Twitter is on the Brink of Bankruptcy

[@debasishraychawdhuri]

Musk did not leave PayPal, he was kicked out.

[@momoneyinvesting]

big surprise

[@typicalsomeone5073]

He was kicked out before it became PayPal mainly due to being a clueless idiot

[@lnsflare1]

Before it even became PayPal.

[@NalgasCQ]

And you personally observed this? Mmmm you must be a human FLY. a pest.

[@Andrewza1]

​@@lnsflare1he was kicked out but still held his shares he sold them after the rebrand

[@skaruts]

The Paypal part of the story is a bit wrong, though. X merged with Confinity. At that time, Paypal wasn't a company, it was the software developed at Confinity. Some time after the merge, they ended up ditching the X name, because no one liked it, and they also kicked out Musk. He didn't leave, he was kicked out. Only about a year later was Confinity rebranded to Paypal, and Musk was lucky to still own a share of it.

[@SangreFriasBack]

Didn’t he get booted for scheming to try and take over the company?

[@scottfarrell1906]

The article is completely rubbish

[@jloiben12]

@@SangreFriasBack He was booted for making, or trying to make, god awful decisions such as renaming Paypal X-Paypal and then eventually just X along with trying to turbofuck the backend systems by changing platforms for effectively no reason

[@Miata822]

@@jloiben12 When you own a domain name that you think is really cool, but don't know what to do with it.

[@ultraginge1990]

Correct. Musk got rich because competent people were very successful and he owned a portion of that. PayPal would not exist today if Musk was still CEO.

[@jloiben12]

I am glad he is making public knowledge what I have known since 2018: there is a reason why the only time he worked at a company he didn’t control he got fired in the first 6 months

[@paradiddles]

Get a job

[@TheCrusher72]

@@paradiddlesget a life, cybertruck…

[@BadThrusher]

😂

[@tjroelsma]

Only a self-proclaimed genius can buy a company and shred $30 billion of its value that fast.

[@JB-yb4wn]

Truly a master of the weapons of financial destruction.

[@kokroucz]

Mate that's nothing to what he lost on tesla last year

[@brightonbabe2139]

Ive seen this happen to another company that I was in and was bought out by another company. Within a year, anyone who can generate business (like me) was gone, the name of the company was changed, therefore eliminating the brand value and within 2 years it was bankrupt and closed down. He overpaid for Twitter because his ego got in the way, and even when given a way out, ie forgo the billion dollars deposit, he doubled down. Every casino's we dream is Elon!

[@marktvcturner2448]

Sounds Trump-like. 🤣

[@RM-el3gw]

dont forget he paid over asking price. lol

[@Martinmack333]

not paying basic bills like rent or servers, reneging on termination agreements, not adequately staffed, and still deeply under water...yep, Musk is truly a genius businessman.

[@ebzs1429]

Google "richest man in the world" then Google your own name 🤔

[@Suksass]

​@@ebzs1429 And yet the guy can pay his bills most likely. Musk doesn't.

[@Martinmack333]

@ebzs1429 personally I'd be way happier with my search results than with Musks. And seriously, you fanboys really need to learn make better arguments "well what have you done"...that's schoolyard level stuff...

[@melvinthedeathless.melvint6727]

@@ebzs1429 so you worship a person becuz he/she is wealthy? Truly debasing yourself. Have some standards.

[@CBRN-115]

​@@ebzs1429jesus you are spineless

[@Gredddfe]

Hearing that the X rebrand is a 25-year-old dream of Musk's makes so much sense now. There's simply no way that anyone with a sense for marketing thought it would be a good idea to rebrand Twitter. I can't imagine even his executives would have been happy to hear that decision.

[@kenlieberman4215]

Rebranding only makes sense when your brand is unknown. Its hugely expensive, and you always lose customers. For example, Nissan never recovered from the rebrand from Datsun.

[@asbeautifulasasunset]

You know when you have too much power (and you've abused it) when all the people around you can only say "Yes". Mao Tse Tung killed millions of his own people by having them kill birds in their agricultural fields. With Musk, it's only a business thank goodness.

[@fdm2155]

Especially since Musk clearly did zero research on active trademarks... 🙄

[@meteoric91]

Even "Twitter X" would have made a hell of a lot more sense than just "X." Kind of like Space X, except you still keep the well known "Twitter" branding.

[@helloxonsfan]

Exactly! It makes no sense to spend $44B on a company just to kill its well-established brand. ... If he wanted a different brand, he should have taken all that money & bought or started a different company...!!! He's a real clown...!!! (SMH!!!) 🤡

[@jarrodf_]

Hard to think of a worse acquisition and execution in corporate history.

[@MultiMates7]

I mean who wants to spend money on a crappy free social media.

[@n3wt]

channel got one thing wrong the title it's supposed to be x is about to be bankrupt

[@ajdz1840]

Disney and Fox, Time Warner and America Online, AT&T and Warner, Yahoo and everything, the list goes on. Empire building when rates are low often goes tits up

[@onsokumaru4663]

@@MultiMates7 a billionaire with an inflated ego, that's who.

[@jarrodf_]

@ajdz1840 What about them? How was Disney and Fox, bad or AT&T and Warner etc?

[@ecmuppet9538]

Elon musk's greatest contribution to society wasnt Space X, nor Tesla. It was destroying twitter for good.

[@kendi1417]

Wish he could have done TikTok too.

[@darkinetix]

Twitter has been a huge lifeline for those of us that suffer natural disasters, I don’t get why people think it’s a “bad” platform. Controversy thrives everywhere and Twitter’s death won’t be the end of that, but it will be the end of a critical resource for times of crisis.

[@tonycrabtree3416]

@@darkinetixNah, Twitter clearly took sides as a publicity held company. Twitter was and is shit.

[@Derekzparty]

I hope your natural disaster doesn't require more than 280 characters!

[@SlXkxmx]

I’m sure he is thrilled to fuck up so bad!!

[@anagramagt9717]

Twitter is over, and the change of logo and name is the formalization of that. What we have witnessed is not the evolution of a popular app but its end, and certainly as a result of a string of bad decisions. It would've been better if X was an app hub with Twitter among others that could be integrated, e.g. Twitter Chat, Twitter Pay, etc. Anyway, X is a monument to Musk's ego, a typical case of overconfidence in business, and proof that he screws up too, which in his style of doing things, he did it big time.

