With so much in headlines these days it’s hard to pick a topic that’s seemingly unbelievable to write about. People really do dumb s***
When talks of Elon Musk buying started I’m not sure anyone thought it was gonna turn out the way it did. Although I do know for a fact quite a few predicted the series of events not long after the takeover – I spoke with them as we watched the descent unfold.
It was clear from the beginning the majority of Twitter’s users didn’t approve of the takeover. All of the executive staff was immediately fired. So who’s bright idea was it to sue Elon Musk forcing his hand to go ahead with the takeover?
Even Elon Musk thought the deal was a bad idea after he considered all of the details. Were the majority of shareholders people without Twitter accounts who never worked for the company nor had family that did? I know that’s how I ended up with Twitter stock – some analyst recommended it and I was knew so I tried a couple shares, lost a little money, looked at their financial statements, subsequently sold my shares and never looked back.
Now with all executives having been fired, Twitter stock removed from the market, over 50% of the workforce fired, laid off, or quit, Elon looking for an Executive dumb enough to take the job he got stuck with, advertisers pulling ads – you don’t have to be an analyst to make the calculations – revenue is dropping towards zero (and Twitter has never turned a profit to begin with), workforce is dropping towards zero, at this point the most likely outcome seems to be the death of Twitter.
I’ve said from the beginning- Elon is the richest man on earth, and there’s a reason for it, he’s a creative guy and typically pretty savvy when it comes to business deals; surely he’s got something up his sleeve, some magic trick to make Twitter what it’s never been before – profitable.
From the beginning he tried to hide his lack of confidence by saying he bought Twitter for “the good of humanity.” His plan was for a town hall place on the internet where people could debate different ideas in a safe space, with free speech… there’s so much wrong with that – it’s hard to believe he used Twitter far more than the average American before the takeover.
Twitter has always been a platform of anonymous trolls where celebrities can say what they feel and everyone can anonymously butcher them for it. To make Twitter a space to freely exchange ideas with balanced debate and no hate speech – you might as well do what Trump did and just start from scratch.
And from the beginning – sell verification for $8 because Twitter can’t rely on revenue from advertisers alone? Maybe it would work if the name you put on the account was the same as the name on the credit card, but there were for Elon Musks on Twitter within a week of implementation of the new policy. No magic tricks there.
And now, because of all of these fake “verified” accounts advertisers are pulling all their funding because they don’t want their brand placed next to anonymous hate speech (I would argue that if that’s what you wanted Twitter was never the best choice for your ad dollars.)
So the revenue is way down, you have to cut expenses, naturally you lay off half of the company – where else can you cut that much necessary cost? Ok, half the staff, how do you make up for that?…. – Ask the remaining staff to work overtime for less money to make changes you never wanted to make to begin with…. Hmmm, no magic trick here.
The longer this train wreck continues the more my confidence drops that Elon has some trick up his sleeve to make billions off of Twitter like he does off of everything he touches. And of course the more I wonder how it got here to begin with.
From the beginning – Elon didn’t want to buy Twitter, Twitter users didn’t approve a Musk takeover, all ranking executives were fired so it’s hard to imagine this was their plan all along – who’s plan was this?
Somebody somewhere wanted Twitter shut down and wanted Elon Musk to pay for it. It’s the only scenario I can think of that makes sense! Everyone predicted each step of decay as it happened, it’s been the only conceivable outcome from the beginning, but many of us gave Elon the benefit of the doubt because of his past experiences making billion dollar businesses – but those benefits, like Twitter severance packages, are running out.
I’m pretty sure Elon Musk would have done better to fight the ridiculous lawsuit and eat the legal fees. Twitter was losing $4 million daily before the start of the downward spiral, I’m pretty sure a good legal team would have cost a lot less. And the demise of Twitter seems to be playing out exactly as everyone expected – with shockingly little deviation. It’s not every day someone cries a gloom & doom Armageddon scenario and gets it right, but this Twitter takeover is by far the closest I’ve ever seen. I don’t think any reasonable court could force anyone into such a bad deal, and it least then he would have the excuse that the government made him do it.
But as it stands now, Elon has no one to blame but himself for the complete demolition of Twitter. Maybe that is the magic trick. No one but Elon Musk had the money to eat a $40 billion dollar loss and still be the worlds richest man. At the very least he purchased a very expensive domain name, a lot of assets as far as computers & servers & user data & apparently sinks.
Maybe that’s what the mysterious sink metaphor was the day Mr Musk took over – “look out America, watch Twitter spiral down the drain.” Elon took a platform funded by the traffic of trolls and used it to build his “X” app – “the everything app.” Could work. I don’t see many options left at this point, Twitter as we knew it is gone for good, which is fine with me, I never liked it – the anonymity to say things to someone you would never say to their face never seemed like a good concept for an app to me.
I guess I’m holding out a little longer to see what happens. At the very least it will be an entertaining show with a lot of headlines. And just maybe it will be another Elon success story – the genesis of X.
I doubt it, it seems pretty far out fantasy to me, but that’s what Elon does – he’s made a fortune turning fantasy to reality. Still waiting for that trick up the sleeve – but that’s what the best magicians do, make it as unbelievable as possible then do it right in front of everybody. For the sake of thousands of newly unemployed Americans, I’m routing for you Elon.
– Joseph Smith
Htxjoe@me.com
Cj Contractor Services 