With the way he's running this, I'm a bit confused as to why he didn't just buy Truth Social directly. Wouldn't have cost him nearly as much.
He bought the users. Elon knows that people are lazy and will not change websites.
-50% ad revenue says otherwise
Twitter could have 200% more users, if no one want to show them ads, then ad spots will be dirt cheap. Printing 5 millions of 1cent ads vs 1 million of 10cents ads is not the same. Both on income and expenses...
This, so much this. I also find it rather coincidental that fb cam out with threads soon after the twitter implosion. Opportunistic feasting on a dead carcass perhaps?
Twitter has been on the outs since musk bought it. If Facebook was smart they'd have started right then.
Threads looks like they started development as soon as Musk bought twitter.
Threads still doesn't have #hashtag searching IIRC. It's missing a huge number of features. It's clear that they only came out as early as they did because they saw an opportunity to eat Twitter's lunch.
They really needed a few more months of dev time.
Bluesky is the same way. There are a lot of features there that still need to be implemented.
I’m glad Masto at least has hashtags and video and gifs and editing. For me right now it has the best features and the best experience. I’m pretty happy with it.
Dude could have created his own Mastodon insrance for practically nothing. Is he somehow even dumber than Trump?
I think the evidence speaks for itself.
Let's be honest Elon doesn't care about Twitter.
He bought it with money he doesn't have. He only increased in net worth since the takeover and has successfully done what he wanted to, destroy an organization he thought was problematic and now everyone gives even more data to Facebook.
Everyone of them won.
Remember the 50% number is just what he was comfortable with publishing to the public
We have no reason to believe his public statistics
100% of the ads I see on Twitter today are dropshipping scams, while in the pre-musk era they were highly targeted to my job and interests to the point that if there wasn't the "ad" tag I couldn't distinguish that.
They can't cost the same for the advertiser, a generic dropshipping scam that targets everyone must be cheap
Indeed. Elon is a pathalogical liar.
Why would he tweet about his losses in the first place? I applaud his openness (/s) but I doubt any investors or advertisers will come running to a dying social networking.
Wait, the white supremacists and Nazis that he caters to aren’t making up the ad revenue? Well I’ll be!
Maybe.... I don't know, just throwing ideas out there.... you shouldn't have Musked all over Twitter nor fired its core developers? Again, just thinking out loud....
Or saddled the business with 10 billion in debt? Shit is like an ouroboros...
Not even just that... Alienates all potential leftwing/brand friendly advertiser's through changes and being the spokesperson for the platform.
"We're down 50% how could this have happened?????" - Elon Musk
Dude needs to stfu, make an alt account. He has chosen to be the spokesperson for the platform. Spouting off conspiracies and controversial takes. You can't be surprised nobody wants to associate with him.
He is a liability and a brand risk. Sure he can have his opinions but here is the problem...
He has chosen to be extremely public and force those opinions onto the average consumer feed due to his narcissistic tendencies and it is biting him in the ass.
No sympathy. He wanted free speech, (albeit it isn't because he is okay as long as it doesn't criticise him or his affiliates.) now he has his free speech platform but in the same way advertisers can chose not to engage with it.
Best way to avoid traffic to your site, then complain about revenue loss from advertisements.
Weird, users can't access the site, so ad revenue goes down?? Nobody can blame Elon, that's literally impossible to predict. Maybe if he bans users from tweeting more than once a day it will get better?
I'm not waiting to see Twitter fail. I'm just hoping that the federated alternatives for Twitter and Reddit will get more mainstream. And I must say that I'm happy with the way things are evolving at Mastodon and Lemmy.
Hmm maybe putting in rate limits, thus greatly reducing the amount of time people spend on the app, isn't the best strategy for a platform whose main source of revenue comes from advertising?
Elon complaining about this just reminds me that he can afford to lose ~50 billion dollars and still be one of the wealthiest people ever to have lived.
I remember a fellow saying Elon is a very business savvy person, because of his 2 other successful companies, Tesla and SpaceX. I guess ruining communications with potential advertisers on a platform that depends entirely on advertisers wasn't a very intelligent move.
TIL how loooong it takes for a largeish business to die. It's hard to grasp scale I guess. I thought it would be over in months.
I find it hard to believe Facebook is so terribly great. Keep in mind these are not businesses like a grocery store; they're publicly traded and the metric is growth, not profit. (Edit: Twitter is private now no idea how that change is accomplished.)
Truly, I'm hoping they all die.
Of course! It's because of Threads! Don't you guys get it? They stole their secrets!! It has absolutely nothing to do with how things are being run on twitter or because Elon Musk is a genius!!!
…
Fuck Musk and fuck twitter and all that goes with it.
And no interest in thinking about why they're down ~50% in advertising revenue.
So, we still 50% to go. I believe in you, Elon /s
Translation: "I'm terrible at business, and I'm making it everyone else's problem"
The heavy debt load was caused by his purchase... He paid $26 bn, a couple other investors (including a Saudi prince) together paid $5 bn, the remaining $13 bn is a loan Twitter took out to buy itself on Musk's behalf.
The purchase was always a financial death sentence. Either Twitter steps into line and becomes the propaganda tool he and his old friend Peter Thiel want, then it can have some extra investment, or Twitter dies.
Heavy debt load? Where could that have come from.? A leveraged buyout at an overvalued price or something?
Gasp. Who would have thought actively courting Nazis would make risk averse corporations stop using your ads! Poor Elon! Also doesn't help that the site was basic private for a while. I know I never bothered to log in while it was log in only.
Nobody is talking about it, but does that advertising exec that Musk hired for CEO take a massive hit to her career for any of this?
It seems surreal to have a ghost CEO who isn't responsible for anything such a large company does. But that's exactly what's happening here.
Music to my ears
On the other hand, I think the people at Tesla/SpaceX are probably very happy that Elon has his hands full with Twitter right now.
Let’s see: Alienate the users. Fire everyone who knows how to keep the place running. Fill the site with bots and white supremacists.
FA complete. FO now underway.
Good. Fuck em
50% is just what he's admitting to. Not sure how easily that number can be verified, but if someone told me that the actual numbers were much, much worse... I wouldn't bet against them.
Just shut it down already.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
