Also, it is now full of bots and grifters, plus Musk’s own promoted tweets with whatever political thing he’s obsessed with at the moment showing up in everyone’s timelines.
The matter of the fact is that most governments and newspapers publish on twitter (now X) still. It also serves the purpose of amplifying Musk to a large audience.
If you wanted to transform a public forum into a right -wing echo chamber, then the transformation is a massive success and the platform continues to achieve all relevant objectives.
While you’re right in that the platform has its uses, other companies cannot do the same. Which is why it’s important to talk about objective success metrics. Sure if you want to fire 80% staff at Microsoft and have a transformation where they only cater to half the user base then they can do it. But they will also not be taking in the same profits as before.
I don't think it's right, but I can see how a billionaire just completely overrides the company mission and business model after they buy enough shares or something.
Maybe there are other non-obvious use-cases for other companies, where you're effectively buying the user base to then pull the rug.
A lot of the original customers will just accept such a change. See Twitter or GitHub.
Musk paid an absurd premium for the company. Far more than it was worth. It was intended to force the board to sell. So an 80% estimated drop (it’s private so it’s a very rough estimate and I won’t go into the various reasons you should not accept it at face value), sounds scary but it’s by design.
Twitter as a company was doing quite poorly leading up to the acquisition. It lost more than $1.3B in the two preceding years. A big downgrade from its previous $1B+ annual reported profits.
As for the 81% headcount reduction, Musk confirmed that, but if you think he’s lying about that for some reason, CNBC investigated it. Journalists examined internal Twitter records and reported approximately 1,300 actively working employees, with another 1,400 still receiving pay but no longer working. CNBC also interviewed two recent employees who corroborated the scale of the reductions. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/20/twitter-is-down-to-fewer-tha...
Prior to acquisition, Twitter's SEC filings confirmed more than 7,500 full-time employees.
I don’t see why this claim is so unbelievable. Twitter was famous for its army of social media staff whose entire day comprised two meeting between matcha tea and meditation. https://youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs
Musk just fired everyone who wasn’t an engineer and it turns out the engineers keep the lights on.
As for this:
> Twitter as a company was doing quite poorly leading up to the acquisition
This is objectively false. 2020 revenue for Twitter was $3.71B while 2021 came in at $5.07B. The company was on a growth trajectory and path to profitability.
In fact, after the acquisition, the ad revenue dropped by a lot. https://www.businessinsider.com/x-revenues-plunged-months-af...
All of this is public information.
That’s because I didn’t make any claims about X’s financial performance. I was explaining to you why you were wrong on some important facts.
> This is objectively false. 2020 revenue for Twitter was $3.71B while 2021 came in at $5.07B.
First, you’re conflating revenue and profit, which is kind of unforgivable in this context. Second, I explained that in those years they made large profits. In my comment. Which you clearly didn’t read.
If this is just where you like to emotionally vent may I instead recommend Reddit? I like the interesting discussions here.
The valuation crashing back to reality after going private, and therefore being measured by its intrinsic worth rather than whatever the latest trader paid for a share of it, was an inevitable but meaningless consequence.
Twitter has become text book bad purchase, bad management, and worst "rebranding" in history.
It was meaningless to Musk for all of about a week, when he came off his ketamine binge and realized what a stupid offer he’d made. But it was a done deal by that point.
According to Reddit[0], it might not have been meaningless to employees with unvested RSUs. They lacked an acceleration clause, so instead of immediately becoming 100% vested at $54.20, the schedule remained intact with a cash payout instead of stock. If the cash payout was relative to current company value, then it was a massive hit.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitter/comments/yykn1e/if_you_work...
I'm talking about the investors and banks that ponied up over half the purchase funds, and the employees that didn't have life changing payouts who were laid off.
I suppose he has the money to pay back the investors and banks now though. Not sure what kinda return they were expecting vs what they got.
The Financial Times report is behind a paywall so I'm not sure how that evaluation was reached. Also there are a bunch of bizarre financial shenanigans Musk has freely pulled with zero scrutiny. Hard to gauge the full impact of the layoffs when the person at the helm is profoundly amoral and has no scruples about lying.
and `X’s revenues have dropped since Musk’s takeover, but it posted about $1.2bn in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation in 2024, according to two people familiar with the matter — roughly flat with the period before Musk’s takeover.`