SOCIAL
5 Twitter Updates that Elon Musk Should Consider to Maximize Revenue at the App
Elon Musk continues to mess around with elements of Twitter, switching things off and cutting functionalities, along with staff, which may or may not ultimately lead to more significant problems for the app over time.
On balance, I would bet on Elon eventually working things out and stabilizing the app. It just might take a while to get there – but while we’re quick to criticize Musk’s various schemes and plans, it is also worth noting that he’s trying to reform the way that the business operates for good reason.
Elon paid $44 billion for Twitter, with a portion of that coming from a collection of equity partners, including Oracle, Sequoia Capital, Binance and Andreessen Horowitz. Those partners, of course, want to see return on their investment, while Musk will also reportedly have to pay over $1 billion per year in interest on the more than $20 billion in loans he took out to finalize the Twitter deal.
Twitter, meanwhile, according to Musk, is (or was) losing $4 million per day, due to rising costs and declining ad spend, the latter of which has potentially declined even further since Musk took over, with various big agencies advising clients to pause their Twitter ad spend due to the potential for changes to its policies.
Essentially, Musk needs to make money, and fast, which is likely why his $8 checkmark subscription plan feels so rushed. Because it is – but at the same time, the reality is that Elon needs to stabilize and rationalize the business, quickly.
Which may not be possible – but rather than simply pointing out the flaws in Musk’s approach, it’s worth also considering what Twitter could do to make money, and revamp the platform in line with business need.
This is a separate question from Elon’s ‘free speech’ changes, which may or may not happen – what features and/or elements could Twitter implement that would actually improve the platform, while also generating money for the business?
Here are some ideas:
Business subscriptions
The most obvious opportunity is a business subscription program, where brands could pay a certain amount – potentially in varying tiers – to gain access to additional Twitter features, designed specifically for business use.
Twitter’s already taken some steps on this front with its Professional Profiles, which it’s been gradually evolving over time, but there are other elements that Twitter could also incorporate into a more comprehensive business package.
Improved analytics, for example, would be valuable. Twitter actually downgraded its analytics tools back in 2020, removing various insight elements, including demographic info, from its display. You can still access basic audience and tweet analytics data, but Twitter is far from the best platform for analyzing your audience, in order to maximize your strategy in the app.
Which seems like a problem, and one that Twitter is uniquely placed to solve, and that brands would indeed pay for.
What if, as noted by Hubspot back in 2016, Twitter added follower analysis over time, so that you could track follower increases in line with specific tweets, or influence analysis, highlighting the most influential amplifications of your tweets. Hubspot also suggested conversation tracking, so you could identify key tweet trends as they evolve, and ’buzz tracking’, to monitor conversations around your brand and staff in the app.
Various third-party tools also include in-depth competitor analysis and performance tracking, which you can’t get on Twitter itself, while management platforms like Hootsuite, which has over 200k paying subscribers, are largely used for tweet scheduling.
If Twitter could provide variations of these types of analytics and scheduling tools, in one incorporated platform, that could be a significant value add, and brands could then pay to access, say, the basic Professional Profiles with enhanced brand display options, or Professional Profiles and improved analytics, and maybe a top tier of Professional Profiles with advanced analytics tools.
Twitter already facilitates data analysis via Gnip, which is pricey, and likely does place a higher data load on its systems (another cost consideration). But this seems like a key opportunity, and if Twitter priced this right, and offered variable access options for different brands, that seems like an immediate way to raise funds, using the platform’s existing resources.
The question then is how many brands are using Twitter, and how much would this be worth for the company?
There are no concrete stats on how many brands have an active Twitter presence, but I would assume that at least 50 million of the app’s 238 million daily active users are brands or professionals associated with brand accounts.
Let’s say you charge variable tiers of $5 to use Professional Profiles, $15 for basic analytics, then $30 at the top end. At base level alone, you’re looking at $250 million per month ($750m per quarter), which is well in line with Elon’s target of half of Twitter’s revenue coming from subscriptions.
