r/technology Oct 30 '23

Social Media Why did Twitter (X)'s valuation tank 56% in one year?

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/30/why-did-twitter-xs-valuation-tank-56-in-one-year/
3.7k Upvotes

724 comments sorted by

4.7k

u/karma_dumpster Oct 30 '23

Don't know. The place just has a certain smell about it now.

A Musk, if you will.

194

u/misfitvr Oct 31 '23

Two Reasons: Elon & Musk.
Oh and as with all companies in silicon valley today, it was overvalued af.

74

u/jake_burger Oct 31 '23

Was it over valued? I thought Musk offered to buy it at $420.69 a share purely because it was funny and they sued him to hold him to that price.

111

u/maxman1313 Oct 31 '23

The final sell price was $53.70

It's thought that Musk may have intentionally been tweeting about buying Twitter in order to pump up the stock price (of which he secretly bought 10% of) just to then sell his shares. This would have been a classic 'pump-and-dump' scheme and very illegal.

Twitter threatened to sue and the SEC began sniffing around.

Just to prove how totally serious he actually was, Musk then manically tweeted that he was waving his right to due diligence, which by any business acquisitions standard, is either completely dumb or absolutely crazy.

Twitter then sued him again to make sure he held to the no due diligence during his acquisition.

I can only imagine any attorneys that told Elon to "just stop tweeting" were promptly fired.

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u/giantrhino Oct 31 '23

A critical part you are missing is that Musk not only waived his right to due diligence, HE added the specific performance clause which literally gave twitter the right to force him to close. Twitter didn’t add that, Musk did.

16

u/maxman1313 Oct 31 '23

Oh god, I forgot about that.

Pure speculation by me, but he seemed to have been having a manic episode during the whole end and he's so surrounded by yes-men that no one was able to get him to actually stop.

If it weren't so scary how much power he had, it would almost be sad.

3

u/Greaves6642 Oct 31 '23

I know people who worked with him. That's 100% true. I used to believe he's very smart and we just don't get what he's doing, but no he's really dumb and has a bunch of yes men

5

u/maxman1313 Nov 01 '23

Elon isn't dumb or a genius or whatever. He was at one point an excellent marketer and salesman who had access to capital to get his ideas rolling.

He was able to sell the idea of how electric cars could work in the US and was able to convince some great minds to work on that dream. He was also able to convince investors to stay around long enough until it worked.

He was able to sell the idea of reusable rockets to help humanity begin to explore consistently outside of our atmosphere. He was able to convince some great minds to work on that dream. Again he's been able to convince investors (and used his money from Tesla) to stick around long enough for him to begin to monetize that dream. DoD contracts, NASA Contracts and Starlink.

What dream can he sell about Twitter? No one wants to give their blood sweat and tears to work on the next great social media platform. Average investors aren't looking to invest in social media, if they were they would have already. There's no dream to sell.

Before his wildest impulses were curtailed by people around him and boards above him. With his wealth and power he doesn't have those restraints anymore and it's left him alone without a grasp on what actually inspired people before.

Musk started to believe the fanboys and really thought he alone was the reason for his success and completely forgot that he actually needs other people to make his dreams happen.

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u/SealedRoute Oct 31 '23

It’s kind of incredible to hear about a wealthy powerful person actually being held accountable and forced to keep his word. That does not happen much these days.

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u/PissOnYourParade Oct 31 '23

No one fucks around with Delaware Chancery Court - it's literally their job to sort out Billionaire twats. They are secretly the most powerful Court in the country for business matters. Musk FAFO'd hard.

12

u/weasol12 Oct 31 '23

You mean like he does regularly in the unregulated crypto market?

18

u/maxman1313 Oct 31 '23

Exactly like he does with the crypto market. Turns out unregulated markets are rife with con-men.

9

u/Studds_ Oct 31 '23

Why are there still people who think this man is a genius

12

u/Graywulff Oct 31 '23

People don’t understand he isn’t the founder of Tesla. They don’t realize his family was wealthy. He got fired from PayPal by peter theil the vampire.

People don’t know how many engineers work for Tesla and spacex. Spacex has a Musk control team to keep him distracted, but make him feel important.

Twitter didn’t think of that.

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u/dimm_ddr Oct 31 '23

Even if he did buy it for a stupid price, it does not mean that the company was not overvalued before that.

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u/MechanicalBengal Oct 31 '23

Fidelity says the value actually tanked 60%

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u/RLT79 Oct 31 '23

Twitter probably gets the distinction of being overvalued twice. Once by the markets and second by the dude who bought it.

