Musk warns twitter may have to declare bankruptcy

[Sauron]

40 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

If you consistently work over 60 hours a week(not at work, actually doing work, it's easy enough to fuck off while supposedly working), you're not at some sort of job where it's several weeks on, several weeks off, and it's not because you're at the very bottom of the economic ladder, you're a workaholic. While mildly subjective in that it would require someone to self report the amount of actual working vs being where their job is performed, it's rather objective.

What do we have in terms of evidence for these people fitting that definition other than them describing themselves as workaholics? Don't you think there's some disconnect between the idea of a CEO necessarily working "over 60 hours a week" and the fact that many are CEO of more than one company at the same time? Clearly either the workload isn't quite that high, or they simply neglect some of the companies they're supposed to run only to find that they run themselves well enough without any input from the CEO. In most companies there's a sufficient management structure that the CEO isn't really required to do anything for day to day operation of the company; that's not to say they don't do anything (at least not necessarily) but that the "work" they put in is probably overestimated.

 

It turns out people's perception of their own workload or "workaholism" is not always accurate, or at least not in the terms you described; about half of americans consider themselves to be workaholics, so it's no wonder ultrawealthy CEOs looking to justify their position would place themselves in that category as well. On the other hand, measures of "actual" workaholism place the stat around 30%, which is much higher than the CEO-to-regular-employee ration... so even if we take them at face value, the correlation is non-existent. It's worth noting that the working definition of workaholism isn't just based on the amount of hours you work (economical consequences notwithstanding) but also your ability to detach from work outside of working hours; something that can only be self reported rather than emplirically measured.

[Beerzerker]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Yes, and also Gates got his start because his mother was a prominent executive and had connections with IBM execs who under her suggestion contracted Microsoft.

That's also why Gates got into creating the HDD system he and Jobs worked on to start MS. His mom having these connections certainly helped, not denying that but the HDD system those two created was the basis of MS and Apple both getting off the ground in the first place, Jobs going his own way with Apple later.
(I think I got that right......)

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

No he didn't, CEOs/owners aren't really part of any hiring process unless it's a small business with like 10 employees and the consequences of them directly meddling with human resources is what we're seeing happen to twitter.

Actually they can and will do sometimes, esp for high level positions within to be filled because of their importance.

Happened where I was before with Buffet personally appointing the new CEO of the company I worked for after the old one suddenly passed away so yes, they can and if they want, they will step in and say "This is the one I want in this position" and in this case it was for running the company.

He was able to do that because he was the owner and the company I worked for was under the umbrella of Berkshire-Hathaway, which is his main holding company by which all the rest is organized under.

It still has it's own CEO but at the same time the guys on the company's board don't "Own" the company, Buffet does via Berkshire-Hathaway so that's why he could do that.
The CEO in this instance is the one that runs the company in the capacity of a CEO on a day-to-day basis, manages it in the same way too but that's really about it.
The REAL boss (Buffet) can step in at any time and do anything he wants as he's proven before and probrably will again one day.

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Losing what? If he wanted to he could just liquidate his assets and walk away richer than he will ever need to be. If twitter dies he'll lose billions but he can just file for bankruptcy and walk away, still being extremely wealthy. For comparison, Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy multiple times, he's still a billionaire and in fact his bankruptcies arguably made him wealthier. There is no risk to him other than functionally meaningless fluctuations in his stock portfolio.

Yes he could do all that but all that in itself does not negate responsibility if his name is on the dotted line - Which it has to be or he woudn't own it in the first place.
That's something you can't just dismiss out of hand with all the legality involved.
I will say though it's entirely possible he could let it go and come out of it OK in the end.... We'll have to wait and see.

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Well, there is a small risk of him being prosecuted by the FCC if he keeps breaking the law but that's not really inherent to investing, is it?

I wonder then, at what point do you feel it's fair to critique these people? If they make money you assume they did something to deserve it; if they lose money you assume there must be some grand design behind it because they had money to lose in the first place.

