had acquired a large number of Twitter shares, and he became the single largest shareholder of Twitter with a whopping 9.2% stake.
Social platform Twitter
When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) poked it out on April 4, Twitter users realized that Musk's choice of social products was probably to start with Twitter.
Seeing Musk transform from his own platform influencer to a major shareholder, Twitter can only invite Musk to join the board, but unfortunately, on April 11, Twitter CEO Parag Agravar tweeted in frustration that Musk refused to join the Twitter board.
Things began to get interesting here, and when the foreign media broke the news that Musk was ready to buy Twitter at a price of $54.20 per share on the 14th, people fully understood Musk's intentions - it turned out that this was intended to eat Twitter directly. Of course, for the menacing world's richest man, Twitter did not choose to sit still, but prepared to sacrifice the "poison pill plan" (that is, "equity dilution anti-acquisition measures", which is a defensive measure to prevent Musk from reaching out to his own "claws" by issuing a large number of low-priced new shares, diluting the proportion of shares in the hands of the acquirer, and then dealing with the hostile takeover).
However, just when people think that the business war between the two is about to erupt, Twitter finally has to choose "true incense", on April 25, that is, the tenth day after Twitter indicated or will use the "poison pill plan" to stop Musk, the media suddenly broke out that Twitter was ready to accept Musk's acquisition offer, and seeing that victory was at hand, Musk also opened "champagne" on Twitter and began to talk to Twitter netizens about what he would do after the success of his acquisition of Twitter.
In this way, from premeditation to success, Musk only took more than a month to successfully change from a Big Red Man to the Lord of Twitter, which made people have to sigh again that "having money can really do whatever you want."
But at the same time, Musk, as a recognized business wizard in the industry, often has some deep business game behind his behavior, so few people will believe his statement that he bought Twitter simply to "defend freedom of speech" or "kill spam bots". So, if it wasn't for those grandiose reasons, musk spent so much money to buy Twitter, what would he want?
From stocks to cryptocurrencies, "Superman with Goods" has tasted the sweetness of social media
Musk's intention to acquire Twitter is not hidden much, except that he ostensibly "helps improve this product" in order to maintain the human design, a very important reason is that Musk has tasted the sweetness of manipulating the market with speech from social platforms.
As a master of self-marketing, Musk has long noticed the huge energy contained in public social platforms such as Twitter that are different from Facebook, and he himself is also very involved in "playing Twitter", not only has a high frequency of interaction (the car media Future Car Daily has statistically found that by June 18, 2020, Musk has released 11,394 tweets in 10 years, with an average of 5.9 tweets per day), and will release some every three to five years" The show's effect is explosive" radical remarks, and from time to time to ridicule other rich guys - in a word, pay attention to Musk, fun is indispensable.
Because of this, Musk quickly established a huge fan base on Twitter, and as of April 28, 2022, Musk's number of fans has exceeded 87 million, which is the "top idol" of the Eight Classics.
Musk's Twitter account
Of course, just like the current netizens are familiar with, when a self-media, marketing number or Internet celebrity kol has enough fans, it can monetize the traffic, and Musk did not miss this opportunity, but compared to the snacks, toys, and electronic products brought by the traffic network celebrity, Musk's "goods" are much hardercore, and he brings enterprises, stocks and cryptocurrencies.
Musk's businesses have done less in terms of advertising spending, but many market analysts believe that Musk's personal activities have brought a lot of exposure to the brand behind him. However, analyst agency Escalent has found that 1/4 of Tesla owners do not like Musk, believing that Musk's Twitter activities have played a "negative role" on the brand.
However, in the stock market and the crypto circle, there are not a few people who choose to buy Tesla stock or Musk's "goods" cryptocurrency because they worship Musk personally.
According to an online survey conducted in June 2021 by Ingwei Finance, nearly two-thirds (63%) of U.S. investors believe Musk is the most influential figure in the financial markets. According to survey data from game entertainment site GamblersPick, 35% of cryptocurrency holders admit that Musk influenced their cryptocurrency-related decisions.
The trend of the stock market and the cryptocurrency market is easily affected by the topic, and when Musk accumulated a large fan base through the platform of Twitter, his topic influence also rose. Sometimes Musk only needs to post a tweet to trigger a terrifying butterfly effect.
For example, in August 2018, Musk tweeted that he was ready to take Tesla private at $420 per share, followed by investors rushing to buy Tesla stock, which forced Tesla stock prices up by 11%. In the end, the SEC had to step in, requiring that Musk's subsequent tweets related to Tesla must be approved by the company's lawyers.
Although limited in the stock market, in the gray area of cryptocurrencies, Musk is more unscrupulous to use his "superpowers", he claims that in the future, Dogecoin can buy Tesla peripheral products, which can make Dogecoin soar by 16.42% the next day; a tweet that he is worried that Bitcoin will increase fossil fuel consumption and no longer accept Bitcoin to buy Tesla, which can make Bitcoin dive for $3,000 in 40 minutes.
