Topic: Twitter ad sales down 59%, company valuation down 66% (Read 685 times)

I have my own opinion, in general, about the purchase of Twitter by Ilon Musk.
My guess is that "technological greatness" has already been achieved. Yes - there are powerful people and big money behind it. But. There is no "greatness" and no mechanism for managing and manipulating a large society. Max is well aware that the ambiguity of his person, does not allow in the real world to become an "idol", for many reasons. But he is well aware that large social networks are both an influence and a mechanism for "pushing" certain narratives into the masses, a large social network is a good mechanism to prepare, for example, for a political career. And much more.
And Twitter simply turned out to be the most "convenient" on the market to buy! And yes, this is Elon Musk's experiment to prepare for a larger release of global social networks as a mechanism to achieve other, not technological, goals ! My opinion is purely my own, I do not claim to be the only true one

This is such a beautiful ending and a perfect example of how Elon is not any extra special kind of genius. He got lucky with his original Paypal investment, which as the biggest web based payment processor for such a long time was a license to print money. He then took the huge amounts he made from that company and was able to spend it on hiring many other super intelligence people in various fields, who then turned out actual useful products that made a lot more money. Unfortunately his ego grew so large and he cannot stand being insulted, he talked himself into paying twice the price he should have for Twitter and then tried his hardest to weasel out of it. Unfortunately he did not realize how powerful the business laws were where Twitter was incorporated, so he couldn't back out and has now run it into the ground.

I do not agree with you!
One side is the technological projects of Elon Musk. Where was the plan, from the birth to the actual product (we won't consider some "nuances" from reality now, ok ? )... The other side - when the halo squeezes the brain and the man decides that he is God, and can create and create, but completely forgets that he is a mere mortal with his own problems and begins to "rebuild the world". In this case, "Twitter. Unfortunately "shitting himself" with his innovations, he KILLS Twitter. Yes, there is still a loyal audience (me for example ), but it begins to dwindle and move to where it is as comfortable and convenient as on Twitter before Musk, and this flow will not dry up ! Moreover - if the "alternative Twitter" has at least 5% more features and conveniences - and the most loyal audience will leave Twitter. And that's what it's all about. I'm absolutely ready to quit "Twitter named after Musk" and move to an adequate platform, by the way, I'll drag my friends there too
Even if Musk gets his hands off the once great Twitter, Twitter will be VERY DIFFERENT, close to impossible, to get its image back. Too bad, but ... it happens ! And examples of mismanagement are many in history, Twitter is not the first and not the last !

Elon is running Twitter like some sort of high school science project and we shouldn't be surprise with the numbers. Twitter is just like one of those toys you buy and play with when you are bored because for you it has no intrinsic value so you do with it as you please. Many people migrated from Twitter to some other platforms or just completely left.

Apparently he saw his numbers dwindling and had to hire someone else, well it isn't working out so well for him. He is rich and he is profiting from the government in one form or another. This is the thing I loved about Jack. He had principles and morals and stuck to it. Well, even if they go bankrupt and sell it, how are we sure that the next buyer won't be some government official masking as an entrepreneur. 

Musk has successfully led Tesla and SpaceX and PayPal gave him the nickname "PayPal Mafia." Impressive portfolio. Would you agree that the same man who can tweet market turbulence might also bring Twitter "fluctuations"? Remember: Elon Musk is more than a businessman. Scientist, inventor, and visionary. His obsessions include tech-heavy, space-faring projects. Twitter, a tech business, operates in social media. Musk may boost Twitter's market position, but there are risks. Leadership changes affect market values. Shareholders panicking over a lower value could trigger instability.

Maybe we're not intelligent enough to understand what Mr. Mars is doing with the company and it will actually be worth at least $250 billion in the future (so he claims), but to me who looks at it from the sidelines it seems like he's deliberately trying to destroy the company. In the context of everything that has been going on in recent months and days, the competition is about to make the final blow, and we'll soon see if the birdie manages to recover after Threads is released from the bottle.

Elon Musk is a shrewd businessman and it is possible for him to position a company well, as he has done with Tesla, spaceX.  Elon Musk is also called the PayPal Mafia because PayPal was the first project of Elon Musk's and several other successful businesses.  So I don't think there will be any major damage to Twitter as long as Elon Musk is with Twitter.  Twitter may face a temporary problem and their market value may decrease slightly.  But this problem won't last long since Elon Musk bought Twitter he will take it far and it is possible for him to do one

From the Internet

"Musk closed free access to tweets, now you can see them only after logging in. So, according to the rules, Google started to remove Twitter from search. Already deleted 52% of content Without search traffic on Google Twitter will quickly die. That's what happens when a business is run by a stupid ignorant stiff."

There was a lot of hype around this change. I've seen a lot of different "threats" even to leave the Twitter network, but I don't think it will be like that. It will probably be a bigger problem if a restriction is introduced on writing posts and retweeting. I am certainly convinced that this can only help in reducing spam.
What I'm interested in is, does anyone really read 600 tweets a day or do you at least know someone who does?

Does it surprise anyone? Elon Musk is a unique man, of course, but that does not mean that everything he takes on turns into Paypal, Tesla or Space-X !
Plus some overconfidence and overestimation of his capabilities and understanding of another market - as a result, as they say "we have what we have"!
The saddest thing for the Twitter platform is that these processes can become INCREDIBLE, leading either to the actual closure of the project or attempts to resell it. But as they say "the spirit" of the project will remain, and it is unlikely it will be possible to revive it to its former level...

