埃隆-马斯克希望有第二次机会在 X 上失败 - The Verge

I understand the driving need to prove to people that you are right, which is why I am to some degree sympathetic to Elon Musk’s ill-advised plan to rename Twitter and turn it into his long-dreamed-of financial heavyweight. He wasn’t right when he tried to rename PayPal in 2000 and create an internet upstart in banking; he’s not right now, either. But that isn’t going to stop him from trying to Show Us. 我理解向人们证明自己是正确的这种动力需求，这也是为什么我在某种程度上同情埃隆-马斯克（Elon Musk）将 Twitter 更名为他梦想已久的金融巨头的不明智计划。他在 2000 年试图将 PayPal 更名为银行业互联网新贵时并不正确，现在也是如此。但这并不能阻止他 "向我们展示 "的努力。 Musk says he wants to rename Twitter X, and the Twitter logo has already changed on the app to a Unicode X. There’s some history here with Musk and X: when Peter Thiel defenestrated him from PayPal, it was because Musk wanted to rename PayPal. You are never going to guess what he wanted to change the name to. 马斯克说他想把 Twitter 更名为 "X"，Twitter 应用程序上的标识已经变成了 Unicode "X"。马斯克和 "X "有些渊源：当年彼得-蒂尔（Peter Thiel）将他从 PayPal 解职，就是因为马斯克想给 PayPal 更名。你永远猜不到他想把名字改成什么。 Musk wanted to change the popular PayPal branding to X 马斯克希望将流行的 PayPal 品牌改为 X Musk started the business X.com in 1999, which — reading it now — sounds like an early version of what Musk is trying to do with the artist formerly known as Twitter: electronic payments, checking accounts, stock trades, mutual funds. About the only thing it’s missing is quote-tweet dunks. If you are thinking, “This sounds kind of like WeChat,” you are right! 马斯克于 1999 年创办了 X.com，现在读来，这听起来就像是马斯克试图通过 Twitter 这个前身来做的事情的早期版本：电子支付、支票账户、股票交易、共同基金。它唯一缺少的就是引用推特上的扣篮。如果你在想："这听起来有点像微信"，那就对了！ Anyway, X was a massively money-losing company, and it merged with Thiel’s Confinity, another massively money-losing company, which had developed PayPal. Musk became the CEO of the merged companies, with Thiel stepping aside. Crucially, however, many of Thiel’s deputies remained, including David Sacks, who is now a VC, podcaster, and would-be political influencer. 总之，X 是一家严重亏损的公司，它与泰尔的 Confinity 合并，后者是另一家严重亏损的公司，开发了 PayPal。马斯克成为合并后公司的首席执行官，蒂尔则靠边站。但重要的是，泰尔的许多副手都留了下来，其中包括大卫-萨克斯（David Sacks），他现在是一名风险投资人、播客和有政治影响力的人。 Musk wanted to change the popular PayPal branding to X, even though customer surveys indicated that wasn’t a good idea. Sacks decided that wasn’t going to happen and was among the architects of the coup that removed Musk, according to The PayPal Wars by Eric M. Jackson. 马斯克希望将流行的 PayPal 品牌改为 X，尽管客户调查显示这不是一个好主意。根据埃里克-M-杰克逊（Eric M. Jackson）所著的《PayPal 之战》一书，萨克斯认为这是不可能的，他也是罢免马斯克的政变策划者之一。 Credit where it’s due: Sacks made a good call here. Branding is important for consumer products, and making your payments company sound like a porn company is not a great idea. Which is why I am a little puzzled with the rebrand of Twitter; Sacks almost certainly knows better, and he’s involved. 值得称赞的是：Sacks 的判断是正确的。品牌对于消费品来说非常重要，让你的支付公司听起来像一家色情公司并不是一个好主意。这就是为什么我对 Twitter 的品牌重塑感到有些困惑；萨克斯几乎肯定知道得更清楚，而且他也参与其中。 Musk is discovering the hard way that he’s not very good at running a social media company 马斯克正痛苦地发现，他并不擅长经营一家社交媒体公司 My colleague and sometimes drinking buddy Casey Newton has argued that the X rebrand is, effectively, a way to kill Twitter. I disagree that this is just an act of cultural vandalism, though it is certainly also that. I think what’s going on is less intentional than that — Musk probably did not mean to buy Twitter at all, and once he was stuck with it, he decided to see if he could use it to address some unfinished business. 