So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122159192#Comment_122159192

You could always start your own social media service for like-minded people. Setting up a Mastodon node is quite cheap. The problems, naturally, are funding it and getting users.

X already has a critical mass of users and the switching cost of someone moving to another social networking service like Mastondon is worse than a simple subscription switch because people have built up networks of followers and people whom they follow. If they don't switch too then the value of that new social network is not so high for that person who wants to switch. X will lose some users but it will also gain users. As this is a presidential election year in the US, it is likely to gain users. All social networking services are going to be competing for a slice of that traffic.

Regards…jmcc

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122154300#Comment_122154300

“Free speech free speech free speech…his business his rules”

Clown

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122159196#Comment_122159196

That will continue to upset people who think that they know better than Musk and his investors.

Musk knew better than Musk and his investors if his legal fight to get out of the deal was anything to go by. His instinct was correct seeing as Twitter has lost the bulk of its value (71% by Jan-2024).

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122159199#Comment_122159199

I'd suspect they've had a substantial drop in active users. And the big factor is it's impossible for them to keep up with innovations now as it's running on a shoe string with an owner that is toxic. On top of that, they're losing more money than ever before due to advertising revenue disappearing. Instead you've got a tiny fiscal stream from those who want to pay for verification.

LuckyLloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122159196#Comment_122159196

Twitter is valued in and around $15b today, a 65% write off of value since Musk completed his purchase. Simply existing is not good enough. I think the forthcoming election is maybe more of an Alamo event for this whole folly - if X can't regenerate significant traction during or after the event that meaningfully adds to its value, Musk may be forced to take the write off in value and move on.

But you're right, leave all the political stuff to one side and just consider the value and / or consider the current ad spend and revenue generation landscape for X. When you consider the topic in an objective and dispassionate manner, the investment has gone very poorly indeed.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122159196#Comment_122159196

How do you think your posts have any credibility with lines like: "That will continue to upset people who think that they know better than Musk and his investors."

Given the staggering loss in value at Twitter since Musk got his hands on it?

That's a lot of 'upset' people, given that is anyone with the ability to actually pay attention to what is going on.

eightieschewbaccy

It's sounding suspiciously like Tesla are in loads of trouble and Musk is trying to find people to blame. Worth remembering Obama and Biden are responsible for Tesla getting huge amounts of subsidies.

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/equities/24/05/38910114/elon-musk-counts-amazing-president-joe-biden-among-tesla-naysayers-who-wish-to-see-the-ev-maker-

fly_agaric

Going to repeat something I said before but reading above article made me laugh again with the mad quoted Musk Tweets as I don't view Twitter much.

"Whoever controls the teleprompter is the real president!"

Oh dear. I am just imaginging a world where he goes and says something like that about Xi Jinping on his platform and boosts it to his gazillion followers (would have to be by accident!)…speed records broken on agile use of any Undo/Delete option, so much abject kowtowing it bores a hole in the ground perhaps?

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122160608#Comment_122160608

I'm more concerned about the fact that something like twitter is considered a teleprompter.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122159801#Comment_122159801

Ultimately, what you or I post here about Twitter/X doesn't matter. There are people who hate Musk for taking away what they thought was their space. It never was. They just provided content that could be monetised.

Twitter/X is a very powerful marketing tool that manages to bypass the tradtional gatekeepers in the legacy media (broadcast and print). Trump, in 2016, realised that and used it effectively to dominate the news cycle. In the 2020 campaign, Trump was banned from Twitter and it removed one of his maiin ways of reaching voters.

The importance of Twitter/X in terms of political influence seems to have been missed by those who complain about Musk and all the bad things he has done. Musk purchased political influence when he took over Twitter. The upcoming US presidential election is going to generate a lot of business for X. More importantly, with much of the pro-Democrat element in management having being removed, X could have a major effect on who becomes the next president of the USA.