Exactly my thoughts. Musk's behavior on social media, particularly on Twitter, does sometimes appear impulsive and lacking a clear business strategy. It seems like he moves without a stable direction. This inconsistency can lead to confusion and speculation among observers, including whether his intentions are to intentionally disrupt Twitter.
One would wonder why he doesn't depend more on a group of knowledgeable advisors. It's appears that Musk likes to work alone or depends on a small number of advisors rather than a bigger team when making decisions. Regardless, he is the richest man in the world, and if that is what works for him, who are we to question? Lol!

This is not about post limits per day, but about viewing tweets per day. New users will be able to view 300 tweets per day, old users 600, and if you want more, then pay.

Well, I'm not surprised, Twitter for Musk is just a business, and since he is a businessman, it was expected to receive such steps from him. Someone will not like it and leave twitter, but someone will choose to pay, and this will be enough to receive a very good income. In addition, if this does not work and there is a significant outflow of users, then these restrictions can always be removed, but I think that this will bring Musk the expected profit.

I'm not his fan from day 1 and never liked his behavior since he became the sole owner of that micro blog. The limit thing is clear to everyone that Elon is only trying to make people subscribed to his $8 thing in favor of making more revenues. Remember that some money were borrowed in addition to what was use to purchase Twitter and they have deadline to pay back plus interest and the plan was to pay from the interest of the company, they also have staffs to settle and that is why I see this as a milking opportunity by Elon Musk. There is no way you will explain this in technical term to layman that they wouldn't see it as a business strategy but regardless of his tactics, people that are less interested will live and also reduce number of users.

If it drops by 59% as others say here, it is because from the very beginning of Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, we have already heard that there will be a big change in its management and one of them is having a monthly subscription for everyone of users apps of twitter.

This is where I saw the problem, because if we think about how many people have spread twitter on social media and are used by millions of communities in different parts of the world, you suddenly charge users like that, of course what You expect everyone who has a subscription to agree, even I will find other apps like FB.

Well, the latest Twitter new update, limit their own user to use their platform, which means reduce their ad impression. Advertiser would never want that, they want the most and widest impression they can get. And because ad is their main source of income, then it's understandable that people are considering to sell their stock.

I used to support Elon buying Twitter because it would become freer and the company's ad sales fell, or its value fell because we were in an economic crisis, so it's not too big of a problem. But constantly thinking of all sorts of ways to find ways to collect money from users like what is happening, I really disagree. But like you said, he owns Twitter, and he has total control over everything, if his policy succeeds, it's a win for him, and if it fails, he's the one who suffers. So let's see what happens next with this popular social network.

well, he knows what he's doing so whatever the aftermath will be is his own choice, right? it is his company so he can do whatever he wants for his company. if goes bankrupt or people getting away from it, he will bear the consequences of his actions. anyway, he's the one putting money into this social media.
also, the current limitations in my opinion is quite valid. let's say you have verified acct, it now have a temporary limitation of 6k posts per day. now, as a user, can you really max out such limitation? you can barely reach the 100 posts/day. so the media is just exaggerating what musk is implementing on his platform. but if you will look at it, quite reasonable and there's so much leeway as i see it.


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On more related news, Musk once again broke twitter

Why Elon Musk has imposed reading limits that could cripple Twitter

He says that Twitter is being scraped by bots and it slows down the system, but users have found a bug that causes the client to fire unnecessary requests. Also, immediately after buying Twitter Musk was talking about some inefficient API use, even though the Twitter engineers publicly disagreed with him. A lot of them got fired. Seems like Elon decided to have his way and "fix" something that wasn't broken.

I agree with you, everything is temporary, and people are too hasty to conclude that Elon or Twitter has failed. Look at the previous companies he's run, they've all done really well, so I believe he'll know what to do with Twitter. He spent $44 billion to buy it, he's not a spender without a clear purpose. I am not in a hurry to judge others by their words or actions on social networks, but I just believe in their actions and the results they achieve. Sometimes they just joke around online, but when it comes to work, they are completely different.

"Freedom of speech" was something they focused on as soon as Elon Musk took over, meaning people could say offensive stuff without getting banned, not straight up curse at someone, but they can point out their offensive thoughts, there is nothing illegal about saying "I do not like black people", that's racism, but not illegal to say.

However, when you do that, and when the website is filled with that, do you really think that people would be willing to spend their money on it? That's not cancel culture or snowflakes or libs or whatever, this is people deciding not to spend their money on a company anymore, and they have all the rights to do that. This is why twitter will keep going down as long as companies keep seeing it as a bad place to spend marketing budget on.

Of course this is a lesson for Elon Musk who is too optimistic and ambitious, if ad sales continue to decline in the long run then the fate of Twitter could be like Yahoo which continues to lose money, Twitter must be more creative and able to take advantage of all the things that are trending, and change is needed to make advertisers are increasing on twitter.

