I am moving out of my second home this year. This time it is the home my Mum and stepdad have lived in for a number of years. Any place Mum was, was a home for all of her children and I spent some time here, including 3 months in 2021 working. Saying goodbye to the house is another moment that's emotional as well as being time consuming. Far more time consuming than I had considered.
I started with moving so I will continue there. Over the last year I have spent a fair bit of time here, looking after my stepdads animals, sorting out the will as an executor and helping with other odds and ends. Could I have done more, undoubtedly but I could easily have done far less too. One of the many things I have supported with is going through Mum's stuff.
We had sorted out so much throughout the year but it was apparent how little we had sorted when it came to starting to pack. From all of her baking and cooking equipment to trinkets and Guinness memorabilia. It's been a treasure trove of memories and whilst they are tinged with sadness these memories have seen far more smiles than there has ever been before, from both my stepdad and me.
All of this is a journey and I know my stepdad is grateful of the support. It's a hard balancing act. This is the first time he has done so much of the adulting required to buy a house and organise a move. This has led to a few moments and that's OK. We have got through them and our relationship is strong. The point of this is that high stress situations cause reactions. Both of us have reacted and both of us have quickly tempered our reactions to resolve situations through clarity of communication.
9 months of blogging. That's insane. I genuinely didn't know I had it in me. The first thing to say is thank you for your support. There are 355 people other than yourself signed up and that amazes me. There is a lot about this space that I would never of imagined, but writing a blog (essentially it's a bit like my web3 journal) is definitely one of them. I have learnt a lot and obstinately decided to to it 'my way' in other areas.
Committing to creating and releasing regular content is a lot. I thought I knew how much but I really didn't. There were a few things I didn't comprehend. Holidays, and that means public holidays for you and normal holidays for me. How much of a struggle it can be to articulate and write down thoughts. How difficult it is to offer insight and opinion without sounding like I am telling. And when to stop waffling!
I would love for more time to offer a genuine newsletter alongside my blog, one that can elevate and support you, my readers and NFT holders. Right now it is just not a possibility, maybe when I find my new home I will find some more time, although it is highly likely I will find another pretty/shiny distraction!
There isn't a huge amount of flow to today's blog, but I accepted that before I wrote it. I have a few topics I want to touch on. Twitter being the final one. I watched a video of the BBC interviewing Elon about Twitter and I would recommend that anyone using Twitter to create or share content gives this video a watch (it was also on Twitter Spaces). There is a lot of insight into Twitter as it was, is and will be. And even more insight into Elon and his motivations.
Approach this video with an open mind. Both from the perspective of Elon and the BBC correspondent. It's very easy to think that all the BBC correspondent wants to do is trap Elon on hate speech and moderation. On the flip side it would be very easy to see Elon treating the interview like a joke. One thing I will mention is that at times Elon talks to the BBC correspondent like he is an equal (i.e. runs the BBC and is in charge of the decision making). Just to clarify why I say this, there are times when the BBC correspondent cannot answer Elon's questions because he is not a decision maker at the BBC, and from my perspective answering could place his job at risk.
They touch on a huge range of topics and I could not cover the entire interview in one blog, let alone a section of one. One of the key things that get mentioned is advertisers using the platform. Elon insinuates advertising revenue is almost back to where it was. The point he makes is if Apple and Disney are happy to advertise on Twitter then Twitter be doing something right. Anecdotally I have to agree. This has led to revenue being increased and Twitter getting close to break even, according to Elon.
Some numbers because why not. When Elon took over he said Twitter was losing $3B a year and had $1B in cashflow. That gave Twitter 120 days to survive. Staff were cut from just under 8000 to Twitter currently having in the region of 1500 staff. Twitter has just achieved 8 billion user minutes daily and that is the most use the platform has ever seen.
8 billion user minutes is every single person on the planet using Twitter for about one minute per day. That is an insane number and almost incomprehensible. I saw this representation of big numbers recently. 1 million seconds is about 11.5 days. 1 billion seconds is approximately 31.7 years. This gave me a different understanding of how big a billion is and to add a little more context. The daily use of Twitter equates to approximately 253.6 years in the total time that humans spend on the app.
I had to work through that a couple of times, and make sure Elon said 8 Billion minutes. He did. There are plenty of points in the interview that I could discuss for hours and probably will. I definitely want to write an article on the interview. I found a 57 min interview on YouTube and have attached it below. It was also recorded on Twitter Spaces. And fair play to both the BBC and Elon for doing that.
Here is the link to the Twitter Spaces - BBC & Elon Musk Twitter Spaces
My very brief summary. Elon seems to want an open forum for news and discussion and he wants accountability alongside it. He wants Twitter to be humanities town hall and he wants it to be as accurate as possible. All of this is involves things like not only letting journalists have a blue tick. Is thoughts are this adds trust to a platform. Twitter is doing what so many people in the Web3 space want to happen. Don't let sensationalism tell you otherwise. Not every change will work, not every change will be perfect and the changes will keep coming. Of course they are profit orientated, it is naïve to think otherwise.
He has been incredibly change heavy in the last 6 months and understandably. Twitter was a bit of a dinosaur and needed updating drastically to remain relevant. He has made the algorithm opensource, what other social media would do that? He also talks about subscriber features and being able to add pay walls for your content on Twitter.
If you are worried about Twitter. Don't be. It's reduced costs, streamlined processes, improved the core algorithm by up to 80% in terms of computing power with one less data centre. Twitter is better than it has ever been in my opinion and it is only going to get better. On that note, there are some new features being added to Twitter Blue, check them out below.
Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable…
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And this is it for another week. I have no idea what next week's blog looks like. We have to be out of this property on Thursday and I am sofa surfing for a couple of nights to make sure I have secure internet for work. There will be something.
Thank you for reading and choosing to spend your time with me. It means a huge amount and still baffles me in the most incredible of ways. I hope you have a fantastic Friday and an incredible weekend. Until next week.
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