That’s a very basic estimate, but seems like a better opportunity than charging users for a blue tick.
Audience segmentation and access
Another element which Musk’s team is exploring is paid DMs, and the capacity to reach Twitter users with direct promotions, for a fee.
That might work, and definitely, there are brands that have expressed interest in paying to reach specific users via their direct message inbox in the app.
But another aspect that could be worth considering is audience segmentation, and being able to tweet at selected users, either via DM or via tweet, with specific tweets and messages.
Twitter’s already been developing various audience segmentation tools, with private tweet groups (Circles), subscriptions (Super Follows-only tweets) and reply controls, so that you can decide who’s able to engage with your content.
But what if brands were able to better segment specific elements of their Twitter audience, then tweet at them only, enabling more specific community building, promotion, and more.
This could be another element of an advanced Twitter package for brands, or maybe an aspect of Twitter Blue, providing another way to maximize audience engagement – and limit annoyance.
Make Spaces and live-streams Twitter Blue-only features
This may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, in that these features generally gain more value when more people use them. But the reality is that most live-streams are bad, be it in audio or video form, while they also cost a heap in data storage and facilitation, usually to the point where they’re not profitable to operate.
But some people get huge value out of building their communities in live elements, and there are some broadcasters who are really great at what they do. If you made Spaces and video live-streams accessible only to Blue subscribers, at the current $4.99 per month (not the $8 per month blue tick program), you would effectively filter out a lot of the junk, which could actually see Spaces engagement, overall, increase, with top broadcasters then seeing increased engagement and amplification in the Spaces/Live tab.
Maybe you don’t see many sign-ups as a result, but it would be a valuable perk for Twitter Blue. And I’m, guessing that the vast majority of Twitter users never stream anyway, so the potential negative impact would be minor.
That also then reduces system load, while Twitter could also work to incentivize broadcasters by revamping the Spaces tab to focus on Twitter-native broadcasts, as opposed to podcasts from other providers.
Creator Profiles
Twitter already has Twitter for Professionals, which is aligned towards creators and providing them with more tools in the app. But this could also become a paid option, especially if Twitter sweetens the deal with, advanced audience insights, in-stream newsletter tools (made available only to paying creators), longer video and audio uploads, better access to live-streaming tools, etc.
There are various options that Twitter could build into a more advanced creator account offering, which would be of interest to those looking to boost their presence in the app.
Also – this may be off deep end – but what if Twitter looked to help amplify paying creators’ tweets by shading them a different color in-stream:
Okay, that might be too far, and my mock-up here is probably not the best representation. But I do think that there are options like this that Twitter could implement to showcase different elements, and highlight specific tweets in-stream.
Maybe the color is more subtle, but it could be another option that creators looking to build audience in the app would consider paying to use.
Build revenue pathways via partner subscriptions
In May last year, Twitter acquired Scroll, a platform which, before being integrated into Twitter, worked with publishers to establish revenue share deals from its paying subscribers, which essentially meant that publishers got direct revenue from readers, and readers didn’t get shown ads.
Scroll used the money that it generated from user subscriptions to the app (which cost $5 per month and up) to then pass on revenue to the sites that it sourced content from, which Scroll says ends up securing even more income than ads for its partner platforms.
Twitter eventually integrated Scroll into Twitter Blue, then the Musk transition team canceled its publisher deals. But over 350 publications were, at one stage, signed up to the program, and it does seem like an opportunity to generate revenue for Twitter, even if it’s not a significant, game-changing amount.
Micropayments also offer an alternative revenue stream for all kinds of creators, which could better align with Musk’s goal to facilitate ‘citizen journalism’ in the app.
And many Twitter users would probably consider paying, say, $3-$5 per month to avoid paywalls, if those deals could be expanded, and this was made more of a specific focus, as opposed to being hidden within the Twitter Blue package.
