Twitter CEO Elon Musk Wants Users to Maximize Unregretted User Time
Twitter CEO Elon Musk is urging users to have no regrets for the amount of time they spend on the app. Musk is continuously looking for ways to make the platform profitable, and this time, he is telling advertisers and Twitter users that he wants Twitter to be « fun, interesting, and informative. » He said at a conference last month that the optimization for Twitter is to maximize the unregretted user time. Musk took over Twitter in October and tried to promote the social media platform as Twitter 2.0, saying the company would use secret algorithms to attract more users to the app.
Users Respond to Musk’s Call for Feedback
Twitter users were asked to vote in a poll posted on Musk’s page on Sunday, which said, « We’re trying hard to make your feed as compelling as possible (maximize unregretted user minutes). » The majority of voters, 49.5%, said their opinion of minutes spent on the site was better, while 15.9% reported it was the same, and 38.2% said their regret of time spent on the platform had worsened. In response, Musk asked users what Twitter « should do more or less of, or aren’t including at all? » Several users complained about increased shadow bans on Twitter, which is when a user’s account is partially blocked or blacklisted, or its visibility is reduced without the account holder’s knowledge. Other users complained that the platform’s algorithm reduced the content they want to see on their feed, while some said increased suspensions and the auto-refresh feature had worsened their experience.
Expert Opinion on Maximizing Unregretted User Time
Ravi Iyer, a former Facebook data scientist and current managing director of the Psychology of Technology Institute, wrote in a Substack essay earlier this year that if a social media platform wants to increase user engagement and decrease the amount of regret from time spent on the platform, companies need to focus on ways to « find explicitly positive experiences and magnify those. » He added that it is far more difficult to manufacture more such experiences than it is to create content that is simply « unregretted. » The value to the user and the value to the company are not aligned. Therefore, if Twitter wants to maximize unregretted user time, it needs to focus on creating positive experiences for its users.
Keywords: Twitter, Elon Musk, unregretted user time, social media platform, user engagement, positive experiences.
