X CEO Says Platform Should Turn Profit in 2024
wsj.com
wsj.com
If that kind of dark engagement tactic is partially what it takes for twitter to become profitable, then it will be at the expense of its dignity and soul.
If you believe it, it's not a lie!
Is this supposed to be some kind of “gotcha?”
Of course saying something you believe is true is not a lie. Of course. Why would you even bring up the possibility of it being a lie?
Nevermind a prediction cannot be a lie. Misleading perhaps, but not a lie.
> Musk was quoted as saying in the interview that the social media platform now has only 1,500 employees, down from under 8,000 who were employed at the time of his acquisition. The reduction equates to roughly 80% of the company’s staff.
That was in April. Another 10% since then seems entirely plausible.
In my own experience I’ve been seeing a lot more dodgy ads (scams, crypto, far-right groups) that were probably rejected by the old management. Maybe that’s making up some of the lost revenue, but it’s exactly the sort of stuff that made traditional businesses anxious about content moderation on platforms like YouTube.
It does seem that the userbase hasn’t gone away - the migration to other platforms hasn’t panned out and the power users are still there. But if the platform is long-term toxic to advertisers then they’re going to need some better ideas than Twitter Blue.
I have no Twitter account and for couple of months Twitter links are not working for me. Before, I have not noticed the presence of Twitter because it was just another link I have visited. But now when it is just error page I have noticed how omnipresent Twitter is on sites like Reddit, HN and in the news.
Elon Musk probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with his antics but I don't think he was fundamentally that wrong with his core analysis of the issues facing Twitter when he bought it:
- High staffing cost relative and some revenue challenges.
- Content moderation that was simultaneously controversial, expensive, and biased. And also not that effective.
- The Twitter API was getting abused a lot by people with all sorts of agendas. Including some state actors like Russia.
- R&D stagnation. The site barely changed in the years before he bought it.
So, he took a wrecking ball to the whole thing and upset a lot of people doing so. But, if he gets it back to being profitable next year, that will be a big milestone for them.
I've been using it less and less over the years. But that already started before the takeover. I kind of like Mastodon currently but part of the attraction is that it is relatively free from the noisy crowd that makes Twitter less interesting than it used to be.
For privately held companies, what difference does it make what they say? (to anyone else other than the actual stakeholders)
Now that's a site I haven't seen in a Long time.
To users, it doesn't matter unless sometimes sues them. And I'm pretty sure there is some terms and services clause that makes it non trivial to sue.
But also, how is FSD/Tesla relevant to an article on X? Just because it's the same CEO?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_Exchange_Act_of_193...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Securities_Litigation_...
I can understand that Musk attempts to bend reality to juice the chances of success. I don't condone it personally, but I understand it [2].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/business/trevor-milton-ni...
There's lying by omission; no falsehoods, but important bits left out.
"X Corp. Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino said on Wednesday..."
The investors are Musk, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Binance, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia and some others. Imaginary profits shouldn't be an issue for this group, the value of their holdings lies elsewhere.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/24/elon-mu...
This is _why_ many jurisdictions, including the US, have some concept of 'qualified/accredited' investor, and investment in private companies is somewhat restricted to people who are presumed to know what they're doing. CEOs of _public_ companies absolutely cannot lie about financials, but it's murkier for private companies.
But let her take the reins? No way.
She's just a glorified puppet and if Elon tells her to jump, she'll ask how high.
And it absolutely would be a major accomplishment if true.
Then why does any company fail when they could just do this 1 easy trick?
And this are only the debts which have been talked about _publically_.
It can get significantly worse and still be a going concern
"X Corp. Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino said on Wednesday..."
In this case, parent ego.
(That's why you read the article, kids)
Reddit is literally wall to wall 'musk empire crashing' for the past 4 years and yet the progress continues (largely) unabated.
It's all very odd.
If you add this kind of payment to the website you actually make the service less beholden to ad revenue so you do not have to worry as much about their sensibilities. If the subscription fee gets big enough i think the company would become beholden to the users and hopefully serve their needs more than the advertisers (maybe my wishful thinking).
Twitter (X) definitely changed in the past year, but I see it as a positive change (maybe it's my bubble) - my tech feed is no longer polluted by people fighting about left vs right, Trump etc, my feed is now tech people sharing tech-related content and I love it.
Twitter kicked out a lot of right wing zealots, and now I think the left wing zealots have left for greener pastures.
Just took a look at my Twitter homepage. It's hate speech, aliens live along us, flight tracking (?), various conspiracy theories and weird American right-wing crap (I'm not even American), and a couple of tech posts. It's become complete garbage.
Now every time I open my feed it reminds me of trash tv. Ads for weed gummies every 8th tweet, crazy rhetoric and political content from extremist politicians I’ve often never even heard of, Elon musk himself - who I don’t follow - pushed into my face, forcing me to see his angry tweets, first, every time I load the app.
Beyond the drama, I used to get a lot of value in reading threads and now the comments are all garbage? Finding anything useful requires me scrolling past a long list of reply guys and often what just seems like spam.
It genuinely makes me sad to lose such a useful product :(.
Either way, a part of me really wishes Elon didn't the take company private. It would've been pretty cool to own a little piece of the rocket ship.
For those of you who are not convinced, lets put it this way:
We all stuck with Twitter for the better part of a decade under sub optimal management. A lot of you stuck with or are coming back to X despite being against the new values of the company & and its owner.
All is to say, the network effects are unfathomably strong. All they have to do is sprinkle in some monetisation via empowering the top 5% that actually creates stuff.
Easiest bet of the decade. I wouldn't be surprised if X becomes a 500b company by the end of the decade.
1) Why are people so certain that the claims that X should profit are incorrect? X did cut a massive percentage of their staff, and presumably whatever infrastructure changes they've initiated in the past months to save money should be done by then. Nobody can perfectly predict the future, but reducing expenses drastically seems like a good step forward in achieving their goal.
2) Why are people acting so personally hurt if X thrives? I don't even see this level of animosity for companies that deserve this level of ire, like companies that deliberately pollute the oceans or even the cable companies.
3) Are people rooting for X to fail? I think competition for Facebook and other social media is a great thing, and X still has a certain connection with the zeitgeist that I don't think can be matched.
4) Why are people ok with the rampant deadnaming of X? Do better!
Cutting expenses is one part of the equation. The other is debt servicing.
There's $13 billion in loans used to buy Twitter, that now sit on Twitter's balance sheet. There's a minimum of $1.2 billion in annual interest payments on those loans.
That's a big number, but in an of itself doesn't really say anything conclusively without knowing the rest of their expenses as well as revenue.
Since X is now a private company, does the public have access to that other info other than making guesses based on past years' financial filings?
These are not minimum wage workers, these are thousands of people who on average got payed more than the president.
Beyond that, we also have twitter blue. I'm guessing they have crossed one million by now. Thats bordering $100m ARR.
Then there is the advertising revenue, Twitter made $5 billion in revenue with a total loss of 220m. Even if advertising was cut by half, thats still $2.5B in income.
Honestly I'm surprised they are not profitable now, let alone next year.