Anecdotally speaking as a long time twitter lurker, the quality of my "For You" feed has dropped precipitously since the Musk acquisition — I am now consistently getting trashy, lowest common denominator shock/click-bait posts about race, iq, social/political violence, hitler, etc. in my feed despite the fact that I do not seek that content out and have only ever used twitter for art/philosophy/literature/tech/science etc.
If that kind of dark engagement tactic is partially what it takes for twitter to become profitable, then it will be at the expense of its dignity and soul.
The replies from blue ticks that get pushed up mostly seem to be braindead trolling and camgirl spam too. Twitter was always a bit of a cesspit but you could curate your way to a useful feed. Now it's just awful.
How can you classify a prediction as a lie? You could say it's unrealistic or delusional based solely on your guesses without having seen any financial data, but it's not a lie.
If they're saying "should turn a profit" publicly and their internal numbers say "almost certainly won't turn a profit", that prediction is, IMO, a lie.
The classification is based on the reliability of the narrator, itself based on its track record on delivering on its huge promises who will be delivered "Next years, second quarter"
I’m not surprised the comments here are universally skeptical so far, but I’ll chime in that I think it’s plausible. The largest expense by far was compensation and with 10% the previous workforce it dropped dramatically. The question is how much revenue would have fallen. In the HN bubble X is basically over and everyone has moved to Mastodon, but there has been little change in the folks I follow. Are journalists and ordinary folk leaving en masse as well?
From the sounds of things Musk’s antics have cost Twitter a lot of ad revenue from businesses not wanting to associate themselves with him.
In my own experience I’ve been seeing a lot more dodgy ads (scams, crypto, far-right groups) that were probably rejected by the old management. Maybe that’s making up some of the lost revenue, but it’s exactly the sort of stuff that made traditional businesses anxious about content moderation on platforms like YouTube.
It does seem that the userbase hasn’t gone away - the migration to other platforms hasn’t panned out and the power users are still there. But if the platform is long-term toxic to advertisers then they’re going to need some better ideas than Twitter Blue.
In the end, journalists are dependent on social media to get eyeballs on their content. Twitter / X still is a highly effective tool for that. There won't be a lot of people that can afford to opt out of that.
Elon Musk probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with his antics but I don't think he was fundamentally that wrong with his core analysis of the issues facing Twitter when he bought it:
- High staffing cost relative and some revenue challenges.
- Content moderation that was simultaneously controversial, expensive, and biased. And also not that effective.
- The Twitter API was getting abused a lot by people with all sorts of agendas. Including some state actors like Russia.
- R&D stagnation. The site barely changed in the years before he bought it.
So, he took a wrecking ball to the whole thing and upset a lot of people doing so. But, if he gets it back to being profitable next year, that will be a big milestone for them.
I've been using it less and less over the years. But that already started before the takeover. I kind of like Mastodon currently but part of the attraction is that it is relatively free from the noisy crowd that makes Twitter less interesting than it used to be.
Have most HN people gone over to Mastadon? Personally I think Twitter/X has improved and become more interesting though the monetisation schema feels like it's pushing it towards it being a bit more LinkedIn'y (people are chasing impressions more than they used to because an actual carrot exists).
> Are journalists and ordinary folk leaving en masse as well?
I have no Twitter account and for couple of months Twitter links are not working for me. Before, I have not noticed the presence of Twitter because it was just another link I have visited. But now when it is just error page I have noticed how omnipresent Twitter is on sites like Reddit, HN and in the news.
It's not about Mastodon taking users, it's about major advertisers deciding it's not worth it to continue. Have you noticed that the CEO, an ad account executive never mentions any advertisers by name or ad-related revenue growth?
> Musk was quoted as saying in the interview that the social media platform now has only 1,500 employees, down from under 8,000 who were employed at the time of his acquisition. The reduction equates to roughly 80% of the company’s staff.
That was in April. Another 10% since then seems entirely plausible.
A recent recruiting email I got from X said their team is 50 people. Maybe that's just engineering, but it's tiny. I noticed they're also hiring random remote devs with barely any experience too.
I don't get how it is allowed that C-Suits just are allowed to blatantly lie to their investors/board/users they have the data and they know it won't happen. Exactly how Musks knows FSD won't happen this year...
Lying to users about performance is covered under free speech. It's securities fraud if Musk is knowingly lying to those with an interest in X, even if a private company. Necessary components are standing ("I own a piece of X"), appetite to litigate, and evidence the statement was knowingly untrue.
The key there is "knowingly." For those who want to litigate, proving that he's lying is incredibly difficult. You would need some kind of internal message from Musk directly saying that "X will not be profitable in 2024" right before he posted. I doubt anyone will actually sue him over this.
Nikola's fraud was blatant [1]. They rolled a truck down a hill, and the internal emails were damning. Trying in good faith (solar shingles) and failing isn't fraud, that's just a failed business venture. Solyndra failed too. Fraud? No, just bad business.
I can understand that Musk attempts to bend reality to juice the chances of success. I don't condone it personally, but I understand it [2].
The investors are Musk, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Binance, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia and some others. Imaginary profits shouldn't be an issue for this group, the value of their holdings lies elsewhere.
> I don't get how it is allowed that C-Suits just are allowed to blatantly lie to their investors/board/users they have the data and they know it won't happen
This is _why_ many jurisdictions, including the US, have some concept of 'qualified/accredited' investor, and investment in private companies is somewhat restricted to people who are presumed to know what they're doing. CEOs of _public_ companies absolutely cannot lie about financials, but it's murkier for private companies.
