A “teardown”, in the world of real estate, is when a building or house is completely destroyed to build a new one. When a remodeling project is too costly, or if the renovations are too extensive, it’s often decided to tear down a building.

Elon Musk is currently undergoing a redesign of Twitter that could not be in line with the original design. In fact, as he has changed so many features of the former Twitter—which is being rebranded as “X”—the question that could be asked is why he didn’t simply start from scratch.

Rob Enderle from the Enderle Group suggested that starting something completely new is usually easier than re-architecting an existing product to achieve something it was not intended for.

Enderle added, “Musk has clearly shown that he doesn’t have the skills to manage Twitter. He has also made a number of costly mistakes. It’s possible he could succeed by building what X becomes, but he doesn’t seem to know much about building X. So again, he would be forced to learn through trial and error, which will almost certainly lead to failure.”

What does X mark?

Reuters said earlier in the week that Musk’s choice to rebrand Twitter to X may lead to legal issues, since companies such as Meta and Microsoft have already acquired intellectual property rights for the same letter.

The old Twitter changed the @Twitter handles to @X despite Gene X. Hwang using it for many years. Mashable reported on Wednesday that Hwang received no compensation for losing his handle.

The company has the right to use that username. Mashable pointed out that, except for trademark issues with social media sites, most users have no rights to their specific handles.

This action by X shows clearly that it may not be a well-thought out plan. Every week, a new policy or feature is introduced. It was announced this month that unverified accounts will be restricted to 600 posts. Meanwhile, in June it became clear that all advertisers would have to pay to subscribe to verified content.

Charles King, Pund-IT’s principal technology analyst explained that what we are seeing is Musk improvising in the moment. He’s smart and talented, but his forte is not in social media nor large-scale engagement with customers. “Given the amount of money required to buy, he appears desperate to make the company profitable. However, his choices, so far, have undermined rather than enhanced the value.”

App Everything

It’s possible that X remains a work-in-progress and the final result could be much bigger than Twitter was. It’s still unclear why Musk didn’t just start over with a brand new product. He may have only acquired the user base for $44 billion, and they might not want to accept the changes.

“Some have suggested that the new X rebrand of Twitter is part of Musk’s plan to develop an ‘everything’ app that blends text, calling, financial transactions and other features—a sort of U.S.-based WeChat, in other words,” noted King. King noted that if Musk’s plan was to create an “everything” app, it would have made more sense for him to start from scratch, rather than take on huge debts in order purchase Twitter. He could then destroy its brand while alienating its majority users.

Musk may not have the talent to reverse the direction that X has taken, particularly as history repeats itself.

Enderle added, “I expect that we will be witnessing one of the biggest failures ever in history, all in an attempt to try and convince people that a bad idea earlier, changing PayPal into X, actually was a good thing. Instead, he’ll simply reiterate that the idea was bad.

Earlier than Jack Teixeria, the 21-year-old junior-ranking US Nationwide Guard airman was arrested in April for leaking categorised Pentagon paperwork, a lot of People might have by no means heard of Discord, the voice-over IP (VoIP) and immediate messaging social platform. Although it has about 150 million month-to-month energetic customers because it was based in 2015, it’s largely utilized by avid gamers.

Discord is only one of a number of trendy communication providers that now embrace Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Groups, Sign, Slack, and Notion – amongst others. All of these platforms permit some type of direct communication, as do Fb, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, Fact Social, and others.

It’s now more and more widespread for a pal, relative, or colleague to recommend to hit them up on a platform you’ll have by no means used or barely heard of – and it typically means putting in after which signing up for one more technique to talk.

What occurred to good outdated texting, emails, or cellphone calls?

“Are there too many platforms? Most likely sure, however they serve completely different functions and attraction to completely different audiences and demographics,” defined Susan Schreiner, know-how analyst at C4 Tendencies.

From Social Connections To Communication Platform

Everybody in all probability now is aware of somebody who solely prefers to speak through Fb or somebody who appears to solely interact through Twitter. Likewise, when attempting to attach with colleagues Zoom has changed the normal convention name.

“Communication has all the time advanced, from the telegraph to the phone to smartphones and from snail mail to fax after which e mail. It is protected to say, nevertheless, our world has seen its greatest change because the Web and social media made its mark,” stated Jason Mollica, professorial lecturer and program director at American College’s Faculty of Communication.

