‘GrokX’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Elon Musk is not very adept in business if he can’t see what is obvious — he could use Twitter’s established userbase to corner the consumer-facing AI market.

Now, there are signs he’s thinking about this because an Grok prompt is now organic to the X / Twitter app. But why not collapse all these features into one whereby you could absolutely not avoid seeing Grok when you tweeted. There would be one central hub UX whereby you would have the option to use Grok when before you wanted to tweet something.

Or something.

If you made Grok free and sold ads against people’s use of it like you do now with tweets then, there you go, you make a lot of money. AND you get a lot of buzz from the fact that about 200 million users use Grok as their native AI without having to go anywhere else.

It’s a very simple solution to a number of structural problems facing Twitter at the moment. Change the name to GrokX and get all that buzz AND you instantly become a name brand AI service for average people who use Twitter on a regular basis but only vaguely even know of the other AI options out there.

But what do I know. Just because it’s obvious and easy to do, doesn’t mean anyone will listen to me.

Could Elon Musk Pull ‘X’ Off?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that Elon Musk has changed Twitter’s name, I can begin to imagine a scenario whereby he might manage to turn “X” into the “everything app.” He has vision, if nothing else.

But there is a huge obstacle to this particular situation — AI.

All this talk of turning X into the “everything app” seems very 2012, very passe. The AI era is careening towards us at an alarming rate and I would suggest that by late 2024 the effects of AI will start to be seen in the economy. All this talk of social media will be rather moot.

There was a moment in time when if Musk was doing what he’s doing now with Twitter / X that it really could put a “dent in the universe” but, lulz, I have my doubts now. In fact, if Musk really wants to do something interesting with X, I would propose he made an AI prompt native to the service. Now THAT would be a way to propel X to next-level status.

It definitely will be interesting to see how things play out. It’s at least possible that there really is a -very narrow – window of opportunity for Musk to transform Twitter / X into an “everything app.”

I still have my doubts, however.

Turns Out, Everyone Online Just Wants 2012 Twitter Again

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s definitely interesting how people are getting so excited about Threads when it’s just a less-feature-rich Twitter clone that happens to be fused to Instagram. That’s it. There’s nothing all that great about it –but for one thing: it has a a lot of people (already) the vibe is really good.

Just my opinion, folks.

That’s it — that’s all Threads has going for it — people and vibes.

It’s not like there’s any particularly interesting feature set that might make people choose it over Twitter. I mean, I’ve come up with a really cool, really feature rich social media platform that no one cares about, so lulz.

Anyway.

I suspect everyone should really just enjoy the good vibes while they last. Put enough humans in the same space virtually and all hell is going to break loose eventually. If I had to make a bet, I would suspect that it’s probably going to be Trump coming to the service that ultimately turns it into just another Twitter. Or, it might be a lot more gradual.

It could be that all the smug liberal infotainment types spooging their pants over Threads will gradually realize they hate it just as it becomes a Twitter clone on a vibe basis, too. People are so dumb. They act like This Is The End of Social Media History and they have nothing to worry about ever again when it comes to how hateful social media is. All they have to do is just use Threads and they will have an eternal 2012 to enjoy.

Ugh.

Burn, Reddit, Burn

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I got no beef with Reddit. Live long and prosper, you Usenet knock off. But I do think it’s telling that if both Twitter and Reddit implode that my personal vision for a service that uses updated Usenet UX / UI concepts becomes something more viable.

If I was smart enough — which I’m not — I would somehow figure out a way to use AI to design my dream platform that is based on Groups and allows for pull page posts and robust threading.

And…yet…that moment has passed. It’s just not viable anymore. We’re now in the age of XR, crypto and AI. Lulz. No one gives a shit about something as quaint and prosaic as a social media platform…based on a 30 year old concept no one cares about anymore.

Anyway. I do wish there was something a bit more like Usenet out there to use. I think by the time Reddit came around I was just too old to be willing to wade into its many subcultures. And I was so weened on Usenet back in the day that neither Twitter nor Reddit really appealed to me.

I’m old and I hate it.