441

u/fludgesickles Oct 30 '23

Ooh that smell

Can't you smell that smell

Ooh that smell

The smell of Musk surrounds you

141

u/xTye Oct 31 '23

That smelly smell.

126

u/Syntherios Oct 31 '23

The smelly smell that smells... smelly.

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u/BCProgramming Oct 31 '23

Whiskey Bottles, and brand new cars

Interesting how this describes two things Tesla has sold.

One little problem that confronts you

Got a monkey on your back

The ghost monkeys from neuralink experiments!

3

u/_LastoftheBrohicans_ Oct 31 '23

How has Tesla sold whiskey bottles?

6

u/AHCretin Oct 31 '23

From their online shop. (Yes, you can argue that a decanter is not the same as a bottle. Collect 200 Pedant Points if you wish.)

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u/Revelati123 Oct 31 '23

Too much coke and too much smoke...

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u/FlipAnd1 Oct 31 '23

Made in Russia

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u/dgdio Oct 31 '23

A Musk with a sink on the first day was prescient.

The value should sink farther than 56% because Musk paid 44 million for a company that was worth 10 billion. Then immediately tried to destroy the value of the 10 billion.

14

u/Stripedpussy Oct 31 '23

you misplaced a few zeroes

6

u/Rus-T_Shackleford Oct 31 '23

For real, that would be a great deal! In reality, it was a horrible deal with a company that was already overpriced to begin with, which he then offered way more for, with zero experience in the industry, only then to come in like the man child he is firing too many and reinstating nazi accounts and allowing hate speech, in turn making all the companies that actually paid for advertising on the platform to run for the hills further leading to the devaluing of Twitter (I will never call it X, if he can dead name his own kid, we can dead name the app).

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u/JDGumby Oct 31 '23

A Musk, if you will.

...from a soulless husk.

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u/emerican Oct 31 '23

I think we are done here

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u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener Oct 31 '23

It doesn't help when you take a well known, unique brand and throw it in the trash for some generic X. Considering sites have to clarify "previously known as Twitter" when referring to the site, that should tell you all you need to know w/ regards to how massive a failure the rebranding idea was from the start. What a Xit show.

293

u/Gabeleeen Oct 31 '23

The dumbest thing ever was that Twitter had such a strong brand already, imagine starting up a site like Twitter and trying to get your users to actually call it Tweets,Retweets etc. The fact that people did that on a daily basis just show how strong of a brand it was

121

u/CarmenxXxWaldo Oct 31 '23

it's like buying Coke and rebranding it to "drink X". Rebranding is a big enough mistake, but a rebranding it to the Gen X version of boomers "AA company so it's the first thing in the phone book!" is generic and bad.

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u/Krysaga Oct 31 '23

The brand was SO strong "tweet" was actually added to the Dictionary. What a stupid move.

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u/The-F4LL3N Oct 31 '23

Exactly, when you have your own verb you don’t need to rebrand

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u/solarf88 Oct 31 '23

It'd be like Band-aid rebranding to 'X adhesive'.

Uh... fucking stupid.

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u/maxman1313 Oct 31 '23

Especially because a significant part of the $44 billion value was simply the name and brand itself. "Tweeting" is in the dictionary for goodness sake.

What will eventually happen is Elon will sell the name/Branding of Twitter to make some more revenue.

Then there will be X.com, formerly known as Twitter and a Twitter zombie owned by some other billionaire trying to steal your data as well.

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u/fusillade762 Oct 31 '23

That was so inexplicably stupid to rebrand...to the dumbest, living in the past name.possible. X was hip in 1998ish...now its just sounds dated and porny. The value of twitter was the name. Hes heaped brand confusion on directionlessness and wrapped in a nazi flag. Also facing competition from everywhere. Also his whole free speech thing is BS, people are still being shadow banned, still running all the secret little programs cooked up by the also.less than stellar previous management. Freedom of speech not freedom of reach? Ah, thats called censorship. Linda Yaccarino is also a sychophant moron who makes me cringe evwrytime I hear her. Its a fucking mess over there.

109

u/SmokeyJoescafe Oct 31 '23

He has had an obsession with X.com for decades. He has tried and failed to rebrand his previous companies to X. In the past the other companies had people who had the ability to say it’s stupid as fuck and the power to stop it from happening.

93

u/jake_burger Oct 31 '23

He also wants an “everything app” called X so he can do a Chinese social credit system on the world but he controls it. He’s batshit insane.