And this is why Wall Street is literally as nasty of a game as it gets aside from politics itself.... And in many ways it's still worse.
Only the biggest, meanest, smartest, most daring of all gets to be on top and that's how it works - Even Buffet himself is no saint when it comes down to it or he woudn't have been as successful as he's been.
He's done all the dirty, fended off attacks by being worse than those coming after him and what he had, played all the angles and tricks in the book, logged a few entries in the book too and managed to get away with it like all the rest have that's been successful.

You want to play the game?
You play to WIN or it's best you don't play at all.
BTW I didn't make the rules of it - That's how it is and has been done since the beginning.

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

The simplest explanation to these events is that they are just normal people who have ups and downs but wield extremely disproportionate wealth and power, meaning they have several advantages leading them to succeed and little consequences if they fail. I don't know if I personally would be a better CEO (although in this specific case it seems like doing absolutely nothing would have been much better for the company) but I know I don't want anyone to individually have this much influence and power when clearly they're just winging it like the rest of us.

Alot of the time these guys really do start off with an advantage, that much is true.
It's not a requirement but it helps.
As for being a potential Owner/CEO I don't consider myself even close to being capable of it because I don't have the business sense to do it or the want to be this kind of person - It's just not my thing or I'd be there with them myself.
I do agree though, I've known a few of these guys and they put their pants on like the rest of us have to do every morning.

[Sauron]

16 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

That's also why Gates got into creating the HDD system he and Jobs worked on to start MS. His mom having these connections certainly helped, not denying that but the HDD system those two created was the basis of MS and Apple both getting off the ground in the first place, Jobs going his own way with Apple later.

Jobs wasn't really responsible for any of Apple's tech, you might be thinking of Wozniak.

17 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

Happened where I was before with Buffet personally appointing the new CEO of the company I worked for after the old one suddenly passed away so yes, they can and if they want, they will step in and say "This is the one I want in this position" and in this case it was for running the company.

Still extremely limited intervention and on positions like the CEO which as I explained aren't directly involved in day to day operation of the company. Not to say there aren't any exceptions but usually HR departments exist for a reason.

19 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

Yes he could do all that but all that in itself does not negate responsibility if his name is on the dotted line - Which it has to be or he woudn't own it in the first place.
That's something you can't just dismiss out of hand with all the legality involved.

I mean again, making a risky investment and doing something illegal are not the same thing. Also being wealthy shields you from legal consequences and let you hire lawyers to deal with it. Another of Musk's many mistakes here was firing or causing the departure of most of twitter's legal team that was tasked with ensuring FCC compliance.

24 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

Only the biggest, meanest, smartest, most daring of all gets to be on top and that's how it works - Even Buffet himself is no saint when it comes down to it or he woudn't have been as successful as he's been.
He's done all the dirty, fended off attacks by being worse than those coming after him and what he had, played all the angles and tricks in the book, logged a few entries in the book too and managed to get away with it like all the rest have that's been successful.

You want to play the game?
You play to WIN or it's best you don't play at all.
BTW I didn't make the rules of it - That's how it is and has been done since the beginning.

Yeah, if you want to win the lottery then cheating helps. Doesn't mean cheating is "part of the rules" or in any way acceptable and deserving of reward. It doesn't make you smart, it makes you a fraud. A lucky fraud as well because we only ever hear about the ones who "make it" and not the ones who do the same stuff but get caught or make the wrong bet once.

[HenrySalayne]

6 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The simple fact is, everyone here is being armchair CEO's and yet it's clear from how people are talking that they don't even understand the basics of why they have so much extra "debt"...or "close to bankruptcy".  Even the concept of declaring bankruptcy could be a plan to restructure the debts of Twitter.  Like I mentioned though, at it's peak Twitter actually netted over a billion in profits (not revenues but profits).  The also have a considerable amount of revenue, but tons of bloat.  If restructured correctly, Twitter likely could become a profitable company.

It took Tesla 16 years to make money.

Now Twitter has to pay back more than a billion dollars of debt every single year for the next decade.