[@truemastermind6630]

"overconfidence in business, and proof that he screws up too" he screwed up alot of time's before this buddy... SpaceX was also almost a failure

[@1lollmaolol1]

He has screwed a lot before too. Solar city, for ex.

[@anagramagt9717]

@@1lollmaolol1 right, but as long as other people put the money, no biggie.

[@abaddononion]

Yeah this shouldn't have been hard. "Facebook, by Meta", "Google, by Alphabet", "Twitter, by X". Every big company knows you don't throw your valuable name recognition away, even if you change your company name. Except Elon, who has been set his entire life to prove everyone else is wrong when they tell him "X is a stupid name".

[@waiyon1951]

I’m just kinda waiting for someone to pick up the twitter logo and sorta rebranded it to something similar

[@Dogsnark]

One thing that changing name does for Musk, is to keep him in the headlines. I think that’s what he craves most - the media coverage.

[@WeeWeeJumbo]

he's that disturbed kid whose parents are always away on vacation, or leaving him with a sitter, or a nanny, so he never understands that there is some attention that is bad. any attention is like sweet sweet honey, because of his childhood trauma

[@eduardochavacano]

Well America is addicted to creating celebrities. Might as well admire porn stars.

[@snooganslestat2030]

Soon he'll be getting attention for being bankrupt after being the richest man in the world!

[@my1vice]

He has a god complex.... He likes to see things happen physically after he speaks (or tweets). All of that crypto BS is a perfect example. He's not the only one.

[@matheussanthiago9685]

There ought to be some Freudian explanation for all of this, I'm pretty sure

[@brightonbabe2139]

Given that Twitter/X has a serious lack of staff, why would you put banking through it? Where is the security? Competence and trust are basic requirements of any financial organisation.

[@light-rd7vq]

Lol tou cant take this idiot seriously. He cant even manage social messaging, so now youre going to implement finance products? How about you pay your bills fool lol. Would you trust someone with your money that doesnt pay his bills and tanks twitter?

[@jackdavenport4303]

Why would you link your bank to Twitter? Imagine getting mass reported by trolls and losing access to your money

[@mrb152]

It would be run by a big bank, just like every other company with a financial product uses.

[@maxmeier532]

more important, at this point, who would give his money to anything Musk is touching. During the pandemic with the stimulus checks and new apps facilitating poor people in buying stocks, tesla was pushed ahead. but the story short sellers had been telling is still relevant. tesla going under, i.e. being sold for pennies on the dollar is inevitable. they may win the race against a legacy car maker. But not against all of them. And they wont win against all the chinese brands, specially not on the chinese market, which is the biggest and fastest growing. the tesla short sellers werent wrong imho, they just became broke before they will be right.

[@78Terp]

​@@mrb152then it's duplication of current banking services. Like Zuckerberg, I have no intention of handing over my personal data much less access to my financials.

[@Catten_whisperer]

Watching Elon crash and watching his fanboys still defend him is so hilarious

[@maxmeier532]

I am looking forward see them sitting in the leased teslas with dead batteries when the tesla servers are shut off and teslas become stationary lolz.

[@NalgasCQ]

I love LEFT Soy Boys cry for old Twitter

[@letitbeenow]

​@@NalgasCQIt must suck to exist as you 😂

[@matheussanthiago9685]

"Masterful gambit sir"

[@Toonhai]

They are cult and he is their god

[@AyyGin]

Not even a joke. Now that they've rebranded as X, they may as well embrace being a platform for NSFW content considering how their userbase has shifted in that direction for years anyway.

[@Juanchomagro]

i seen a lot of nopor content on twitter...perphaps its the X logo associates to nopor websites?

[@marcosdheleno]

how about it? have you xeet today? i was too busy doing this xeet longer. and of course the classic, cant wait to see influencers xeeting their excuse next time they screw up...

[@casbot71]

Well Elon did just personally intervene to restore the _X_ account of a right wing influencer who'd been banned for posting child 'nopor'.

[@evanmurphy2165]

Just a minor correction at the 15:40 mark. Musk didn't leave PayPal - he was fired for incompetence.

[@MegaSimmaster]

CEOs generally aren't fired. While me and you know he was forced out, rich people typically "resign" ahead of any dismissal. It happened with Nixon, Steve Jobs, and Jack Dorsy. Funnily enough, Elon Musk did this exact thing to the original founders of Tesla.

[@Omega---13]

He was forced out because they didn't like the direction he wanted to take the company, they eventually sold the company a few months later without his support. He was way ahead of them.

[@MrRedsjack]

Not fired and not for incompetence. He wanted to make PayPal into a much larger project while the rest of team wanted to sell it to ebay. So they asked him to leave the CEO position as he was in contrast with them and they sold the company. Musk made billions but he tought he could make PayPal much bigger. Now PayPal is not used mich anymore mostly I see it only on ebay which is also slowly shrinking.

[@TheRealJellyBomb]

Nope, fired, the OP is right. Or, if you wanna be anal about it, "voted out."

[@chiquita683]

​@@TheRealJellyBombHow can you claim he was fired for incompetence when the company was sold? His incompetence was not selling the company? Why would ebay have paid top dollar in a historic transaction for ebay if Musk was leading paypal to failure.

[@markbrzezinski8889]

Musk buying twitter is like me buying a Maserati. I can afford it and it's fun but long term my money is gone.

[@zeusnitch]

...and then you start pulling out random parts, change it from an automatic transmission into a manual, grind the gears with every shift, and blow the engine out by revving too hard

[@buttsexandbananapeels]

Don’t forget you negotiate a great deal with the salesperson. “$130 grand?! No way! I won’t pay a penny less than HALF A MILLION! I won’t take no for an answer! Unless I say no, then get forced to pay! On ketamine!”

[@gaara4667]

How about making sure you’re rich enough where depreciation doesn’t matter to you and you just enjoy the car?

[@misterjei]

Unless you devalued the vehicle by racking up the mileage or power sliding it into a another object, at least it will hold a sizable percentage of its value. After Musk as finished driving Twitter(X) into the ground, I'd safely assume that there won't that much of a value left.

[@chrisleebowers]

It's more like if you bought a Maserati and drove it on the wrong side of the road every day until it was destroyed.