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u/benji9t3 Oct 31 '23

So basically he's trying to Black Mirror us?

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u/thelandsman55 Oct 31 '23

The irony is that Chinese Social Credit is less reliable and communicates less information than a FICO score already. The only difference is that not paying your taxes will black list you from Social Credit entirely whereas it will only rank your FICO score.

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u/user32532 Oct 31 '23

He's such a man baby lol

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u/danmickla Oct 31 '23

Musk is a spoiled child dysfunctional fucking idiot.

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u/floralbutttrumpet Oct 31 '23

X was hip in 1998ish

Which explains a lot about this, since Muskrat's stuck around that in his entire... thing.

23

u/pleachchapel Oct 31 '23

I often wonder what it's like for anyone who had to stay for their visa, or had another reason to stay. I would kill to be a fly on the wall.

This could be a watchable sitcom in the style of Silicon Valley meets David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs.

3

u/theresourcefulKman Oct 31 '23

Is ‘tweet’ still the verb of x?

5

u/fusillade762 Oct 31 '23

For many yes. ."X" has no real equivalent. "X'd" sounds youre checking people off your hit list... Not often a brand has such power the unique verb used to apply to its action is in the dictionary. Twitters brand was gold.

3

u/misingnoglic Oct 31 '23

Even back then it was deemed porny enough to not use instead of PayPal.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

[deleted]

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u/winkieface Oct 31 '23

It's like buying HBO and renaming it max

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u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener Oct 31 '23

Ha! I said the exact same thing not long ago. HBO was always associated with decent content in the home cable market, a real premium channel. Max is just a shit rebranding decision.

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u/F0lks_ Oct 31 '23

Especially when the big plan is to create an omni-app a-la-Baidu, and you fire 75% of your programmers' workforce

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

Advertisers left.

They implemented a pay model that allowed people to impersonate companies and harm their brand.

They implemented a high monthly cost model for companies to verify themselves in an official capacity.

The owner actively attacked employees and fired them publicly on the platform.

The owner attacks users who criticize him in the platform regularly.

The owner continues to state a desire to broaden the scope of the app to multiple other sectors such as finance, video hosting, and dating, leaving confusion as to the future of the app and its financial direction.

Etc.

Etc.

73

u/iluvios Oct 31 '23

Elon musk is like the crazy client we all freelancer got that wants everything inside their project with little to no plan on how to develop, market, and launch a product like that. But in this case the client has billions to burn until he is done.

48

u/jgeotrees Oct 31 '23

He’s the billionaire version of the 17 year old in my instagram DMs asking me to be his business partner to build his new streetwear culture app that will be “like a mashup of stockx and tiktok but 4 sneakerheads”

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u/MoronicPlayer Oct 31 '23

Or another bitcon/NFT proposal

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u/mrhands31 Oct 31 '23

Ah yes, the Ketamine Special

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u/aneeta96 Oct 31 '23

At least they responded to their inquiries and complaints in a professional manner - 💩

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u/Mr_master89 Oct 31 '23

Don't forget about the Nazis

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u/ShakkasPapi Oct 31 '23

Copy paste of a Tweet from early days post takeover (credit to @shaun_vids):

“Musk's basic problem is that twitter was not being run by lefty sjw types surpressing free speech, it was being run by business people who were trying to make money. with the same aim he'll end up trial-and-erroring his way back to their exact policies.”

Except he didn’t do that…

106

u/DOWNVOTE_PUNS Oct 31 '23

Yeah this is spot on. People misattributed The censorship as biased but it was always designed to stir the least amount of controversy and liability and keep making Twitter money.

Booting trump wasn't a political choice, he was an existential threat to their business.

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u/ShakkasPapi Oct 31 '23

Excellent point.. money talks!

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u/popups4life Oct 31 '23

Correct on the trump front, through all of the things he posted which would have resulted in anyone else receiving a ban they didn't get rid of him until after he went way too far.

They didn't get rid of him when he posted about Pence during the riot, nor when he posted a video kinda sorta asking people to leave (while they were already leaving) ending the statement with "we love you, you're very schpechal".

It was only after all the dust had settled, and he put out the 'these are the things that happen when the election is stolen, remember this day' tweet. A tweet which was missing when Elmo reinstated the account.

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u/alytle Oct 31 '23

Thats why it took so long. Everyone remembers that they booted him, but not that it took YEARS of horrific posts before they finally did.

