• SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    When a company declares bankruptcy the only money anyone gets back are the value of the company’s assets. Which some quick googling indicates is somewhere around $14B. So $30B less than what he paid for it.

    I’ve heard Twitter was actually worth somewhere around $25B when he bought it. If he did nothing and left it alone for a year and then sold it, yeah he’d have lost around $20B from the whole mess, but that’s still better that driving it into bankruptcy.

    I think it’s more an ego thing. He obviously overpaid for Twitter, and he can’t admit he made a mistake, so he’s trying to find a way to blame the mistake on the “woke” left or whatever.

    • TehWorld@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m really intrigued what the composition of that 14B is. I’m doubting that they have big investments in the stock market, or oil fields, or whatever. It’s clear that the core IP of Twitter can be largely re-coded by a few bored guys (we’re here aren’t we?). If the actual value of Twitter is in the name and userbase, and that gets trashed, then it’s certainly not worth 14B.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        The code needed to handle as many users as Twitter has isn’t trivial.

        But yeah most of the value is in the brand and the userbase. A big factor with social media is how it allows people to build friend networks that are bound to the platform. People can esily move to another platform, but convincing all of their friends to do the same is much more difficult. It’s insidious how it locks people in.

        The fact that Musk is behaving like a complete asshat and people re staying there anyway just goes to prove how valuable that social media lock in is.

        Of course AOL was valued similarly… just before the dot com bubble burst.