Look, some of these may have obvious developmental flaws that Twitter staff would highlight immediately, while others may require so much development time and resources that the cost to offer them would be too great, especially now that Twitter only has half the employees that it did last month.
But the point is that there are other areas of opportunity out there that don’t require devaluing elements of the platform, or causing discord with ad partners – while they could also provide an improved user experience (as opposed to charging for basically nothing).
And while Twitter’s verification issue is significant and worthy of reformation, especially in regards to separating the humans from the bot accounts, it seems like a lesser concern at this stage. It’s also one that would likely be better solved by simply offering a gray checkmark for users that verify their info, as opposed to upending the current system entirely.
But Elon has his own way, and again, I do think that he will eventually stabilize the app. It’ll just take some time, and probably a lot more radical proposals, to get there.
SOCIAL
Meta Highlights Key Platform Manipulation Trends in Latest ‘Adversarial Threat Report’
While talk of a possible U.S. ban of TikTok has been tempered of late, concerns still linger around the app, and the way that it could theoretically be used by the Chinese Government to implement varying forms of data tracking and messaging manipulation in Western regions.
The latter was highlighted again this week, when Meta released its latest “Adversarial Threat Report,” which includes an overview of Meta’s latest detections, as well as a broader summary of its efforts throughout the year.
And while the data shows that Russia and Iran remain the most common source regions for coordinated manipulation programs, China is third on that list, with Meta shutting down almost 5,000 Facebook profiles linked to a Chinese-based manipulation program in Q3 alone.
As explained by Meta:
“We removed 4,789 Facebook accounts for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. This network originated in China and targeted the United States. The individuals behind this activity used basic fake accounts with profile pictures and names copied from elsewhere on the internet to post and befriend people from around the world. They posed as Americans to post the same content across different platforms. Some of these accounts used the same name and profile picture on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). We removed this network before it was able to gain engagement from authentic communities on our apps.”
Meta says that this group aimed to sway discussion around both U.S. and China policy by both sharing news stories, and engaging with posts related to specific issues.
“They also posted links to news articles from mainstream US media and reshared Facebook posts by real people, likely in an attempt to appear more authentic. Some of the reshared content was political, while other covered topics like gaming, history, fashion models, and pets. Unusually, in mid-2023 a small portion of this network’s accounts changed names and profile pictures from posing as Americans to posing as being based in India when they suddenly began liking and commenting on posts by another China-origin network focused on India and Tibet.”
Meta further notes that it took down more Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) groups from China than any other region in 2023, reflecting the rising trend of Chinese operators looking to infiltrate Western networks.
“The latest operations typically posted content related to China’s interests in different regions worldwide. For example, many of them praised China, some of them defended its record on human rights in Tibet and Xinjiang, others attacked critics of the Chinese government around the world, and posted about China’s strategic rivalry with the U.S. in Africa and Central Asia.”
Google, too, has repeatedly removed large clusters of YouTube accounts of Chinese origin that had been seeking to build audiences in the app, in order to then seed pro-China sentiment.
The largest coordinated group identified by Google is an operation known as “Dragonbridge” which has long been the biggest originator of manipulative efforts across its apps.
As you can see in this chart, Google removed more than 50,000 instances of Dragonbridge activity across YouTube, Blogger and AdSense in 2022 alone, underlining the persistent efforts of Chinese groups to sway Western audiences.
So these groups, whether they’re associated with the CCP or not, are already looking to infiltrate Western-based networks. Which underlines the potential threat of TikTok in the same respect, given that it’s controlled by a Chinese owner, and therefore likely more directly accessible to these operators.
That’s partly why TikTok is already banned on government-owned devices in most regions, and why cybersecurity experts continue to sound the alarm about the app, because if the above figures reflect the level of activity that non-Chinese platforms are already seeing, you can only imagine that, as TikTok’s influence grows, it too will be high on the list of distribution for the same material.
And we don’t have the same level of transparency into TikTok’s enforcement efforts, nor do we have a clear understanding of parent company ByteDance’s links to the CCP.