[@krozareq]

Google has all that and more. Maps & traffic, Gmail, video chat, cloud services, Google Play with apps, games and music, KZbin (still way bigger than TikTok), Google Pay, Bard, Google News, Google Adsense which is big even outside the Google ecosystem, and smart home integration. They would probably love to put everything on one app. But you know the regulators would never go for that. But they do have the next best thing with Android. Just like when Facebook tried to integrate FB and Insta into each other. That was stopped by regulators. Acting that a WeChat type of ecosystem is only something that exists in China is dishonest or ignorant on Elon's part. Also, making himself such a polarizing figure can only hurt him. Right out of that gate, the brand 'X' has a market split that does not need to exist. It's hard enough to compete with Apple, Google, etc. let alone to create arbitrary boundaries.

[@TheRealJellyBomb]

Yeah, but Google is literal Satan, though, so there's that 🤔

[@spicychad55]

Most of Google's revenue is from advertising. Not exactly the smartest way to make money.

[@FangKu-fp5ub]

True! There is no interest in usine his services, plus his réputation is tanking

[@MiniKodjo]

Everything is in one app called android

[@metalicminer6231]

You think there are regulators? 😂 It's all government sponsored, ready to control your life.

[@profdc9501]

Elon Musk is giving a very tall stack of bills a Viking funeral.

[@belindaelisa5618]

I think Elon watched Marvin the Martian too many times as a kid. In those Bugs Bunny cartoons, Marvin goes to Mars and there are X's everywhere.

[@ACzechManGoingHisOwnWay]

No matter how brilliant one thinks they are, there is only so much emotional YOLO one can get away with. Musk has been pushing his luck really hard.

[@DropBox-jx6yr]

Facts

[@Washpenrebel]

You do know that is an old interview when he took over. He explained the finance. Twitter is a now private and no one knows in what state are its finances. They don't have to make anything public. There are no public shareholders or stock price. There are many it companies that don't make a profit. So alot of this is just guessing at best.

[@itsmrevoud3399]

I'm pretty sure Musk has been pushing his luck his entire life dude.

[@DonRA33]

This comment is valid

[@picketf]

@@Washpenrebel except like stated in the video it's privately owned but owned with debt and all these other parties need to access the company's performance every few months by law so unless Musk fakes the company's earnings it's highly likely that when a lender marks down their initial investment by 2/3 the company logically lost at least 66.6% of their worth.

[@crypto_que]

For clarity musk didn’t have to lay off 80% of the staff. He’s following “The Worst CEO” model made famous by Jack Welch. Jack would do this to every company he touched making investors NOT employees his priority. Before this business model, employers used the kind of business practices that was workplace focused sustaining employees and their families for life. Many many American families were made middle class this way. People built & bought homes had life insurance & put their children through college. Welch also lobbied to do stock buybacks which had been previously made illegal. All in the name of shareholders not customers or employees. This business model destroys companies, people lives and blurs the lines between governments & the corporations who own them.

[@BigHenFor]

Please cite your evidence for your assertion. Please provide links and for literature, citations in Harvard format, because people need to understand this completely. And a post on social media doesn't really provide evidence.

[@blktauna]

@@BigHenFor google is your friend man. Its pretty simple. Welch destroyed the social contract and the middle class.

[@crypto_que]

@@BigHenFor The name of the KZbin video is The Worst CEO. That’s why it was in quotes. I’m out of college so you don’t deserve MLA Formatting. Or as they said in grad school “Google is your friend”

[@douglasdippold8235]

Employers didn't provide good work environments because of any ethical standards. Unionization pushed them in that direction. Now that they've managed to convince people that collective bargaining is somehow bad for them, we're backsliding into the gilded age of the robber barons.

[@stingerjohnny9951]

@@BigHenFor Still in school with that MLM are we? Don’t worry, no one uses that shit in the real world 🤣

[@bmeht]

Once or twice per generation a tech bro will get lucky on 2 or 3 massive risks, become stupidly rich, and then think they're an infallible megagenius. It's more like luck and survivorship bias. We see Zuck's luck and Musk's luck both running out around the same time, and I'm enjoying the show. 🍿

[@levansegnaro4637]

What goes up must come down

[@id10t98]

It's just like the people that win Texas Hold 'Em tournaments and big money. They think they're a genius and know all there is to know about playing luck bucket poker games.

[@porcus123]

I think zuck is a bit more level headed than musk still

[@jefffrederick258]

I would argue Zucks luck is a bit on the rebound. As the focus away from VR means most of those engineers pivoted back to positions in Facebook proper.

[@letsburn00]

As much as I dislike Zuck, he seems to be far more rational than Musk. He majorly screwed up the metaverse thing, but it's clear that shifting the company focus away from Facebook was smart, since it's a dying site full of old people and misinformation con artists. Twitter meanwhile just ramped up the censorship on everyone Musk didn't like and go easy on people he did. I do find it interesting how Musk's ex wife said she wanted to stay in his life(they married twice. She played Angela, the insanely beautiful host in Westworld) because he needed someone to stop his megalomaniac tendancies. Zuck seems to have a calm and reasonable personal life.

[@rogerpicklum1871]

Elon broke (oops) the news that Twitter was losing $4M/day, not noting the coincidence between that number and the daily debt obligation with which he loaded the company...

[@id10t98]

He's a genius all right.

[@benjamintalbot201]

Yeah that was my first thought to, to go and check 1.5 billion divided by 365, funny would you look at that. Almost as if dumping mountains of debt in a company only just breaking even is a bad idea.... who'd have thunk it.

[@larryc1616]

Nobody wants to be on 4chan 2.0 🤡👈

[@WeeSmokey]

​@@larryc1616dude it's numbers are breaking records so get wrekd

[@quixomega]

It's ok, no public shareholders to screw over so it doesn't matter if he runs it into the ground.

[@pmorton7960]

Bought Twitter on credit....😂😂😂

[@mrvirus888]

Who else here doesn’t even have twitter but enjoys this videos? 😂

[@letsRegulateSociopaths]

shoulda changed the name to Twatter.

[@TreyDobe]

Never had it, never really looked at anything on that site and never will make an account.

[@pino_7428]

Had it and never like like it. Once Elon bought it I just deleted it because I wasn’t using it anyways and I don’t like the disinformation.