I don't need to make billions of dollars to criticize him, i might even be a very poor person. What is said here is that Musk is very indecisive and sometimes does not quite know what he wants to do. As long as we don't insult someone we can say criticism and we don't need to be on the same level as someone to criticize them. I just don't find the decisions Musk made after buying Twitter right. Elon is smart and has the ability to change the world with his actions. Their companies can change people's lives in the years to come. I respect a lot of his work but that doesn't mean i can't criticize him.

Many analysts criticize that advertising on Twitter is ineffective so it doesn't have a good impact on advertisers. Of course, we can see that Google continues to be profitable because Google's creative team presents advertisements so that many consumers feel satisfied when advertising on Google.

Just goes to show that Elon is definitely not that intelligent, or more likely that his intelligent has long been overtaken by his ego. He got rich from PayPal and from that point onwards he was able to hire very clever people with his accumulated billions and go on to make even more billions. There reaches a point where if you are that rich, you don't need to be particularly clever to increase your wealth much further. Glad to see that he threw away so much money because he really is against free speech, even though he pretends to stand for it - only when you again with him.

I think the increasingly difficult global economic situation like this also causes a decrease in income from many top sites, Google, Facebook and others also report a decrease in income so what is happening with Twitter is normal.

No, I disagree with you...

Elon Musk had some "trouble" with the previous owners and management of Twitter and I think he thought it would be a good idea to buy the platform and fire all those people. (Just to teach them a lesson)

This strategy failed, because Twitter was not "healthy" financially, when he bought it and when Musk realized that, it backfired on him. He wanted to back out of the deal, but they backed him into a corner.... so he went ahead with the deal. So the acquisition of Twitter was a "bad" deal.... and the people who angered Musk, got the best end of that deal. 

You win some, you lose some. When Elon took over Twitter, he made a number of drastic changes. Some of them were successful, while others were less so. Anyway, his plans are for the long term and therefore I don't think that he will be much worried about the temporary setbacks. The core point here is that Twitter retains a monopoly in its respective domain. There are simply no competitors for Twitter in the micro-blogging platform. And if the situation remains unchanged, the advertisers will return to Twitter sooner or later.

I have seen general improvements in Twitter though. Fewer bots, and more features. I think things will level out.

Well, it seems there are too many young economists here, who are still going to school, and some are still earning extra income to survive the inflationary period. But made statements criticizing and disparaging the richest man in the world and his way of doing things. What are you thinking in your head? Can you do it like him? Have you made billions of dollars like him?

I wonder what Twitter will do to prevent this loss of value. Different things that Twitter will do will cause it to regain this value or have the opposite effect. They should pay attention to this. They can get ads they haven't received before to increase their ad revenue. Or, as you say, they can apply propaganda-style things by making an agreement with the governments.

Platforms can lose value, that's normal, but newsworthy when it comes to Musk. Even in such a situation, I don't think Musk will do any harm.

Admittedly, Twitter's revenue has dropped somewhat, and the company isn't doing as well as it used to. But we all forget that the world economy is in crisis, so it is normal for some companies to have difficulties. But many people looked at it and began to disparage and mock Elon.
In general, with the current world economic situation, I don't see too many companies reporting profits in the last 2 years of the economic crisis and not to mention a series of bankrupt companies and corporations. So, the fact that Elon helped Twitter survive and continue to grow through the great crisis has been a success, we should look at that positive side.

Couldn't care less for him. I don't drive a tesla or another car, nor do I plan to do so.
I like a few things he did, others I believe are plainly stupid.

New managers stir things up, that is the way new managers react, new ideas tend to be discarded. 
 

You just discussed about ad sales down but dont know how much musk/twitter got profit from their monthly subscription. Since Twitter now considered as private company the data out ther might is outdated or not really accurate tho.

and besides that I don't think Twitter will bankrupt anytime soon, especially with the hand of Elon looking at the other private company like SpaceX or the boring tunnel it eating billion of dollar but still stand out.

He's a businessman, I don't think he has such a narrow vision. spending $ 46 billion buying a social network just to manipulate Dogecoin?  Doge's market cap is less than $10 billion, and how much will he make even if he holds the entire supply of Doge in his hand?  even ordinary people like us can calculate this simple profit problem. Do you think he is stupid to spend $46 billion just to do it? Losing in business is normal, why many people do not understand.  In a crisis economy, many businesses failed miserably, and even some banks went bankrupt, TW has stood firm until now, and it is a success.

Considering how belligerent the guy is and his business practices, there's no doubt he'll either do something like this that will shoot the foot of his other companies, or he's just gonna pass the problem to someone else. There's been talks about it anyways, so that seems to be the most obvious answer as of now. In any case, this just goes to show how Twitter was shitty as it is now, riddled with all cryptobros, and the promise of bots being removed in the timelines of people only granted to those who paid 8 dollars per month instead of it actually being for everyone, among many other broken promises that Elon Musk made as he was appointed CEO of twitter. He lost his internet rep too and now everyone (except his meat riders) hates him lmao. What a time to be alive.

Elon musk is trying to run twitter Like other paying social media platforms. He just announced recently that content creators will have to get paid for the ads being attached under their comment boxes. So, he thinks with that more content creators will have to flock around twitter and it'll also increase the reach of Ads in the platform. Twitter users dropped drastically when Elon Musk started selling verification badge to everyone. The whole concept of that badge faded out, and it affected Twitter's growth. However, he is yet to master his new craft and soon his policies will begin to fit in and twitter will grow again.