我的同事、有时也是酒友凯西-牛顿（Casey Newton）认为，X 重塑品牌实际上是扼杀 Twitter 的一种方式。我不同意这只是一种文化破坏行为，尽管它确实也是。我认为，马斯克可能根本无意收购 Twitter，一旦他被 Twitter 困住，就决定看看能否用它来解决一些未了的心愿。 Musk is discovering the hard way that he’s not very good at running a social media company. His changes in moderation — inviting Donald Trump, assorted white supremacists, and some conspiracy theorist who was posting child sexual abuse material to continue using his platform — have scared the living bejesus out of advertisers, which were Twitter’s main form of income before Musk bought it. Now, there’s a fire sale on Twitter ads because it seems like brands are nervous about appearing next to videos of animal abuse, and Musk is also threatening that brands will lose verification if they haven’t spent at least $1,000 in the last 30 days or $6,000 in the last 180 days. 马斯克正在艰难地发现，他并不擅长经营一家社交媒体公司。他在节制方面的改变--邀请唐纳德-特朗普、各种白人至上主义者和一些发布儿童性虐待材料的阴谋论者继续使用他的平台--吓坏了广告商，而在马斯克收购 Twitter 之前，广告商是 Twitter 的主要收入来源。马斯克还威胁说，如果品牌在过去 30 天内没有花费至少 1000 美元，或者在过去 180 天内没有花费至少 6000 美元，就会失去验证资格。 Twitter has never been the most successful social media site, but this is really a new low. So Musk is trying to pivot to something he thinks he knows better: digital payments. After all, PayPal was successful despite Musk and made him pretty rich. 推特从来都不是最成功的社交媒体网站，但这确实是一个新的低点。因此，马斯克正试图转向他认为自己更熟悉的领域：数字支付。毕竟，PayPal 在马斯克的努力下取得了成功，并让他变得相当富有。 We’ve talked a little about Musk’s payment app ambitions in the past. The so-called super app has been a Silicon Valley obsession for a while, inspired by the success of China’s WeChat. These super apps are like rolling together Twitter, Instagram, Slack, Venmo, and your bank’s app. I can see why; our Silicon Valley overlords are obsessed with accumulating power — money is just how the powerful keep score — and being the owner of such an app would mean a lot of power. 过去，我们曾谈论过马斯克对支付应用的野心。受到中国微信成功的启发，硅谷对所谓的超级应用痴迷已久。这些超级应用就像把 Twitter、Instagram、Slack、Venmo 和你的银行应用整合在一起。我明白为什么；我们的硅谷霸主们痴迷于积累权力--金钱只是权贵们记账的方式--而成为这样一款应用的所有者将意味着很大的权力。 Musk has a tendency to try to force his ideas onto people who aren’t interested 马斯克总是试图把自己的想法强加给不感兴趣的人 The reality is that banks — and with FedNow, the actual Federal Reserve — have been keeping up with technological innovations in the US in ways they haven’t done elsewhere in the world, where super apps rose to power. Arguably, JPMorgan Chase is one of the most important tech companies in the world. 现实情况是，在美国，银行--以及美联储（FedNow）--一直在紧跟技术创新的步伐，而在超级应用程序崛起的世界其他地方，它们却没有这样做。可以说，摩根大通是世界上最重要的科技公司之一。 There is also a second thing standing in the way of the super app here in the US: the app stores. Both Google and Apple take cuts of any digital transactions, which is why you can buy cat litter from your Amazon app but not an ebook. The cooperation of both of those app stores would be crucial for any super app’s success, and it’s not guaranteed because such a super app is potentially a competitor to Google Pay and Apple Pay. “But Liz,” you might say, “isn’t that an antitrust issue?” Yes, my love, it is — and given what I have seen so far with respect to app store antitrust cases, I don’t like the odds for any super app challenger. 在美国，还有一件事阻碍着超级应用程序的发展：应用程序商店。谷歌和苹果都从任何数字交易中抽成，这就是为什么你可以通过亚马逊应用购买猫砂，却不能购买电子书。这两家应用商店的合作对任何超级应用的成功都至关重要，但这并不能保证成功，因为这样的超级应用有可能成为谷歌支付和苹果支付的竞争对手。"但是丽兹，"你可能会说，"这不是反垄断问题吗？是的，亲爱的，这就是问题所在--鉴于我迄今为止所看到的应用商店反垄断案例，我不看好任何超级应用挑战者的胜算。 