Divide the anual amount of money needed by the number of users (dropping) and you have a rough idea. Twitter struggled with stagnating user numbers long before Elon came along. Twitter is not new and exciting technology which will open up new markets like Paypal, Tesla or SpaceX were at the time. And I don't see how he would grow the platform excessively without dumping billions and billions into it like he did with the companies mentioned before.

Twitter is extremely unlikely to ever be a profitable company in it's current form. If Elon finds new ways to turn a profit he would not have needed Twitter (especially not for 44 billion) and could have easily build up a new platform from the ground.

[WhitetailAni]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

We can lose Twitter and something will replace it, but not for a fairly long while, and I think it was already replaced by Discord by anyone under the age of 30.

I've seen it either Discord only or Discord/Twitter. People who use both use Twitter primarily for shitposting - see r/jailbreak out of context by Korfi as an example.

 

EDIT:
I've seen a large uptick in Twitter use but mostly to troll with Twitter Blue.

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

No he didn't, CEOs/owners aren't really part of any hiring process unless it's a small business with like 10 employees and the consequences of them directly meddling with human resources is what we're seeing happen to twitter.

For any mid-ranged level employee at Tesla for the jobs that count (engineers etc), Musk typically has the final say and reviews the hire.  While not directly sitting in on the final interview, he does apparently get the notes on it and chooses the candidate.  For the real higher ups as well, like lead people, he is directly involved in the process.

 

This is one of the ways that the companies he builds and adapts are different than others.  He tries to eliminate a lot of the middle-management so to speak so the chain of command is very short.  One of the reasons why an engineer wants to work at Tesla is because at the heart of things you get a lot more freedom in what you are allowed suggest and implement (not bogged down in a month long process of decision making)

 

A good CEO is one that makes sure the company is surrounded by good employees and also realizing you can't handcuff a good employee by having multiple layers of paperwork to do to make a single change.  Seriously, have you ever come across a time where you were in a meeting/doing do nothing courses about workplace ethics only because it was a requirement...when there was a bunch of projects that needed overseeing.  That sadly becomes a major issue in a lot of larger companies.

 

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

Impulse buying a company, illegally firing half the staff and then calling them back because it turns out they were pretty important seems like winging it to me, and it also seems to me like not doing those things would have been beneficial. If by "evidence" you mean "perfect vision into an alternate timeline where this didn't happen" then I'm afraid by your standards it's impossible to ever allege incompetence against anyone.

  Wouldn't necessarily call him buying it an impulse buy, he was acquiring it prior to the bid for months.

 

"Illegal firing" based on rumors and lawsuits.  Firing that many people you are bound to get lawsuits.  Based on the leaked emails and what was said publicly the staff were given appropriate notice/severance...but ultimately that doesn't make a good story and more importantly it doesn't make the lawyers money.  If I understand it correctly the lawyers will just have to find one person who fell through the cracks and wasn't offered severance and the lawyers will be entitled to lawyers fees.

 

It's important to note, having a lawsuit doesn't necessarily make it "illegal" until the evidence is filed in court.

 

3 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

It took Tesla 16 years to make money.

Now Twitter has to pay back more than a billion dollars of debt every single year for the next decade.

Divide the anual amount of money needed by the number of users (dropping) and you have a rough idea. Twitter struggled with stagnating user numbers long before Elon came along. Twitter is not new and exciting technology which will open up new markets like Paypal, Tesla or SpaceX were at the time. And I don't see how he would grow the platform excessively without dumping billions and billions into it like he did with the companies mentioned before.

Twitter is extremely unlikely to ever be a profitable company in it's current form. If Elon finds new ways to turn a profit he would not have needed Twitter (especially not for 44 billion) and could have easily build up a new platform from the ground.

For the debt every year - That's going to greatly depend on how much debt was actually added in terms of the buying of Twitter.  If he backed part of the loan based on fixed assets with clauses where he would have to repay the loan if those assets dropped below a certain value, he could very well have gotten a favorable interest rate % and it's important to remember that while purchased for $44 billion it won't mean all $44 billion is in loans.  So it could very well be that the loans total only a few hundred million.