Which is why the threat of a possible TikTok ban remains, and will linger for some time yet, and could still spill over if there’s a shift in U.S./China relations.
One other point of note from Meta’s Adversarial Threat Report is its summary of AI usage for such activity, and how it’s changing over time.
X owner Elon Musk has repeatedly pointed to the rise of generative AI as a key vector for increased bot activity, because spammers will be able to create more complex, harder to detect bot accounts through such tools. That’s why X is pushing towards payment models as a means to counter bot profile mass production.
And while Meta does agree that AI tools will enable threat actors to create larger volumes of convincing content, it also says that it hasn’t seen evidence “that it will upend our industry’s efforts to counter covert influence operations” at this stage.
Meta also makes this interesting point:
“For sophisticated threat actors, content generation hasn’t been a primary challenge. They rather struggle with building and engaging authentic audiences they seek to influence. This is why we have focused on identifying adversarial behaviors and tactics used to drive engagement among real people. Disrupting these behaviors early helps to ensure that misleading AI content does not play a role in covert influence operations. Generative AI is also unlikely to change this dynamic.”
So it’s not just content that they need, but interesting, engaging material, and because generative AI is based on everything that’s come before, it’s not necessarily built to establish new trends, which would then help these bot accounts build an audience.
These are some interesting notes on the current threat landscape, and how coordinated groups are still looking to use digital platforms to spread their messaging. Which will likely never stop, but it is worth noting where these groups originate from, and what that means for related discussion.
You can read Meta’s Q3 “Adversarial Threat Report” here.
SOCIAL
US judge halts pending TikTok ban in Montana
TikTok use has continued to grow apace despite a growing number of countries banning the app from government devices. — © POOL/AFP Liam McBurney
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked a ban on TikTok set to come into effect next year in Montana, saying the popular video sharing app was likely to win its pending legal challenge.
US District Court Judge Donald Molloy placed the injunction on the ban until the case, originally filed by TikTok in May, has been ruled on its merits.
Molloy deemed it likely TikTok and its users will win, since it appeared the Montana law not only violates free speech rights but runs counter to the fact that foreign policy matters are the exclusive domain of the federal government.
“The current record leaves little doubt that Montana’s legislature and attorney general were more interested in targeting China’s ostensible role in TikTok than they with protecting Montana consumers,” Molloy said in the ruling.
The app is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance and has been accused by a wide swathe of US politicians of being under Beijing’s tutelage, something the company furiously denies.
Montana’s law says the TikTok ban will become void if the app is acquired by a company incorporated in a country not designated by the United States as a foreign adversary.
TikTok had argued that the unprecedented ban violates constitutionally protected right to free speech.
The prohibition signed into law by Republican Governor Greg Gianforte is seen as a legal test for a national ban of the Chinese-owned platform, something lawmakers in Washington are increasingly calling for.
Montana’s ban would be the first to come into effect in the United States – Copyright AFP Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV
The ban would make it a violation each time “a user accesses TikTok, is offered the ability to access TikTok, or is offered the ability to download TikTok.”
Each violation is punishable by a $10,000 fine every day it takes place.
Under the law, Apple and Google will have to remove TikTok from their app stores.
State political leaders have “trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information, and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment,” ACLU Montana policy director Keegan Medrano said after the bill was signed.
The law is yet another skirmish in duels between TikTok and many western governments, with the app already banned on government devices in the United States, Canada and several countries in Europe.
SOCIAL
49 Times Companies Gave The Most Ridiculous Explanations For Their Mistakes
Facing the truth and being responsible for your actions, no matter how unpleasant, is the mature thing to do. But that’s easier said than done. Especially when talk turns to business! Many companies and managers have a hard time being honest about what’s going on because they have a vested interest in staying profitable.