This may additionally add challenges.

Do you really want to put in Slack as a result of one colleague makes use of it, whereas one other prefers Sign? The identical is true of attempting to handle so many social media accounts.

Connecting with folks has by no means been simpler, but it surely additionally requires a plethora of platforms.

“From a person standpoint, being on each social community does an individual little good,” Mollica added. “It is essential to decide on these networks which might be greatest for you. You do not have to be on any platform, although.”

Sure, Blame the Pandemic

This oversaturation of communication instruments had slowly been constructing, but it surely all modified when the nation shut down simply over three years in the past initially of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. Zoom provided digital face-to-face conferences, and social media allowed everybody to remain related.

Now within the post-pandemic world, we’re caught with an more and more fragmented communication panorama.

“Maybe the over-reliance on social media platforms is a consequence of the pandemic,” stated Schreiner. “For shut to 2 years Zoom, Skype, Groups, and different platforms turned lifesavers to ameliorate loneliness. In a single day in addition they emerged as platforms to collaborate and conduct enterprise. On an enterprise stage, completely different organizations chosen their most popular platform based mostly on their very own standards.”

Because of this, we’re now more and more liable to shedding that direct human interplay and conversational talents that may’t get replaced by posting on TikTok or Instagram, Schreiner added. She additional warned that it appears as if folks have forgotten how one can choose up the cellphone and name a pal to share one’s day relatively than only a superficial posting.

At problem is that every new service tries to do one thing a bit completely different from previous platforms.

“I all the time advise college students and professionals to concentrate on what every social community affords,” Mollica advised. “It is true that TikTok is extra well-liked with one group, however Twitter and Instagram nonetheless maintain robust with others. Fb will not be as robust because it was ten years in the past. Regardless, folks around the globe are nonetheless sharing updates.”

Can The Market Assist So Many Platforms?

Simply as there may be now a debate as as to if the market can help so many streaming providers, the query to ask is how can so many social communication platforms coexist. The brief reply is that we should always count on to see some consolidation within the close to future.

“Virtually each new know-how goes by means of an evolutionary part the place there’s a proliferation of merchandise,” Schreiner continued. “Bear in mind the early days of cellphones, when on a tradeshow flooring one may see dozens of manufacturers? Quick ahead to in the present day with a remaining few manufacturers vying for his or her share of the smartphone market. Equally, these are nonetheless the early days for social media platforms – they usually too shall be changed with the but to emerge subsequent new shiny platform.”

And that’s in all probability good not simply because it’s laborious to handle so many providers, however that there’s a threat concerned in having a lot private info “on the market” on an growing variety of platforms.

“Having too many accounts is usually a safety threat. One can attempt to be vigilant, however even when you have 4 accounts, a person can nonetheless see their account hacked,” warned Mollica.

“Who hasn’t been photo-bombed on Zoom,” added Schreiner. “As we glance to the long run it will appear {that a} widespread safety protocol throughout platforms would possibly make sense.”

That could be only one a part of the evolutionary part of social media. However, we nonetheless should not get too comfy with each start-up or new platform. Some will turn out to be the subsequent Fb, whereas others are destined to be one other Friendster.

“We’re not going to see social media disappear,” stated Mollica. “That is why it is essential to grasp how these networks can give you the results you want and the worth they convey over time.”

The EU has criticised Twitter for not providing enough information regarding its disinformation efforts.

It failed to submit a detailed report on how it was executing its obligations, in contrast with other signatories of Code of Practice on Disinformation such as Google Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok.

These reports should contain information such as how much advertising revenue each company prevented from going to disinformation actors; the amount or value of any political ads that were accepted, labelled and rejected; instances where manipulative behavior was detected like the creation and usage of fake accounts; information about fact-checking’s impact.

These reports will be submitted to the Transparency Centre, which is designed to provide visibility and accountability for platforms’ disinformation efforts.

There are now 38 signatories to the code, ranging from large tech platforms like Google and Meta to non-profits, fact-checking organisations and software companies.

The EU says that while reports on other platforms were 150 pages, Twitter’s report was just 80 pages. According to the EU, it was “short on data” and did not include information about commitments to support fact-checking communities.

We need to be more transparent and can’t rely solely on online information platforms for quality. They need to be independently verifiable,” says Věra Jourová, EU vice-president for values and transparency.