 

As for the annual amount of users, which you claim is dropping...well that appears to be increasing not dropping.

 

Finally the building his own company...while it's cheaper you don't get the "userbase".  This way you are starting with a head start.

[divito]

I don't understand all these people thinking Elon is the catalyst for Twitter's problems. Twitter has been losing a lot of money for a long time and there has been a lot of infighting and staff issues even without Musk being around.

It was a problematic company no matter which way you slice it, and Musk's casual disregard for convention might help in the long run, it might not. But pretending, because you hate Musk or his actions, is the reason for Twitter issues is fallacious and inane.

[Guest]

Prolly just be a restructure bankruptcy.

 

Got the scary word but prolly nothing will happen aside from like.... Remove debt 

[Arika]

2 hours ago, divito said:

I don't understand all these people thinking Elon is the catalyst for Twitter's problems. Twitter has been losing a lot of money for a long time and there has been a lot of infighting and staff issues even without Musk being around.

It was a problematic company no matter which way you slice it, and Musk's casual disregard for convention might help in the long run, it might not. But pretending, because you hate Musk or his actions, is the reason for Twitter issues is fallacious and inane.

It's simple, they see a person they don't like and now they attribute anything bad that happens to being cause by him

 

2021:

Twitter: *has a problem*

people: "oh well that's ok, everyone runs into issues"

 

novemeber 2022:

Twitter: *has a problem*

people: "Fucking musk, it's HIS fault!!!!!!!"

[oali24]

34 minutes ago, Arika S said:

It's simple, they see a person they don't like and now they attribute anything bad that happens to being cause by him

 

2021:

Twitter: *has a problem*

people: "oh well that's ok, everyone runs into issues"

 

novemeber 2022:

Twitter: *has a problem*

people: "Fucking musk, it's HIS fault!!!!!!!"

So your saying that without Musk, that trolls impersonating major brands would have still happened, that they wouldn't have $13 billion more in debt, and tbat all the brands that are pausing their relationships with twitter would have done so without Musk firing the teams that deals with content moderation and meeting federal regulations that they need to meet? No one was warning of bankruptcy before he bought it, twiiter was publicly listed so if there were signs of possible bankruptcy the people would have known.

[Arika]

11 minutes ago, oali24 said:

So your saying that without Musk, that trolls impersonating major brands would have still happened, that they wouldn't have $13 billion more in debt, and tbat all the brands that are pausing their relationships with twitter would have done so without Musk firing the teams that deals with content moderation and meeting federal regulations that they need to meet? No one was warning of bankruptcy before he bought it, twiiter was publicly listed so if there were signs of possible bankruptcy the people would have known.

impersonation has been a problem with twitter since it existed and has always been against their ToS. It just came into the spotlight because of how easy it was to get a blue checkmark, which i think was a stupid decision for them to make anyway.

 

You seem to misunderstand what i'm saying. I'm not saying that Elon isn't responsible for anything. he fucked up big time, but everyone blaming EVERYTHING going on with twitter on him is wrong.

 

it has been literally days since Musk took over and people (and the brands that have pulled out) are acting like it's the new 4chan instead of waiting to see what happens. it's essentially "i don't like Musk, Musk own twitter, now twitter bad, i leave Twitter" but in the grand scheme of things, the operation of the site has barely changed.

 

[divito]

30 minutes ago, oali24 said:

So your saying that without Musk, that trolls impersonating major brands would have still happened, that they wouldn't have $13 billion more in debt, and tbat all the brands that are pausing their relationships with twitter would have done so without Musk firing the teams that deals with content moderation and meeting federal regulations that they need to meet? 

Impersonations were already happening; trolls just went hard because Musk is shaking things up quickly with questionable forethought. Perhaps it was intended (Twitter is all over the news and usage is up apparently), perhaps not.

