Secondly it's doubly unimpressive because I believe Musk could have actually maintained very similar revenue levels, but the haphazard and immediate way of laying everyone off was incredibly counterproductive.
The revenue reduction was also more related to political positioning/image than technical capacity of the platform.
[0] article quote:
"During the last full year prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter reported adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) of about $682 million and about $5 billion in revenue.
In 2024, X had an EBITDA of about $1.25 billion and annual revenue of $2.7 billion.
While X’s revenue is about half of what it used to be, the company’s costs are just about a quarter of what they were before.
As per the WSJ, investors noted that these were better figures than they had anticipated."
Even this [1] hilariously biased article is forced to admit in the middle that yes, X's profits have gone up since Musk took over.
"Now X also, of course, has reduced its overheads significantly, by culling around 80% of staff, so X’s profit margins are now much better as a result."
[0] https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-x-doubled-ebitda-since-2...
[1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-is-still-far-from-pr...
Net profit is profit.