“It is disappointing to see the Twitter report fall behind other sources and I expect them to be more serious about their obligations arising from the Code.”

They are meant to be a starting point to show a state of play for the first time on how firms have implemented their code-related commitments. In July, the next batch of reports is expected.

The reports reveal that during the third quarter of 2022, Google prevented more than €13 million of advertising revenues from flowing to disinformation actors in the EU.

The figure for MediaMath, a demand-side platform that allows ad buyers better management of programmatic ads, was €18 million.

TikTok claimed it had removed 800,000.00 fake accounts over the same period. Meta, however, reported that about 28,000,000 fact-checking labels (on Facebook) and 1.7million on Instagram were used in December 2022.

Microsoft announced that its Newsguard partnership had resulted in news reliability ratings being displayed 84.211 times in its Edge browser discover pane in December 2022. Twitch reports that in October, Twitch blocked 270.921 botnets and fake accounts created through its platform, and also took steps to stop 32 impersonation and hijacking attempts.

Twitter’s brief report might not surprise given its recent announcement about removing third-party access to its Application Programming Interfaces.

While the company claims it used its Community Notes (which uses fact-checking volunteers) as its core report, they admit that not all member states have them.

We’ve reached out via Twitter to receive a response and will keep you updated.

On Wednesday, tech giant Microsoft officially ended support for Internet Explorer (IE), the web browser that once dominated the market – and even led to an antitrust case that brought on by the United States government.

Internet Explorer launched officially on August 16, 1995. The browser quickly won the “Browser Wars”, a late 1990s competition against Netscape.

Microsoft’s market dominance didn’t last long. Firefox’s 2002 release led to open-source browsers like Google Chrome. Google Chrome was launched in 2008. IE wasn’t over. But, perhaps Sir Winston Churchill would have said that it was just the end. Microsoft realized this and created Edge, an updated browser with more security and functionality that was launched in 2015.

“The demise of IE signifies a kind of formal end to early Internet days when more traffic was generated by accessing and aggregating content than advertisements. Charles King, a technology analyst at Pund-IT, said that Microsoft’s actions around IE (including bundling it together with Windows) led to Microsoft being charged with violating Sherman Antitrust Act.

King stated that although Microsoft avoided being dismantled, the victory it achieved in the Browser Wars’ wasn’t lasting and IE started losing ground to its competitors like Firefox and Google Chrome. King explained that the story of IE’s rise to prominence and subsequent decline to irrelevance is similar to other activities. The ride was fascinating with what would once have seemed a very unlikely end.

Twitter Responses to Browser History

Social media marked Wednesday’s end to official support of IE. Around 100,000 tweets were dedicated to the browser. Some people felt it as if they were losing a dear friend.

Morning Brew, the official twitter account for fin-tech news site Morning Brew (@MorningBrew), posted a picture of Woody from Pixar. The image stated that Woody was “so far partner,” and it added “Goodbyes Are Never Easy.” Microsoft officially shuts down Internet Explorer on Wednesday after 27 years.

Microsoft today announced that it is ending Internet Explorer after nearly 27 years. RIP,” Dexerto (@Dexerto) is a prominent influencer in gaming and esports news sites.

The LizaMinnelliOutlives humor Twitter account (@LiZaOutlives) tweeted that Liza Minnelli had outlived Internet Explorer Browser. Microsoft has officially closed it down after 27 years.

Other people were more harsh in their evaluation of IE’s contribution to browser history.

Malaysian news site MGAG (@My_MGAG), suggested “You will be missed Internet Explorer”, and shared a cartoon that said “It’s time to go Internet Explorer.”

Marques Brownlee, a web producer and video editor (@MKBHD), shared a similar theme, laughing at the joke, tweeting: “Today marks Microsoft’s official end for Internet Explorer.” We will miss you, Chrome’s #1 Installer of all Time.

@mn_google added “Respect++ to Internet Explorer!” He noted that it was impossible to download another browser without IE.

IE Joined The 27 Club – Or Did It?

Despite the fact that the browser didn’t actually make it to its 27th anniversary/birthday, which is still technically two months away, a few users suggested that IE has joined the infamous “27 club” of musicians, artists and actors who died at age 27. Blues singer Robert Johnson, Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix are among those in the 27 club.

“not [sic]”Internet Explorer joins the 27 Club,” tweeted @mountbellyache

Twitter user @chrisforfree added, “Oh no! IE joined our 27 club!”