Brands pulling is just politically/PR-motivated. It's a short-term thing and can change depending on how things unfold and what else is implemented in the near future.
 

37 minutes ago, oali24 said:

No one was warning of bankruptcy before he bought it, twiiter was publicly listed so if there were signs of possible bankruptcy the people would have known.

Given their operating income, bankruptcy was only a matter of time. The fact they're publicly traded has little bearing on whether the executives were ever contemplating bankruptcy, such are the rules, and normal people would want to avoid messing with the stock. Musk isn't like that, for better or worse.

And, if they hadn't ever discussed bankruptcy, I'd be more inclined to side with Musk on overhauling the whole organization because ballooning to their staff size and maintaining such losses without clear direction shows just out of touch they are in running Twitter.

That being said, Musk's views on content moderation are problematic, among many other things. Just seeing the way people talk is irksome, especially when Twitter has had many problems, and a bad business model for a long time.

[Avocado Diaboli]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

it's essentially "i don't like Musk, Musk own twitter, now twitter bad, i leave Twitter"

I mean, that's a perfectly valid stance to have. I don't like Musk and as a consequence I would never buy any of his products, regardless of their merits.

 

And while Musk certainly isn't the source of all of Twitter's problems (I think his reluctance to buy it after his hilarious refusal to do his due diligence is a testament to that), he's still a catalyst who seems to amplify the problems. The same mechanisms he leverages to trick gullible people into buying cryptocurrency he personally profits from are at play when advertisers refuse to participate in a platform led by someone as volatile as Musk, it's the flip side of the coin that is cult of personality.

 

On a different note, I think it's actually not the worst idea to charge users for the privilege of using the platform like he did, it's a means to offset the losses from advertisers backing down. And people who buy his line of activists being to blame again (because somehow these social justice warriors always seem to be so powerful despite their lack of capital, political presence, etc. How peculiarly convenient.) fall for his typical tricks and gleefully pay him for the privilege of propping up his shitposter persona. If the last 20 years of online services have taught us anything, it's that a service that doesn't charge upfront requires some other form of revenue which inevitably means ever stricter content moderation to ensure brand safety. As soon as that guarantee falls, you need to look for some other source of revenue.

 

And I'm not saying that this is a great development in the grand scheme of things, stuff like this being free (meaning, paid for with your time and/or our data) has been beneficial in many respects while also terrible in others. But honestly, the only way I truly see a way out of the Catch-22, if free speech really is the maxim by which you want to define the purpose of Twitter while also ensuring operation that is removed from market forces, is government intervention, meaning you nationalize social media and finance it through taxes while at the same time having to actually uphold free speech in the legal sense. And I'm not oblivious to the fact that this too bears the risk of abuse, but hey, free speech isn't something you can make money off of in the private sector without charging someone for it. To paraphrase dipshits who don't understand what free speech is: "Free speech ain't free"

[Arika]

44 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

I mean, that's a perfectly valid stance to have. I don't like Musk and as a consequence I would never buy any of his products, regardless of their merits.

not saying it's not valid. I think he's a bit of an idiot too and waaaaay too full of himself

But you also need to be careful when taking such a stance. Do you look up the behavior of the CEOs of all company you are purchasing from or using the platform of? if not, why not? why makes Elon's behavior so egregious that you (the royal you) out-rightly refuse to use anything he owns or is associated with, but are more than happy to use something else.

 

I wonder if the people leaving twitter because Elon now owns it still have a facebook despite Mark Zuckerberg being right up there next to Elon in terms of people who are a bit of a douche with too much money and power.

[Avocado Diaboli]

23 minutes ago, Arika S said:

But you also need to be careful when taking such a stance. Do you look up the behavior of the CEOs of all company you are purchasing from or using the platform of? if not, why not? why makes Elon's behavior so egregious that you (the royal you) out-rightly refuse to use anything he owns or is associated with, but are more than happy to use something else.