My office is 7.1 miles away and I go FSD there and back. Perhaps it's where I live is conducive to functional operation, but it works. Perhaps the difference is that unlike a lot of people who try FSD, I keep my eyes on the road and not watching something like Harry Potter
There are still plenty of investors, such as the Saudi royal family. Musk isn't the sole owner of Twitter, some of the old investors agreed to remain co-owners with him in the buyout.
I suspect people underestimate how much third world shitholes are willing to pay to have more influence over the discussion on twitter. Doesn't matter if it's saudi arabia, india or russia.
I had honestly forgotten that they had hired her for a moment. I guess that answers the question if Musk was really going to step aside and let her take the reigns.
you could turn any company profitable by firing all its employees and licensing the brand name. It will be an extraordinary accomplishment indeed if X becomes a > $44 billion company, but turning a small profit on declining revenue is not actually moving that direction.
So does this include paying off all their past obligations, including, but not limited to: Rent(s), Vendor Payment(s), Employee termination and back pay, etc, etc?
And this are only the debts which have been talked about _publically_.
Regardless of i might think of elon musk i kind of want him to succeed with X because i would like to see a social media platform make the users pay to fund the service.
If you add this kind of payment to the website you actually make the service less beholden to ad revenue so you do not have to worry as much about their sensibilities. If the subscription fee gets big enough i think the company would become beholden to the users and hopefully serve their needs more than the advertisers (maybe my wishful thinking).
This is obviously not a popular opinion, but: I think this is great news. In the world of Meta dominating social media (+ TikTok now de facto in 2nd spot), we need diversity in the field.
Twitter (X) definitely changed in the past year, but I see it as a positive change (maybe it's my bubble) - my tech feed is no longer polluted by people fighting about left vs right, Trump etc, my feed is now tech people sharing tech-related content and I love it.
Yeah, its definitely your bubble. I'm seeing much more racism, trolling, and abuse. And from talking with other folks (IRL) I don't think this is my own bubble either.
Interesting, it’s the opposite for my feed. For 10 years I came to twitter for the exchange of ideas, learned so much about tech and business, developed friendships and connections that changed my life.
Now every time I open my feed it reminds me of trash tv. Ads for weed gummies every 8th tweet, crazy rhetoric and political content from extremist politicians I’ve often never even heard of, Elon musk himself - who I don’t follow - pushed into my face, forcing me to see his angry tweets, first, every time I load the app.
Beyond the drama, I used to get a lot of value in reading threads and now the comments are all garbage? Finding anything useful requires me scrolling past a long list of reply guys and often what just seems like spam.
It genuinely makes me sad to lose such a useful product :(.
Twitter disrupted the ability of mobs to self organize and some of the most toxic culture warriors left for Mastodon. So the people left there are the ones that can live with the idea that wrongthink exists and there is no need to be extinguished.
Conversely, I can only find that now on mastodon, where it only shows me who I've explicitly followed and not some algorithmic feed.
Just took a look at my Twitter homepage. It's hate speech, aliens live along us, flight tracking (?), various conspiracy theories and weird American right-wing crap (I'm not even American), and a couple of tech posts. It's become complete garbage.
Sure it will, a site being served to absolutely no one and being paid for by a handful of people who died with automatically reoccurring subscriptions that won't be turned off for a wee while will turn a cent or two of profit.
I'd be surprised if they didn't. Heck I'm a little surprised that its taking them this long. I'm guessing all those severance checks must have hurt.
Either way, a part of me really wishes Elon didn't the take company private. It would've been pretty cool to own a little piece of the rocket ship.
For those of you who are not convinced, lets put it this way:
We all stuck with Twitter for the better part of a decade under sub optimal management. A lot of you stuck with or are coming back to X despite being against the new values of the company & and its owner.
All is to say, the network effects are unfathomably strong. All they have to do is sprinkle in some monetisation via empowering the top 5% that actually creates stuff.
Easiest bet of the decade. I wouldn't be surprised if X becomes a 500b company by the end of the decade.
A few questions based on reading the comments here.
1) Why are people so certain that the claims that X should profit are incorrect? X did cut a massive percentage of their staff, and presumably whatever infrastructure changes they've initiated in the past months to save money should be done by then. Nobody can perfectly predict the future, but reducing expenses drastically seems like a good step forward in achieving their goal.
2) Why are people acting so personally hurt if X thrives? I don't even see this level of animosity for companies that deserve this level of ire, like companies that deliberately pollute the oceans or even the cable companies.
3) Are people rooting for X to fail? I think competition for Facebook and other social media is a great thing, and X still has a certain connection with the zeitgeist that I don't think can be matched.
4) Why are people ok with the rampant deadnaming of X? Do better!
> Nobody can perfectly predict the future, but reducing expenses drastically seems like a good step forward in achieving their goal.
Cutting expenses is one part of the equation. The other is debt servicing.
There's $13 billion in loans used to buy Twitter, that now sit on Twitter's balance sheet. There's a minimum of $1.2 billion in annual interest payments on those loans.
Cutting expenses doesn't really put in perspective. Head count was cut by over 80%. Everything was switched to austerity mode.
These are not minimum wage workers, these are thousands of people who on average got payed more than the president.
Beyond that, we also have twitter blue. I'm guessing they have crossed one million by now. Thats bordering $100m ARR.
Then there is the advertising revenue, Twitter made $5 billion in revenue with a total loss of 220m. Even if advertising was cut by half, thats still $2.5B in income.
Honestly I'm surprised they are not profitable now, let alone next year.
If that kind of dark engagement tactic is partially what it takes for twitter to become profitable, then it will be at the expense of its dignity and soul.