Godspeed, Reddit. I hope you figure out all your API bullshit.

Could Twitter Morph Into A Chatbot Service?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve given it some reflection and it definitely seems as though Space Karen could surprise us all and do something pretty amazing with Twitter. At its heart, Twitter is a text-based system with a prompt. It seems obvious that you could somehow rig up a chatbot natively and organically to the service’s existing UX and do something astonishing.

I’m not smart enough to figure out the specifics just yet — like, how you would make money . But imagine you sit down in front of Twitter 2.0 and instead of turning to Google to answer a question, you ask a Twitter LLM whatever it is you want. Just a back-of-the-envelope imagining of this concept suggests that the possibilities are endless.

If you could make a Twitter LLM compelling enough, people might even be willing to pay for it. Or something. I still am very dubious about the idea that you’ll be able to turn LLMs into subscription services. That seems like a daydream of the elite who don’t want to have to put up with something as pedestrian as ads.

But if you could fuse the existing Twitter userbase with a LLM, it’s a very intriguing idea. For no other reason than Twitter would be adding to its existing service, rather than having to eat its own, like, say Google. All of this is fast moving target, so it could all go a lot of different ways.

Apparently, Space Karen has already incorporated an AI company, so as such there might be some ready synergy between it and Twitter a lot sooner than one might otherwise think.

Is Twitter Dying? And What Happens If It Dies?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the mysteries of the tech world at the moment is what, exactly, Space Karen is up to with Twitter. While sometimes it feels like Space Karen might just pull the plug on the whole operation out of pique, more likely he would turn around and sell Twitter at a massive loss.

But, as I’ve said before, there is definitely a window of opportunity for someone to come up with a better mouse trap in the near-realtime discussion space. But it’s extremely narrow. You would have to strike almost immediately — things like AI and AR / VR are about to dramatically revolutionize everything.

I still think that if you cherrypicked the best UX elements of the old Usenet discussion service, you could really rock the world in a very quick manner. But, alas, it’s dawned on me that I should just shut up and work on my novel when it comes to shit like that.

It could be that even if Twitter “dies” it will all be moot because we’ll be wearing Apple VR / AR headsets that replace how we interact with media altogether. Or, hell, we might even be wearing mindcaps as far as I know.

There’s just no juice in social media. There’s definitely a need for a Twitter-like service without the baggage of Space Karen, but it could be that, like most things in life, we’ll just muddle through. But I do think that we’re in the process of lurching forward into a new, uncertain technological future that will change the everyday life of the average person in ways we can only barely begin to imagine.

Buckle up.

What All These Twitter Clones Get Wrong

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are, at last count, now two viable Twitter clones vying for the attention the many people fed up with Elon Musk’s shenanigans. Both Post and Spoutable seem to believe that the path to success is to lean into being a “safe space” for center-Left people.

From what I can tell, however, both services are kind of missing the point. It seems what people want is not a “woke” version of Twitter, but Twitter without Elon Musk. They have certain end-user experience expectations and if they don’t get that, they complain — even if they’re center-Left.

For instance, Spoutable, which is, in my opinion, the Twitter clone that clones Twitter the best, is apparently having a big problem with well-meaning people wanting to post things the service considers “porn.” So, you the squeaky wheels of sex workers and erotica writers screaming at the top of their lungs about how much Spoutable sucks….just as Spoutable is trying to pounce on fleeing Twitter users.

The solution is to give people what they want when it comes to Twitter — an almost no holds barred freeforall where you just come to expect that you’re going to have to block half a dozen people before dawn for being totally, completely insane and malicious.

So, I’m really enjoying Spoutable, but I’m a bit concerned that it will ultimately be just another social media flash in the pan.

There is some chatter about some former Twitter employees working on their own Twitter clone that I have a lot of hope for. If anyone can get a Twitter clone right, it should be them.

I will note in passing, of course, that I still think one could cherry pick the UX principles of the old Usenet News to create a service that would be a lot better than Twitter and would, in fact, explode with popularity if you just were able to implement it.

But I fear that particular delusional daydream of mine is just not going to happen.

