The sad thing is this guy will light $44B on fire, probably lose 99% of it, and not even feel it.
He’ll feel it because a lot of the deal was financed off of his Tesla stock. It isn’t that Musk will lose money from Twitter; he’ll lose some control over Tesla. Worse, it could push Tesla’s stock price down, which may be an issue as a lot of people shorted Tesla’s stock.
Yep.
And it is a lot of Tesla stock he had to put to cover that much.
The banks won’t hold it or even accept it directly tho.
Musk would have to sell all that stock, which would crash the stock price. Meaning he has to come up with the money from somewhere else.
The whole thing is a house of cards and has a chance to completely wipe him out. He’s over leveraged, it’s not that complicated.
protip: corporate debt is not the same thing as out of pocket debt, no one is understanding this lol
On the next season of The Sopranos reboot:
Since the day he proposed taking over, Musk has demonstrated no interest or expertise in how such a service might enhance the lives of its users or at least make money to stay afloat. He’s run it on debt – debt accrued from some of the most dangerous people in the world.
With the new debt Musk took on to complete the purchase of Twitter stock and take the company private, the company’s annual debt payments ballooned to about $1bn a year. Yet the company’s operations in 2021 generated about $630m in cashflow.
Get your popcorn ready.
Oh no!
anyway
Is it, though? I’m still waiting for the guys I’m following to move on, like Scott Manley for example.
Pretty much this. The whole of (popular American) sports is entrenched in Twitter. They aren’t going anywhere unless forced to do so.
My kid plays football and has aspirations to play in college. Every person has told him to build a prescience on Twitter as that is what all the recruiting coaches use and look at.
I think tech people don’t understand how social media supports non-tech areas.
Threads is the only thing I’ve seen with enough name recognition to get those big, non-tech oriented accounts to move. I’ve seen so many people I follow on Twitter post about Threads in the last day or two that it is insane. The only thing close to that hype is Bluesky, but it being invite only now is limiting its growth.
Exactly.
This is Elon hate-porn. Some people LOVE to hate on Elon and make it out like every misstep he does is a DISASTER AND THE MELTDOWN WILL HAPPEN ANY MINUTE NOW!!!. No it’s not. Twitter is alive and well. Some heavy users are pissed I’m sure. But the whole ‘running it into the ground’ thing just isn’t happening.
If you disagree, my answer is simple- try using it. It works. Articles like this paint an awful picture of a service circling the drain that’s gonna go bankrupt any minute now. It’s clickbait, an article trashing him pandering to a bunch of people who hate him and want to see him fail.
To be clear- I disagree with a lot of what Elon’s doing at Twitter. I understand he wants to monetize AI scraping, but I also think that if he wants Twitter to be the ‘public square’ it has to stay, you know, public. As in no registration required, Google can index.
But I have no need to hate on the guy. If he runs Twitter into the ground or pisses users off too much, Mastodon and other fediverse platforms win. If he succeeds, then good for him. No skin off my back either way.
No it’s not. Twitter is alive and well.
It’s alive and if it dies, its death won’t be for technical reasons. It will be enough advertisers abandoning it for his creditors to force him to get something from it and sell it. But so far it is hanging in there.
To be clear- I disagree with a lot of what Elon’s doing at Twitter. I understand he wants to monetize AI scraping, but I also think that if he wants Twitter to be the ‘public square’ it has to stay, you know, public. As in no registration required, Google can index.
This AI scraping excuse sites like Twitter and Reddit are using is so disingenuous. This scraping isn’t new and hasn’t increased to the level where it is costing them anything. It’s just it now has hype and a price tag around it so they want their cut.
I don’t see Elon selling Twitter. He’s too far in. He paid $44bn for it, by most estimates it’s probably worth half that today (both due to lower traffic and Elon seriously overpaying from the start). So if he sells, best case scenario he takes a 50% haircut. Crazy or not he has a plan for the thing, so he’s gonna do his plan and if it works he’ll make a bundle and if not then it’ll shrink a lot. But I see him hanging on to it with a skeleton crew before he sells it.
This scraping isn’t new and hasn’t increased to the level where it is costing them anything. It’s just it now has hype and a price tag around it so they want their cut.
Well yeah, that’s what I meant. The costs of having someone scrape the database are essentially zero for Twitter/Reddit. The lost opportunity cost however is astronomical. Reddit and Twitter both are sitting on an incredibly valuable database of genuine interactions. And I understand not wanting to give that away for free.
Problem is, it’s too late. Reddit and Twitter have both been scraped already. So locking barn door after horse has left just pisses off the users.