Regards…jmcc

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122162971#Comment_122162971

Do you reckon it'll generate enough business to restore the company to its pre-Musk buyout value? I can't see the likes of Bob Iger coming back to Musk begging to be allowed to advertise again and I don't think they're getting a cut of all the scams being run through the platform. Maybe he could sell… red checkmarks.

Podge_irl

The importance of Twitter/X has tanked since Musk took over. I still use it, but it is getting less and less useful and more and more actual people are leaving it. He has destroyed its financial value and its zeitgeist value.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122162971#Comment_122162971

You say it's gonna generate a lot of business but the reality is, advertisers have largely fled from the platform. So it'll just continue to be a disaster. On top of that, since Musk's takeover I'd suspect its overall reach has actually diminished.

And in terms of Musk himself, all of his business decisions in the last few years have been atrocious. Tesla pursuing a cybertruck, firing the supercharger team, buying Twitter and Tesla's woes are only beginning IMHO. So assuming he bought Twitter to gain influence is suspect, he was forced into purchasing it is the reality.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122162971#Comment_122162971

Suggest you go back and re-read the post you replied to, because you seem to have replied to an entirely different post, and this tangenital mini essay only serves to underline your previous claim was without foundation.

Multiple posters have pointed out to you how Musk overpaid for Twitter, how advertisers have fled the platform and its disastrous finacial results under Musk in lost value.

Your claims for Musk's financial wisdom have zero credibility, foundation or merit - further demonstrated by your inability to respond to those points directly.

Your fixation on "There are people who hate Musk for taking away what they thought was their space" seems to be blinding you to basic facts. That is errant strawman nonsense. They didn't make Musk overpay for Twitter. They didn't make Musk do all the stupid, counter productive things he has done to drive advertisers away. They didn't make him rebrand to X in an act of gigantic marketing folly.

The different structure may well affect the US elections - but that is at the expense of its finances, let's not pretend otherwise, that would be an entirely bad faith argument or demonstrate total ignorance of Twitter's finances. And let's not pretend it is being done out of any free speech championing, as is disproved by Musk's actions on the platform, it would be an entirely bad faith argument.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163029#Comment_122163029

In one election cycle? No.

X also generates money from things other than advertising.

https://developer.x.com/en/docs/twitter-api/getting-started/about-twitter-api

Regards…jmcc

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163161#Comment_122163161

Their API pricing has pretty much put off any platform utilizing them tbh, it's ridiculously expensive so I can't see it being particularly profitable. The reality is they're losing more money than pre acquisition and far less innovative in terms of technology.

francois

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163199#Comment_122163199

Th api is so fooked it was serving up Nazi shìt alongside big brands. Of course they left. Nothing but drop-shoppers, crypto shills and pussy-in-bio spam now.

Coke, Disney, Microsoft love nothing better then having that cùnt Fuentes in their threads

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163161#Comment_122163161

So you think there's a long game being played?

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163465#Comment_122163465

Definitely.

Regards…jmcc

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163465#Comment_122163465

Musk is playing 4D chess and us common oiks are too stupid to understand it. or so his supporters would have you believe.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163465#Comment_122163465

He will end up winning this time next year, the same time he delivers full self driving.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163470#Comment_122163470

In spite of the fact he was forced to purchase Twitter? Can you point to any credible source that indicates Twitter is improving under Musk? Eg via technologic improvements or increased revenue

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163523#Comment_122163523

Twitter's earnings from advertising in 2023 were $3.4 billion.

https://www.investing.com/academy/statistics/twitter-facts-statistics/

Before Musk took it over, the company was listed and had to publish quarterly reports. Musk mentioned that the company was losing around $4 million a day. It led to a lot of job losses and cutbacks. The bot problem may be one of those that has been reduced. Users were lost to Mastodon. The loss of users was not enough to cause the demise of Twitter in a few days. When it comes to Twitter, credible sources are few and far between. Some of this is due to the reduction in published financial information but some of the media coverage seems extremely biased.

