Elon Musk buys a big chunk of Twitter

[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.

[taiwan_girl]

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/01/nx-s1-5283271/elon-musk-lawsuit-advertisers-boycott-new

Elon Musk's X broadened an existing lawsuit on Saturday to include several major brands — accusing more companies of illegally boycotting the social media platform in 2022 following Musk's acquisition.

The suit, which was filed last year in a federal court in Texas, initially targeted the boycott organizer, the World Federation of Advertisers, along with companies including CVS and video-streaming platform Twitch.

But early on Saturday, Musk's lawyers filed an amended complaint, adding several new defendants, including Lego, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate-Palmolive, Pinterest and Shell International.

[taiwan_girl]

A group of investors led by Elon Musk is offering about $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit behind OpenAI, escalating a dispute with the artificial intelligence company that Musk helped found a decade ago.

and

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly rejected the unsolicited bid on Musk’s social platform X, saying, “no thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-openai-bid-chatgpt-sam-altman-b1ad37fe4fe70e3b5d283940bd3b8215