Reminds me of a little study I did years ago on Newspaper advertising, after all these years the same rule of commerce over consumer direct revenue would seem to apply to even the cutting edge tech development.
 Adverts are king, nice he got some revenue but this ship sails or sinks on its ability to integrate advertising profitably.  They thought the same of Facebook at one time, on IPO it halved in value on doubts any mobile usage could work out but it was not well founded.  If Twitter has users it should be ok longer term in much the same way, equity values arent hard ground to judge actual viability on.

Yes, the meaning of freedom of speech is to talk anything about whatever is allowed, if your speech is against one specific idea, then you are evil, should say that, etc. The only place where someone has freedom of speech is his mind. Freedom of speech doesn't exist, has never existed and will never exist because it's impossible in humanity. An anarchy can't exist among social animals, we always try to centralize things, that's the reason.

If we keep in mind how OpenAI promotes the capabilities of an AI and how there are rumors that real AIs are far better than publicly available ones, then it looks a little bit doubtful for me how many killed by an AI accidents we have in the military. I just don't know what's going on in this case but the game is very interesting (not desirable though).

To be fair, in United States the term freedom of speech has always been part of the dictatorship because it always comes down to one definition: "you are free to say whatever you like as long as what you say doesn't have any conflict with the regime's interest". It is not up to Musk or anybody else either, it is the US regime's decision considering how US sees the internet as a whole, a military ground and it is even under the supervision and control of the armed forces of US (under Department of Defense) and even has a 4-star general in "control" of it.

To be fair that too is the US regime's new policy. The shift happened in the past year with mass advertising of AI as something "dangerous" and there has been lots of attempts to "discourage others" from doing any kind of development in this field while US does it under the radar to try and get ahead since US has fallen far behind in AI technology specially for military applications.

It's true that he failed miserably in this, he is definitely a great businessman but he couldn't manage this one the way he might have wanted or expected from himself and people expected more from him too but he couldn't work up to the expectations of himself and the people. As you said, he probably should just give up at this point because the value of Twitter has dropped significantly since he bought it.

I don't know why but it just feels like he has earned a lot of hatters after buying Twitter with whatever he did, maybe he didn't really plan everything well and that is the reason why things didn't work out for him but something totally went off for him and this business from the beginning.

I understand you may like the guy, you have 100% all the right to like the guy and think that he is doing the right thing. However, you need to also realize that people didn't like what he did and that's why he is losing money.

What he owns worths a lot less now because he made a mistake. His income doesn't come from mainstream media or anything else, it comes from you and me, people who put ads there, sure some of them are big companies, but a lot of them are regular people, and he is not getting ads that much anymore because of this reason. Facebook owns so much marketing stuff, and yet they do nothing like this and that's why they keep on profiting, he could have repeated the same thing and he would have a lot of money right now if he did that.

A new manager will stir up the sleeping workers. Twitter being a News Social network plus Elon Musk not caring to get some scratches, is swimming against the current mainstream. Just watch the interview, BBC is a news network run by its employees. 

I think most advertisers will come back. Let's not forget that Twitter has no competitors. 

When Musk just bought Twitter and started mismanaging it, a friend of mine who works in the area of professional consultancy for corporations said that Musk will destroy Twitter, and eventually Twitter will cease to be among the top social media platforms that tons of people use. I thought it was an overstatement and that new policies would find a new audience, so in the end Twitter would be okay (as a company, commercially speaking), but it seems he was right. Musk's mismanagement is causing lots of harm, and his own controversial opinions further hurt the platform's reputation.
So I'm not surprised the value is going down, and at such an alarming rate. Twitter was far from perfect, but now it's much-much worse. I'm only sorry that the company was sold to Musk in the first place.

The former Twitter shareholders are the luckiest people on Earth. Getting 44 billion dollars for company like Twitter was a gift from God.
Elon Musk clearly had lost his mind somewhere around 2021. Becoming the richest man on the planet had a negative impact over his mental health. He's definitely not a genius and he's not even a good businessman.
Perhaps most of the advertisers on Twitter were progressive, liberal and "woke" companies. Twitter going right-wing is something they never wanted. Musk will have to reduce the right-wing propaganda and try to please all the "woke" and progressive advertisers.

I was just responding to this:


So I don't know what you're responding to now. If you LOLed and didn't agree with my "argument" that Twitter is losing billions in ad revenue despite all the facts and now says you didn't deny that Twitter is indeed losing big time on ad revenue, I'm a little confused on what you're trying to say. You seem to be confused, too, and inconsistent.

And where did you get that 5,000 "conservative estimate" of Twitter employees who got fired?

Please note that I don't care much about Twitter and its fate. I'm just dropping my couple of Sats on this discussion about Elon's Twitter having falling ad sales.

Well twitter is recently bought out and is kinda privately owned now by those investors shelling out $ to Elon Musk. 
I have no doubt they believe in him.  Share could go to 15 $ and if they believe in him so be it,

I think it matters much more to stop the bleeding of the company first. He could have been more sensitive but then its his game not ours.
Make the math. 5000 x 5000 US average wages of twitter staff, a month. Plus endless perks.