The main thing that Musk had to do when he took over was to stem the losses. According to some of the coverage, Twitter was a mature company that was being run like a start-up (or non-profit according to Musk) complete with benefits for employees to keep them in a college-like environment. Much of this was stopped and a lot of these employees (I think that it was almost 80% of Twitter's workforce) were fired. Twitter still makes money from advertising and Musk's reduction of the operating costs of the business may have been the first step on a very long path.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/elon-musk-twitter-tesla-cuts-profit-532dc0e3

"The company has reduced its non-debt expenditures to $1.5 billion from a
projected $4.5 billion in 2023, helped by cutting its cloud services
bill by 40% and closing one data center, Musk said. Twitter has also laid off thousands of employees."

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitters-musk-says-can-raise-revenue-with-more-relevant-ads-2023-03-07/

Regards…jmcc

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163564#Comment_122163564

Twitters revenue was 4.4bn in 2022, the year he took over. It was 5bn the year before he took over. Real 4D chess from. Driving away your biggest source of revenue is business genius.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163575#Comment_122163575

Net income matters:

2022: (Q1+Q2) $513M, -$270M

2021: -$221M

2020: -$1,136M

2019: $1,466M

2018: $1,206M

2017: -$108M

2016: -$475M

Twitter was making money but its operating costs were high. That meant it was effectively losing more than it made. Covid had a major impact on all Big Tech companies and some bet that a lot of business would go online. Some of these Big Tech companies laid off a lot of employees that they had hired when things returned to normal. However, there are other economic factors at play. Apart from only two years, 2018 and 2019, Twitter has had net losses. Losing advertisers was one headache Twitter could have done without but getting costs under control was important.

Regards…jmcc

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163597#Comment_122163597

Costs under control doesn't mean a whole lot if he managed to halve all the ad revenue. On top of that, they need to be making more rather than less post takeover due to the fact the company is saddled with debt of the massive purchase price.

They've also lost 15 percent of their active user base which I don't think any other social media platform has faced at that speed. Numerous downtime events since the takeover as well which isn't gonna help.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163743#Comment_122163743

Getting the costs under control was a priority. The ad revenue for 2023 was $2.5 billion but there was also $0.9 billion in subscriptions and data licencing. The previous year's subscriptions and data licencing revenue was $0.4 billion. It is lumbered with a lot of debt. They need to be able to meet to meet the interest payments on the debt and pay operating costs. The subscriptions helped but the focus on dealing with bots scraping content from Twitter/X may have helped increase the data licencing revenue.

Regards…jmcc

pjohnson

Dealing with bots when the place has multiples of the bots it used to is comical.

I thought most musk simps had fled this sinking ship by now.

Regards Musk4Lyfe

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163791#Comment_122163791

GOOD POST I LIKE THIS MUCH LOL

← p#u#s#s#y##i#n##b#i#o

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163781#Comment_122163781

Bots and scams are more prominent than ever before. Getting costs down is great and all but it's not great if it causes more and more platform instability. And killing off technical innovations means that they can't compete with other platforms.... Nobody wants Twitter to be their everything app but that's his idea of innovation… Have you any proof that there's any substantial uptake for API functionality? Iirc, most major platforms eg consoles have removed the ability to tweet instead of paying. The fact Musk isn't come out with any big figures to indicate major profits indicates that there simply aren't.

It's somewhat fascinating to watch posters struggling to find any way to indicate the takeover as a success. Meanwhile both Tesla and Twitter are in serious trouble long term.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163597#Comment_122163597

This post is wildly irrelevant if you don't include what the net income was after Elon took over.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163862#Comment_122163862

The user generated content, (the tweets, the interactions and the locations) are valuable data. In addition to posting using bots, people also try to scrape this content for free. This kind of activity is not immediately obvious but content scraping has been a major problem for all large websites for decades. With AI and the need for data to train AI, this content, and the content from all large websites has become quite valuable. The New York Times has already taken legal action against one well known AI operation. Ryanair has also successfully sued companies scraping its website.

Twitter only ever had two profitable years. It probably would have struggled to make a profit even if Musk didn't take it over. Musk overpaid for a company with a lot of problems. Some of them were dealt with by cutting costs. Others will take a lot longer to fix. That kind of discussion might be beyond the scope of this thread.

