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Ed Zitron, CEO of media and public relations group EZPR, tells The New Abnormal’s Andy Levy that Elon Musk is driving the platform formally known as Twitter into the ground and is one step away from it going completely under.
Now that many big advertisers have walked away over Musk’s antisemitic comments, he says the problem for X comes when those advertisers stop posting and sports pull away.
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“That will be the real death knell for Twitter. I think that what will kill this website truly is if sports leaves it,” he said. “If Bluesky or Threads can truly capture the posting of the sports realm, Twitter is over. It’s done. Because right now, really Bluesky needs video. If Bluesky had video, I think it would be a compelling competitor. And Threads is awful, which is the only advantage that X/Twitter/Rate-My-Nudes, whatever it is called at the moment actually has.”
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“People want to see what the latest brand has to say about brand things. It’s strange, and it feels, when you see these posts and you see people interacting with them sincerely, it feels like you’ve kind of entered a new world that you don’t like. Yeah. But that is how social media works. And if these brands just give up on posting, I mean, that’s bad, but really I do mean it, it is going to be the sports, it’s going to be the live reaction things that kill this website.”
Zitron, who writes the Where’s Your Ed At substack, said that we could well see the world’s richest man lose his title due to his terrible mismanagement of X.
“The only way to fix Twitter right now, and I really mean this, is for him to leave and never return. He needs to borderline delete his account. He needs to walk away and he needs to give it to Magic Johnson or someone completely inoffensive. But he won’t do it because he can’t admit that every choice he’s made has been bad,” he said. “He blames everyone for his problems other than himself. Even the antisemitic comment, he said it was bad, but then didn’t delete it and then told the advertisers to go fuck themselves. He doesn’t care.”
“Twitter is burning a hole in his pocket. He may be the richest man alive, but guess what? He doesn’t have unlimited funds. He will have to sell Tesla stock. Right? Or he could take SpaceX public. But that I think is impossible before 2027.”
Plus! The New Abnormal team lampoons new House Speaker, and “wee little psychopath” Mike Johnson, who believes that God told him to be Speaker.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