Personal preference. I don't claim to have an objective measure by which I condone participation in our capitalist society. I don't find it useful to try and find something like objective reasons to justify something like that, because if you look close enough at any corporation you'll find skeletons in their closets and reasons to hate their executives, never mind their shareholders to whom they're beholden.

 

Same thing with most creatives, if you dig deep enough, you'll find some dirt, so have fun enjoying pretty much zero entertainment for the rest of your life. So I don't subscribe to the idea that we need to weigh up everybody's shortcomings to find the acceptable amount of bullshit we're individually willing to tolerate before they fall out of our good graces. I dislike Musk for a multitude of arbitrary reasons. And I like to think that Musk's particular style of neurotic narcissism makes him a suitable target for public ridicule whenever his failures come up. That doesn't mean everybody else is doing fine by comparison. But Musk seems like someone who really, deeply cares what others think about him but his tendencies make it impossible for him to please his critics, so he bathes in the cheer of his fellow shitposters. And this facet of his, that he can't go full "I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks about me" nicely contrasts with his narcissism. It lends his real-life story a bit of dramatic irony and it makes it easy for me to dislike him. 

[HenrySalayne]

12 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

For the debt every year - That's going to greatly depend on how much debt was actually added in terms of the buying of Twitter.  If he backed part of the loan based on fixed assets with clauses where he would have to repay the loan if those assets dropped below a certain value, he could very well have gotten a favorable interest rate % and it's important to remember that while purchased for $44 billion it won't mean all $44 billion is in loans.  So it could very well be that the loans total only a few hundred million.

Instead of speculating, you could have looked it up. Twitter has to pay roughly 1.2 bn USD in the next 12 month.

 

12 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

As for the annual amount of users, which you claim is dropping...well that appears to be increasing not dropping.

Are you talking about actual users or new accounts? Where did you get those numbers?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-where-did-tweeters-go-twitter-is-losing-its-most-active-users-internal-2022-10-25/

12 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Finally the building his own company...while it's cheaper you don't get the "userbase".  This way you are starting with a head start.

Ok. Sounds like something an armchair CEO would say.

Just to put this into perspective:

Twitter has 300 million something users. The takeover was 44 billion USD. 44 billion is two magnitudes more than 300 million. Elon just paid more than $100 per user. Free users.

If we take a look at the good ol' Ansoff matrix only market penetration would effect the existing userbase.

But even if he converts 10% of these free users to paying costumers (IMHO unlikely), he would have to earn more than $1000 (in profits not revenue!) on every costumer in the next decade to make his 44 billion USD a profitable investment. That's impossible.

He could only make Twitter profitable with a large influx of new (paying) users or with completely new products appealing to a wide range of costumers. In both cases buying Twitter's userbase was completely pointless and he could have just started a new business.

[mr moose]

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'm suggesting there is no correlation.

As with most things he says he's wrong here as well. By "nearly all of them" I assume he meant the handful he picked to support his idea and even then our ability to assess if someone is a "workaholic" is highly subjective and conveniently not measurable. It's also easier to work long hours if you don't have to worry about shopping for groceries, cooking, picking up your kids etc. because you're obscenely wealthy. Even if it were true, plenty of people work very hard and have pretty high IQ scores but will never be CEO. Consider that even in a society where everyone has an IQ of 200 and works 16h a day, only a handful can be CEO by definition. You can't run a company where everyone is CEO.

 

Not cherry picked, He has hundreds of hours of video on youtube he has been posting of his lectures for over a decade now (since well before he become a predominant figure). I have looked ito the research he cites and it's all there and all legitimate.

 

It's actually not hat hard to look up the research and see if he's cherry picking or not, especially if you have access to a library of journals.

 

 

 

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

I wonder what he'd answer if someone pointed out that being a wealthy CEO seems to heavily coincide with coming from at least an affluent family and being part of hegemonic majority groups.

He'd probably either point out the facts why that is or at least give a reasoned hypothesis and point to some well established observations on human nature and thorough research surveys.   

