I admit, I’m impressed. Elon Musk has thrown away $24 billion in less than half a year. That takes real money savvy.
Elon Musk has revealed that he believes Twitter is currently worth $20 billion, or less than half the $44 billion he purchased it for just five months ago.
In a companywide email Friday obtained by the New York Times about employee stock grants, Musk admitted that the company’s value since going private, in his estimation, is roughly $20 billion; in the aftermath of Musk’s acquisition, many advertisers — the social network’s main source of income — fled the service, and as Vox reported earlier this week, haven’t returned.
That’s not the punch line, though. This is the punch line:
Elsewhere in the email, Musk said that at one point Twitter was four months away from running out of money, which sparked the need for mass layoffs and other cuts. However, an optimistic Chief Twit also told the employees that still remain there that “I see a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation,” and that he now views Twitter as an “inverse start-up.”
As ever, Elon Musk is the master of hype and self-delusion. No, he doesn’t have a plan to increase the value to $250 billion. Right now, he’s playing games with checkmarks that people can buy. I never saw the point of getting verified and getting blue checkmark on my twitter account back in the day, when the company was run by only semi-incompetent management, and now that Musk is imposing weird arbitrary rules to get people to pay for it, I have even less interest. He thinks this will help him increase the value of the company by $230 billion? That’s nuts.
When the army was revolting and emperor Nero’s advisors told him he had better kill himself rather than be captured, he complained “but the world would lose such an artist with me!”
More than halfway there!
I don’t post on Twitter anymore but I do still go there to block Twitter Blue subscribers. I know there was a lot of jealousy over the check marks (blue emojis in display names were popular) and the old way was ridiculously difficult and seemingly arbitrary, but they did serve a real function and now I don’t feel confident that FredSm98378923 with 14 followers is the actual FredSm98378923.
He says Twitter is worth $20 billion but do you really believe him? The estimate based on its bonds was around $13 billion a few months ago, and it hasn’t shown much signs of recovery since.
An “inverse start-up”, aka a “shut-down”.
Why should anybody take Musk’s estimation of Twitter’s value seriously? What does “Twitter’s value” even mean in this context?
Musk is following the Trump model of business success, one Trump himself crowed over as a success – the bankruptcy model of success.
You know, declaring bankruptcy a success makes it a success, ignore the fact that he bankrupted the businesses.
I was present for Trump crowing over his 1992 “successes”, at a tri-state Chamber of Commerce do, where every business owner present rolled their eyes. That function survived Trump as guest of honor with a 90%+ attrition rate the following year, as none forgave who they had brought in as the boor of the party.
I no longer have a Twitter account, I killed my account the day that the Trump reinstatement went live. I’ve briefly unlocked my Facebook account, which I’ve retained under duress, as that’s the only way my eldest will share family pictures.
Society has changed for the worse. When I was a kid and raising ours, Fotomat didn’t get the rights to my family album. Today, Facebook literally has rights to imagery people store on their site, as did Google when they still ran Google+.
He’s a genius in his personal life too.
Grimes Has Changed Her and Elon Musk’s Baby’s Name to a Question Mark
Musk’s fortune is not enough to buy the therapy his children are going to need.
Musk is of the gazillionaire class. He can burn all of his money in a big bonfire and still get ridiculous loans and bounce back.
The numbers aren’t real to him. Well . . . unless they say he’s “winning.”
At least driving Twitter into the ground counts as an accomplishment.
When billionaires lose billions, it usually ends up being someone else’s money. I guess that’s the genius part.
At least Elon hasn’t lost his sense of humor. Just the other day he tweeted a “that’s what she said” joke.
He botched it.
Twitter is still being overrun by trolls, antisemites, Nazis, Russian trolls, white racists, and antivaxxers are most of them.
It isn’t a good place to spend much time these days.
There still isn’t a good replacement for Twitter though.
Twitter is useful and serves a common need for general announcements. As such it is used by most news outlets, both internet and non-internet.
It won’t be Mastodon.
Mastodon isn’t even set up to be a Twitter replacement. It is decentralilzed and doesn’t have the resources to replace Twitter.
Strangely enough, Twitter has held up a lot better than I would have expected.
It is only down by 50% in valuation.
Usually, when these forums die, they end up worth a whole lot less.
I doubt AOL is worth much these days.
Tumblr went from $1.1. billion to $3 million in 6 years.
Nono, you don’t get it! Twitter is going to land on Mars annnnnnyy day now.
Ah, new winner. To generate money, I mean to identify bots, Musk announced only paid for “verified” accounts will appear in users “For You” feed.
Because, obviously nobody can possibly pay for a bot account. And it ain’t about the money, as one can be verified only by paying money, so hand wave.
AKA, pay up and be whoever you want to be.
Boy, am I glad I shitcanned my account! Just triple checked, account has been deleted per my direction.
raven: it is only down 50% if you believe Musk. But I see no corroboration of that value.
From what I see, it depends upon who you ask and when it was asked what the value of the company is.
To me, paying two bits is overvaluing the company, but to investors, depends upon who is asked, with some putting it at 5 billion, 13 billion for others and plucked fresh from another ass, 24 billion.
Values that change daily. But, one thing that influences stock prices illegally is Musk going on about it, as the SEC has repeatedly warned him. He should get fined, but rich does what it wants in the US, poors only get penalized.