Elon, Reddit, AI, and More

Happy Sunday!

This week, we’ve got thoughts on the Elon-ified future of Twitter, why Reddit should take on search, and what you should do after you launch a new product. Plus, more thoughts on the AI-enabled future of writing, and an AdTech exec brings tech sensibilities to an unsexy industry. 

Let’s jump in! 

How Elon Wins

In his bid to take over Twitter, Elon loaded the company with over $13B in debt. That means he has to find a way to increase Twitter’s cash flow—fast. The question is how does he do that?  The levers currently at the company’s disposal—ad revenue, subscriptions—won’t be enough. 

The answer, according to Evan, is that Elon and whoever is left at Twitter need to reinvent what it means to be a consumer internet company. The way Evan sees it, Twitter is a perfect case study of the shifting power dynamics of the ad market and how to make money in this era of the internet. In this post, he lays out why. 

Read.

Reddit Should Drop Everything to Work on Search

If you know, you know: if you want to find something worthwhile on Google, append the word "Reddit" to your query. In an era of sponsored posts and gamified SEO, Reddit has built something vanishingly rare for the search universe: trust. 

So what is Reddit doing with this invaluable resource? So far, it looks like nothing much. While the company chases trends like NFTs and follows in Facebook’s tried-and-true footsteps, they’re leaving a prime revenue opportunity on the table. In this post, Som Mohapatra makes the case for why Reddit should drop everything else and work on search. Because in the era of big tech, trust is monetizable.