This god-like experience is hard to refuse, as far as he said, he even banned an account on Twitter for a period of time. The feeling of being tied up obviously made Musk very angry.
After the acquisition of Twitter, Musk's topic influence will undoubtedly be further released, even if he himself can not speak for the enterprises behind it with Tesla, SpaceX, but after having the topic window of Twitter, these products that are relatively weak in marketing have more opportunities to be exposed, especially in the new energy vehicle market where competition is heating up, Tesla only relies on products and word-of-mouth marketing methods have obviously gradually entered the bottleneck, in the future, it needs more means to boost word-of-mouth, And Musk's own social platform, which can avoid the risk of censorship, can undoubtedly become the cornerstone of Tesla's future marketing activities.
As for the cryptocurrency field, it is foreseeable that in the future, how to prevent Musk from using social platforms to influence the cryptocurrency market and stock market will be a key issue that will cause headaches for regulators in the future.
User growth is slow, the interaction rate is declining, and the only way out for social platforms is to "sell themselves"?
An interesting fact is that in this stage play between Musk and Twitter, Musk always occupies the C position, and Twitter's sense of existence is limited and weak.
Of course, this may also be related to Twitter's "slippery knees" to Musk less than 10 days after launching the "poison pill plan", but no matter what, although the heavy money of 44 billion is enviable, Twitter's final decision to sell itself still makes people vaguely see the melancholy behind social media.
In fact, although social platform products have eaten the huge user dividend brought about by the lockdown and isolation measures of various countries during the epidemic, the social platform has quickly shown fatigue due to the normalization of the epidemic and the impact of entertainment products such as short videos and mobile games.
In February this year, Facebook released its first financial report after changing its name to Meta, and the financial report showed that in the fourth quarter of 2021, Meta's head social platform product, the number of global monthly active users (MAUs) on Facebook,910 million and 1.93 billion daily active users (DAUs), down 500,000 compared to the second quarter, a phenomenon that has never happened before.
Another popular social platform product, Instagram, also leaked internal documents in October last year that teenage users were flowing to similar software such as Snapshot and Tik Tok, while according to the social media marketing analytics firm Rival IQ released the "Social Media Industry BenchmarkIng Report" in February 2022. Instagram's average fan engagement rate fell from 01.22% in 2019 to 0.67% in 2021, a drop that was almost waist-deep. While Rival IQ attributes this figure to the fact that companies aren't operating brand accounts well on the platform, some analysts believe it's related to the decline in the number of advertising audiences on social platforms.
Image credit: Rival IQ
In addition to Facebook and Instagram, the two Meta products, the Twitter acquired by Musk in recent years is not satisfactory, in the past two years, Twitter has shown a continuous loss, losing 1.136 billion in 2020, 221 million in 2021, and in the third quarter of 2021 Twitter also appeared to turn profit into loss, and later in the fourth quarter although the loss was reversed, but it was still reduced year-on-year. Some analysts commented on Twitter, believing that it had operational problems and failed to play the value of Twitter users.
Behind the decline of social platforms, it is not difficult for us to glimpse some clues.
On the one hand, the excessive dependence on advertising on social platform revenue has not been improved, whether it is Facebook or Twitter, advertising business is their core business, as user growth is sluggish, stickiness declines, the attractiveness of social platform advertising business will undoubtedly be affected. Although many companies are trying to develop new growth points, they have not achieved much reality, such as Meta CEO Zuckerberg waving the flag last year, and the result almost did not kill Meta's meta-universe business, or Weibo, which is more familiar to domestic social platform users, to create a "desert" oasis.
With the rise of products such as short videos, mobile games and e-commerce platforms, and the continuous expansion of their own social functions, the external challenges and pressures faced by social platforms are also increasing day by day, and it can be said that there is really not much time left for social platforms to expand their functions and increase monetization methods.
On the other hand, social platforms, as gathering places and discussion venues for public topics, always hang the sword of Damocles in supervision overhead, which makes social platforms must be cautious when guiding and pushing topics and carrying out activities. For example, the domestic social platform Douban is a negative teaching material familiar to netizens, as a social platform that focuses on the "literature and art" and "niche" style, Douban has repeatedly been ordered to rectify the information prohibited by laws and regulations from being released or transmitted. According to the Cyberspace Administration of China, from January to November 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China instructed the Beijing Municipal Internet Information Office to impose 20 disposal penalties on Douban, and even once asked to remove the APP. There is a serious negative impact on the continued operation of the product.
It is for the above reasons that Twitter will weigh the pros and cons and come up with the best choice for shareholders - to the "diamond king" like Musk, who not only has his own fan base and fan stickiness, but also can easily provide huge amounts of money.
However, it is clear that not every social platform can find such a Bó Lè, and for other social platform products such as Facebook, the road to future user growth is still a long way to go.
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