I really don't know, but at this point, I have to say he looks a whole lot like a guy who's convinced himself he's a genius, refusing to see that everybody else in his life are the ones doing all the work - all the things he's showing us pretty clearly he isn't able to do.
He tried to buy Twitter, and then he tried to bail on it, but they threatened a massive lawsuit, so he went through with it, paying 2 or 3 or 4 times what the company's worth.
Twitter has been showing some pretty good signs that it's getting its shit together, having cut it's losses by billions over the last couple of years, but it's still losing money - lots of money.
As of 2022, Twitter is not profitable. In fact, in 2021, on $5 billion in revenues, Twitter generated over $220 million in net losses.
So maybe Elon did the smart thing, buying a company on the rise. But so far, he's a fucking disaster. Twitter stock is floating along on the breeze, and Tesla is down $80/share in the last 3 months.
The rich man asked me, "You're smart, why ain't you rich?"
And I asked him back, "You're rich, why ain't you smart?"
Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over
Estimates from Bot Sentinel suggest that more than 875,000 users deactivated their accounts between October 27 and November 1, while half a million more were suspended.
In the days after Elon Musk’s October 27 purchase of Twitter was confirmed by his tweet saying “the bird is freed,” many Twitter users have threatened to leave, unhappy about the new ownership.
People always threaten to leave Twitter and then often fail to follow through—but new data suggests that a significant number of users really are abandoning the platform this time.
The firm Bot Sentinel, which tracks inauthentic behavior on Twitter by analyzing more than 3.1 million accounts and their activity daily, believes that around 877,000 accounts were deactivated and a further 497,000 were suspended between October 27 and November 1. That’s more than double the usual number.
“We have observed an uptick in people deactivating their accounts and also Twitter suspending accounts,” says Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel’s founder.
(pay wall)
The billionaire and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages, fees to watch videos and other features to the service.
Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, is throwing everything against the wall to make more money at the social media company.
Since closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter last week, Mr. Musk and his advisers have discussed adding paid direct messages — which would let users send private messages to high-profile users — to the service, according to two people with knowledge of the matter and internal documents viewed by The New York Times.
They have also talked about adding “paywalled” videos, which would mean that certain videos could not be viewed unless users paid a fee, these people said. And they have discussed reviving Vine, a onetime short-form video platform, which could attract a younger audience coveted by advertisers.
This week, Mr. Musk moved to make money from Twitter’s “blue check” verification program, a method of making sure users are who they say they are. The billionaire announced that the program, which is currently free, will be rolled into the “Twitter Blue” subscription service, which will offer enhanced features for a monthly $8 fee.
The frenzy of product development underlines the pressure that Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, is under to deliver immediate results — and returns — on the technology industry’s largest-ever leveraged buyout. To finance his Twitter deal, he loaded the company with $13 billion in debt, putting it on the hook to pay more than $1 billion annually in interest alone.
But last year Twitter had less than $1 billion in cash flow, partly because of a one-time charge, meaning it generated less money than what it now owes its lenders annually. The company was also unprofitable for eight of the last 10 years. So, to make ends meet, Mr. Musk must boost Twitter’s revenue or cut costs — or do both.
Mr. Musk has already ordered job cuts across Twitter. On Wednesday, a Twitter employee posted a link to a “severance calculations” document in a company Slack channel, noting that there was a “master list” that included the number 3,738, according to a copy of the message seen by The Times.
A blockbuster deal. In April, Elon Musk made an unsolicited bid worth $44 billion for the social media platform, saying he wanted to turn Twitter into a private company and allow people to speak more freely on the service. Here’s how the monthslong battle that followed played out:
The response. Twitter’s board countered Mr. Musk’s offer with a defense mechanism known as a “poison pill.” This well-worn corporate tactic makes a company less palatable to a potential acquirer by making it more expensive to buy shares above a certain threshold.
Securing financing. Though his original offer had scant details and was received skeptically by Wall Street, Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, moved swiftly to secure commitments to finance his bid, putting pressure on Twitter’s board to take his advances seriously.
Striking a deal. With the financing in place, Twitter’s board met with Mr. Musk in April to discuss his offer. The two sides soon reached a deal, with the company agreeing to sell itself for $54.20 a share — roughly $44 billion in total.
Tensions arise. Not long after Mr. Musk and Twitter reached their agreement, problems began. Mr. Musk threatened to pull out of the deal if Twitter did not provide more information on how it calculates the number of fake accounts. In June, the company announced that it planned to give him access to a large swath of its data.
Musk backs out. In July, Mr. Musk announced that he was terminating the deal, citing the continuing disagreement over the number of spam accounts. Twitter then sued the billionaire to force him to go through with the deal. But Mr. Musk fired back in a legal filing, arguing that the company concealed the true number of fake accounts on its platform, accusing Twitter of fraud.
Preparing for trial. Lawyers for both sides have issued more than 100 subpoenas ahead of a trial that was expected to start in October, mostly targeting tech VIPs. In September, a judge ruled that Mr. Musk could amend his suit to include accusations from a former Twitter security chief who claimed that the company misled the public about its security practices.
A surprise move. On Oct. 4, Mr. Musk proposed a deal to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, the price he agreed to pay for the company in April. On Oct. 27, the purchase was completed. Mr. Musk quickly began cleaning house, with at least four top Twitter executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — getting fired.
If that figure refers to people who could be laid off, and if the number holds, it will amount to about 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500-person work force. Interns were excluded from the list, according to the copy of the message. Some of Mr. Musk’s advisers held a conference call on Wednesday evening to try to finalize the number of cuts, according to internal memos and calendar entries viewed by The Times.