 

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

Impulse buying a company, illegally firing half the staff and then calling them back because it turns out they were pretty important seems like winging it to me, and it also seems to me like not doing those things would have been beneficial. If by "evidence" you mean "perfect vision into an alternate timeline where this didn't happen" then I'm afraid by your standards it's impossible to ever allege incompetence against anyone.

So no evidence other than you think it is an impulse buy?  I'm not sure personal interpretation without all the facts counts for much.

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

To be clear, if/when I call Elon Musk an idiot it's not just because of this. He has a track record of saying and doing absolutely idiotic things. It's possible in some occasions he did stupid things intentionally to get attention and popularity, which in some cases directly resulted in him getting wealthier, but here it's just him losing money and destroying a company for no discernible reason other than ego; at some point if it acts exactly like a duck it might as well be a duck.

He certainly has said lots of stupid things,  I know of a few technical ones too. but that is beside the point,  it still remains to be seen that he is actually stupid, and as I pointed out before, the known realities of what separates CEO's from workers and from the poor is not luck or circumstance, that only gets your foot in the door.   If you could solve poverty wouldn't you?  There are many who genuinely want to solve poverty, they work to find jobs for them, places for them to live and to get back on their feet.  But weeks roll buy and they are back in the gutter.  Why? it's not luck or circumstance, it is an issue intrinsic to mental psyche.  The same with CEO's, you can bankrupt them and they will come back because they have a psyche that drives them to it.  Majority of the population does not have that.

 

 

[mr moose]

35 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

If we take a look at the good ol' Ansoff matrix only market penetration would effect the existing userbase.

But even if he converts 10% of these free users to paying costumers (IMHO unlikely), he would have to earn more than $1000 (in profits not revenue!) on every costumer in the next decade to make his 44 billion USD a profitable investment. That's impossible.

He could only make Twitter profitable with a large influx of new (paying) users or with completely new products appealing to a wide range of costumers. In both cases buying Twitter's userbase was completely pointless and he could have just started a new business.

If that's true then that is not only a good point but also one that lends weight to Musk's intentions being never strictly about earning cash from twitter,  which leaves either the fact it's existence hurts his other business, or it's existence is in his eyes so bad it needs to be removed or changed from the inside.  And so much so he is willing to burn his own cash to do it.

 

 

[ravenshrike]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

impersonation has been a problem with twitter since it existed and has always been against their ToS. It just came into the spotlight because of how easy it was to get a blue checkmark, which i think was a stupid decision for them to make anyway.

 

Amusingly, had he went forward with the initial proposal of ID requirement for blue checks, it wouldn't have been a problem. I wonder if dropping it was his idea or pressure from his other investors.

[Brooksie359]

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'm suggesting there is no correlation.

As with most things he says he's wrong here as well. By "nearly all of them" I assume he meant the handful he picked to support his idea and even then our ability to assess if someone is a "workaholic" is highly subjective and conveniently not measurable. It's also easier to work long hours if you don't have to worry about shopping for groceries, cooking, picking up your kids etc. because you're obscenely wealthy. Even if it were true, plenty of people work very hard and have pretty high IQ scores but will never be CEO. Consider that even in a society where everyone has an IQ of 200 and works 16h a day, only a handful can be CEO by definition. You can't run a company where everyone is CEO.

 

I wonder what he'd answer if someone pointed out that being a wealthy CEO seems to heavily coincide with coming from at least an affluent family and being part of hegemonic majority groups.

Impulse buying a company, illegally firing half the staff and then calling them back because it turns out they were pretty important seems like winging it to me, and it also seems to me like not doing those things would have been beneficial. If by "evidence" you mean "perfect vision into an alternate timeline where this didn't happen" then I'm afraid by your standards it's impossible to ever allege incompetence against anyone.

To be clear, if/when I call Elon Musk an idiot it's not just because of this. He has a track record of saying and doing absolutely idiotic things. It's possible in some occasions he did stupid things intentionally to get attention and popularity, which in some cases directly resulted in him getting wealthier, but here it's just him losing money and destroying a company for no discernible reason other than ego; at some point if it acts exactly like a duck it might as well be a duck.