Well.. if you look at my post, I didn't denied the fact that the Twitter revenues are down (especially those from the advertisements). But at the same time, their expenses are also down. They laid off close to 95% of all the employees and that saves a lot in the form of salaries. Even if we take a conservative estimate of 5,000 employees who got fired, that alone amounts to around $1 billion in savings. And as I mentioned, Twitter still retains the monopoly in micro-blogging domain. There are simply no competitors. As long as the situation remains the same, advertisers will return.

BTW, they have found new revenue sources as well, such as Twitter Blue.

Yeah, it's still like gonna be unknown if it will be successful but if that's the plan that he's proposing to his stakeholders and to everyone who uses Twitter we'll get to see how it will go.

But so far, we're not yet there and if ever they're working already on it behind it, there has to be some prototype because it's not a leak when he had mentioned it or someone has seen the plan.

It's an optimistic upgrade and a good additional source for them as well but if it's not yet executed, they'll for sure struggle for their revenue.

Well, this isn't an argument. I'm not stating this as a matter of opinion. I'm stating this as a matter of fact. There are data which support this.

I'm not talking of the falling prices of Twitter shares, not of the decreasing valuation of the company, and especially not of the subjective perceptions of the platform. I'm simply talking of the advertisement revenue of the platform. For whatever reason, it has significantly lose a lot. And advertisers are one of the main sources of Twitter's income. Twitter has since provided discounts for advertisers. So far, it hasn't really made a big difference.

1. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertiser-decline/
2. https://www.thewrap.com/twitter-ad-revenue-plunges-elon-musk-bloomberg/
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/twitter-s-revenue-drops-amid-advertisers-concerns-over-elon-musk?
4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-elon-musk-advertisers/

Shareholders of tesla or spacex can't be unhappy because he can't use directly their money, he would have to either sell his shares to get that money, or he would be paid basically, in all cases the money is his, he could buy worlds biggest building, or he could spend it on twitter, it's his choice.

However, I agree that him leaving makes more sense, he could just sell to someone else and that person could make it a lot more interesting once again. He had some ideas about what he will do with twitter when he gets it, he did those, and people disliked it so there is no turning back from that. If his ideas were to be liked then he would have been able to make a good amount of money from it, but they weren't so there is no reason why he should keep running it.

 I guess this is asserting that the company is not doing well as he was trying to make us believe. This plunge would leave a lot of work for newly appointed Chief executive, Linda Yaccarino since the state of Twitter's advertising makes for 90% of the company's revenue.
 Personally I don't see how a company which depends hugely on advertising could fire it's major sales execs, spreading conspiracy theories and bringing back banned accounts. This action would definitely send advertisers looking the other way.
 Who knows, maybe he's got something up his sleeves? But I feel he'd need to act fast else he could lose Twitter.

Not at all surprised with this new. It was never a vision for Elon Musk and whatever business idea he had. He bought Twitter literally out of his wish because he thought he could play around it and create another income source. The problem/spark started when Elon became tweet lord Back in the year and during DOGE trivia. He saw how he could move the entire Share price for anything if he just tweets about it. Moreover, he thought that if just buys entire Twitter and play around it for moving such prices of stocks and god knows what devil plan he had. This is my theory but not sure who would agree upon it. What do you guys think?

Honestly, since I stopped using Twitter, I haven't even tried to try anything else, although I have also heard of Mastodon, which is mostly mentioned as the first alternative. Of course, there are other platforms of a similar type, and some of them are presented on this link Ditching Twitter? Here are the 20 Best Twitter Alternatives


Maybe when it comes to the younger population that is looking for a replacement, but there are a lot of people who are fed up with this way of communicating and are not actually looking for a replacement. Fortunately, there are alternatives, and the world will not stop even if Twitter somehow ceases to exist.

I also think this is a consequence of leadership transition in company management, and certainly has new arrangements and views in the management of business companies, so that those who use services have doubts or avoid temporarily paying attention to how new leaders will make Twitter better in cooperation business.

I don't think it is without a clear business strategy, but indeed that is the way he works in managing his business, I am a little hesitant to say that Elon wants to destroy Twitter, given the lot of money he spent on this company.
Yes you are right, if seen from that situation, Elon indeed has money to hire the right person as a business advisor, but for someone who has a crazy mindset like Elon Musk I think it will be difficult.

I have seen some changes and it seems to me that he is trying to adapt the network exclusively to his ideas and needs. Twitter is definitely not the same place anymore.
I can't say I feel sorry for his losses if they are real. The whole thing seems to me like when a rich kid buys his favourite toy, and such ambitions are often not successful. Whatever, they'll post a few tweets about Doge or something and cover the loss.


He made a lot of money by manipulating the Dogecoin price through his influence on Twitter, he probably thought about what power he would have if he owned the entire network.


But it's a completely new type of income that they didn't have before. Quite a good solution to generate profit from ordinary users, not only from companies and marketing campaigns.

Twitter is making a big change, and the social media market will witness drastic changes during the coming years, so I do not think that someone who paid 44 billion will think of selling the platform after several months for half of this amount, but rather we will see how things will go during the coming months, or perhaps we need after the US elections to see if The platform is really worth developing, or will it be sold to a competitor?

If you mean by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, I do not expect that he will participate in more on this platform. He is not a party to the ruling family and therefore he is somewhat far from politics and political influence. I do not think that Elon Musk will risk more SpaceX money due to it being the company of the future more than Twitter.

