'You must be a genius': Elon Musk spars with ex-employee over Twitter ad relevance
1 min read . Updated: 19 Feb 2023, 04:37 PM IST
PremiumMusk noted that the current system was ‘sheer madness’ and needed an overhaul at the earliest. He said that the company had begun improving relevance in December last year, but still had ‘a very long way to go’.
Twitter chief Elon Musk lashed out at a former employee on Saturday over advertising relevance on the social media platform. The remarks came after the company's ex-revenue product lead Bruce Falck took to Twitter insisting that Musk had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
Falck had been reacting to an update wherein Musk said Twitter was working to ‘improve contextual relevance’ on the social media platform.
“My apologies, you must be a genius, which is why Twitter has the worst ad relevance on Earth. Almost nobody buys anything on Twitter, but almost everyone on Instagram does. That is being fixed," came the sharp rebuttal from the company's new commander-in-chief.
As he added, in response to supportive messages from several users, “Irrelevant or annoying ads work for neither the user nor the advertiser!"
Responding to another user, Musk noted that the current system was ‘sheer madness’ and needed an overhaul at the earliest. He said that the company had begun improving relevance in December last year, but still had ‘a very long way to go’.
“When I ask people if they use Twitter, almost all have for many years. When I ask if they’ve ever bought something from an ad after using the site for a decade, the answer is almost always no. That’s insane!" he said.
“The biggest problem is that Twitter optimized for impressions over clicks, with the perverse result that it maximized ad irrelevance, because clicking on an ad takes you away from Twitter, thus reducing impressions generated per user-minute. The sheer madness of this takes a moment to appreciate," the Twitter CEO added.
Meanwhile, the company announced yet another change this week, noting that only paid subscribers would be allowed to use text messages as a two-factor authentication method to secure their accounts from March 20.
“Use of free authentication apps for 2FA will remain free and are much more secure than SMS," Musk added.