Seizing the @X handle after the hasty rebrand, rather than before, is part of what seems to be an incredibly sloppy process to try to pursue the super app dream. It’s also in keeping with Musk’s tendency to try to force his ideas onto people who aren’t interested: during Musk’s PayPal days, he tried to push users to upgrade to business accounts on PayPal through an annoying pop-up targeting its most frequent users. The backlash was immediate and intense — and though very few people closed their accounts, only “about one-fifth of our targeted sellers voluntarily upgraded,” Jackson writes. 在仓促的品牌重塑之后而不是之前抢占 @X 域名，是马斯克试图追求超级应用梦想的过程中令人难以置信的草率行为的一部分。这也与马斯克试图把自己的想法强加给不感兴趣的人的倾向相吻合：在马斯克任职 PayPal 期间，他曾试图通过一个针对最常使用 PayPal 的用户的恼人弹窗，推动用户升级到 PayPal 的商业账户。杰克逊写道："虽然很少有人关闭了自己的账户，但只有 "大约五分之一的目标卖家自愿升级"。 Judging from how Twitter Blue has gone, Musk did not learn his lesson here. You need to give people a service they want to pay for — simply taking away the things people have gotten used to and telling them those services now require payment isn’t good enough. There’s more: the basically slap-dash process of becoming X is also likely to spook anyone who might be thinking about banking with him. 从 Twitter Blue 的发展来看，马斯克并没有吸取教训。你需要给人们提供他们愿意付费的服务--仅仅拿走人们已经习惯的东西并告诉他们这些服务现在需要付费是不够的。还有：马斯克成为 X 的过程基本上是草率的，这也很可能会让那些可能会考虑与他合作的人感到害怕。 Leave aside the technical questions of building a super app — the technical part’s comparatively easy 抛开构建超级应用程序的技术问题不谈，技术部分相对简单 Here are some things I do not want from my bank: abrupt, frequent service changes; regular service outages; new fees added at random; white supremacists; difficulty with verification; spam and fraud. 以下是我不希望银行做的一些事情：突然、频繁的服务变更；定期的服务中断；随意增加的新费用；白人至上主义者；验证困难；垃圾邮件和欺诈。 We are all watching Musk make some very big changes in public very quickly, and the way he has approached even changing the sign on the Twitter offices has not inspired confidence. Like, the cops stopped Musk from changing the Twitter sign because he didn’t bother with getting a permit. Even the new X sign launched an investigation because it was done in a slipshod fashion — and now, it is being taken down.  我们都在看着马斯克在公开场合迅速做出一些非常大的改变，而他连更换 Twitter 办公室标志的方式都无法让人产生信心。比如，警察阻止了马斯克更换 Twitter 标志，因为他没有费心去申请许可证。就连新的 X 标志也因为做得草率而引发了调查--现在，它被拆了。 Banking has a long history of financial shenanigans: the good old days of wildcat banking and counterfeiting, embezzlement, creative accounting, fraud, money laundering, you get it. The solution in the US financial system has been regulation, which not everyone appreciates. So we get crypto, which is “fixing” the regulation by dodging it, and the result has been a dazzling array of hacks and exploits, embezzlement, creative accounting, fraud, money laundering, and so on.  银行业的金融诡计由来已久：野猫银行、伪造、挪用公款、创造性会计、欺诈、洗钱，你懂的。美国金融体系的解决方案是监管，但并非所有人都欣赏监管。因此，我们有了加密货币，它通过躲避监管来 "解决 "监管问题，其结果是一系列令人眼花缭乱的黑客攻击和漏洞利用、贪污、创造性会计、欺诈、洗钱等等。 Banking is highly regulated, and it’s highly regulated for a reason, as cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been discovering the hard way. Leave aside the technical questions of building a super app — the technical part’s comparatively easy. The hard part is social! Finance is built on a foundation of trust. That’s what those regulations are for! Now take a look at Musk’s behavior with respect to regulations in general and, at Twitter, with respect to the social stuff. Ask yourself, and be honest: is this kind of man someone you trust with your money? 银行业受到严格监管，而受到严格监管是有原因的，加密货币爱好者们就发现了这一点。抛开构建超级应用程序的技术问题不谈，技术部分相对容易。难的是社交！金融建立在信任的基础之上。这就是那些法规的作用！现在来看看马斯克在一般法规方面的行为，以及在 Twitter 上的社交行为。诚实地扪心自问：这样的人，你会把钱托付给他吗？