2023-08-14 09:24:00
Will the duel between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk take place? The billionaires, respectively owners of Meta (Facebook) and X (ex-Twitter), have been talking regarding a mixed martial arts (MMA) fight since the end of June, the date of August 26 having even been suggested. Failing to have concretized their joust in the immediate future, the two men are torn apart especially by interposed platform.
« I think we can all agree that Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on wrote Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday on Threads, a direct competitor to X, launched last month by Meta.
“I offered a real date (…) Elon did not confirm the date, then said he had to have surgery, and now he is asking for a training session in my garden instead” , he continued.
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Musk fantasizes regarding a fight in Rome…
Elon Musk immediately replied on his X platform: “ Zuck is a wimp “. Then he announced that he would be going to Silicon Valley on Monday before boasting: ” I can’t wait to knock on her door tomorrow “. In response to an X user who suspected him of not being so determined for the fight anymore, Elon Musk wrote: “ He (Zuckerberg) can’t eat at Chick-fil-A, that would be cannibalism in reference to a chain of restaurants serving poultry.
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg challenge each other to a duel: behind the publicity stunt, a real rivalry
The idea of this hypothetical fight seemed to take shape on Friday August 11. Elon Musk has indeed announced on X a kind of peplum in Italy. ” I spoke to the Italian Prime Minister and the Minister of Culture. They gave their agreement for an extraordinary place “, he said, adding a single word in a second message: “ Gladiator “. Elon Musk also spoke on Friday of a ” minor operation ” for a ” problem with (his) right shoulder blade rubbing once morest (his) ribs ». « Recovery will only take a few months “, he added.
… but the Italian authorities say no
Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano confirmed he spoke to Elon Musk regarding “ how to organize a great charity event evoking history “. On the other hand, he indicated that no match ” would not be held in Rome “, thus ruling out the possibility of a fight at the Colosseum, mentioned since the end of June by Elon Musk.
« I love this sport and I’ve been ready to fight since Elon challenged me “replied Mark Zuckerberg on Threads later in the day. On the other hand, the two billionaires do not seem to be in agreement on the terms of this game. Mark Zuckerberg explained that he wanted to collaborate ” with professional organizations “like for example the UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts league, to frame this possible duel.
The two tech giants have clashed for years over their opposing views of the world, from politics to artificial intelligence. The animosity between the two men went up a notch with the launch in early July by Mark Zuckerberg and his Meta group (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) of Threads, a direct competitor to Twitter, now X, suffering for several months from decisions contested strategies.
Twitter ad revenue plummets
Twitter saw its ad revenue halve. ” We are still in a negative cash flow situation, due to an approximately 50% drop in revenue and the heavy debt load “, thus confirmed Elon Musk Saturday, August 12, on his social network. He did not specify in how long this decline had taken place. ” We need to get to positive cash flow before we have the luxury of doing anything else “, he added.
Twitter has completed its transformation into X, following a crazy week
It was common knowledge that the group had seen its accounts deteriorate rapidly, even though it was no longer required to publish them following delisting on the New York Stock Exchange in November. The changes in the functioning of this social network since its takeover by Elon Musk have upset users and advertisers, causing it to lose audience.
One of the emblematic decisions was to make the blue tick which until then certified reliable accounts payable and accessible to any user. The result has been to make Twitter more confusing, with paid accounts promoted by the algorithm being owned by anonymous people, and/or set up to spread false information.
A challenged strategy…
In May, Insider Intelligence said Twitter was set to earn less than $3 billion in 2023, almost a third less than in 2022. The billionaire made other announcements that were displeased. Thus, at the beginning of July, he had announced his intention to restrict – officially on a provisional basis – the reading of tweets to 10,000 per day for paying accounts, 1,000 for others and even 500 for new accounts.
The aim is to limit the action of bots (accounts operated by computers), but more active users should suffer from these limitations. A few days later, a new announcement that destabilized Twitter followers: the TweetDeck application, very popular with information professionals, was going to be reserved for paying accounts from August.
More and more Internet users are convinced of the advisability of migrating to a competitor, Threads, launched on July 5 by Meta, Facebook’s parent company. In five days, without being able to be offered in the European Union for legal reasons, it reached 100 million users. Earlier this year, the artificial intelligence application ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, took two months to reach this threshold of active users.
…which benefits Threads, its direct competitor
According to data analytics firm Quiver Quantitative, Threads had 112 million users as of Saturday. For the firm Data.ai, the threshold of 150 million has already been exceeded, with India in the lead. Threads is seen as threatening no less than the existence of Twitter, which has an estimated 200-350 million active users. Meta can indeed count on synergies with Instagram, which has some two billion active users.
Threads, which is not currently hosting ads, is so similar to its bluebird rival that Elon Musk, via attorney for Twitter’s parent company X Corp, wrote to Meta that he suspected him of stealing industrial secrets and infringing intellectual property rights.
Facebook’s parent company, headed by Mark Zuckerberg, is notably accused of having recruited ” tens from former Twitter users, reads this letter published by the news website. Traffic lights. Meta, which has denied these accusations, reserves the blue tick for accounts it deems reliable, without requiring a paid subscription.
(With AFP)
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