The r/AskReddit online community had a field day, calling out various companies that gave thoroughly ridiculous explanations for why something was happening. It’s perfect proof of why corporate communication has to be empathetic, not just robotic attempts to spin the truth. Scroll down to see just how ludicrously some businesses tried to protect their interests.
We wanted to learn about proper business communication, so we reached out to Matt Johnson, Ph.D., a marketing psychology speaker and the host of the human nature blog. He explained why transparency is paramount and shed some light on one of the best campaigns ever, aimed at repairing a company’s tattered reputation. You’ll find Bored Panda’s interview with the expert below.
“We reduce the performance of your older iPhone to keep it from crashing.” Sorry, Android doesn’t do this and this type of thing hasn’t been a problem for over 10 years. It WAS an issue with some of the earliest smartphones, but not since 2012 or so. Apple just does it to try to get you to upgrade or pay for a battery replacement.
Edit: gotta love the Apple sheep down voting me for speaking the truth.
According to marketing psychology speaker Johnson, how a company approaches communication about problems will depend on the business itself, as well as how serious the issue is.
“If it’s a safety issue with the product, there are regulatory and liability concerns, and so almost certainly in these cases the company needs to come clean, do a recall, and formally apologize,” he explained to Bored Panda via email.
“In less severe cases, when the product is merely faulty and not dangerous, it’s still a best practice to take responsibility and apologize. The brand’s reputation is contingent on the quality of their products, and if they are consistently delivering a poor experience, this won’t be sustainable for the brand in the long term,” Johnson said.
Samsung destroyed my fridge while working on it. They agreed to replace it, and then told me they couldn’t replace my fridge they destroyed, because “they didn’t have any.”
They’re literally the manufacturer.
I filed a claims in small claims court and won and made them pay. It was ridiculously easy.
McDonald’s and the coffee burn victim, claiming she only did it for the money. She didn’t – she was horribly burned by coffee kept far too hot that McD’s had been warned about repeatedly in the past and they still refused to fix.
“It will force the company into a position where it is competing based purely on price and on the advertising effectiveness, which is typically a losing proposition. All in all, the default should be to take ownership, repair the product, and to be transparent to the consumer.”
Luckily for brands, consumers tend to be “surprisingly forgiving” when they’re transparent about their failures. “Three things should be in place in order to pull this off,” Johnson walked us through the process.
“First, the brand needs to have some degree of existing trust with their consumers. Secondly, the brand needs to be transparent and take ownership of its product’s failings. And lastly, they need to make the product genuinely better. When these three things are in place, consumers can be very forgiving which helps to restore the company’s reputation.”
Optus recently blamed a outage that affected the whole of Australia on a 3rd party. This “third” party was their parent company
According to the marketing psychology speaker, one of the best examples of this was done by Domino’s Pizza, over a decade ago. It’s a prime example of how honesty, when mixed with grit and creativity, can yield great results.
“In 2011, Domino’s Pizza did the unthinkable: They came out and said that they’re pizza is terrible. They listened to consumer complaints, ran focus groups, and all the signs pointed to the same conclusions. And Domino’s said: you know what, you’re right,” Johnson shared with Bored Panda.
“They ran a campaign admitting that their pizza isn’t what it should be, that they’d be making changes, and that in the future, their pizza would be better. And they did. Fast forward thirteen years later, and Domino’s is a beloved brand, who’s pizza is adored by their customers. They leveraged their trust with their consumers, admitted fault, and made the right changes. And in the end, their business greatly improved.”
You can find more of Johnson’s insights and posts on his marketing and human nature blogs.
Amys Baking Company after going nuts on facebook. They claimed they were hacked and were now working with the FBI to find out who was behind it
Reputation is everything in the business world. If your customers know that they can trust you, they’ll stay loyal. Trust, however, is a pretty ephemeral thing. A lot of different factors contribute to it. For instance, you need to think about the quality of your product and services, how your employees treat your customers, as well as how ethically you do business.
