Elon Musk-owned social media company X could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Don't forget how recently he really started driving away the advertisers and how close we are to the end of the year. I see it as a very hopeful start.
X is already worth less than half of buying price. And this is income loss, not net worth. Which will eventually lead to the later or if not to bankruptcy.
I've been on the internet since the 90s, BBS services before that. Thankfully I've never stumbled upon anything remotely close to CSAM all this time. To think that I could open up a twitter thread linked from a news story and be subjected to it is repugnant.
Why is this problematic for Elon? Has he ever explicitly conceded he needsX to be profitable? Isn't it sufficient and necessary enough in the eyes of his investors to simply neuter it?
He's said that he WANTS it to be profitable and as a clinical narcissist billionaire, he doesn't cope well with not getting what he wants.
On a more practical level, the cesspit it's become has increased scrutiny on his other companies and the main one, Tesla, is decidedly NOT weathering that well.
All in all, he's lost over a third, maybe even as much as HALF of his still absurdly huge dragon's hoard of wealth since he took over Twitter.
Much of his wealth is held in shares of his publicly traded companies. If investors lose faith in his ability to manage and grow one company it could (and seemingly has) affect the value of all companies he's involved with, directly decreasing his net worth. Making Twitter profitable would have gone a long way in demonstrating his ability to run a company, but he has done the opposite.
But technically no, I guess he doesn't need Twitter to turn a profit. He could just watch it all burn.
Sure, but at the end of the day, does it really matter? It's like made up numbers that never run out. He's still set for life, no real consequence. He feels this less than someone who misses a car payment one month.
That's the really crazy thing. With the market value crash of Twitter he lost more money than the GDP of a small country. Yet, it practically makes no difference to him.
Around $22Bn, that's how much he had to sell on Tesla stock. The other half was a loan from several banks and investors that got saddled to Twitter itself. These things are public, that's how we know most of the loan money came from the Saudi crown.
Yeah, he probably wanted it in order to influence the election, but the way things are going it might but be around for that. Not to mention, Twitter isn't really used by real people, it's basically just all journalists circle jerking.
I remember reading an article speculating that his strategy was to bring down twitter because it was a left leaning platform, and that would appease the Saudis, or something like that. Seemed pretty far fetched. I reckon he made an ego driven power play without thinking it through and it is going about as well as anybody expected. No shenanigans, no strategy, just a more publically exposed failure than his previous business failures.
Nov 24 (Reuters) - Elon Musk-owned social media company X could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Musk backing an antisemitic post on the platform last week has led several companies including Walt Disney (DIS.N) and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O) to pause their advertisements on the site formerly called Twitter.
X has struck back and sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed the platform with a report that said ads for major brands including Apple and Oracle had appeared next to posts touting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.
X said on Friday $11 million in revenue was at risk and the exact figure fluctuated as some advertisers returned to the platform and others increased spending, according to the report.
Advertisers have fled X since Musk bought it in October 2022 and reduced content moderation, resulting in a sharp rise in hate speech on the site, according to civil rights groups.
The platform's U.S. ad revenue has declined at least 55% year-over-year each month since Musk's takeover, Reuters previously reported.
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It wasn't worth $44 billion when he bought it. That's why he tried desperately to back out. The reason the company is in such a dire financial situation is specifically because it was bought at that price and now pays debt service far disproportionate to its actual worth.
You're also confusing company valuation with operating revenue. $44 billion isn't how much cash they have on hand and $75 million doesn't get subtracted from that, so expressing that percentage makes no sense. One number isn't a percent of the other.
Twitter's ad revenue is already down more than 50% since the takeover and this is $75 million more of lost revenue on top of that. The company was maybe on a path to profitability at full advertising revenue and without the debt service, but now it is burning cash even as revenues tank.
They have a billion of loan payments due each year. In order to pay that, someone has to come up with cash. Having a business that actually generates a profit would be the ideal way to do that.