[@78Terp]

I never had Twitter or Facebook for that matter. No TikTok, Instagram none beyond KZbin.

[@RobRoss]

I had a Twitter account for over 10 years. I rarely tweeted anything, I mostly just read other people’s tweets. But I cancelled my account after all the Republican propaganda got out of control. It was a week of particular tweets that Ted Cruz made that made me decide to cancel my account and I have never regretted that decision.

[@ultraginge1990]

Twitters MAIN asset that is has is brand recognition. Getting rid of that is insane to me.

[@dmac7128]

A lot of those layoffs were software engineers. These are the ones essential to reprogramming Twitter into what Musk wants. And its going to be a bit more expensive to replace them in this job market. And second he did get rid of censorship that "he detests". But censorship is still alive and well. Its just applies to speech hat HE doesn't like, such as anyone that is critical of HIM or his ideology.

[@samuelglover7685]

Who the hell would *want* to work for the nitwit in the first place? Musk is the anti-recruiter.

[@AG-ig8uf]

Exactly! Even Xitters own public data shows that company is far more obedient to requests from censorship , including those coming from foreign dictatorial governments. While Twitter used to resist such requests, Xitter just obeys.

[@SpottedHares]

Musky was never for “free speech” he wanted “freedom from speech” speech that hurts his feelings.

[@gediminaskucinskas6952]

Musk did not leave PayPal. He was thrown out. In fact it was after they got rid of Musk that the company rebranded itself into PayPal and became quite a powerhouse. Musk had nothing to do with it but he was lucky as he still had company shares from his time with Confinity.

[@eternaldarkness3139]

Elon playing 4D chess... Disaster, Delusional, Disappointment, Dumbazz Checkmate

[@psycho7.7]

💀

[@WeeWeeJumbo]

woefully underrated comment

[@nerfherder4284]

The irony is that "4D chess" is just a prop in a TV show and not actual "plain" chess, which takes some smarts to play.

[@artnull13]

@@nerfherder4284if we’re talking Star Trek here it was known as: tridimensional/3D chess. 4D chess is the bs muskrat fanboi’s spew out because of course _genius billionaire smooth brain_ here has to be 1D ‘cleverer’.

[@tomlxyz]

@@nerfherder4284 even if it's not real, just adding two dimensions to chess would make it much much harder to play than regular chess, especially since our natural imagination works only up to 3d

[@chasejones8302]

The switch to 'X' can be explained by massive financial pressure on the business. He has to prove to investors that they are on their way to being an 'everything app'. When things are going well, you don't change the name of your brand.

[@brendonross5774]

The massive financial pressures are of his own idiotic making. He never wanted to buy Twitter in the first place, he was just desperately trying to impressive his 14yr old fans with a "really dank 420 meme bro". Hilarious $40+billion gag Elon! Forced to buy the company, at easily $20billion more than it was worth he is trapped. Interest on his loans is $1+billion, and Twitter always struggled to get anywhere close to breaking even every single 1/4 of its existence... I believe it made a profit finally in the 2 1/4ers before Musks purchase. The guy is screwed. As for the "everything" app... WeChat is his model? Do you think that perhaps the Chinese political system might give a single approved app an advantage it could never have in a Western democratic context?

[@internet_userr]

He can't be an everything app, he doesn't have support of the us government, and if he does become like WeChat they'd just say X is a monopoly and they'd break it down into smaller companies thus it cannot be a mega company

[@ruekurei88]

Its a private company, so he doesn't have to.prove anything to 'investors'. There was no initial plan or promise to turn Twitter into an everything app when he borrowed the money as well. This is what he always wanted to do and is doing it, there was no external pressure from others. People were also trying to say he got pressured into buying Twitter as well, ignoring the fact that he made the initial proposal which the company was forced to consider after him buying him stock and declining to be a board member. The company even taking measures like poison pill.

[@deathroll914]

facts

[@larryc1616]

Twitter is X'd out into bankruptcy

[@LIONTAMER3D]

Destroyed the brand, destroyed the staff, destroyed the logo, destroyed verification, destroyed volume, destroyed advertising. I get it: destruction is a necessary prerequisite for creation. What has he created? His "vision" has no manifestation beyond him saying so (lol), which means he either can't figure out how to do what he wants to do, or alternatively, there is no "vision" & he's just making things up as he goes along. That later scenario bears a closer resemblance to what we are seeing.

[@S-K69]

The brand was destroyed by Twitter who was working with state actors to censor political speech they disagreed with. Musk has saved the brand. The only people who hate Twitter are the ones who hate Musk. It’s not Twitter they have any issue with, it’s Musk they have an issue with because they were told “Musk bad”

[@mobbkopf]

Musk has visions about a lot of things, a people keep celebrating him as a big hero about to save the entire universe. Fully self-driving electric cars, robo-taxis which cost $25k and generate profits of $30k annually, electric trucks which are much cheaper to run than Diesel trucks and which are conveniently recharged by solar roof shindles while the trucks are being (un-) loaded, hyperloops, brain implants, sending people to Mars... List not complete. A former German chancellor once said "those who have visions should see a doctor".

[@Mandy-Lane]

more importantly destroyed himself too

[@Infotainment-cb6cy]

advertising destroyed itself. look at youtube and all other platforms. the propaganda appartus works like this: Stocks = free capital and marketing, be woke = get good ESG, adverrise on anti-woke = get lower ESG score = lose marketing and capital.

[@NoName-rl3fh]

​@@Mandy-Lanebetter than ever. Nice try though.

[@ofskittlez]

"We have a three billion dollar negative cash flow situation." -A financial genius.

[@bigwavesun]

😂Lmao, best comment

[@TheSateef]

i have a feeling in 6 months we'll be watching a lot of "why did twitter go bankrupt" videos

[@TooLateForIeago]

"Free speech advocacy," is an... interesting way to describe Musk's motivations.

[@jcngokai-76]

Yeah, consider that he has essentially let Nazis to takeover his company, it’s no wonder why there’re so much hate speech flying everywhere, and everyone bails on Musky Boy (myself included).

[@salamandiusbraveheart4183]

A dishonest way maybe

[@j4genius961]

He's definitely pro free speech...As long as he agrees with it

[@zarbon700]

Some free speech have negative consequences. Freedom of speech doesn't protect you from consequences of your speech. Elon is now realizing that with Twitter.

