https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.htmlBut Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times. The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said.
Twitter’s ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said. The company has forecast that its U.S. ad revenue this month will be down at least 56 percent each week compared with a year ago, according to one internal document.
Twitter’s valuation has since plunged. In March, Mr. Musk said the company was worth $20 billion, down more than 50 percent from the $44 billion he paid for it. Last week, the mutual funds giant Fidelity, which owns shares in Twitter, valued the company at $15 billion.
At this rate Twitter will either file for bankruptcy or will be sold for 5-10 billion to new owners. Or maybe Musk will double down and will start using his Tesla/SpaceX money to support Twitter, although if that happens, the shareholders of those companies will be very unhappy. Another way how Twitter can survive a bit longer is if it will secure funding from foreign governments. One of the buyers of Twitter together with Musk was a Saudi prince. Maybe Musk will start offering censorship/propaganda/data harvesting service to governments for a large fee to offset his ad revenue losses. Because blue checkmark sales are clearly not enough.
Did anyone on this forum, who use twitter, notice any unusual or significant increase in hate speech? Personally, I haven't noticed. Has anyone here watched BBC's interview with Elon Musk? The interviewer so absurdly talking about hate speech increase while in fact he had no evidence to prove his claim. I think freedom of speech is very important and Elon Musk clearly pointed that out in that interview, who is fair to judge what's true and what's false?
By the way, Elon Musk's approach towards Twitter, as a company, is very strange. To my mind, his mistake is that he ignores the fact that people aren't as dedicated and hard-working as he is and by firing so many employees, his company is not doing well and he doesn't want to return them back too.