Will Elon Musk’s Twitter Torpedo Real Estate’s Most Critical Debates?

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A several months ago, a tale about the demise of Airbnb begun circulating on TikTok.

The idea was that the shorter-term rental company was collapsing amid worsening financial disorders.

Inman reported on the story — which social media customers dubbed the “Airbnbust” — and located that the real truth was much a lot more nuanced. But appreciably, industry experts themselves also pushed again on the “bust” plan, and they did it in a certain location: Twitter. That pushback eventually assisted generate information coverage of the matter.

The episode highlights the way that Twitter, at its very best, features as a type of community forum. Consumers can certainly uncover themselves in a bubble on the social network. But the platform has fewer walled gardens than Facebook and is not curated by way of algorithms like TikTok’s For You Webpage. Over the several years Twitter has consequently turn into a digital home for journalists, small business leaders, analysts and other specialists who want to communicate immediately to the public.

So why does this matter?

As any one who has been viewing the information will know, Elon Musk just acquired Twitter for $44 billion. The obtain arrived right after months of rigmarole in which Musk flip-flopped back again and forth on the offer, and it finished Thursday when the Tesla and Space X CEO confirmed up at Twitter’s headquarters lugging a sink — a visual pun that he later on defined on Twitter was intended to say “let that sink in.”

Moving into Twitter HQ – permit that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

Businesses switch out leaders all the time, but Musk is no everyday govt. And his ascension to the major of Twitter has consequently prompted hand-ringing among Twitter consumers that he could jeopardize the site’s usefulness or purpose as a general public forum. Musk is himself an avid Twitter user and forecasts about his eventual effects on Twitter are divided. But as the “Airbnbust” discussion illustrates, Twitter comes about to be where some of the most vital debates about the housing marketplace will take area. And if Musk shakes up the platform that could finally reshape the way the world understands genuine estate.

Shaking points up

Musk has put in decades cultivating a community persona as a type of superstar disruptor, frequently working with Twitter to do so. And he seems to be bringing that very same ethos to Twitter. Shortly soon after coming into Twitter’s headquarters, for illustration, Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Main Money Officer Ned Segal and Policy Main Vijaya Gadde. On Monday, news emerged that Musk experienced dissolved Twitter’s board of directors.

The moves came soon after Musk reportedly threatened to ax as a lot as 75 p.c of Twitter’s staff before ultimately strolling back again that thought — nevertheless important layoffs are seemingly however in the operates.

On Sunday, the Verge also described that Musk was scheduling a significant shakeup that would specifically impression customers: He wishes to roll out a compensated subscription service that would price tag about $20 for each thirty day period and which would provide verification to consumers. The concept signifies a seismic change for Twitter, which has ordinarily been free of charge and which gives verification — signified with a blue checkmark displayed beside a user’s name — to general public figures, this kind of as famous people and journalists.

Far more fundamentally, Musk has also framed his Twitter takeover as a go to maintain no cost speech. Critics have countered that this sort of an orientation could jeopardize the platform’s moderation procedures or consequence in the restoration of accounts that were banned for factors like abuse or spreading disinformation. The most well-known banned account belonged to former President Donald Trump, even though neither he nor Musk have indicated if Trump will return.

Possibly way, the firings, the verification proposal and the stated goals recommend the new “Chief Twit,” as Musk is calling himself, is not squandering any time shaking up Twitter’s organization techniques. And he is seemingly not messing close to in accordance to the Verge, Musk told Twitter workforce they have until Nov. 7 to make the new verification idea a reality or they would be fired.

The discussion about genuine estate

The “Airbnbust” problem isn’t the only time debates about important housing problems have taken area on Twitter. Circumstance in position: Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman is a repeated Twitter person and has repeatedly made use of the platform to examine racial discrimination in housing. Focus on the subject matter exploded in 2019 many thanks to stories of racial discrimination among the brokers on Extensive Island, New York and then once more in 2020 soon after protests in excess of the killing of George Floyd.

Kelman utilized Twitter to specifically address the situation, writing in 2019 that “we all have brokers who are biased” and urging marketplace users to “set a zero-tolerance plan for discrimination.”

This could transpire at any brokerage. We all have brokers who are biased, whether the brokers know it or not. If you are a broker, send this investigate to *just about every* agent at your enterprise. Spotlight the vital conclusions. Established a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination.