Internet Explorer joins the 27 club. Statcounter shows a dramatic drop in desktop IE usage (blue line – we won’t even get into the mobile browser dominance of visits these days). Bye IE, unlike Kurt, Jimi, Jim, Amy et al. Evan Kypreos (@EvanKypreos) remarked, “You didn’t rock me world.”

TwitterJavaScript is not available.

@willkanellos said that IE seemed well past its prime “unlike other 27 clubs.”

It appears that IE has been removed from our browser history.

ETwitter is in a very similar position for most of the 20th century. A company is in a difficult situation and must consider selling. Twitter was open to receiving offers from Yahoo and Facebook during the 2000s. A few years later came a Google outreach and in 2016, a Disney offer. Facebook’s $500 million proposition probably It stands out most because it is the most thoughtful of all the companies, and arrived at the same time as Jack Dorsey, the CEO, had just left (sound familiar? Questions arose about the possibility that the company would live up its economic potential.

“All of the acquisition events for Twitter have always been around other board drama or changes in CEO leadership, like, you know, the one that’s happening now,” recalls Jason Goldman, a founding executive at Twitter. He spent almost a decade on Twitter’s board and was there for the Yahoo, Facebook and Google bids. “Twitter has the kind of cultural resonance that much larger companies wish they had, a bigger cultural footprint than the size of the business suggests,” Goldman says.

Today, Twitter’s back in trouble, and maybe it’s time to add another would-be suitor to the list, like say, Microsoft or SalesForce. Let me explain: Twitter right now has an untested new CEO, Parag Agrawal, trying to make the business grow—to mend that gap between commercial potential and cultural significance. He’s contending with the advances of the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. Musk is willing to buy Twitter for $54.20/share, which represents a slight premium over what the stock traded in recent trading, and a valuation of $43 Billion. (It is delivered in classic Musk fashion: “420” at the end of his share-price figure is a deliberate reference to April 20, a day marijuana enthusiasts view as a holiday.) In making his overture, Musk expressed skepticism about the company’s current management. He said he wanted Twitter to be “the platform for free speech around the globe” and added: “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

Although Twitter may not be keen to offer the deal to Musk, it might soon run out of options to defend him. And if Musk doesn’t complete the deal, he may have unintentionally opened the door for other acquisitive parties to wander in and launch their own bids.

Twitter doesn’t have the protection offered by the dual-share classes that Meta, Snap and Alphabet have, which prevent raiders showing up on a corporate doorstep. Twitter could adopt a poison pill strategy, selling stock at a discount to dilute Musk’s stake. In doing so, Agrawal might walk away with control of Twitter, but it’s unclear how much of Twitter might be left after such a share sale puts a dent in the company’s market value.

To escape from Musk, Twitter may need what’s called a white knight in the buyout game, a well-capitalized suitor it can live with more easily than the mercurial electric-car mogul. The most famous example of such a strategy was Warren Buffett’s 1989 saving of Gillette, when he bought $600 million of preferred stock to end a hostile takeover attempt by Coniston Partners.

Buffett’s not coming into play with Twitter. In fact, when you consider who might be able to ride to the rescue for the social media platform, it’s a pretty short list. Consider past suitors. Facebook/Meta is likely out because it’s the subject of an ongoing antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. Google faces a Justice Department review. Yahoo? Most likely. Disney certainly has the money and likely wouldn’t encounter much flack from regulators. Bob Iger is no longer the Disney CEO and has nothing to write about his thoughts about Twitter buying in 2019.

“Twitter was a potentially powerful platform for us, but I couldn’t get past the challenges that would come with it,” Iger writes. “They included how to manage hate speech, and making fraught decisions regarding freedom of speech…and the general rage and lack of civility.” (Many of those problems still plague Twitter today.)

So who could bail out Twitter? Here’s the thinking from Wall Street: Salesforce could afford it and co-CEO Marc Benioff once gave purchasing Twitter serious consideration before changing his mind. Salesforce’s other co-CEO, Bret Taylor, is certainly familiar with Twitter. He’s actually the chairman of Twitter’s board. But it’s unclear whether that would make Salesforce more or less likely to pursue Twitter.

After chasing and then abandoning a deal worth $45 billion for Pinterest, PayPal has emerged as a serious contender. Though the PayPal-Pinterest tie-up made more sense when you thought about Pinterest less as a social network than a social shopping site—with PayPal having plenty of insight about checkout transactions.