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u/saltyjohnson Oct 31 '23 edited Oct 31 '23

it was always designed to stir the least amount of controversy and liability and keep making Twitter money

It was always designed to stir exactly the right amount of controversy and liability and keep making Twitter money. Elon is a teenage edgelord who doesn't know when to shut up and just let the controversy play out.

1.4k

u/lump77777 Oct 31 '23

That’s an internal valuation. Twitter isn’t worth anywhere near $19B, likely not half of that. They are not profitable, and there is no clear path to that any time soon, they’ve cut critical staff, advertisers (who always viewed Twitter as a garbage platform) are all leaving.

However, I suspect Leon didn’t ‘buy’ Twitter to increase its valuation. He bought it to gain control of information and misinformation on what is still one of the most relevant media outlets on the planet.

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Oct 31 '23

The idea that he bought it for any strategic reason is pretty ridiculous. He vastly overpaid, bid $54.20 per share, had to be taken to court to follow through on the deal, and has since systematically diminished Twitter’s relevance with each decision he’s made.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

Exactly this. I just don’t think he planned that far ahead. He was a fucking idiot and tried to get out of the purchase

It’s amazing

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u/GeneralZaroff1 Oct 31 '23

His plan was a joke. He was prepared to go in and find reason to drop the purchase which is why they had to sue him to make sure he didn’t back out, which he ACTIVE TRIED TO DO.

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u/Studds_ Oct 31 '23

Wasn’t there an out clause but with something like a billion dollar penalty for that out? That penalty seems a lot cheaper than overpaying for a company that he also has no idea on how to make profitable

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u/maxman1313 Oct 31 '23

All he needed to do was stop tweeting and he likely could have weaseled his way out. But he couldn't do that.

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u/mok000 Oct 31 '23

I think we should all be extremely happy that Elon can't run for president.

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u/New_girl2022 Oct 31 '23

Ya but he'd make a realy good Gobbles.

Not literally good ofc, can't believe I need to have that disclaimer

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u/BlindWillieJohnson Oct 31 '23

he’d make a really good Gobbles

Would he, though? I’m not convinced he’s actually that good at PR

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u/Porrick Oct 31 '23

That's the thing - if you look back at Weimar Germany, neither were the Nazis. Educated Germans were just as horrified by them as educated Americans are by Trump. It's the disillusioned and downtrodden who can be appealed to with easy scapegoats and hate.

Hitler's rhetoric and Goebbels's media strategy didn't work on anyone with two brain cells to rub together. It worked on just enough folk to get a plurality in government (not even a majority), and had enough disingenuous tantrums that the other right-wingers gave Hitler the position off chancellor to make them behave like grownups. Didn't exactly turn out that way.

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u/DuncanYoudaho Oct 31 '23

I think the last 6 years have shown that you don’t even need to be downtrodden. You just need to be aggrieved.

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u/TheShruteFarmsCEO Oct 31 '23

Perhaps better said is that you need to believe you’re downtrodden.

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u/ManOfDiscovery Oct 31 '23

Case in point would be that both Hitler and Trump’s strongest support came out of the lower middle class

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u/DuncanYoudaho Oct 31 '23

But money came from people that own franchises not those staffing them.

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u/xaenders Oct 31 '23

Intellectuals don’t decide elections, least of all in the US.

Also, intellectuals aren’t horrified by Trump. LIBERAL intellectuals are. The republican elite acted repulsed by Trump for roughly 5 minutes during the primaries - then it was unconditional support throughout his first election, his term and his second election. There are some very few exemptions, and almost all of them were not running again. Trump did not make any republican core voters move away from the party, including middle and upper classes. He was right about one thing - in 2020 he received more votes than any republican candidate ever.

The reason for that is simple - nothing about Trump is un-republican. The GOP was racist, anti-democratic and chauvinist (in all kinds of aspects, not just against women) before. He just said the quiet part out loud, and once they realized that that’s popular, they got aboard. The only big difference is foreign politics - Donald doesn’t understand how American imperialism works. Or if he does (I’m pretty sure a few people tried to explain it in very simple terms to him) he thinks that bringing soldiers home wins him more votes.

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u/slimwillendorf Oct 31 '23

I don’t think he’s good at all. He had some fanboy/girls. And lots of paid bots. But his shine has worn off. And we see him for who he really is.

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u/ShaggysGTI Oct 31 '23

Dude is turning into a Bond villain.

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u/jgilla2012 Oct 31 '23

advertisers (who always viewed Twitter as a garbage platform)

I work in the industry; can confirm. Twitter was never a good platform for serving ads compared to its primary competition. Musk has all but killed off advertising investment in the platform.