To put it bluntly, putting products and services aside for a moment, customers value companies that have clear values, act in a moral way, and are transparent about what they do. Businesses are like people: those who are trustworthy and respectable become true leaders. Meanwhile, shady behavior and avoiding responsibility will get called out. Consumers and employees alike hate it when someone’s trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
When a company runs into trouble, the first instinct is (quite naturally) to focus on survival. If something unethical happens, many businesses try to avoid the issue and present a counter-narrative. Their goal is to protect their reputation and profits.
Many companies are notorious for calling their customers stupid when they’re sued for something. For example, when Subway was sued for undersized sandwiches, Subway argued that “Footlong” was just a trademark and there was no reason for anyone to think that it meant that the sandwich was 12 inches long.
However, this can backfire to a pretty big extent. If someone knows what really happened, they can blow the whistle and spill the beans for the whole world to know. When you get caught lying, it’s even worse.
In an ideal world, every business, boss, and middle manager would be open, honest, and transparent about any and all issues, both with their employees, as well as their customers. However, in reality, companies are constantly competing for people’s money and attention. So showing any signs of weakness, when your opponents probably won’t do the same, would be ludicrous.
It all comes down to the fundamental values upon which a company is built. Founders and managers who fully embrace transparency and empathy are going to tackle any issues that arise very differently than someone who always puts profit first… at any moral cost. Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with being profitable. But it has to be balanced with ethics, a sense of purpose, and proper motivation for workers.
Pier 1 was blaming their employees for not upselling/getting enough credit cards before they went bankrupt.
I could buy the same blanket at home goods cheaper than my discount at Pier 1!
Obviously, employees want to get a fair wage, have plenty of room for growth, and only ever deal with supportive bosses. That won’t always be the case. It becomes necessary to screen businesses for their work culture ahead of time before you’re in too deep. So before you think of applying for a position at some huge conglomerate, do some research. Read up on what their workplace culture is like, see if they’ve ever been embroiled in some deeply troubling scandals.
Forbes suggests checking whether a company’s online presence is “professional and legitimate.” That means looking at their website, how they respond to customer inquiries and criticism on social media, and what (former) employees have to say on job sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn. It’s definitely a red flag if you spot examples of awful customer service.
If a business has tons of negative reviews online, something is probably amiss. However, just like you shouldn’t blindly trust any corpo PR dribble, you should take any reviews with a few grains of salt. Actually, scrap that, pass the whole salt shaker!
“we need everyone back in the office buildings now because the 3 years of working from home didn’t actually succeed and everyone has to be back in the office for the work to get done. It has nothing to do with needing all the workers to resume spending their money on all the stuff they didn’t have to for 3 years.”
I quit a job after the entire company was being forced to sign away our rights to ever sue the company. (This was after they were getting sued for not paying their employees accurately).
The topper was that if we elected not to sign, we would be forfeiting ALL BONUSES until we did sign.
I quit within a couple weeks and told my boss directly that a leading factor in why I was leaving.
He left shortly after too.
Comcast changed its name to xfinity because Comcast was well regarded as the worst customer service on the planet and you couldn’t search their name without it pulling up page after page of customer stories about how bad they were.
They didn’t fix their customer service they just changed the name of the company as if it would reset their reputation and it on some level worked.
It’s vital to filter which reviews give an accurate representation of reality and which ones are written by someone who is extremely disgruntled about e.g. being fired (perhaps for poor performance or other issues). A good rule of thumb is that the more emotional a review is, the more biased it is. The truth isn’t black and white, it’s often nuanced. Sure, any company might make some mistakes. But it doesn’t mean that these businesses fail in every single regard.
You won’t ever find a ‘perfect’ company, but you can come across businesses that admit to having made mistakes and then work to correct them. If you ever have any doubts, as a prospective worker or a potential customer, get in touch with the business and ask some questions about their culture and values.
SpaceX offered to build a submarine to rescue people in a cave. They drew a design and everything. Had a whole plan. A guy said no thanks so Elon Musk called him a child molester.