A Native OpenAI ChatGPT Prompt Built Into Twitter Is An Intriguing Idea

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I just saw on Twitter an interesting use case for OpenAI ChatGPT — native integration into Twitter itself. I say this because people are already used to the Twitter prompt so the ability to ask ChatGPT questions directly from Twitter would be a very smooth addition to the Twitter UX.

It would make a lot of sense for Musk to add ChatGPT to Twitter.

Given that Elon Musk has a connection to both Twitter and OpenAI, this is a gimmie. It’s something that once ChatGPT is far more scalable could happen pretty much with the flip of a switch.

As an aside, it’s interesting how similar people’s speculation surrounding ChatGPT is identical to what people talked about with the late, great Blab. Everyone assumes that it will be pay-to-play soon enough. In fact, some people are pretty much begging it to be that way.

This raises a very interesting issue — what if, just like with the Internet, the actual service itself is free and the money is made from the things you can do with it. This is what caused the death of the online services of the 1990s — the Internet was open and it was, unto itself, the “killer app” that everyone seemed to believe was going to happen at some point in the future.

There is a lot I still don’t know about what is going to happen with chatbot technology. At the moment, it definitely seems like it’s going to be very disruptive — the only question is the degree. But I also don’t know if there will be ONE AGI or a multitude.

The whole thing is very intriguing.

Twitter Killer Use Case: ‘Advertisers’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, let’s go through how an advertiser might use this Twitter killer that I’ve come up with. To me, the main appeal of this hypothetical service is you have a lot more freedom in what type of ads you push into the platform because they can pretty much be the same size as a Webpage. AND you have the option of using traditional banner ad sizes within Posts in the system as well.

Groups
Anyone would be able to create a Group about anything you liked. It would be attached to your account ID, which would allow for redundancy, which would allow for scalability. This is a very flexible nature of the service — at least in this specific aspect. You would have to have a robust discovery feature for that to work, of course.
Threads
These would be presented much like a traditional blog inside of a Group. This would allow for huge page-sized advertisement. There would also be a subthread feature which would be pretty cool.
Posts
What would be interesting about this would be you would have inline, collaborative editing like you might find with a Google Doc. You would have, say, six people able to inline edit a Post before a new Post in the Thread is spawned because you would run out of colors.

So, here’s how an advertiser might use my Twitter Killer.

Remember, using their account, they can create as many different Groups as they like about whatever aspect of the service or widget that they’re selling. AND, what’s more, they can control who can Post into the Groups they’ve created.

So, if you were a major advertiser, you could have a variety of Groups devoted to discussion about any number of not just a widget, but an element of a widget that you felt people might really want to talk about. And also remember there would be an Excerpt feature that would work with a Feed feature like you might see with Facebook or Twitter, which would cut through the service to allow people to know when a new Thread or Post was created in Groups they might be monitoring that were run by people they might be monitoring.

This is a far more powerful brand tool than either Reddit or Usenet — or even Facebook, for that matter.

I’m Not Prepared To Count Elon Musk Out Just Yet When It Comes To Twitter

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a lot of talk these days that Elon Musk is going to drive Twitter into a ditch, declare bankruptcy and then walk away. While that may happen, I’m not yet prepared to write his chances of success off entirely.

Elon Musk

He has a track record of (turbulent) success to the point that it’s possible he’s going to pull this off — maybe. We’ll wake up a year from now and all these fanciful things that Musk wants to do with Twitter will be taken for granted as a part of life.

I say all this because the more I see how Musk operates, the more I see myself. I would do the exact same thing if I was Musk thrown into such a situation. I would make a lot of mistakes at first, but once I got my sealegs, I would shock everyone with how well I did.

But, then, I’m just a loser in the middle of nowhere, so I don’t know if anyone should take the above as any sort of ringing endorsement of Musk. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how all of this works out. It could be that social media is a whole different bird than SpaceX or Tesla. It could be that being an eccentric is so off putting to the userbase of Twitter that it’s inevitable that someone will swoop in with a better mousetrap.

And, yet, I’m just not prepared to assume this is the case. I’m taking a wait and see approach.