I am pretty sure Elon Musk passionately loves Twitter. Its one of the best social media apps out there. I am daily user of it I pretty much liked using it. If only I got more followers tho. Anyways I started using blue checkmark because I said why not? It didn't look that much expensive to me. But I think it's still pretty much useless. I think he should incentivize blue checkmark more so his money generation should be higher through. Current benefits of blue checkmark are good but not enough.
I think in short term he will fund twitter with profits from other companies btw.

LOL.. I don't agree with the argument that Twitter lost billions. The share price has gone down, but that doesn't count unless the equities are sold. And regarding the fact that advertisers have gone to other platforms, it was somewhat expected. When left wing extremists such as Vijaya Gadde and Yoel Roth were in charge, they converted the platform to a place where Islamist lunatics like Mahatir Mohammad would make open genocidal threats. And they banned every account even remotely right-wing. Elon restored freedom of speech and it is natural that the left-wing doesn't like him a lot.

The blue tick will never be enough to cover the entire ROI for Musk. I guess he's aware of it or if it will ever do then there has to be the "all in" app that he's planning all along for Twitter.

We may not see it yet but if ever he's got a plan and he's still chill on the situation that Twitter he's facing, in no way that he's going to support it with outside money just to sustain it from the other companies that he's had.

He may just leave his position there as the CEO and let someone run it the better way as he does because it's not clear on which he's focused with while the other companies he's running are running stably.

This has been the case ever since Elon Musk took over the platform. Just days after Twitter changed hands, there was an exodus not only of mere users but also of advertisers. More than half of Twitter's top advertisers like Unilever, Coca-Cola, and others have left the platform. Billions were lost.

The way I felt it, even before the transfer of ownership finally took place, Elon was not really liked. Jack Dorsey was kind of loved. The transfer was controversial, even chaotic. Elon made unpleasant statements against Jack. He also made statements on the upcoming changes which were largely unwelcome.

If Elon really wants Twitter to stay alive, I guess the best way is for him to quit running the platform and stay away from it.

If this is true, I must say it is quite a blow for the investment Musk made on Twitter. I was aware the advertisement renevue was going to decrease as a result of the policial noise of the purchase and the policial instances Elon has made public.

My personal prediction is that Elon would just continue to keep Twitter as it is and just continue to focus on his other enterprises. Twitter is just a toy for him, in my eyes, something to entertain himself and steal the spotlight whenever possible.

Honest question, what are the alternatives? I only know about Mastodon, which is too clunky for most people, so it will never achieve the full network effect, and I know of Trump's Twitter clone, which is what Elon Musk is trying to recreate.

My prediction is that Reddit and Telegram will absorb a lot of Twitter users, since these two social networks are not as cancer as products of Meta.

there is a possibility that this is happening because Elon Musk cannot handle the many existing businesses, I think Twitter is starting to be forgotten. even though I've heard that Elon Musk is preparing someone to hold the position of CEO of Twitter, but I think if he gets a big loss, I'm sure Elon Musk will think far and wide of selling Twitter again to cover that loss. because Tesla and spaceX have been very good at business, too many businesses will find it difficult to manage even if they have to trust others.

You are right! There is a hope that he wants to keep free speech on Twitter but there is another problem, billionaire and free speech? A billionaire that pumped and dumped market for personal growth and made people buy Dogecoin? A real shitcoin? By the way, it's inevitable that resources are and will end up in his hands. Let's hope thing go better but to be completely honest, I don't believe in this person lately. His intention was the development of an AI and now he says that it's a threat, he bumped and dumped the crypto market like it was a 3yo's toy, now he talks about freedom of speech and I'm afraid its just a mask that will allow him to change freedom into dictatorship over time.
This man is very hard to guess! His intentions can be both good and bad while being completely unpredictable. There is still a positive lit shining him in my mind because he is a very hard-working man who really changes the world and has some positive ambitions.

Well, I noticed that too, especially when Ledger announced Ledger Recover service and was telling us how secure and beneficial it is, this was one of the dumbest tweet I have ever read, so, I agree with you, I've seen increase in dumb speech but I think that it's just natural degradation of some people and Elon has nothing to do with it.

If Elon Musk no longer holds Twitter as the original owner it looks like it will have a big impact on crypto. especially Dogecoin which is likely to fall, but it will change how Twitter holders at that time handle Twitter again, whether there will be a crypto trend or a new trend created there. I myself wonder, if it has decreased to like this, what is Elon Musk's motive for buying Twitter, does he want to stop by for a moment in the world of crypto. but it seems that, compared to tesla and spaceX , twitter has received less attention from Elon Musk so he must have a plan to resell twitter.

What's important is that Twitter, like any other tech company, needs to find ways to increase revenue and create shareholder value. Investing in new areas can help Twitter grow and adapt to changing markets.

Attracting potential investors and partners from other countries is also one of the ways to ensure the existence of Twitter. Seeking funding from foreign governments can also help Twitter get funding to develop new services and products. Twitter needs to find new ways to increase revenue and shareholder value. Cooperation and finding funding from foreign partners and governments can be an effective way to help Twitter survive and develop in the future.