Regards…jmcc

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163928#Comment_122163928

you dont fix a company by cutting revenue by a third

LuckyLloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163597#Comment_122163597

You ignored the point above, but I’ll note it again: Twitter is estimated to be only worth 15b now, a value loss of ~65%. We can argue this up and down and all around, but slashing costs and improving net revenues will never make up for catastrophic value loss and brand toxification (as demonstrated by the nature of ads on the site since he took over).

Unless those core aspects of Musk’s Twitter / X can be turned around, the rest are mere deckchairs.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122163928#Comment_122163928

He hasn't eliminated bots though, they're still there... He's also lost almost a fifth of their active users and half their advertisers… I shutdown my Twitter account about a year ago, I sometimes glance at the content and the comments and they amount to far right nutjobs going wild. Advertisers won't go back because of the kind of content they're associated with…

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122162971#Comment_122162971

It is advisable to check your own bullsh*t before posting it. Trump was banned from Twitter in January 2021.

But "owning the libs" fanboys dont do facts

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122164035#Comment_122164035

When Musk took over Twitter, it was delisted as a public company and became a privately owned company. That changed the financial reporting requirements. It no longer had to publish quarterly statements. That was mentioned above as was point about X being worth less now.

Twitter only had two profitable years before it was taken over. For all those other years, it was losing money. Musk had to reduce operating costs. He fired 80% of the workforce and reduced costs on hosting. X also lost advertising revenue. X now has to try make a profit and keep making a profit in order to restore some of that value for its investors. And the point about Musk overpaying for the company was mentioned too.

Phrases like "catastrophic value loss" and "brand toxification" may sound impressive but the reality is that X is a business and it has to cover costs, deal with its debt and try to make a profit. The core aspects for a business are survival and making a profit. Typically, the more profit a company makes, the more valuable it is considered. It will take a long time to be worth what Musk paid for it.

Regards…jmcc

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122164130#Comment_122164130

It is very difficult to completely eliminate bots. There was a lot of argument about the level of bots before Musk took over Twitter and the previous management was reluctant to state the actual numbers.

The effects of the bots responsible for automated posting are obvious and are the ones on which most people concentrate. The other bots, the ones that scrape content from X and other websites, go largely ignored. For large websites and services, they are an expensive problem. Some of X's actions like requiring users to log in to read tweets and limiting the number of tweets that can be read at a time are geared towards dealing with this problem.

Twitter/X is in the business of monetising user activity. It makes money from advertising on user generated content (the tweets), data licencing and subscriptions. It still has hundreds of millions of active users. It is commonly said about Web businesses that if you are not paying for a product then you are the product. Twitter/X is just one very large scale example of this.

Regards…jmcc

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122165889#Comment_122165889

And they've lost over half of their advertisers, not seeing the issue yet?

LuckyLloyd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122165632#Comment_122165632

Yes, yes I understand the basics of how a business operates.

Your last sentence is the key one - Twitter / X is worth a significant amount less than Musk paid for it. It is amazing to me that his supporters always somehow ignore that crucial fact - the man agreed to buy the business for multiples of what it was worth - when lauding all his decisions since. Particularly when those decisions have had a direct impact on lowering the core revenue stream and weakening the potential to increase that revenue stream in the future. It is very hard to square such an acutely bad decision with Musk's supposed brilliance and excellent decision making since.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122166312#Comment_122166312

Exactly - He made an offer using a price based on a marijuana related meme and then spent the next few months desperately trying to get out of the deal.

Having been forced to buy the company and loading it up with catastrophic levels of debt he then went on a cost cutting spree with zero attention to what he was cutting in a desperate attempt to help him pay back the $44B he spent buying a turd.

That turd is now worth about a 3rd of what he paid for it (and he'd already paid about 20% too much right out the gate just so he could have "420" in the bid price, because he's a child) so he is well and truly upside down on the debt.