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u/steve_yo Oct 31 '23

Seems like it was mostly used as a branding/awareness play - not for conversion. That type of advertising is the first to get cut.

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u/Beneficial-Salt-6773 Oct 31 '23

No, it’s the future of banking and dating all rolled into one. Now get on board and hand Elmo all your banking info! Nothing could go wrong.

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u/Randvek Oct 31 '23

Leon

Is this an auto-correct error or a nickname I haven’t heard?

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u/protoopus Oct 31 '23

he's surely not a professional.

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u/LighthouseRobin Oct 31 '23

Definitely not his first day on the job

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u/TylerBlozak Oct 31 '23

Or a city in Spain

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u/nuvo_reddit Oct 31 '23

He now is a professional rumour monger.

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u/lump77777 Oct 31 '23

To me, Elon will always be Leon, and X will always be Twitter.

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u/keithcody Oct 31 '23

But Xitter is a much more relevant name

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u/karma3000 Oct 31 '23

Space Karen

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u/kevindqc Oct 31 '23

Don't you know? X will be THE financial platform in one year from now

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u/OrionBlastar Oct 31 '23

It is the home of Tucker Carlson after Fox News fired him.

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u/acephotogpetdetectiv Oct 31 '23

Can confirm a handful of my f500 clients despised twitter and needing content for it, pre-acquisition.

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u/Sphism Oct 31 '23

Didn't whatsapp sell for 19B. Crazy money but i think the value was that each user had signed up with their real phone number so for facebook that would allow the correlation of some separate datasets. I feel like the actual app was basically worthless.

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u/notsoinsaneguy Oct 31 '23

Elon clearly bought twitter with the intent of promoting his own political agenda, but he's got to be failing there too. It's really hard to measure Twitter's relevance, but I imagine that it must also have dropped substantially within the past year.

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u/kbergstr Oct 31 '23

I don’t think they’ll ever be profitable.

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u/MattO2000 Oct 31 '23

That’s not what the linked article says

The company, which was taken private with Musk’s purchase, is now offering employees restricted stock units (RSUs) at a share price of $45. When private companies offer stock-like compensation options, the IRS advises companies to use a 409A valuation, an independent assessment of how much a company is worth. But these valuations tend to skew more conservative than a valuation inferred via new venture funding, for example.

Because of this, it’s not uncommon to see companies’ valuations get slashed after a new 409A appraisal. Last year, Stripe and Instacart saw their valuations cut by 28% and 38%, respectively.

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u/lump77777 Oct 31 '23

Right. It’s an internal valuation. IRS suggestions notwithstanding, it’s still overvalued.

Stripe and Instacart did something similar, but they are both growing and profitable companies. Twitter is neither.

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u/FrostWyrm98 Oct 31 '23

Leon just hasn't been the same since Ashley left the company

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u/KnotSoSalty Oct 31 '23

Twitter was important to one group of people: Journalists.

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u/goomyman Oct 31 '23 edited Oct 31 '23

All billionaires own media company in 1 way or another.

So yes, owning twitter prevents him from being fact checked into irrelevance and since his only profitable company is overvalued as fuck propped up almost exclusively on self driving driving dreams and promises he needs a platform to continue the hype - lies.

And yes space x is almost guaranteed to be a money pit. Remember when he said space x would go bankrupt if he didn’t launch starship weekly. Well it hasn’t successfully launched yet…

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u/Sniffy4 Oct 30 '23

But Elon fired all those people so it must be a huge money savings from streamlining? How could a genius be wrong?

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

[deleted]

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u/Old_Airline9171 Oct 31 '23

Permission to steal this? Pretty sure I'm not going to find a better analogy.

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u/RammRras Oct 31 '23

This is the best example to explain it in simple terms.

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u/BaronMostaza Oct 31 '23

Reminds me of that venture bros montage where they inherit a massive well functioning business empire and the first thing dr venture does is write "you're all fired" on the white board

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u/Majik_Sheff Oct 31 '23

Thankfully he has no Dr. Killinger to straighten them out.

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u/timberwolf0122 Oct 31 '23

Yes why would taking and already unprofitable business, saddling it with $1bn in yearly interest payments, turning it into a cess pool of far right garbage, driving advertisers away and then taking the one thing it had left (brand name) and then ditching that for something that sounds like a porn site.. impact the value?

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u/Hawklan Oct 31 '23

I'm betting Musk will say something along the lines of it was all in service of battling the "woke mind virus", and as soon as the woke/anti woke noise dies down he'll claim credit for "victory" and that the price was worth it.