I don't think the news actually had much of a surprise because Twitter hasn't had much of a good start since it was acquired by Musk. Although I am not an advertiser on Twitter I do not know whether it is a problematic platform for advertisers but if it is a platform that constantly imposes unnecessary restrictions for advertisers it is quite normal to see a decrease in the number of advertisers. On the other hand, if the advertiser is not very satisfied with the ad performance I think this will cause a decrease in the number of ads because advertisers expect a sales return or conversion of the target audience from these ads. To make a general comment about the Twitter, I think that the loss of value will accelerate due to the decrease in its return.

Honestly, it doesn't matter to me at all if that company will fail quickly and completely, or if something else will happen, considering who became the owner. There are quite adequate alternatives, and with time people will find them and join the millions who have already left that platform for one reason or another.

In addition, there is no good news from the EU either, because Mr. Mars (so far) refuses to harmonize his business with the new regulations when it comes to digital laws in the EU. Obviously, these new laws do not match his vision of "freedom of expression".

Or maybe they saw this coming and that is why introduced premium subscription sales for the blue tick? I mean, they probably saw their ad sales are going down, maybe not this much initially but their analyzing experts must have gotten a hint and they thought they will start some other way to get revenue so that if the money isn't coming from one stream, it might come from the other but apparently, the plan didn't work as planned.

Elon Musk definitely couldn't manage things well, maybe because he didn't have much planning or ideas about how he would go ahead with things and he also did a lot of unexpected things like changing Twitter's logo to DOGE coin's logo, etc.

Probably just a temporary crisis or this will be the new form of Twitter in future but I don't think Elon has the idea of selling the Twitter because he knows how to make money using the platform with his huge influence he can manipulate other things including cryptocurrencies so he can make money for his own.

I’m starting to think along the same lines as well. I did think he bought twitter as a business to make a profit off advertisers and the sales of blue ticks reenforced my thoughts on that.

But his engagements on the platform has shown me at least that he’s content and willing with spreading his own thoughts and opinions over certain issues and lots of gullible people would gulp it down as truth. And yes, the only drop in numbers that would matter to him is the number of users cause he’s actively promoting twitter as a platform where free speech is allowed. Hate speech disguised as free speech in my opinion.

Elon will absolutely not sell, because he said he's determined to make it profitable.

These days he's been aiming shots at "legacy media" such as FOX, CNN, ABC and so forth. So I think he's going to try and turn Twitter into a news channel. He won't be able to do that without easily-generated video content - generative AI could help here.

Of course, it will be full of misinformation, but you can expect for people to place counter-information right under it using the new Community Notes feature (I haven't used it myself to be honest, but I've been looking at it these days as a sort of BS-detector)


I haven't seen much hate speech, but I've certainly seen an upsurge of "dumb speech" in my timeline - tweets that are so nonsensical that they can't even be classified as memes, but are just plain stupid to read. It's mainly from the army of blue checks though. I guess a better word for it would be spam though.

This is incomplete information IMO since there's no information about the industry average. To objectively measure firm performance, you need to look at what Meta (FB), TikTok, Instagram, etc. doing. If the competitors have a better number, then we can say that Twitter is currently underperforming.

Still, I just can't understand why Elon bought Twitter in the first place. The company was in decline even before the acquisition.

My view is that Musk will stick around and make some changes to Twitter's corporate strategy. The current drop in revenue is understandable, as there have been several controversial Musk decisions which have caused many users to switch to other platforms and as a result advertisers are less interested in advertising on Twitter. Especially now that Twitter has not found the right strategy to be able to increase their revenue. They're just fixated on advertisers, analytics, and the blue ticks they rent out to their users. But I think that Musk will definitely find a solution for this, given that he is a smart businessman who can see the opportunities in the future.

They have been doing that for many years but it officially started under the code-name "Etidal" in 2017 aiming to data harvest, censor what the regime doesn't like (eg. news about the journalist they murdered in broad daylight) and to spread extremism/terrorism when they want it in places they want. Saudi regime is only one of many customers Twitter has for such operations.

Keep in mind that Musk didn't buy Twitter to make profit (as a business). He did it to gain power over information and in the political scene. This means such drops does not matter at all, the only drop that matters is in the number of users and the propaganda's reach which is not happening so far.

Twitter's ad revenue is dwindling faster than a deflated balloon pet, isn't it? But shall we back up and take a look at the big picture? Perhaps this is the spawn of simultaneous shifts in advertising fashion and the global economy. Twitter may be a little slow to adopt the latest and greatest in marketing strategies, such as influencer marketing, native ads, and video reels, which are currently setting the internet on fire.

Musk's proposal to divert money from his other businesses is riskier than riding a unicycle on a tightrope and might lead to a breakdown in corporate governance. Fiduciary duty to shareholders is as important as the final piece of pizza at a party, thus this must not be forgotten. Elon Musk needs a solid wall separating his personal wealth from the inner workings of Tesla and SpaceX.

Concerning sponsorship from foreign governments, one must walk a diplomatic tightrope. It might tarnish Twitter's free-speech reputation with a muddy puddle of political dispute. Twitter might do better to attract strategic partners or advertisers who share their brand's values and community's ideals.