Wall Street sources suggest that Microsoft is another potential contender. According to Wall Street sources, the company did not comment on whether or not it was looking into Musk-Twitter. However, the company has indicated a willingness to purchase a social network company recently. Although it was eager to acquire TikTok for roughly $50 billion, the Trump administration intervened and halted its efforts. Moreover, Microsoft’s $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn has already proven it can turn a quixotic social network into a money machine. According to Statista (a data analytics company), LinkedIn’s revenues have risen from $2 billion to $8 billion when Microsoft bought it in 2016, to more than $9 billion today.

“Microsoft has added a tremendous amount of value to Linkedin,” says Brent Thill, an analyst at Jefferies. “And if you think about it, Microsoft would add professionalism. trust and respect.” True enough: a Microsoft offer probably wouldn’t come partly framed as a reference to weed culture, which, oddly enough, counts as only the latest strange development in Twitter’s tortured history with trying to sell itself.

Nearly a decade ago, Microsoft created “Metro” as it was preparing to launch Windows 8 and its Windows Phone 7. It was a modern interface – according to Jacob Miller, a UX designers for Microsoft – that was meant to appeal to “your computer-illiterate little sister, for grandpas who don’t know how to use that computer ‘dofangle’ thingy, and for mom who just wants to look up apple pie recipes.”

The interface was created for casual users. It was more for content consumption and creation than creation. Windows 8.0 was not loved by all users. However, few people ever used the term “Metro”. Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet columnist, reported that Microsoft had problems with the Metro Group in Europe in 2012. The software giant was either unable or unwilling to address the brand issues.

This meant that developers, publishers, device manufacturers, and other parties involved with Windows 8 had to rewrite documentation and apps. Metro could not be mentioned again, much like a book.

Facebook could now be facing a similar dilemma. The social network was looking to make a facelift that would rebrand the company “Meta.”

What’s With The M&Ms From The Tech World?

The problem is that Meta PC founders filed to trademark “Meta” in August for computers, laptops and tablets. Joe Darger and Zack Shutt, the company founders, said they had been operating Meta PC for less than a year. However, they filed the documents to formally trademark it.

Shutt & Darger appear to have the trademark, although it has yet to be granted.

“Meta PC filed their trademark applications a few months back in Class 9,” Clarissa Harvey Esq., trademark attorney at Digital.com explained via email.

“The application is still under review, but it appears that they are claiming Nov. 1, 2020. Harvey explained that federal trademark registrations are only valid for the specific international classes and the goods or services you pay for in your trademark application. “In addition to the general identification of these classes, the trademark owners also need to describe each product or service they want their trademark to be applied to. Meta PC’s description for goods includes “Computers and laptops and portable computers”, “Tablets, laptops and tablets”, “Networking equipment, software, server components, software, hardware, networking equipment, software and all related accessories. Specifically, keyboards, mice wireless keyboards and mice, speakers and external hard drive backup devices, wireless cards, wireless routers wireless monitors, chairs, and wireless air cards.

It seems that the trademark application was well handled by the duo. The pair stated that they would be happy to give up their brand if Mark Zuckerberg or his company paid them $20 million. They argue that giving up the trademark would mean they have to rebrand their company.

However, they have seen a 5,000% increase in their followers on social media channels. Although it’s unclear what that actually means in dollars, since followers aren’t enough for a company selling PCs to make ends meet, it is certainly free exposure.

This is a replaying of Microsoft’s errors. We might ask how this happened.

“Should Facebook have done better and done more research/due diligence prior to announcing a new brand? Charles King, a Pund-IT technology analyst, stated that in a word, “Yes.” “The fact that another company appears to own the ‘Meta” name/brand makes Facebook’s Meta rollout and Mark Zuckerberg’s awkward demo look like something the company pulled from thin air or a handy orifice.”

The timing could not have been better for the social network.

“Following weeks full of bad news, including Francis Haugen’s testimony to Congress, and The Wall Street Journal‘s publication of embarrassing ‘Facebook File” internal documents, you would think that the company would be walking on eggshells to avoid embarrassment, and/or further controversy,” added King. “Facebook instead is following a course that is likely leave many wondering if Zukerberg’s company has any clue how to plan and implement long-term strategies or diffuse major crises.”