[@PsyrenXY]

The free speech absolutist thinks cis is a slur

[@maamiimii]

Even if hypothetically a WeChat-style app was able to succeed in the US there's no way that he's going to make that with 20% of the staff. Twitter was already small compared to other SV companies (In the single thousands vs tens or hundreds) so to cut that by 80% (down to ~1500) and try to force that staff to basically make Paypal but in twitter is stupid. Paypal itself has 30k employees and they JUST manage Paypal. Even if you think there's bloat in the company it still needs around 15-20k just to manage the payment system alone.

[@nerfherder4284]

There is really no such thing as a "private" company in China. Musk is most successful when he is surviving on government subsidies because he likes totalitarianism.

[@truthalonetriumphs6572]

Don't worry. He's going to sleep on the office couch.

[@THE16THPHANTOM]

its scary that twitter was just getting by and only breaking even each year. keeping those advertisers happy was a good thing, but it was also not getting them anywhere. why did the people before him act like they owned the world under those conditions.

[@Compgeek86]

The twitter purchase was like private equity buying out a retailer: load it with debt, cut costs as much as possible, then strip it for parts. But retailers have "parts": real estate for stores and warehouses, inventory, and well-known brands that another company will want to buy. Twitter doesn't have anything but an advertising platform.

[@Sokko13]

and now that he's ditching the brand for "X" they won't even have any brand equity left. 😆

[@NoName-rl3fh]

This comment aged like milk.

[@kubluu]

Lesson: Don't get addicted to Twitter when you are the world's richest man.

[@maxmeier532]

it's the disease of an aging man to fail to realize he's increasingly out of touch with reality. You need to be able to change gears or you will run off a cliff.

[@keepmoving1185]

Or at all

[@ImSimplyAHuman]

Not sure how rich he actually is vs how much leveraged debt he has

[@Jangocat]

He's actually not the worlds richest man, his value is in assets, and those are near worthless these days.

[@matheussanthiago9685]

Nor ketamine

[@adampagano5361]

This feels like the institutional equivalent of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[@lawrenceo7372]

The billionaire genius myth just disintegrated

[@uptown710]

Oh believe me, that shit was non existent for quite sometime

[@stingerjohnny9951]

@@uptown710 Yeah, but now the veil has been completely lifted. Plus it said something when I hear “genius billionaire,” the first person I think of is Lex Luthor 🤣

[@hemzaonline]

instead of starting a company from scratch gaining users from 0 he bought a platform with a 450M potential customers with just 98$ per customer

[@David_Last_Name]

I'm having my own cash flow problem so I have also decided to just not pay my bills anymore. It's saving me so much money, I'm such a genius!

[@samuelglover7685]

The Musk simps admire deadbeats, I guess.

[@8GrayDemon8]

9 Months Later: The Sinking Company!

[@marcosdheleno]

dont worry, afte X fails to catch on elon will rebrand it again to oceangateX...

[@eldenfindley186]

If I owned Twitter, I’d probably sell a limited addition set of NFT trading cards depicting myself in various superhero costumes. If that didn’t work, I’d probably resort to outright fraud. Maybe I’d start a fund to build a wall in the middle of nowhere and just pocket the rest of the money after building only a few miles of it.

[@nerfherder4284]

😂👍🏻 that's crazy, who could get away with that? 😂

[@individual1-floridaman491]

Don't forget to fleece your supporters while running for president, purely to save your own skin.

[@blktauna]

lololololol good one

[@crypticnomad]

The kitchen sink thing is just weird. He should have done like a dog and just peed on something to mark his territory.

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Shut up

[@maxmeier532]

I thought that's what the sink was for. Real men piss in sinks.

[@crypticnomad]

@@maxmeier532 lmao, that caught me off guard. well played

[@asbeautifulasasunset]

He was just subconsciously giving advance warning that the business was going to go down the drain.

[@samsonsoturian6013]

@@asbeautifulasasunset no, it was a common joke

[@rutgers182]

let’s not forget musk has changed everything. in 2014 musk promised full self driving. now there are zero humans driving cars. also now there are tunnels everywhere so you can go underground and skip traffic. also, twitter is massively successful thanks to him. he is the best self made son of an emerald miner in the history of the planet.

[@zeusnitch]

Don't forget about how he landed the initial supplies for our future colony on Mars!

[@light-rd7vq]

Haha well put. I do love twitter cuz it exposes morons which otherwise you would think may actually be smart. Ie Elon and Trump lol

[@mcwomble99]

Don’t forget he saved those boys stuck in a cave in Thailand with his mini submarine

[@mrb152]

The musk hate is so pathetic. He owns one of the largest car companies in the world and could buy a couple more twitters and still be one of the richest in the world. Sorry that makes your tummy hurt pavankat.

[@zeusnitch]

@@mrb152 Lol. How long ago did Elon say FSD was 'here/now'? Six years-ish? His mouth writes too many checks that his companies can't cash...the overvaluation is gonna come crashing down

[@MrKenny368]

When I was doing a bit of fundamentals analysis for Twitter 6 moths before the acqusition, I came to a valuation of 8 to 16 billion at most. That was considering mostly the financials, not the brand itself. The fact that he was buying it for 44 billion was kinda astounding to me. I thought, well maybe the brand name and the influence it has can be worth that much. Maybe he has some plan how to capitalize on it. Ifluencing peoples opinions has its value. But after the change to X and all the shenanigans, it's kinda clear there was no plan to begin with. He just kinda assumed everyting would come his way. With the price he paid just to scrapt the brand, it would be better just to build his own platform. I bet he could hype it into existence even if Twitter was still around. The thing is, he's mostly a hypeman and most of his fortune doesn't come from his companies profit, but from selling people the idea of what the company is going to be and the selling them the stock. Don't get me wrong, thats a great skill to have, it made him the richest man on the planet for a while. But it's a bit of a double edged blade, if you don't realize that your castle stands mostly on other peoples faith in you. The moment he makes dumb decision like this, it not only costs him a lot of money, but the faith too, and that spirals in a nasty way. Running a social network isn't cheap, for example Facebook need's to generate about 40$/year per active user to break even. And that's probably cheapest it gets, because they have their own very cost effective servers. For Twitter on rented servers, it's probably more like 80$/year. Mostly it's through ads. He kinda burned that bridge a little bit. So he tried subscription...that's how they came up with the pricing I think, the 8$/month is pretty much just to break even :D. Assuming a majority of people subscribe :D.