I used to drive for Schneider National Carriers. My husband and I hit from behind by another semi. Schneider deflected it back to us saying that if we wouldn’t have stopped for a shower 10 hours previously we would not have been there to get hit in I -40
Tucker Carlson being sued as part of Fox News and his lawyers stating that what he says “cannot reasonably be interpreted as facts.”
Tesla’s Full Self Driving is *always* only waiting on regulators to approve it.
Really it’s s**t software that doesn’t work.
[Air Canada 624 landing in Halifax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_624). For a while their press releases stated that it was a “hard landing”. The fact that 24 people were injured, engines separated from the wings, and the plane was written off didn’t seem to figure into it.
April 20, 2010 [the Big Horizon Oil Spill](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill)
An estimated 4.9 MMbbl (210,000,000 US gal; 780,000 m3) of deep water oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s considered the largest marine oil spill in petroleum history.
On May 4, of the same year, they were awarded the [Safety Prize](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Blotter/louisiana-oil-spill-feds-gave-safety-prize-transoceans/story?id=10528236) for their outstanding performance *in 2008*.
So, basically , the feds claimed they deserved the prize because in 2008 they did such a good job and their only accident was the 2010 oil spill. Never mind that it was so huge that in 2019 there was still oil floating around the Mexican Gulf from that very same spill.
“Pride and Accomplishment”
Edit:
Oh yeah, and also “Don’t you have phones?”
Thalidomide, which was a popular over the counter drug in the 60s, caused thousands of children to be born with severe birth defects as it was never properly tested before being released and was marked as safe for pregnancy.
They fought for years to not pay out and said every reported case was due to nuclear fallout and botched home abortions.
This literally just happened yesterday. Disney released a new trading card game through a company called Ravensburger. A new set went on sale on their website yesterday morning, and the company once again didn’t prepare for the amount of traffic, so it crashed their queue system. Ravensburger then blamed it on a ddos attack instead of admitting they weren’t ready to handle the amount of traffic.
Not really a “company” per se but there was that time the Australian census site crashed on census night and the government blamed it on a targeted DDOS attack (also known as the entire population of Australia trying to access the same site at the same time).
When Rockstar decided to remove about 200 vehicles from GTA Online and claimed it was to improve the user experience… that’s gotta be somewhere up in the top 100, at least?
I online ordered my groceries to be delivered. Eighty-eight items, fruit, milk, meat.
The groceries appeared on my doorstep, I went out to get them. Then I said “I expected more than th…. Hey, where is the milk? Where is the meat?”
So I go online, and the official explanation was that 57 out of 88 items were “unavailable”.
Nope. I guessed what had happened. The shopper had gotten like a third of the way done, and then stopped for whatever reason. Oh, and “WatTheHell. I’ll deliver what I have.”
But I called and asked about it anyway.
The response was in a “Idunno” voice. “Well, maybe that many items *were* unavailable.”
No way. The day that big store is out of milk, that will be a story on the town’s evening news.
Venezuelan power company (destroyed by poor management, cronyism and corruption) blamed outages on an iguala getting on the cable 😂
I had a flight booked with Delta from New York to Canada. I got an email a week before the flight was scheduled saying it was cancelled. No reason was given. I called the airline and the agent told me it was cancelled due to weather. A week beforehand. So I said to the agent, wow, you guys are really putting a LOT of faith in the meteorologists! Anyway I found out later that they cancelled the route and didn’t bother to tell customers or employees apparently…
Powerball
“We’ve listened to what people want, and that’s higher jackpots!”
The only way to do that is to increase the price or make it harder to win so the total goes up. Powerball did BOTH! from $1 to $2, a 100% increase, followed by extending the numbers to choose from. Doubling the cost and making it exponentially harder to win.
They duped everyone, and the only people who understand have taken statistics in college. It’s the fleecing of the ignorant.
Pokemon saying they cut the national dex so they could focus on animations and balance, then continued to use the same models and animations while bringing back all of the most overpowered pokemon.