There is no "plan" other than throw as many sh!t ideas against the wall and hope some of it sticks and generates some money to help pay off the debt.

And now that the Tesla stock is tanking as well , his ability to service the debt or use that stock as collateral to float the loan forward is much harder.

None of the "ideas" that he's put forward so far are going to generate the kinds of revenue needed to service that debt. There is a brick wall waiting for "X" and they don't seem to have a way around or through it.

blackwhite

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122165632#Comment_122165632

Cutting costs is much easier than growing revenues. That's why tech companies often have a prolonged "growth phase" where they try and build their revenues as much as possible using fundraising from both equity and debt sources.

Once they reach a targetted revenue level, they then try to rationalise the cost-base to a sustainable level which leads to profitability and the ability to repay the debts built up during the growth phase. But it's critical that they can rationalise their cost bases without shedding all the revenue-streams that they have built up. Otherwise they remain loss-making forever and eventually fail.

Musk is doing the easy bit - cutting costs - without doing anything to safeguard the revenues. It would appear that he is shedding revenues to a greater degree than he is cutting costs and if that's the case he's dooming the company to failure.

It's much easier to turn around a loss-making company with high revenues and high costs than it is to turn around a loss-making company with low revenues and a low cost base.

Musk appears to have taken over Twitter when it was high-revenue and high-costs and transformed it into X with low revenues and low costs - whilst missing the return to profitability part.

Quiet Achiever

Elon's promise was not and will not be fulfilled.

His promise was to get rid of bots and ensure twitter would be the world's town square.

Bots are worse than ever, and it's far from a town square as all you see in any "discussion' beneath a tweet are paid subscribers who all share the same world view, or irrelevant memes by bots, and everyone trying to get you to read their thread so they can get paid a few pennies by Elon.

It's a million mils away from its vision and it is now 80% the same crude monotone that 4chan is.

But the big positive is that lazy journalists now ignore it so it doesn't drive what we see in the papers or hear on the radio.

silliussoddius

It's a town square, but he got rid of the toilet cleaners and they are starting to back up.

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122176450#Comment_122176450

But the big positive is that lazy journalists now ignore it so it doesn't drive what we see in the papers or hear on the radio.

It's slowly losing favour. It's great reading news stories that are not just Twitter dumps of user reactions.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122179965#Comment_122179965

I wonder what all these journalists will do with their Ctrl C and Ctrl V skills?

corkie

https://www.sundayworld.com/news/irish-news/us-based-social-media-site-targets-families-of-irish-leaders-after-palestine-declaration/a1958478959.html

Also reported by the times.co.uk ~ archive link

Separately, the Fianna Fail leader criticised Twitter/X after it refused to remove a post by the US-based organisation ……

Not naming the twitter account so as not to generate more traffic to it. Photos are still up today, surprised they didn't report the post under the #DSA. The account did post this under the photo's "This post is for illustrative purposes only and did not actually occur." as if they are claiming 'Fair Use'?

Despicable that photo's can be used in that way.

Edit: -

If Micheal martin can't get these photos/post down what hope has Cynthia Ní Mhurchú getting abusive content taken down after reporting to Coimisiún na Meán this week and basically been told by an information pack posted that content moderation wasn't their remit. Her she is moaning about 'X' on tiktok! Posted day after I tweet to her that I didn't need to know her view point on the subject. That I could have guessed. Good script writers but she obliviously doesn't have a clue what she is talking about. There is limitations to the power it has, as of yet.

odyssey06

Not suprising:

An analysis by The Journal of over 150 anonymous accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, examined how the accounts engaged in attempts to influence opinions on a range of divisive topics in Ireland.

Some accounts show signs of being operated by non-Irish users, despite claiming to be Irish and posting almost exclusively about Irish political issues.

https://www.thejournal.ie/x-irish-anonymous-accounts-influence-operation-6385526-May2024/

Flaneur OBrien

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122188186#Comment_122188186

Unfortunately, there's a lot of thick people out there that need protecting from bad agents.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122176450#Comment_122176450

nudes in bio