Tbh I do not believe he wanted to buy twitter after he looked more closely into it but he was stupid enough to to sign an agreement which basically forces him to commit to buying it. I mean he waived his right to due diligence which what would have let him back out once he saw the numbers for twitter and it didn't look good or at least could use that as an excuse. Now he is stuck with a company that he didn't want to buy and had to finance alot of that money to buy twitter and putting it on twitter as debt. No stuck with a company that makes negative money with a large amount of debt I am not surprised he tried to cut the fat even if he wasn't very good at doing so. 

[Brooksie359]

3 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

Amusingly, had he went forward with the initial proposal of ID requirement for blue checks, it wouldn't have been a problem. I wonder if dropping it was his idea or pressure from his other investors.

I do not know about you but I for one would be reluctant to give twitter my ID. I would imagine it would be the same for alot of people and is likely why they didn't go through with it. That being said this is purely a guess with nothing to really back it up so take it for what it is. 

[Arika]

11 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

Amusingly, had he went forward with the initial proposal of ID requirement for blue checks,

that is an even worse idea than the $8 checkmark.

[wanderingfool2]

32 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Instead of speculating, you could have looked it up. Twitter has to pay roughly 1.2 bn USD in the next 12 month.

You are the one speculating.  Your assumption is 3.1% interest on $44 billion.  If you had even bothered trying to comprehend (or understood anything) you would realize that he hasn't likely added $44 billion in debts.  Based on the amount of stocks sold prior to acquisition he has likely paid close to $20 billion in personal finances...which means any loans would be about $24 billion.  Again that's just of stuff that has been publicly known (in regards to sales and such).

 

This number also ignores that he purchased 9% of it before...so a $44 billion buyout drops to about $40 billion...or with the above $20 billion on potential loans

 

There was talks in regards to having other investors as well, so even he could realistically have gotten a few billion more of people investing in it.

 

So again, it's greatly going to depend...and you simply can't look up the % that billionaires would get (when they use assets as collateral).  It's on a scale that you simply can't really look up, or get accurate % of. o If you are going to say that they have to pay $1.2 billion then you better back it up with concrete evidence (instead of just saying you can look it up...because again, it's not things you just look up)

 

50 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Are you talking about actual users or new accounts? Where did you get those numbers?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/with_replies?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
 

While it is from his tweet, he's the only one who really has access to those numbers now DAU

 

43 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Ok. Sounds like something an armchair CEO would say.

Or you know...the fact that he stated that was one of his intents behind it.

 

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

I mean he waived his right to due diligence which what would have let him back out once he saw the numbers for twitter and it didn't look good or at least could use that as an excuse

Well kind of...apparently in the contract it was that the information that was presented to him and told to him was accurate.  So while he did wave due diligence, by the sounds of it (especially with the whistleblower complaint), it seems as though it wasn't going to be as cut and dry as people make it out to be

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

it seems as though it wasn't going to be as cut and dry as people make it out to be

It never is, and given just on the surface twitter is a pile of steaming poo with more problems than you can poke a stick at, It's not hard to imagine that underneath there is a myriad of complexities in everything from internal policy, middle management shenanigans and algorithm biasing to dodgy accounts, questionable contracts and anonymous controllers.

 

I wouldn't even like to speculate how complex this issue could be,  because as sure as x is x there is a lot that will come out of the closet and make even the best guesses look wrong.

 

 

[ravenshrike]

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I do not know about you but I for one would be reluctant to give twitter my ID. I would imagine it would be the same for alot of people and is likely why they didn't go through with it. That being said this is purely a guess with nothing to really back it up so take it for what it is. 

K... then no blue checkmark. This isn't particularly difficult calculus. The purpose of the blue checkmark was initially meant to identify you as the person you are. If you don't have any significant public relations use for Twitter except bullshitting with acquaintances or shitposting, there's no need for a blue checkmark. If you do, you probably aren't particularly adverse to going through an ID check system.