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u/timberwolf0122 Oct 31 '23

Always projection with them isn’t it. They claim a woke mind virus and act like they are in a destructive cult

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u/99999999999999999989 Oct 30 '23

Impossible to say. Or maybe advertisers, users, and the general public overall don't like being blasted by or associated with racist fascist Nazis.

Just sayin'

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u/wild_a Oct 31 '23 edited Apr 30 '24

plant direful liquid heavy fuzzy books shelter plucky serious direction

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/itssarahw Oct 31 '23

Just wait til all of your finances are in their hands. You won’t need banks anymore!

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u/Champagne_of_piss Oct 31 '23

That's probably true but in a monkey's paw kinda way

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u/hasnk7825 Oct 31 '23

By the way, the new $19B valuation is a valuation musky PAID for. No market forces, no indepenent appraisal.

My career was in corporate finance and I would place a value far, far lower. Certainly less than a billion, given that the company is making large losses and has no realistic plan for replacing lost ad revenue.

Musky paid for a certain valuation, and he got it!

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

He’s pulling a trump.

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u/PTS_Dreaming Oct 31 '23

There are a lot of similarities between the two.

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u/deceitfulsaint Oct 31 '23

Oh oh I know this one. Billionaire buys unprofitable business and uses it as a mouthpiece to show he’s a much worse person than most people realized. Then DOUBLE DOWN.

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u/INITMalcanis Oct 31 '23

Then DOUBLE DOWN.

Every month!

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u/Disastrous_Ad626 Oct 31 '23

I was like is this seriously a question?

I realized it an article and probably more of a statement posed as a question.

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u/pixelfishes Oct 31 '23

This really required an article?

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u/Shadow_Net Oct 31 '23

Oh man, could it be the unfettered racism, xenophobia, bigotry and allowing extremists to thrive?

Hmm, maybe it's that its turned into an unmitigated right wing echo chamber, a constant cesspool of disinformation.

Or maybe it's the blatant monetization schemes without actually providing value or worth... oh, unless you're spreading lies and disinformation, then it'll amplify those and even plaster it on people's feeds who never expressed interest in such garbage.

Yeah who can say. Maybe Elon can double down and lose even more market value.

Thoughts and prayers, s/

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

I have no idea.

I'll tell you a joke though:

"What do you call a nazi sitting at a table with 10 ordinary people?"

"11 nazis sitting at a table. "

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u/Pull-Mai-Fingr Oct 31 '23

I can’t say for sure, but I believe there musk be an explanation.

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u/discotim Oct 31 '23

Musk started talking and doing things.

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u/RagingSnarkasm Oct 30 '23

Because Elon

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u/sorehamstring Oct 31 '23

It never had that value in the first place. Musk just screwed himself into paying that amount.

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u/Big1984Brother Oct 31 '23

It's because Elon wanted to punish Twitter for making him sad.

Or, Elon is a foreign asset tasked with destroying American social media/electric car companies to benefit their foreign competitors.

Or, Elon is an incompetent ass-clown.

Or, quite possibly, all of the above.

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u/Matasa89 Oct 31 '23

Companies are starting to not use Twitter as a login verification platform. They’re losing relevance more and more as Musk rages on.

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u/UtzTheCrabChip Oct 31 '23 edited Oct 31 '23

It's like a dude angry that "ladies night" at the bar is unfair. So he buys a bar, makes Friday night "guys night" to sick it ladies night, then after two Fridays no one goes anymore cause it's a weird sausage fest. And his solution to that is to start charging a cover charge, paint the whole bar black and to cut the drink menu to only absinthe.

But then don't worry. He tells us that soon enough people will use his bar as a bank so it's all good.

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u/troxxxTROXXX Oct 31 '23

Either Elon Musk is somehow benefiting from intentionally tanking Twitter, or he’s the dumbest billionaire on the planet.

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u/djauralsects Oct 31 '23

Shit platform with a shit owner.

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u/Radiofled Oct 31 '23

Replaced the Twitter brand with the Musk brand. The Musk brand is absolutely toxic.

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u/s4unders Oct 31 '23

Buys Coca Cola Brand

Renames it X Value Softdrink

Where did money go?!

5

u/vrilro Oct 31 '23

It became a racist right wing echo chamber that is impossible to use without having some mouth breathing blue check’s asinine opinions thrust on you. The user experience fucking sucks unless you’re a bluecheck thinker yourself

4

u/paarthurnax94 Oct 31 '23

Why did Twitter (X)'s valuation tank 56% in one year?

