A year after he bought Twitter for $44 billion, Musk thinks the company is now worth $19 billion, a 55 percent drop.

Let’s recap what he did to Twitter, I will go first:

  • Changed the original name Twitter to X.
    • yata@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      A lot of journalists, politicians and influencers are really reluctant to let it go. I guess those are the ones still keeping it somewhat afloat.

      It should be more publicly shamed if you keep being a part of his insanity.

      • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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        1 year ago

        It’s because no other social media platform currently meets their requirements. Other platforms either functions significantly different from twitter or it lacks the reach that a politician needs in order for it to be worth their time.

        • Eddie Trax@dmv.social
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          1 year ago

          “Worth their time” ? Copy\paste the text into Mastodon. Post Done

          I can empathize with the reluctance to completely jump ship but it costs nothing (both money and time) to cross post to another platform.

          • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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            1 year ago

            Last time I was on mastodon during one of the many twitter migrations there was a long post saying that people should hold of on auto-blocking people that don’t caption the images they post because new user haven’t learned the cultural rules of mastodon. Is that a thing? I don’t know, could be a particular part of mastodon, I don’t know. Point is that serious public figures have been trained to be careful when adopting new social media.

            • Eddie Trax@dmv.social
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              1 year ago

              Hi. Nobody here 👋 I enjoy Mastodon and although nowhere near the same engagement as Shitter, I enjoy the content more. Some people like different things

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yep. I mean in the end it has no product. It’s just billboard/ad space, in the world of commerce. Sure, it’s a lot of ad space, but ad space in the digital world is also effectively endless, so the percentage still isn’t actually that relevant as it can shift in a moment’s notice.

      Say… if a neonazi buys the platform and brings all his friends with him.

      But beyond an office he’s not even paying for and so on, Xitter got… nothing. They have no actual product that can be liquidated, no supply chains worth any money, nothing to rent/sell out beyond said adspace. Like many digital companies they rely entirely on hype for all their perceived value.

    • donuts@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Honestly it’s probably not… Estimates aside, who would even want to buy Twitter in its current incarnation?

      • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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        1 year ago

        It still has a big enough user base and brand recognition that they could put things back on course if they really went for it. The only permanent damage is the brain drain from firing a lot of people that has experience in running twitter.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The only permanent damage is the brain drain from firing a lot of people that has experience in running twitter.

          That’s like saying “he suffered no permanent damage except the removal of his spine”

        • MagicShel@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Brand recognition? That’s ironic. The Twitter brand had recognition. But you can’t say X, you have to say “X, formerly Twitter.”

          Otherwise you’re right, of course, But I can’t see it being resurrected.

          • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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            1 year ago

            Yes, twitter is the brand. The first action of a sane buyer would be to put the bird logo back. 20 billions of its current value comes from the fact that they still own that name.

  • Nobody@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It was never about the money. Musk is turning a once-valuable information space into a fascist shithole. That was always the goal.

    • MostlyHarmless@sh.itjust.works
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      Yeah, I don’t believe that. Turning it into a fascist shit hole might have been a goal, but losing billions doing it isn’t.

      He’s an arrogant fuck who wants everyone to believe he’s a genius. Blowing that much money makes him look like a moron.

  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    It’s obscene that someone can destroy so much value and not go bankrupt. It should not be possible.

    • alcamtar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The value only exists on paper. He halved it, he can double it. Happens all the time.

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          He absolutely paid an inflated price. It was hovering around $40/share before he put in the offer of $54/share. So he and the other investors overpaid by quite a bit.

      • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        he can double it.

        You must be buying all the shares you can then!

        Narrator: he wasn’t

  • SeedyOne@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Let’s put this another way.

    That ~25 billion, heavily absorbed by foreign investors, has bought influence on worldwide events/elections and allowed those that previously hated the platform to sabotage it internally, likely to a post-election failure.

    Makes you wonder to what degree we have a “useful idiot billionaire” situation, with other interests (countries?) steering the out of control train to their benefit.

  • aeternum@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The worst thing he did was change the name. I mean, everyone knew twitter. Now you have to qualify it with “Musk’s X”

    • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      He doesn’t even need someone who is willing to actually pay for it. Just someone to say they will, even if they have intention to…

    • Wothe@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      ‘Freedom of Speech Not Reach’, I was like isn’t the same thing with Shadowbanning? It’s so disgusting that he keeps claiming Twitter is the place for online Freedom of Speech but look at what he did.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Controlling the narrative is why he bought it.

        44 billion is chump change to him. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find his sole motive was to silence critics now that he got outed as a massive douche.

        I rememy when i could call him a massive douche and a faux-engineer and people would pile on as though he actually built the cars himself. (Fact: he’s not a Tesla founder. He bought Tesla. And made them call him a founder.)

        • 4am@lemm.ee
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          He didn’t want to buy it, remember? A court forced him after he set wheels in motion as “le epic trolololo” and now that he was forced to buy it, he and his authoritarian backers figure they might as well tank it in order to combat the “woke mind virus” aka people waking up to the feudal lords of late-stage capitalism keeping the scales tipped in their favor eternally.

  • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    You forgot quite a significant thing when it comes to Twitter’s devalutation. Musk delisted Twitter on Nov 8 as part of his acquisition. The worth of a private company is a bit more difficult to figure out compared to the worth of a public company.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    I’m sure the value will come back. Valuing X at $19B puts the value of the whole alphabet at $500B, which seems low for an established technology which has been in continuous use since before the time of the Roman Empire.

    The US GDP is $24 trillion, and all the financial reports supporting that valuation use the Roman Alphabet. The Alphabet is essential to justifying the value of the entire US Economy. I think it’s reasonable to value the worth of the alphabet at 8% of GDP, which would give X a fair value of $74B.

    See, haters? Elon really is a financial genius. Numbers don’t lie.

    • ExLisper@linux.community
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      Come on. Obviously not all letters in the alphabet are worth the same. X is not that popular even if you take into account its different uses like ‘:x’, ‘xoxo’ or ‘xxx’. Not that many words use x and if one day it collapses and becomes unavailable you can just substitute it with ‘ks’ like ‘seks’ or ‘meksican’.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      The meat of those financial reports rely on Arabic Numerals and everything is OK over there, right?

  • elbucho@lemmy.world
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    I don’t think it was even worth half of what he paid for it when he paid for it. Musk is a complete god damned moron. I’d be surprised if the company was even worth $19 billion when he bought it for $44 bn. And there’s no way in fuck that it’s worth $19 bn now. Absolute dogshit assessment. Not that I’m surprised, mind. It’s Musk’s assessment, after all.

  • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    He could have just donated all of that to the Signal foundation if he wanted to protect free speech.

  • cholesterol@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How many times will they reuse this image where his jaw is doing something super weird? This time it’s gotten some fancy graphics but it’s the same flipping image. I must have seen it on 10 different articles.

    • xts@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Probably his fillers shifting around so you might as well make fun of him, for that and his ass to head hair transplant.