Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter

[Jolly]

@jon-nyc said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:

(I think he really means ‘since the Obama Depression’)

Works for me.

"Own the language", the Demonrats said.

[taiwan_girl]

https://futurism.com/mistake-elon-musk-begged-twitter-staff-turn-off-new-feature

In late 2022, long before multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X, rumors swirled that he was getting ready to shake up the platform's verification system.

His proposal: charge each subscriber for the privilege of being verified without ever doing the homework of actually verifying their identity — a short-sighted and ultimately disastrous decision that Musk reportedly regretted almost immediately.

and

The 2022 US midterm elections took place on November 8, a day before Musk started charging users for a blue checkmark.

When the switch was made, all hell broke loose, with countless newly verified accounts masquerading as politicians, celebrities, and companies. One account parading as Nintendo shared a viral image of Super Mario giving the finger.

Advertisers, who had gotten wind of the mayhem, started reaching out to Twitter's sales teams, threatening to pull their ads. According to Mac and Conger's sources, Nike executives threatened to never advertise on the platform again.

And Musk was terrified of the prospect of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue.

"Turn it off," he reportedly told an engineer. "Turn it off!"

[George K]

To his credit, he changed his mind after realizing it was a mistake.

[Axtremus]

Good thing nothing really important happens on Twitter; it’s not like he was messing with the nation’s critical infrastructures like, banking, utilities, or transportation.

[George K]

@Axtremus said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:

Good thing nothing really important happens on Twitter

Is there a social media platform on which something important does happen?

[jon-nyc]

@George-K said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:

To his credit, he changed his mind after realizing it was a mistake.

Yes but his best lawyers couldn’t get him out of the contract so he had to buy the company after all.

[jon-nyc]

[taiwan_girl]

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-more-advertisers-pull-back-in-2025

As Elon Musk struggled to rebuild X's ability to generate revenue, the site suffered a mass advertiser exodus late last year, and at least some of those departures were evidently due to pro-nazi content. A few months later, Musk told advertisers "go fuck yourself."

And this was all right before Musk shared that the former Twitter's revenue was already down by 60 percent from before his acquisition.

It looks like 2025 isn't going to be any better for X. A new report from UK market research firm Kantar found that 26 percent of marketers are planning to reduce their ad spend on Musk's platform next year.
According to Kantar's research, this was the "biggest recorded pullback" from any of the major global advertising platforms.

[Doctor Phibes]

@taiwan_girl said in Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter:

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-more-advertisers-pull-back-in-2025

As Elon Musk struggled to rebuild X's ability to generate revenue, the site suffered a mass advertiser exodus late last year, and at least some of those departures were evidently due to pro-nazi content. A few months later, Musk told advertisers "go fuck yourself."

And this was all right before Musk shared that the former Twitter's revenue was already down by 60 percent from before his acquisition.

It looks like 2025 isn't going to be any better for X. A new report from UK market research firm Kantar found that 26 percent of marketers are planning to reduce their ad spend on Musk's platform next year.
According to Kantar's research, this was the "biggest recorded pullback" from any of the major global advertising platforms.

Didn't he sue some companies a while back for not advertising on X?

Because obviously that's going to bring them running back!

[jon-nyc]

[Klaus]

That data doesn't necessarily mean anything.

It doesn't include people using the X app.

It doesn't account for potential bot purges.

SimilarWeb does not have access to the actual data. They need to estimate it from various other data points, and that estimation can easily be off by a factor of 2.

[jon-nyc]

Fidelity has written 80% of the value off of its investment in X.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/29/fidelity-has-cut-xs-value-by-79-since-musk-purchase/

[Horace]

Has their user base really taken that much of a hit? Or maybe Fidelity is taking advantage of the illiquid private equity markets, which have recently tanked as per a story linked to here yesterday, for an advantageous tax write off.

[jon-nyc]

They’d need a valuation model that would survive an audit. I doubt they’re fucking with it. Doesn’t mean their model is perfect. Hard to imagine how to value it, it has meme stock potential and you can’t very well model that.