[@sandwitht6264]

he thought running it would be easy and everyone else was an idiot, in fact he underestimated everything, then got into real troubles later then he invents some more issues to distract people from the current problems then the cycle continues....

[@greyson3421]

👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼 Great job Elon. Now, every time I get a notification from Twitter, it looks like I just got a message from an escort service or worse.

[@stingerjohnny9951]

Nope, Lonnie boy is the only one getting fucked right now lmao

[@samsonsoturian6013]

I think the ultimate winner is the bank, because while Twitter might fall Mr. Musk can still pay back that loan.

[@ktktktktktktkt]

leveraged buyout means twitter is on the hook for the loan, not Musk

[@samsonsoturian6013]

@@ktktktktktktkt Musk's share of Twitter, you mean.

[@questcore636]

you sure about that?

[@QuakerPop]

​@@questcore636yes. He's 100 percent right

[@MrRedsjack]

If Twitter goes bankrupt the bank loses the money. LIMITED LIABILITY companies are called just that for a reason.

[@wamingo]

I think he might be testing the waters for a brand change to sell the Twitter brand while keeping the site and users. Maybe Dorsey wants to buy it back.

[@goodboid]

I'd turn Twitter into an app only available to cantankerous toddlers throwing hissy fits. I mean it makes sense for Elon to double down on his core strength.

[@snuffles5451]

That's what twitter is and always has been... What would you be "turning" it into?

[@stingerjohnny9951]

I’ve seen pics of him shirtless, he has no “core strength” 🤣

[@althunder4269]

One man can change the fortunes of thousands of dedicated workers for his own ego.

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Come now. Lots of Twitter Twats wanted to seize control of the platform and change everything. This guy simpky had the money to do so

[@greghuntington9277]

Your sentence is not quite clear, what are you saying?

[@yesnathan22]

LOL ...dedicated employees work 4 hours a week

[@davelee1935]

Oh lord Elon, show us the light 🙏

[@Montes88r]

Did you skip the video? The company had 3 months to live

[@RealityCheck6969]

After Elon took over Twitter suddenly banned me for no apparent reason. I considered the move so stupid and unfair that I didn't even appeal. I simply stopped using them since then.

[@Boonorp]

I too, had an account banned, but I then realised that I had two separate accounts 😂 (which I suspect was allowed earlier). The problem is that the reason wasn't disclosed.

[@javierpatag3609]

It boggles my mind how Musk can't see how he cut his workforce too small to save Twitter. That's just basic business.

[@aightm8]

the fact that it still functions is proof that it was grossly overstaffed

[@outlandtavern]

@@aightm8 There is a lot of shit you can pull off of a car and still have it function. Doesn't mean people will still buy it.

[@aightm8]

@@outlandtavern Ok. Let's stick with your bad analogy. Where the car parts = non essential features and functionality on the platform. Can you tell me what "parts" (non essential features or functionality) have been removed from twitter? You can't, because there are non. Hence your analogy is bad

[@supermanblackedition]

@@aightm8 I’ve experienced more bugs on X than ever before. Videos not having sound and some threads don’t load are the two most I run into.

[@OhNotThat]

@@aightm8 get a load of this jack@ss, he straight up doesn't understand the concept of maintenance costs vs. capital expenses. What are you a child vib? I ain't explaining stuff to you like you're a 12 year old, get real. Anyone with a brain knows that if you never maintain your car after you buy it or take into repair, eventually it will break down cause all the oil filters got clogged.

[@trevorsmith5946]

Only reason Elon bought Twitter was to turn it into X

[@aaronhpa]

AKA destroying it.

[@BangBangBang.]

Wrong. He bought it to control negative posts about his blowing up cars and horrible customer service with his brands

[@larryc1616]

Space karen is mental turning Twitter into a far right hate-filled 4chan 2.0 😂

[@samuelglover7685]

The drugs might've had something to do with it as well. Not to mention the sociopathic megalomania, surrounding himself with simps and yes-men, etc. Oh, and Grimes, of course.

[@matrices3987]

He's a fraud who should be banned from any corporate ownership for a decade of flagrant lies.

[@samsonsoturian6013]

How much did you lose on the stock?

[@randomuser5443]

Such as? Bad investments isnt illegal

[@samsonsoturian6013]

@@randomuser5443 it's a Twat jealous of the big man's money

[@matrices3987]

@@samsonsoturian6013 I made 6x my investment in stock and options trading over 3 years during the run-up. If you had any sense of objectivity you could research the many court cases against this fraud.

[@mrb152]

Sorry he makes your tummy hurt matrices3987, but he still owns one of the biggest car companies in the world which was a startup when he took ownership.

[@mammajamma4397]

Not Musty digging his original idea out the crate 😂😂😂😂

[@amslu]

Most costly mid-life crisis ever. At least Saudis got rid off twitter…

[@ronjon7942]

Disney using Adjacent Advertising to steer away from Tweets w profanity made me chuckle.

[@laughingman7882]

Paid 44 Billion for a brand and immediately changes the name 😂

[@MicrophonicFool]

The more Elon talks, the more he says nothing at all. The Classic 'Talking Loud but saying Nothing'

[@yesnathan22]

OK billionaire

[@halfdome4158]

Agree 100%.

[@halfdome4158]

@@yesnathan22 Dont believe he's a billionaire. He makes millions selling carbon credits to companies. He also has big govt contracts to send things up in his rockets, which are designed by NASA engineers and scientists he employs. He likes the cache of being a genius science guy. He isnt. A fashionable persona. Like alot of these new types. Cant give the Teslas away..... he is now offering an 84 month payment plan.😃

[@maxmeier532]

@@yesnathan22 what does his bank account have to do with his m.o.? it's such a pedestrian take on everything.

[@yesnathan22]

@@maxmeier532 OK boomer

[@lauraanderson8785]

It angers me so much how Elon's treating his remaining employees. He wants them to live in a makeshift hotel in the office and work through the night? He sounds like a nightmare to work for! Elon doesn't seem to understand that these are *real* *people* who do NOT exist to serve him and dedicate their entire lives to his whims 🙄

[@stingerjohnny9951]

He often makes Dune references (ignoring the transhumanist themes obviously), so I genuinely think he plans to be the God Emperor of man. You know, like how Wile E. Coyote “plans” to catch the Road Runner lol.