— Glenn Kelman (@glennkelman) November 19, 2019

In reality, Kelman has been applying Twitter to speak about race, discrimination and genuine estate even prior to the industry’s optimum-profile incidents, and it was partially by way of Twitter that Kelman has designed this just one of the defining will cause he’s focused on while helming Redfin.

Kelman isn’t the only industry qualified utilizing Twitter to examine massive issues in housing. Daryl Fairweather and Taylor Marr, economists who function at Redfin, discuss the sector and in some conditions present a sober counter voice to some of the extra alarmist pop culture requires on the housing sector.

Other leaders from Zillow’s Abundant Barton to Side’s Man Gal are also frequent Twitter end users.

Among the brokers, considerably of the debate about actual estate normally takes spot in other places. Facebook teams, this sort of as Inman Coastline to Coastline and Lab Coat Brokers boast hundreds of users and routinely have robust discussions about how to manage day-to-day jobs. It’s to some degree scarce for all those styles of conversations to spill in excess of onto Twitter.

But Twitter is still the go-to web site for best-amount executives like Kelman and Barton — each of whom are verified by the way — to converse straight with the general public. Professional economists almost never wade into agent Facebook teams, leaving Twitter as the finest location to see their insights on the fly. Analysts like Lane can and do post on other platforms, such as LinkedIn, but Twitter lets their commentary to distribute additional simply throughout industries and disciplines, perhaps amplifying their voices and shaping the broader discussion.

In the quick phrase, all of that is most likely to keep the similar. Marr, for occasion, was however tweeting insights about the housing marketplace as of Monday afternoon. For all of the gnashing of teeth around Musk’s takeover, the normal person experience hadn’t altered substantially.

But more than time if Twitter begins to follow the trajectory of Myspace — which is to say, gradual decline to the point of irrelevance — it’s challenging to visualize a further platform giving the very same type of accessibility to executives, economists, journalists and others. In other terms, conversations about some of the most pressing problems in genuine estate may basically go offline or into electronic walled gardens, in which they’ll get to fewer folks and have a more durable time altering real-earth instances for the improved.

If Twitter dies off, I’m okay with that. I was in no way making an attempt to be the most effective at Twitter.

— Daryl Fairweather (@FairweatherPhD) Oct 30, 2022

Is the future uncertain?

Modern times have noticed a flurry of commentary above Musk’s Twitter takeover. For case in point, The Atlantic reporter Charlie Warzel lately wrote in his newsletter about how Musk could “kill Twitter.” Warzel’s take was that Musk could “kneecap” the platform with inept management.

Not absolutely everyone was so doom and gloom however. Slate on Monday argued that Musk was unlikely to “open the Nazi Floodgates on Twitter,” and journalist Josh Barro wrote Friday in his publication that Musk could truly realign Twitter’s biases so they more carefully match up with the standard general public.

The level listed here is that there are basically two results persons are envisioning. The initial — and this is the a person that a whole lot of Twitter’s actual buyers are speaking about — is that Musk so radically modifications the system that he ruins it.

The next scenario, articulated by Barro and some some others, sees a softer and probably handy adjust that could make Twitter much more approachable for each day consumers.

It is completely unclear what Musk will do nevertheless. Monday for occasion, he tweeted a poll asking if people today wanted him to bring back Vine, a now-defunct social community that Twitter acquired in 2012 then shuttered in 2016. Presented how significantly time has passed given that Vine shut down, and the simple fact that TikTok occupies a related area of interest now, it is hard to read through Musk’s dilemma as becoming really serious — while Axios claimed that Twitter engineers were being seeking at Vine’s code Monday.

Either way, the remark highlights how it is really hard to parse which of Musk’s responses are really serious, which are trolling and which may be equally. Is the Vine strategy a joke? Maybe. Does that signify it will not come about? Not necessarily. When Musk is in cost, actuality and jokes are not mutually exclusive, as in the case of his consumer-oriented flamethrower.

The consequence is that only time will explain to what Musk will do, even though the Main Twit himself has indicated it’s going to be a wild and unpredictable experience.

“Twitter will be forming a information moderation council with greatly diverse viewpoints,” he tweeted last week, prior to introducing just hours afterwards that “comedy is now legal on Twitter.”

Electronic mail Jim Dalrymple II