Well.. that is the point. The subscription alone nets them $96 per year per user. And the expenses are down, because they laid off 95% of the staff. Ad revenues are down, because the left-wing groups are engaging on a boycott campaign against Twitter, due to the right-wing views of its owner. FoE doesn't exist for left-wing lunatics. But Twitter still maintains it's absolute monopoly in the micro-blogging domain. None of the competitors even come close. If they maintain their monopoly, then sooner or later, the ad revenues will recover.

According to Travis Brown, there were 444,435 paying Twitter Blue subscribers by end of March 2023. That is around $42 million per year.

I think we need to give it a few more quarters and see how the ad revenue will go. After he took over, twitter was an absolute mess and many companies just stopped advertising for it. However many are coming back since they see that it’s more stable.

Keep in mind that they reduced their useless staff and also get $8month with their monthly plan. I think we got to give it more time and see what comes of it. However I think he improved the platform a lot. Even instragam started doing the monthly check fee to boost revenue.

...or may be he will manipulate Doge /s

The business model is the exact same as it was prior to Elon's purchase. Advertising structure works the same way. Only difference is people don't get banned for saying politically inconvenient truths.

There isn't a rise in hate speech -- it's mere propaganda by the same platforms that used Twitter to do their political bidding (MSM) who no longer find their propaganda reach as wide now that free speech is allowed on the platform. Therefore, they work to spread disinformation against Elon and Twitter, like the nonsense that Twitter is a hub for hate speech.

The mistake might be that he is the inverse of a hands off owner, he is the everything to a company which can be advantageous and also a disaster.  Hence why people became bearish on Tesla when he bought Twitter as its a distraction to someone with so little time as it is.
  I don't think his tenure as Twitter CEO has to be said to be a disaster, he was transitioning the company from one thread process to another in theory there is so much room for improvement it merely requires more work to justify itself.  That work is surely not yet complete or even mid way but it is important he delegates to others now so its not just about him.  Some companies fear change, clearly he doesn't especially.  The advertising figures are simple, they can recover so long as he improves traffic and value to those advertisers; I'm not seeing any long term destruction just avoidance perhaps.
  I will judge this whole Musk era Twitter not by that dominant personality but whether he can allow others to take over and do the work, find the right people and it will change everything.

For a businessman who owns many companies and is the richest billionaire in the world. Do you think he would make such simple mistakes? Do not rush to say that he is wrong in business when we are not equal to him and do not have any business experience. I am also not good and have the right to judge anyone, but I know one thing, in business does not always things go smoothly. Sometimes there will be difficulties, especially during an economic crisis. Many businesses also go bankrupt, the decrease in revenue is nothing.

I think the mistakes he did with Twitter go far beyond not being an expert in the field of social media. Buying a company and immediately firing essential employees, demanding people to work long hours and in general trying to "fix" what wasn't broken is just a sign of general incompetence. Any normal CEO would do anything to please the advertisers, because they are the main source of revenue, instead Elon chose to ignore their concerns and switch to a different revenue model - premium subscription, without any strong research to back it, just his genius entrepreneur instincts.

Twitter's business model was fucked since Elon bought it. It became his personal playpen - a testbed for some of his ridiculous ideas, if you may. He's trying to use the platform to gauge the public's pulse and perception to his viewpoints. It's an expensive platform for his ideas, but it certainly is important when he's looking for the public's reaction and opinion on some of the things that he's saying on important matters or any business-related tweets that he's looking to get out there.

This is what happens when a person takes over a company and has no idea about the business of such company, I think no one can deny that Musk is a good businessman, but this is only true when it comes to his field of expertise, on any other field he is just as bad as us, this reminds me of Steve Jobs which also had that tendency, however it is difficult for them to see this as both of them were considered the golden boys of silicon valley.

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.

I am included as one of the people that knew this would happen. Elon Musk can not handle Twitter, he has bought what is mightier than himself. Some people want to do everything when it is natural that everything is not meant for everyone. Money has been lost, I don't know how he can get to bring it back.

Jack Dorsey and his team did a good job but Musk most times will condemn their effort that they do not know what they are doing thinking everything is about money and monetization.

The new CEO Linda Yaccarino has just been announced, her impact can change things to an extent in years.

Could it be that what affected this is that Elon Musk implemented monthly subscriptions for their twitter users? I'm just not updated on whether Musk's plan has been successful Or it could also be because he removed all the former employees of twitter so they face such a problem now that Twitter apps in this industry. It appears that Twitter has gone back to zero since Elon Musk became its owner. But I'm still not sure.

In my opinion, there is a certain amount of Musk's own guilt here. He rushes from one extreme to another without a clear business strategy. One day he wants to be CEO, the next day he doesn't. Perhaps that is his plan: to destroy Twitter. Doesn't Musk have the money to hire proper advisors?

https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/elon-musk-government-surveillance-of-twitter-data-was-routine-both-foreign-and-domestic-intelligence-agencies-had-access-to-private-dms/

This means that user data was available to many governments before Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, but since Elon Musk is a big businessman and knows exactly how to bring in money, so I think he started asking governments to pay money in exchange for data.

Sure there are a lot of governments that pay a lot of money to get the data of important people, Elon Musk never gets out of the deal loser.

I'm not surprised by this news because basically some people also predict that Twitter will experience something like this because of the consequences of a shift in policy from the new owner. If Elon Musk really wants to go ahead and keep supporting Twitter - then he's probably going to be spending a lot of money in the next few years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html


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.