[@asherrfacee]

Should’ve kept it as twitter and just focused videos/live streaming, but the company needs quick money and he knows the fastest way to do that has been to get into financial. Unfortunately for him we’re living in a very different financial world and you can’t pump the stock like 2020. He couldn’t have bought twitter at a worse time, but he really just wanted a way to sell Tesla stock at the top, so even if twitter goes bankrupt he kinda breaks even anyways because he would’ve lost that money when since Tesla shares dropped like 50%.

[@samuelglover7685]

Dropping 3/4 of the staff -- by height? astrological sign? -- doomed the stunt from the beginning. Musk is a goddam moron. Back when he was blathering on "hyperloops" and about his idiotic schemes for tunnels everywhere, he demonstrated pretty conclusively that he never had the technical chops of a freshman engineering student at a third-tier university.

[@Tuxfanturnip]

financial is also a great way to get into prison very quickly

[@imacmill]

Musk didn't get rid of the political censorship. He's very much for censorship, censorship that's in his favor, and we've witnessed him doing it.

[@ZZWWYZ]

How did he fire 80% of staff yet Twitter still have the same operating expenses ?

[@nerfherder4284]

🤔 good question. Since he does "all" the work perhaps he is taking all the pay, 😂 but seriously I think he is adding debt services.

[@artnull13]

It’s called being a _genius billionaire_ 😂

[@sauloborges1377]

imagine being a company who lives of advertising and them try limiting how much post users can see( and for consequence advertisement)

[@obtuse1291]

So it really might be a case of X marks the spot, where twitter is buried. 😂

[@garybarrett4881]

He even had to pay the fees of the lawyers that twitter hired to force him to follow through. Got to be one of the biggest spankings in corporate history. A great engineer does not always mean a great businessman.

[@johnnyonthespot4375]

Hang on....Who is the "great Engineer" in your statement ? Please tell me you aren't referring to Musk - I know a lot of Engineers - Musk is not an Engineer.

[@maamiimii]

He's not an engineer lol

[@ThisJustin_87]

Who is this "great engineer"? 🤨

[@TylerDurden404]

"Great engineer" at being a complete moron / bozo. He has shown that is is not the real life version of Tony Stark but he is actually like the fake Mandarin. Go look up some video of Musk's history.

[@BodyByBenSLC]

he not even an engineer, spaceX should become a fireworks company with all the explosions, nerulink cant keep employees because it is too depressing to watch the test monkeys vomit to death, boring company was suppose to make hyperloops but just makes tunnels, starlink 30% of satellites are dead, we were suppose to have self driving taxis and Tesla trucks last year. Elon is rich on paper because of government hand out and hype.

[@Tricky_Adventures]

It wasn't sink, he carried in. It was a toilet, where he then started flushing twitter down it.

[@AnAngelineer]

I say good riddance. The cesspool of Twitter/X may have granted some people opportunities, but it's main contribution always has been mental health problems and scams. I sure won't miss the site once it's finally gone.

[@TheSushiandme]

Hopefully Elon learned his lesson to shut his mouth and be humble

[@alaakela]

Not a chance 😂

[@nerfherder4284]

😂😂😂

[@MJ-mp1fx]

Couldn't be happening to a more deserving guy

[@TheRealJellyBomb]

As much as I liked the (advertised) sentiment for buying Twittercrap, I couldn't agree more. Electric Jesus is a clown 🤡 😂

[@mrb152]

Not true, there are many more deserving. It's bizarre that the left hates an electric car maker so much. Probably because the actually evil billionaires like Zuck pretend to be of the left.

[@robertluong3024]

Glad you didn't mention the nonsense about "bots" that Musk was using to get out of the deal as a legit reason.

[@pangmeister]

The fix is simple. 1.5b interest payment? Convert the debt into share and dilute the hell out of shareholders. Don't blame the employees or the company, it is you Musk.

[@PaulBernard365]

Very insightful video, as usual. Thank you WSM

[@casbot71]

Elon is going to be a case study at business schools in the future - as an object lesson and warning.

[@mariusvanc]

What is an "object lesson"?

[@casbot71]

@@mariusvanc You don't know how to google?

[@Joepage69]

To fix monetization issues all you have to do is remember that you the company are in control of what is seen. If a person is watching something they like it . So you can think of it the same as nobody associates ads with the particular videos they’re watching.

[@one_of_the_Bobs]

"If a person is watching something they like it"...... this is an absurd overgeneralization in how users engage with content on social media platforms.

[@samuelglover7685]

Ummm.... and this is going to be your pitch to the advertisers who provide(d) pretty much ALL of your revenues?!?!? Jesus, that's some real Musk-level biz genius you've got going there, sport.

[@Joepage69]

@@one_of_the_Bobs well, put more simply if a person clicked on a video, they know that there’s going to be an ad played before it so, by clicking on the video, they decide to give the “video owner” money So put simply what I’m saying is that, the ads and the videos are entirely separate. People pay for videos by watching ads. It’s like if you couldn’t pay for your KKK membership with bitcoin and bitcoin says it does not want to be associated with the “KKK “ Like that’s not how money works, you were just restricting peoples access to “purchasing.” do you understand now?

[@moki1416]

That sink was the heaviest thing Elon ever lifted.

[@Arkets]

Saying Musk “Left PayPal” is a bit of an oversight

[@sethaie]

Brink of bankruptcy could be the goal - to get partially debts forgiven and interest rates lowered.

[@bmeht]

Another 5D chess argument, sounds super likely

[@mrb152]

@@bmeht using bankruptcy laws is common, not 5d chess.

[@codylehr9848]

As long as he shows attempts to save the company, bankruptcy is a real option to get lowered debts

[@one_of_the_Bobs]

I've heard this argument before but from my understanding it doesn't make sense. When Musk purchased Twitter he became the sole proprietor of the company; meaning the business and finances of Twitter are not separate entities from Musk himself -- therefore if he does in fact wish to file bankruptcy on behalf of Twitter he would have to file personal bankruptcy. The relationship between Twitter and Musk in proprietorship kind of forces him to have to sell off personal assets which in Musks case would probably be his shares of Tesla. His best bet is to try diving the valuation of Twitter down and sell it for fractions of its immediate worth if the company becomes so over-leveraged where he has to sell off his personal assets.