MBMMaverick: Seriously? I paid 80$ to have Vader locked?
EA’s response:
The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.
Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.
Worked for a company that 3 divisions. Electrical construction (where I worked), armature, and maintenance.
Every year, the company would set projections, if income was kept in the black, and accidents to a minimum, every employee in each branch got a sizeable Christmas bonus check.
Ten or so years before I came on, one of the c-suites figured if they could keep that bonus… they got to keep the money. Just make up a reason the bonuses didn’t go out.
So the armature department got a letter saying “sorry, electrical went waaay over budget. Blame those a******s.” While maintenance got a letter blaming armature, and electrical got aimed at maintenance.
The departments were fairly independent, so thinking appeared to be that they’d all turn on each other, and C’s would pocket or “reinvest” what should have been bonuses (they knew something was fishy because that same year the CEO bought a nearly 1 million dollar boat, while the CFO could suddenly afford a 300k car)
What they forgot, however, was that construction workers gossip worse than hair stylists with a vendetta. So they all knew something shifty was up.
So next year, there were 20+ reported accidents. But no one knew who/where/how/what. So after about 4 years of being shady, the company just canceled the bonus program all together.
“The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution. The other view says that water is a foodstuff like any other, and like any other foodstuff it should have a market value” – Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, former CEO of Nestle.
Lululemon’s founder, when confronted about the threadbare, see-through quality of his yoga pants claimed that it was women that were “bigger” shouldn’t use them because their thighs rub together, damaging the fabrics.
Nope, you just sell crappy, overpriced pants.
QANTAS our national airline in Australia. They were booking ghost flights, flights they never intended providing. Taking bookings from people even after the flights had been cancelle total fraud, idea was to provide cheap flights then so people wouldn’t book flights with other airlines, then cancel them.
When called out on it Qantas said it’s customers understood that they weren’t booking a flight at a specific time to go to a specific destination but just booking and paying for a ticket.
Optus a major phone and internet provider here, whole system completely crashed, no phone internet, could not even make emergency calls. No explanation from Optus when service would resume no explanation on cause of failure.
Optus did say they had details on their website which people could access, but Optus customers could not of course as the internet and phone services were down.
[China’s birth rate crisis is so intense that Nestlé is closing a baby formula plant due to dwindling demand](https://fortune.com/europe/2023/10/20/nestle-baby-formula-plant-ireland-close/)
Nestle: Demand in China is too low so we’re closing a factory in Ireland and moving production… to China.
I mean, I get that we all think John Q. Public is too dumb to analyze anything these days, but this is a blatant PR lie and Orwellian doublespeak.
The reason we’re not making any money is because our fans are toxic and sexist.
I worked doing tech support in South Florida. After 9/11 our company changed the raise policy from quarterly to annually, dropped the top pay from $22 down to 15 and canceled the free laptop program. They claimed the cut backs were necessary due to 9/11 affecting our business.
My property manager tried to get me to sign a contract saying I wouldn’t sue for anything I’d ever reported in the past, admitting that I was always late on rent (literally never have been), and that I agreed to pay 63$ to sign the contract.
The judge was not impressed with his explanation that the 63$ was for “special” fees because he had to write and print that farce.
Even though someone posted something entirely anti-Semitic and our CEO said it was “the truth” it is being misreported that he himself is anti-Semitic.
Probably the recent failure of the entire mobile phone network by Optus, the second largest provider in Australia. Many businesses lost money because their payment systems were down. The technicians at Optus were locked out of systems because they were on the Optus networks. The CEO just resigned over it.
The reason given for the failure was an upgrade being made by a “subcontractor.”
The “subcontractor” was Singtel in Singapore who owns Optus.
An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as one of the reactors was damaged
Claiming I was incompetent and firing me when they had me doing a job with barely Any training and the training I did get was for a job I wasn’t doing.
When they really just over staffed themselves and didn’t want to pay the sign on bonus
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