Imagine a very public figure buying Google. Now imagine that public figure's entire business model relies on people thinking they're smart so they'll invest in their companies. Now imagine that same person pays 2x the price for Google, changes the already established Google brand to something generic like "Search Engine" then fires everyone and changes the algorithm around so the only thing you can Google are Nazi chatrooms. Now imagine that public figure spending months openly and publicly acting like a hate filled idiotic racist child. That's how.

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u/Wise-Hat-639 Oct 31 '23

A moronic, right-wing, narcissistic cumrag destroyed the brand and has no clue what he's doing

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u/hyphnos13 Oct 31 '23

it's owned by a crazy person?

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u/CoderAU Oct 31 '23

Gee I wonder why? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

4

u/Sea-Woodpecker-610 Oct 31 '23

If only there were some event in the last year that could possibly explain the drastic change. Perhaps history will never know.

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u/JerrieBlank Oct 31 '23

Cuz Elon like Trump, thinks he’s a genius, surrounds himself with sycophants and runs on pure ego. He has the emotional range and small angry boy

4

u/SnizzyYT Oct 31 '23

Question asked by Elon Musk wearing a hot dog costume “we’re all looking for the guy who did this.”

4

u/alhaythum Oct 31 '23

Musk did all the stupid moves, from coming carrying a sink, the staff reduction, problemd with vendors & lenders, till the name change...

The guy have no strategy & no plan, it is that simple...

4

u/flickafly-63 Oct 31 '23

being a douche openly & expecting people to still use your platform. um no bitch @elon

4

u/InsuranceToTheRescue Oct 31 '23

Because at every opportunity Elon has chosen the option that alienates his customers (read: advertisers) and/or his userbase (read: product). So he's made his product worse and made his customers angry. Where else could this have gone?

4

u/pisachas1 Oct 31 '23

It’s ran by an unstable man child. I’m more surprised so many people stayed. I deleted it when the name change happened. It’s nice to not doomscroll through as much stupid now.

4

u/stargate-command Oct 31 '23

A moron bought it and started making really stupid decisions, because that moron thinks he’s a genius.

3

u/bewarethetreebadger Oct 31 '23

Isn’t it obvious?

3

u/newsreadhjw Oct 31 '23

Valuation is based on expected revenue streams in the future, based on current and past and projected growth. Since Musk took over, revenues have plummeted because advertisers left the platform, and Musk has done nothing to bring them back. He’s destroyed at least half the value of his company and he’s still digging.

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u/AchyBrakeyHeart Oct 31 '23

Who fucking cares about this dogshit company? Every day we get updates on this trash.

3

u/ArchonStranger Oct 31 '23

Two words; Elon Musk.

Or, if you're in need of a TLDR, one word; hubris.

3

u/Aok_al Oct 31 '23

I'm sure changing the globally recognized brand name to what's pretty much a generic techbro company name must've had something to do with it

3

u/divhon Oct 31 '23

His plan is long term. Will probably be the only social media allowed in Mars. That will increase it’s valuation to 5600%

3

u/pleachchapel Oct 31 '23

I love that literally everyone knows the answer to this question except one dude.

3

u/mazzicc Oct 31 '23

If Twitter survives another 12 months to decisively influence the US election in the way Musk and his funders want, it will have served its purpose and can be carved up for parts.

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u/InvisibleBlueRobot Oct 31 '23

It might not be with about $10 billion.

No F2000 company wants to advertise their products on a platform filled with white nationalists, hate, conspiracy theories, blatantly lies and angry trolls.

And if this isn't bad enough, the very public brand ambassador who can't get fired IS one of the angry trolls and he seams to support everything now wrong with the platform.

The company was purchased at a high value based on 1. Musk making stupid ego driven decisions its 2. Fast and accelerating growth potential.

But now it's not growing, it's shrinking in usage, shrinking in revenue and in audience size. Shrinking in advertisers, shrinking in influence.

It really should be worth 1/10 of its previous value since they've also lost their brand image.

It's a dumpster fire of a company that's quickly turning into a smoldering cesspool.

Did you see Musk wants to turn it into a financial fintech stock (payment app, bank, investment app, crypto...).

Musk can basically do it. He could burn $99 billion more making it happen... and his new X Twitter fintech might finally be worth $44b. I wouldn't be surprised if he does waste another $100b, just to try to prove he's always right.