[@nerfherder4284]

You don't get personal loans and then do such a bad job with that investment in one year that you try to restructure your loans.

[@MacAutomationTips]

I browse Twitter only one or two times a day, and try to stay on less than ten minutes. The For You stream is a complete turn off. Half the posts are by people I don't follow, and there's just too much vile content that I don't want to see. Every third or fourth tweet is another, which is also very annoying. I miss the days when Twitter offered pretty good news coverage and they censored a lot of garbage on the platform. Also, the X icon is a complete turn-off. I removed it from the homepage of my devices. Sad to see Twitter dissolving, but hopefully something better will replace it.

[@FREEDOM195844]

Never was a fan of twitter and now less so! How he is the richest person in the world is beyond me!

[@jmitterii2]

Because he's a con. Who is already going thru many civil courts... unfortunately some of the juries have had idiocy overwhelm them and some of them he's been let off the hook. But there are other cases coming his way. And some that haven't been filed. None so far that are criminal... hopefully those ones get developed and prosecuted.

[@0lionheart]

@@jmitterii2 his family own a South African emerald mine and he's told a story before about how they had so much money they couldn't close their safe. He came from money, got lucky early, and has been riding that ever since. Tesla is treated like a tech company instead of a car manufacturer and that's why it's so overvalued. I can't remember the details but I know they abuse every government handout they can get, too.

[@yvelaine]

Hey James …. Good interview .

[@annix493]

6:23 “…he couldn’t even think of one that wasn’t coming back” 😂😂😂

[@Deriv44]

At this point, what left about Twitter that would have justified paying $ 44 billion to buy the company instead of starting his own social media platform from scratch

[@Finance-Tools]

same thought

[@johnnyonthespot4375]

Look no further than the attempt by our former Prez - Drumpf for the embarrassing outcome of THAT idea.

[@mrb152]

The userbase is still there. That's the hardest thing to develop.

[@Deriv44]

@mrb152 for how long just need another better option or another bad impulsive decision from Musk to really sink it for good

[@VanillaMacaron551]

Jack Dorsey's way ahead of you, he he.

[@JanghanHong]

I noticed the Twitter app icon being changed to that weird porn site symbol and deleted it immediately.

[@bulkvanderhuge9006]

How to make Musk a multi millionaire? Start with billions and let him take it from there.

[@psp4150]

I can't wait to tell my bank that I am in a negative cashflow situation and will make my car payment some day down the road. Companies don't want to generate a profit; profit is taxable.

[@asburycollins9182]

That is nonsense. The hallmark of great companies is their gross profit and the roic. If you dont make profit people dont want to invest resulting in the price going down.

[@markgouthro7375]

It's always difficult to predict a train wreck. You can see it coming, but getting the time is hard.

[@Joepage69]

I’ll never understand how in 2012 advertisers would put their advertisements on anything and now they won’t because they’re afraid of it being on bad stuff. But the people who are there watching that stuff already like it so they’re not worried about anything. The only people who could negatively associate an ad with a video is someone who’s watching a video they don’t want to watch.

[@Phil_597]

Simple, because of the religious level of ESG fearmongering, brainwashing and moral panic. In 2012 BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, State Street and Capital Group did not yet have the ESG stranglehold on shareholder democracy. Also, back then the average shareholder IQ was way higher. The real rulers of the world had not yet unloaded most their stocks to total idiots to buy property and precious metals instead, the things that always survive massive global deleveraging.

[@DragonZombie2000]

Is it bankrupt yet? This video is almost a year old

[@NoName-rl3fh]

Exactly. He let his derangement get the best of him. Must spend too much time around women.

[@aljoseph8424]

This aged well. lol

[@jpanda79]

The whole building a hotel for employees to work through the night isn't anything new. A lot of tech companies provide these types of services maybe just more quietly. EPIC gives everyone their own office cause often tech workers are sleeping over night in them. And then they have a food court and showers so they can eat and shower in the morning

[@fdm2155]

Those employees likely signed on for that and the company likely has legal arrangements to make this work...Musk is just pulling ideas out of his ass. 😂😂

[@redstream1237]

That 🐦 was too iconic! Idk why he removed it for no reason

[@kinderalegria]

And this is the guy who's supposed to colonize Mars for us 😂😂😂😂😂

[@EEZYEEEE]

Musks only hope is to add two more X’s to the first X and make it an OnlyFans type platform.

[@ItsJoKeZ]

that's what the X is? 😂 that's hilarious. like facebook going to Meta. do they think "cool" names will change everything?

[@VinceroAlpha]

Unfortunately yes

[@homszerrudo1025]

The hubris is strong in Musk.

[@medes5597]

That adjacency tool has worked so well.

[@CaribouDataScience]

Elon is the "Citizen Kane" of the twenty first century. There is a scene in the movie (paraphrased), where someone tells Kane the newspaper is losing $1,000,000 a year, and Kane response "that means I will go out of business in 60 years."

[@nicholashylton6857]

I can't imagine being so rich that I could blow 44 billion dollars just for giggles.

[@samuelglover7685]

Hate to give her any credit, but maybe Nancy Reagan was on to something with "just say no to drugs". But I guess Grimes didn't help, either. ;)

[@t1ll316]

Musk is the last person I would trust with anything that comes close to my finances

[@leonrobinson8180]

I'm glad he's being exposed. He's not a genius. He's just a rich kid who got access to millions in grants, the smartest people in the world and entered an insanely lucrative field (tech).

[@mobbkopf]

@@leonrobinson8180 Plus, he's an extraordinary con man. Probably no one else would have managed to e. g. blow up the value of an experimental electric car manufacturer which is now finally barely breaking even on its revenues to a size bigger than almost all other car manufacturers together by repeated ludicrous promises about e. g. full self driving, the Cybertruck etc. The marketing he does is really incredible - others ended up in jail for decades after pulling off a con the size of maybe 0.01% of what Musk did, and he just keeps doing it since decades, and is not only a free man, but also for many a celebrated hero who is about to change the world.

[@pierrex3226]

Lol I think it's fair to say he's done a bit better than you no?