Mr. Musk is also trying to minimize Twitter’s infrastructure costs. In meetings with engineers, his advisers have proposed saving from $1 million to $3 million in infrastructure costs a day, said three people familiar with the talks. Lieutenants are also looking to make deep cuts to Twitter’s “Redbird” organization, which consists of platform and infrastructure teams, the people said.
Twitter faces difficulties earning advertising revenue under Mr. Musk, who has said he may loosen content rules on the service. On Thursday, General Mills and Audi’s U.S. division said they had paused advertising on Twitter because of concerns about content moderation on the platform.
Mr. Musk and representatives for Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Axios and Jane Wong, an independent researcher, reported some details of the company’s plans earlier.
In an onstage interview at the TED Conference in April, Mr. Musk said owning Twitter “is not a way to make money” and added, “I don’t care about the economics at all.”
Since then, however, the global economy has tipped toward recession, inflation and interest rates have soared and the digital advertising market — which Twitter relies on for revenue — has pulled back. Mr. Musk’s own fortune is tied up largely in shares of his electric automaker, Tesla, whose stock has plummeted.
In an attempt to spin up new lines of business at Twitter, over the past week Mr. Musk and his advisers have dispatched product teams to brainstorm any and all ideas that could quickly bring in money, according to 10 current and former employees and internal documents discussing the matter. Three people who have met with Mr. Musk or his lieutenants said the focus was largely on how to increase revenue.
One product team is working on paid direct messaging, which appears to be focused on Very Important Tweeters, or V.I.T.s, on the network, said the two people with knowledge of the work and according to the internal documents. According to the product mock-ups seen by The Times, users would be able to send private messages to their favorite celebrities for a nominal fee. A fee structure, which had not been set in stone, could be as little as a few dollars per direct message.
In early prototypes, a Twitter user was depicted asking the musician Post Malone about his favorite records. Such paid messages could appear in a special area of the direct message inbox, and the celebrities would have to choose to receive them. Twitter would most likely take a cut of the fees, according to the documents.
Understand Elon Musk’s Twitter TakeoverA Familiar Playbook: In his first days at Twitter, Elon Musk has been emulating some of the actions of Mark Zuckerberg, who leads Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The plans for paid direct messaging remain fluid, and there is no guarantee that the product will launch, the people with knowledge of the matter said.
Product teams are also working on “paywalled” videos, an idea similar to offerings from platforms like OnlyFans, which hosts content for creators in the adult content industry. Under this plan, Twitter might ask users to pay a fee to watch a video, splitting the revenue with the creators who post the content, two people familiar with the project said.
Mr. Musk has also shown interest in Vine, the looping video app that was popular among young creators before Twitter shut it down in 2016. He ran a Twitter poll on Sunday asking his followers whether or not he should bring it back, and he has commanded internal teams to examine the code to see if reviving it is possible, two people familiar with the conversations said.
Mr. Musk’s new Twitter Blue subscription service, which will give subscribers the check mark next to their username, is aiming to begin on Nov. 7 in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to internal documents seen by The Times. Subscribers would not need their identities authenticated to get the check mark, the documents suggested.
The documents also noted that there would be “an interim period where the check would be on both Blue subscribers accounts and previously verified users.” Eventually, verified accounts that do not pay for Twitter Blue will lose the check marks. There are more than 423,000 verified accounts on Twitter.
The documents also outlined plans for “government accounts to keep their Verified badge without paying for Blue.” Some features for the subscription service already announced by Mr. Musk, including higher rankings for subscribers’ replies and the ability to upload longer videos, would not begin on Nov. 7, according to the documents. A European rollout was also planned, with the Twitter Blue team having worked to align the product with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation privacy law.
The Blue team was told to get the product ready for introduction by next week or face being fired. Esther Crawford, one of the product managers, shared a photo of herself on Wednesday in a sleeping bag and wearing an eye mask on the floor of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Product teams are also working on “paywalled” videos, an idea similar to offerings from platforms like OnlyFans, which hosts content for creators in the adult content industry. Under this plan, Twitter might ask users to pay a fee to watch a video, splitting the revenue with the creators who post the content, two people familiar with the project said.
Mr. Musk has also shown interest in Vine, the looping video app that was popular among young creators before Twitter shut it down in 2016. He ran a Twitter poll on Sunday asking his followers whether or not he should bring it back, and he has commanded internal teams to examine the code to see if reviving it is possible, two people familiar with the conversations said.
Mr. Musk’s new Twitter Blue subscription service, which will give subscribers the check mark next to their username, is aiming to begin on Nov. 7 in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to internal documents seen by The Times. Subscribers would not need their identities authenticated to get the check mark, the documents suggested.
The documents also noted that there would be “an interim period where the check would be on both Blue subscribers accounts and previously verified users.” Eventually, verified accounts that do not pay for Twitter Blue will lose the check marks. There are more than 423,000 verified accounts on Twitter.
The documents also outlined plans for “government accounts to keep their Verified badge without paying for Blue.” Some features for the subscription service already announced by Mr. Musk, including higher rankings for subscribers’ replies and the ability to upload longer videos, would not begin on Nov. 7, according to the documents. A European rollout was also planned, with the Twitter Blue team having worked to align the product with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation privacy law.
The Blue team was told to get the product ready for introduction by next week or face being fired. Esther Crawford, one of the product managers, shared a photo of herself on Wednesday in a sleeping bag and wearing an eye mask on the floor of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.
“When your team is pushing round the clock
to make deadlines, sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork."
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