When Elon Musk Turned Blue ⇥ nytimes.com

Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, in an excerpt from their forthcoming book “Character Limit” published in the New York Times:

Mr. Musk’s fixation on Blue extended beyond the design, and he engaged in lengthy deliberations about how much it should cost. Mr. [David] Sacks insisted that they should raise the price to $20 a month, from its current $4.99. Anything less felt cheap to him, and he wanted to present Blue as a luxury good.

[…]

Mr. Musk also turned to the author Walter Isaacson for advice. Mr. Isaacson, who had written books on Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, was shadowing him for an authorized biography. “Walter, what do you think?” Mr. Musk asked.

“This should be accessible to everyone,” Mr. Isaacson said, no longer just the fly on the wall. “You need a really low price point, because this is something that everyone is going to sign up for.”

I learned a new specific German word today as a direct result of this article: fremdschämen. It is more-or-less the opposite of schadenfreude; instead of being pleased by someone else’s embarrassment, you instead feel their pain.

This is humiliating for everyone involved: Musk, Sacks — who compared Twitter’s blue checkmarks to a Chanel handbag — and Jason Calacanis of course. But most of all, this is another blow to Isaacson’s credibility as an ostensibly careful observer of unfolding events.

Max Tani, of Semafor, was tipped off to Isaacson’s involvement earlier this year by a single source:

“I wanted to get in touch because we’re including an item in this week’s Semafor media newsletter reporting that you actually set the price for Twitter Premium,” I wrote to Isaacson in March. “We’ve heard that while you were shadowing Elon Musk for your book, he told Twitter staff that you had advised him on what the price should be, and he thought it was a good idea and implemented it.”

“Hah! That’s the first I’d heard of this. It’s not true. I’m not even sure what the price is. Sorry,” he replied.

This denial is saved from being a lie only by the grounds that Isaacson did not literally “set the price”, as Tani put it, on the subscription service. In all meaningful ways, though, it is deceptive.