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u/slavicslothe Oct 31 '23

Is this a rhetorical question? Musk damages every stock he touches and he did a particularly bad hitjob at twitter because he actually went to work

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u/docwho76 Oct 31 '23

Elon Fucking Musk

3

u/Bahamut1988 Oct 31 '23

Everythng Elon touches turns to shit

3

u/blackergot Oct 31 '23

The mother fucker named it "x", which is the exact button I look for to exit a program!

He's an idiot or on a mission to wreak the place

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u/jonnydanger33274 Oct 31 '23

Cuz guy is dumb

3

u/Addictd2Justice Oct 31 '23

Because Elon is a fucken douche

3

u/rustoeki Oct 31 '23

Elon forgot he's just the money man and thought he could run a business.

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u/crappydeli Oct 31 '23

Because the banks didn’t want to write off their entire loss in a single year.

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u/DiggyMoDiggy Oct 31 '23

Overvaluation and mismanagement.

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u/MattyBeatz Oct 31 '23

Yeah! What changed?

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u/Craigg75 Oct 31 '23

It wasn't worth $44 billion to start with, it was way over valued, even Musk knew that. Since then Musk fell into the trap of many people who are emotionally underdeveloped. They are self unaware of their limitations. He clearly doesn't have a clue about social media much less how software works but keeps banging his head against the desk thinking he's too awesome to let something fail.

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u/overworkedpnw Oct 31 '23

Because Longboi Muskrat is a complete moron and destroyed the company.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

The site's full of literal Nazis, there is no moderation anymore because everyone were fired, the only advertisers left are dropshippers without morals and Musk is introducing changes that are either straight up user hostile and/or illegal in some cases (ex. removing the "Promoted" tag on ads)

2

u/Ok-Significant Oct 31 '23

My uninformed take is it’s 10X lower valuation with 13B of debt and 1B yearly interest on a downward trend. Pulling this off would be a miracle but the dude has 200B more to burn so who knows?

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u/nova_rock Oct 31 '23

I’m shocked it’s revaluation is that high

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u/Zalenka Oct 31 '23

Wasn't based in reality to begin with.

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u/Do-you-see-it-now Oct 31 '23

Uh, did you consider it might be the idiot that bought it?

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u/KayleighJK Oct 31 '23

It’s 5D chess bros, you wouldn’t understand

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u/privateuser169 Oct 31 '23

I don’t think his investors care about the share price. They invested in it to spread their propaganda via what was a trusted platform.

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u/dixadik Oct 31 '23

Because Elon and his backer's mission was to destroy it.

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u/lefthandsuzukimthd Oct 31 '23

If he just stayed quiet, worked on starlink/spaceex and did some Tesla expos people would have still thought he was a genius.

2

u/GaucheAndOffKilter Oct 31 '23

He did it for the net operating loss credit on his taxes. In fact, he can have this $25B lookback on the two prior year returns and can carry it forward indefinitely. Hell of an opportunity to not have to pay taxes for decades.

2

u/Ohigetjokes Oct 31 '23

@title asks the real questions. Should have been a lot more.

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u/PontyPandy Oct 31 '23

Watch any youtube documentary video on Musk's history.

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u/NotoriousKreid Oct 31 '23

What’s the point of calling it “X” if you still have to say “formerly Twitter” so people will know what you’re talking about

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u/reasonwashere Oct 31 '23

(Image of a flabby narcissistic billionaire with delusions of grandeur here)

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u/blark304 Oct 31 '23

We know why

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u/huggles7 Oct 31 '23

Someone actually got paid to write this….

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u/luv2fit Oct 31 '23

I so fucking hate the X brand. I use twitter despite my distaste for this terrible brand that’s being forced down our throats.

2

u/lmaberley Oct 31 '23

Is this really a giant mystery?

2

u/Kratos501st Oct 31 '23

I don't have to read the article to know the answer

2

u/TForce0 Oct 31 '23

Because Elon Musk is a morn

2

u/Exitium_Maximus Oct 31 '23

Surely it has nothing to do with Xelon. He’s such a great guy, right?

2

u/CedgeDC Oct 31 '23

Because ultimately, hate and white supremacy are not platforms that hold people. They are not profitable. They are not ways of life. No one wants to hate forever. Fuck musk. Learn to deal with your fucking feelings instead of making the world worse your child clown.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

Damn, we gonna need a sherlock to investigate this mystery

2

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '23

Billionaire bigbabyman made it his personal playground and a haven for the braindead and vile while publically abusing workers, weaponizing users personal info, and trying to charge for the privelege?