I was an IBM competitive analyst and one of my favorite things to do was make a comparison between companies, especially when they weren’t mine. This is because, even in the business world, no one wants to hear that their child is ugly.
Meta has brought Threads, a Twitter-clone to the market. A similar effort would usually fail, because it is difficult to convince customers to switch from one service to another by simply offering a similar product. You have to successfully disparage the competitor’s product to change their behavior.
Elon Musk, however, has angered so many of his users that it is possible that he will lose them in mass to a service similar to Tesla’s that does not have Musk associated with it.
Explore the battle that is coming and why Twitter could suffer a major setback. My Product of The Week is the Alienware m18 Gaming Laptop, a powerful laptop with a stunning 18-inch screen.
IBM vs. Sun Microsystems Example
In order to understand a competition in the future, it is useful to look at past examples. A good example is the 1980s fight between Sun Microsystems vs. IBM, which I witnessed first-hand.
IBM in the 1980s concluded that IBM’s customers could not leave IBM and that IBM was free to do whatever it wanted. I brought it up once to the head marketing of my unit, as a potential problem. Customer surveys showed that our customers were very upset. “What we sell is like air,” he said. The customers have no choice.
Sun Microsystems, however, was pushing an unworkable solution and yet managed to put IBM out-of-business by offering an alternative. Sun Microsystems salespeople leaned on IBM’s bad behaviors and forced the change.
As I have noted, it was not an easy switch, and the new technology is still not working. IBM, which was the largest technology company in history at the time, nearly went bankrupt, had its CEO fired, and faced massive layoffs.
IBM has since reclaimed the reputation of being one of the most trustworthy vendors in the tech industry by treating customers well and not locking them in. However, it hasn’t fully recovered the power it once had.
IBM’s products and services had a high switching cost, which was a major factor in its recovery.
Twitter is not an enterprise vendor, like IBM. There are no contracts or massive dependencies that make it difficult to switch between services. Elon Musk’s changes in Twitter’s policies and operations have caused many users to leave, even though the replacement services, such as Mastodon, Truth Social and others, are not at all similar.
Twitter is losing users at an alarming rate. Musk made questionable decisions every time it seemed Twitter was about to turn a corner. This caused more users to leave. The latest move is to limit the number of tweets that a user may read for free. This, despite Twitter not creating its own content.
Twitter’s policies have also driven away advertisers at a time where there was no good alternative to the ad expenditure. Once an advertiser has spent money on advertising regularly, they are effectively locked into the medium that they advertise.
Even though it may be difficult to attract advertisers, once you’ve got them, they will usually stick with you, even if your ads don’t work, unless something is done to upset them. Advertisers are largely avoiding Twitter.
These advertisers are also advertising on other platforms such as Facebook. It is therefore easy for these advertisers to stop their relationship with Twitter and to move to Threads. This, in their opinion, is a more reliable entity that carries less risk of brand damage than Twitter.
Threads
Threads is a near-clone to Twitter, and was officially launched on Thursday. Threads is focusing on the problems that are most annoying to Twitter users, and promises a better experience. Facebook is not without its problems, especially in regards to the seemingly inconsistent moderation. However, it’s still far less irritating than Twitter.
There are still many people who do not trust Zuckerberg and Facebook, but it hasn’t reached the point of mass defection. Despite initial concerns about Facebook’s low conversion rate, advertisers seem to be happier on Facebook than Twitter.
Facebook’s low cost of switching for both users and advertisers combined with the fact that it is more reliable and stable than Twitter may be the perfect storm to launch this new service.
Two potential negatives are also present.
Meta/Facebook may not have properly anticipated loading, and it is likely — because it has undoubtedly happened before — that enough users may jump on the platform so quickly that it fails. Meta is a massive company and should be expecting this. However, other companies have experienced similar issues because they did not anticipate loading correctly. The services initially were unreliable and slowed migrations.
Meta does not market itself well or very often. The speed of migrations could be affected by a lack of marketing. This disadvantage could initially be a benefit for Meta, as it will help ensure that the servers hosting Threads won’t fail. It should be known soon if the service hasn’t already crashed.
Wrapping up
Elon Musk’s management of Twitter created a perfect storm, which could lead to Meta’s Threads platform doing to Twitter what Facebook has done to Myspace. Remember how quickly Myspace failed? This perfect storm could make Twitter as a business unviable If you want to know more about if Threads can carry a lot of weight (and that is a huge thing). If you want to know more about ifTwitter will lose more advertisers and users than it can support.
This failure would be highly visible, and it could cause problems for Musk’s properties in terms reliance and valuation. The media will cover Musk in a way that is not favorable. Shortly, a catastrophic collapse of Twitter may cause Musk’s companies to reconsider Musk as CEO.
I’m expecting it to happen fairly quickly if this happens. Twitter’s and Musk’s future should be evident before the end the quarter, and perhaps even this month. The next few months will be interesting to watch. Regardless of the outcome, it’s a good lesson to learn that challenging a competitor in a cage-match isn’t always the best solution to a huge competitive disadvantage.
This match is, in Zuckerberg’s opinion, a no-brainer. Musk won’t be able to focus on creating a stronger Twitter defense because Zuckerberg is already well-prepared for the match. Musk is more important to Twitter’s defence than Zuckerberg, which suggests that Zuckerberg has matured better in his role as CEO.
Alienware M18 Gaming Laptop
It is important to note that the word “you” means “you”. Alienware m18 This laptop is an absolute beast. It’s not a cheap laptop, starting at $1,899.99. It weighs nearly nine pounds and is heavier than many of my more portable laptops combined. Most of the laptops that I own are closer to three pounds.
This laptop is ideal for serious gamers who want the power of desktop computers in a more portable device.
Alienware m18 gaming laptop (Image Credit: Dell).
This thing has a massive 330W adapter. I often wonder whether it would be better to have laptops with this class of power supply built in. This is because the device itself is heavy and a large, heavy power supply will make it more difficult to carry. You could attach a handle to the laptop so you can carry it as one unit, rather than having to juggle two heavy devices.
Another audience for a laptop this large and powerful is creators. This includes animators (including game designers), AI developers (including some types of engineers), scientists, and other researchers. They don’t require software certifications in order to use it.
The m18 has a very short battery life, and you probably won’t try to use it on a car or plane. Battery life is limited, and it’s possible that the plane or car won’t have enough power to run this device.
The 18-inch display is great for working on large projects, compared to smaller laptop screens.
Benchmarking this laptop The strength of the device is shown by its performance against other devices. The gaming battery lasts only two hours but you can get four and half hours of video playback.It is possible to use this device on car or plane trips to watch movies.
I was impressed by the keyboard’s quiet fans. It was so quiet that I couldn’t even tell it was running when I wasn’t gaming. It gets hot when gaming but you need a computer mouse to play games, so I wouldn’t want this on my lap.
The lighting is also a lot of fun. This laptop is unlike any other on the market because it has adjustable lighting. Alienware’s m18 is my Product of the week. I am impressed by this beast.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of ECT News Network.
